Pilgrim's Traverse floors 71+ are a "right direction" for normal dungeon content.

[plasmacutter]

Specifically:

Each mob has its own mechanics.
Remain engaged and awake while pulling and it's easy to deal with.
Ignore those mechanics and your party dies because ignoring mechs results in unhealable damage.

I didn't even realize how much I missed this.
The last time I saw this was in Heroic Shattered Halls in WoW nearly 20 years ago, which was considered the equivalent of "expert roulette" at the time.

More of this please.
Bring this into normal dungeons.

Normal content does not have to be "trivial", and the easiest way to make normal content non-trivial is to severely punish attempts to mindlessly gather and aoe down pull after pull.

There are ways to expand upon this further:
Examples:
Adjust the terrain in rooms to allow pulls to be strategically positioned.
Use the "spiney" mechanic from Ultima Weapon Ultimate to give a dps a kiting job to do.
Make the DR on things like sleep and stun toggleable and adjust those things in dungeons to give players viable CC to use on mobs.

[Catastrophe573]

Agree with the OP. Dawntrail has had some great dungeon bosses precisely because they're harder and more interesting than the devs have dared to make dungeon bosses in the past. The trash mobs can level up a bit too.

I'm thinking about Forgiven Riot, where it telegraphs a left/right cleave then follows it up with the opposite. Nothing in normal content ever does that. It's all just point blanks and small cones.

Thing is, dungeons need to be doable by bad players, and good players who are tired after work or drunk. But just leave the damage as severely undertuned as it already is. Normal mode has generous checkpoints and trash mobs stay dead. No one will be walled. Playing well should be fast and efficient, but optional.

[Valence]

It's overall a good direction, but it still needs to rely less on oneshot mechanics which are boring. If that's the only way to keep people engaged in this game, I don't know where we're going.

They also dramatically skewed this in favor of group play as well since this kind of model has proven relatively bad for solo aficionados from what I've gathered.

[plasmacutter]

It's overall a good direction, but it still needs to rely less on oneshot mechanics which are boring. If that's the only way to keep people engaged in this game, I don't know where we're going.

They also dramatically skewed this in favor of group play as well since this kind of model has proven relatively bad for solo aficionados from what I've gathered.

Agreed, the mechs don't have to one-shot, they merely need to dramatically outpace healing if they're not respected (and you can give very forgiving definitions of "respected" via role actions for this to still work with the 21 combat jobs we have).

And of course it's for group play, my advocacy here is specifically to port the experience of pilgrim's traverse into 4-man "normal" dungeons.

Requiring basic strategies and awake participation in trash pulls is what makes them satisfying, and the reason everyone complains about trash pulls is the lack of anything interesting beyond "gather wall to wall and aoe down".

Each person should have something they're doing that is critical to clearing a trash pull.
Have a few "high damage" mobs that must be tanked alone or their damage is too much, meaning you need to kite or sleep them until you're ready.
Have mobs like that Shadow Dragon in final steps of faith.
Don Mheg's fuaths that buff certain mobs should be a thing, and if you don't prevent it that should wipe the pull.
Give trash mobs tank busters.
Have twists like mobs that sleep your healer if not properly engaged.
These are just examples.

Ideally, trash pulls should feel, at least directionally/generally, like the Add Phase in Shiva Savage, but without a timer on it, so the only way "enrage" happens is if you repeatedly ignore mob mechanics, with the goal being player engagement with actions that matter.

Granted, some minor role action adjustments may be needed, but this is what made MMORPGs engaging, and abandonment of this in favor of "group and aoe, group and aoe, group and aoe" is what has been annihilating the entire sector for 10 years.

[Valence]

What I mean by favoring group play, I should clarify, isn't that more accessibility is bad - the new checkpoints and the whole structure of access for the dungeon is great, actually. But they also focused too much on the "ddr" aspect like in Orthos instead of anything else and it removed a lot of things that made solo what solo used to be. But again, ask to actual solo aficionados because I'm not the best positioned to talk about it. The crowd control presence though is a good thing they kept, and it needs to be explored further.

