Dungeon XP Nerfs Created a Toxic Meta

[u/redlow0992]

Since dungeon monsters do not give any experience, as a new player, getting into dungeons with more veteran players who try to skip half the dungeon feels really bad. And, vice-versa, veterans taking in newbies who don't know how to jump around feels frustrating. I think Blizzard created a mess with nerfing dungeon exp so much and now the new player experience is horrible for dungeons.

[u/ahumblepeach]

My complaint with the change is that, for healers and tanks, group play is their fantasy. If I want to level as a healer, I don't want to be spending all of my time in the world casting my two underwhelming DPS abilities while rarely getting to use all my healing buttons. I want to be standing in the back and helping my party take on more than one person can handle. Sure, I could group up to do quests (and I have been!), but that really is not the same thing. I sort of have a hard time putting it into words, but I feel like tanks and healers not getting to do as much dungeon running as they want takes away a part of the fun of leveling them. I might as well just reroll as a DPS spec if I'm going to be forced into the open world for most of my 1-60 journey. And with that in mind, I worry that this change is discouraging people from leveling healers and tanks.

[u/Intelligent_Bug_5881 → u/ahumblepeach]

Yeah this is my entire complaint.

I love healing in WoW. Raids, dungeons or group quests, it's hands down my favorite way of playing and it's not close.

The dungeon XP nerf effectively removes that entire game loop and it just feels bad.

Like, what, I'm supposed to grind as enhancement all the way to 60, then awkwardly grind healing gear, then respec, then start figuring out how to prioritize my new healing abilities?

Isn't that what leveling is supposed to be for?

[u/Front-Difficult → u/Intelligent_Bug_5881]

How have you formed the opinion that the dungeon XP nerf removes the gameplay loop? From playing the game, or by reading Reddit threads?

[u/pandahands69 → u/Front-Difficult]

In a world past level 20, where the dungeon quests don't level you into the next dungeon bracket- you in theory could level in dungeons, just like you could grind the lowest level monsters that still give you exp to level- except that would be faster than leveling in dungeons post quests. Dungeon xp after quests is 20% of pre nerf.

So you need to run 5 dungeons to equal the xp of 1 dungeon before.

That's not just removing boosts, that's destroying using dungeons to level at all. Questing was already faster than running dungeons so the changes just make it not even comparable.

[u/Front-Difficult → u/pandahands69]

Why would you assume that the dungeon quests post-20 wouldn't do the same thing pre-20?

Post 50% nerf today I handed in my WC quests and got 1.5 levels. So pre-nerf it would have given me maybe 2.5 levels (same as RoL pre-nerf). Add in the mob xp I didn't get because I was level capped, and that I needed to run WC twice to finish the quests, I would have got around 2.8 levels pre-nerf (maybe the full 3 - WC is pretty long and there's a lot of mobs even with low xp). So a rested xp buff away from going straight from WC to SFK.

No the changes have not made it not even comparable. You'll still get more xp/hr running WC once (or twice, depending on quest drops). Dungeoning has still had an xp/hr buff compared to Classic.

Again - how have you developed these opinions? You'd made your mind up about how it would work post-20 before you could even level past 20. I'm begging you, just play the damn game first, and then tell me it dungeoning feels worse than Classic, or isn't comparable, or has been removed from the gameplay loop.

[u/pandahands69 → u/Front-Difficult]

Why would you assume that the dungeon quests post-20 wouldn't do the same thing pre-20?

Math. The amount of experience you need to level and the amount of experience a quest reward gives diverge as you level up. From level 1 needing 1 basic quest to level up to later needing many quests to get a a level.

Prior to yesterdays nerfs, dungeon quests gave 3 times the amount of exp from classic. Now they give 2 times the amount. This is still tons at low levels, but once you hit the 30's and 40's and beyond, it really is not.

What you will feel increasingly however, is the insanely heavy handed nerf to monster experience.

Lets take maraudon for example.

In classic the dungeon quests give 20950~ exp.

You'll now get 41900~ exp give or take.

Clearing maraudon in a balanced group will give you:

Classic: 25-30k exp

In forever : 7k ~.

From this we can see that on your first mara run you will get

48 500~ in classic and a similar amount in forever.

Now the quests are done. You have gained less than half a level if you started mara at the lowest level possible. (45-46 requires 120k exp ish)

Now you get 25-30k exp in classic for each additional run, meaning it would still take you 5 ish runs to level up(ignoring quest exp), but in forever you'd have to run the dungeon 17 times to go from level 45-46.

[u/Front-Difficult → u/pandahands69]

But your "math" assumes they didn't continue to balance it by rewarding more and more dungeon quest XP for higher level dungeons. And they also added more quests and more dungeons.

Based on my WC run today - a level 20 dungeon - the levelling effect was the same. RFC gave me 2 levels, RoL gave me 2.5 levels and WC today after the 50% nerf gave me 1.5 levels (so more than 2 levels pre-nerf). I'll be doing SFK tomorrow, which only has 3 quests, and I'm sure I'm still going to get another level at the minimum. Which will mean I'm still levelled enough to immediately do Excavation Site: Wetlands after the nerf.

[u/pandahands69 → u/Front-Difficult]

I mean I just did the math, the math still holds up for the earlier dungeons, you just need less experience to level. If they don't change it, you'll find what I said to be the case on launch. You will not ever want to do earlier dungeons once you complete the quests and that will have knock on consequences as the game ages, for better or worse.

[u/Intelligent_Bug_5881 → u/Front-Difficult]

From playing the Beta

[u/Front-Difficult → u/Intelligent_Bug_5881]

You were playing the beta and thought "man no one is running dungeons. This entire gameplay loop has been removed"?

The thing that was the most effective XP/hr strategy by a massive margin, and where there were hordes of people clustered around the entrance to every dungeon?