I do agree that normal dungeons would benefit from more as well, even if of course you can't exactly make a MSQ dungeon like you'd make floors 50+ of PT in terms of difficulty. But that's also a problem in PT by the way, I do understand that the very first floors need to be a pushover for scaling and allowing story players to go through, but are they really better than standard dungeons? They kinda feel like the same snoozefest because there is literally nothing happening in there?

And that goes back to my beef with the devs there, it's all binary, all or nothing: you either get oneshots everywhere, or you get literally striking dummies that keel over at the smallest fart. Nothing between. Same for MSQ dungeons - until you get the controversial bosses that are, once more, following the same binary designs.


Edit: there is another trash model that you may have gone through (or not) which was found in Criterion. Very approachable (unlike the bosses), although of course you'd want to tone it down for MSQ content. But it's great, it's unique. Imagine that they're removing this from the next criterion, even in the advanced version... It's like they're doing everything they can to keep trash boring and not have trash at all I swear.

[plasmacutter]

there is another trash model that you may have gone through (or not) which was found in Criterion.

This exactly.
Thank you for reminding me of this.

Criterion Trash should be the model, but without the enrage you find in criterion, or a tuned-up version of Don Mheg with even more mob synergy and intelligence.

You can use the new "announce panels" from the latest trials and raids to make things more explicit, and it would take time and minor adjustments, but this is what trash packs should be, and used to be when MMOs were at their peak of popularity. (and the removal of this model is what caused MMOs to go downhill)

From an RPG philosophy:
A trash group should be like your light party, and defeating it should involve breaking its synergy.

[Catastrophe573]

+1 for the Criterion trash pulls. Criterions were my absolute favorite content in EW and to this day it's the only content I can get my friend group together to do!

I'm a little torn on the new Criterion coming up in 7.4. On one hand, they finally gave us the ability to practice each boss separate. On the other hand, no more trash pulls. The trash pulls were legit interesting. And I think they were just breaking new design ground in aloalo where you had to dodge both the terrain and mechanics at the same time. Plus tank positioning matters a lot!

However as of DT, the trash pulls are kind of nothing now. Mostly due to potency and ability creep, but also due to 740 gear syncing down. In patch 6.55 it was terrible to have 2 vuln stacks in the second pull of aloalo. Now I just casually have 3-4 vuln stacks as a healer and it's no big deal. I wonder if the devs know that trash pulls age poorly and have given up on trying? And then how about normal & variant dungeons?

[Ultran]

Sadly what I see at the moment running floor 61+ in Pilgrim's Traverse is that pugs are already struggling because they try to pull it like a normal dungeon and get killed or bait aoe's in a way that the rest of the party dies.

[Mercury_Grey]

Agree with the OP. Dawntrail has had some great dungeon bosses precisely because they're harder and more interesting than the devs have dared to make dungeon bosses in the past. The trash mobs can level up a bit too.

I'm thinking about Forgiven Riot, where it telegraphs a left/right cleave then follows it up with the opposite. Nothing in normal content ever does that. It's all just point blanks and small cones.

Thing is, dungeons need to be doable by bad players, and good players who are tired after work or drunk. But just leave the damage as severely undertuned as it already is. Normal mode has generous checkpoints and trash mobs stay dead. No one will be walled. Playing well should be fast and efficient, but optional.

it follows up with what legs glow first. Once it lands and turns around then it seems like it is going off opposite. Best way i figured it our was tanking the fight and keeping the boss facing the way its facing.

[Brathar]

I completely agree. The later floors of the new Deep Dungeon are some of the most fun I've had as a tank in ages. I actually get to do real tanking again!

I absolutely loved the trash pulls in Criterion, as well. Very sad to hear they're going away in the upcoming one, as I thought the trash was amongst the best parts of Criterion.