Mythic+ is defined as a race against time. And beating this challenge should be down to your own actions without too many other factors impacting it. Once you spend minutes running back after a wipe or listening to a boss role-play dialogue (RP), you feel like you are not really in control of the outcome of your key.
Last season showed some of the biggest differences between dungeons. Dawnbreaker in particular was an exceptional dungeon in the history of Mythic+ in this regard. In it, no wipe would result in more than 15 seconds until you were back at your old position. Meanwhile, wiping at certain bosses in Grim Batol would leave you with more than a minute of runbacks. Season 2 of The War Within also shows some big differences. Theater of Pain has long distances between the 5 bosses, and the Motherlode allows you to constantly mount up and save time. So let’s take a look at them all and see which work and which don’t.
The Big Differences And Measuring The Lost Time
RP is always a fixed script that steals a set amount of time from you. Running back after a wipe always depends on either the fastest to come back and resurrect the rest, or the basic run speed and displacement spells of the slowest team member. No stat in the world can accelerate roleplay sections. Even stacking the tertiary speed stat is very loot RNG-dependent. Besides, it will rarely get you more than 20% extra actual run speed. Outdoor dungeons are, of course, always great, as Dawnbreaker has proven with Skyriding over really short distances. And even if it is just ground travel, players always welcome outdoor dungeons like Motherlode. That 200% run speed or even more can really cut down on lost time.
Once we get to walking inside a dungeon, not all classes have a 40% extra speed permanent travel form. Or a blink or can jump across long distances saving 5 seconds of running each time. When looking at the dungeons of this season, Nightstalker314 ran the basic paths between bosses without using any cooldowns or passive bonuses.
Setting a Baseline
At 100% running speed, this is a fixed 7 yards or meters per second. We can use this as a generalized metric to compare each dungeon and its sections. On average, players will obviously be faster than this. Bosses in general respawn after 30 seconds. So any distance back towards them that is longer than 40-45 seconds (our standard threshold for this article) will still take most classes a bit longer than the 30-second cut-off. This will result in more and more lost time. And looking at the heatmap feature from RaiderIO’s stats page we can see that most hotspots for wipes are at bosses or in the trash packs close to them. This way the distance between bosses and their wipe respawn point is a good measure for each dungeon.
The Worst Offenders
True Pain
As mentioned above Theater of Pain owns its name when it comes to wasting time. The start is fairly simple with just 10 seconds spent to get to the first boss. But after that, you already lose 26s to the script of falling through the floor until you can move on again.
From this centre court, we look at each of the 3 wings and the way back towards the last boss from Gorechop. This is one of the most common routes. A trip back to Xav the Unfallen (Gladiator fight) is already about 55s of standard running. This is already beyond our defined threshold. The Lich Wing can be even worse with all the travel back to individual platforms. And even if you were to take the entire shortcut enabled after the last platform – maybe you died there to knockbacks and the Bone Spear – you are looking at 36s running to the teleport. That’s a fixed 17s of flight and another 18s of running to the boss. All in all quite terrible regardless of how much speed benefits your spec has.
The distance through the third wing up to Gorechop clocks in at 60s of standard running. And that’s if you get lucky with the patrol that everyone hopes to skip without losing any time. But after this boss it gets even worse. 25s of running interrupted and extended by more than 60s of using the hooks upward. AND the teleport to the top just to wait for the boss RP to finish. On a wipe you get an instant teleport back to the top though. All in all the worst dungeon when it comes to tolerating major wipes.
A Workshop of Wasted Time
A good contender for the first place might also be Mechagon Workshop. It’s just 15s from the start to the first boss area. But after this, the numbers seem to only go up. 15s of roleplay followed up by a section that takes almost 40s of standard running when wiping on the boss. From here it can be an excruciating 60s over the conveyor belt towards the next mini boss. After that, you get a decent reset for the 3rd boss. This one can be up to 50s after a wipe, with the stealth section making up 25-30s in an ideal case. The last stretch towards the final boss includes a 16s scripted flight. Standard running for the rest of the time brings this to another 60s spent. All in all a long dungeon that has frustrating sections around the conveyor belt and the stealth segment.
The Midfield
Darkflame Cleft might be the easiest dungeon this season. But if you start wiping it can cost you a lot of time. Standard running towards the first boss results in just 35s. But the respawn until the 2nd boss is defeated shares the same spawn point. This brings the full runback to number 2 way beyond the 1-minute mark. It comes in around 80s if you have no speed cooldowns. From there, it is quite short to number 3 with 35s. If you happen to wipe towards the end of the follow-up mine cart escort – which the heatmaps suggest happens quite often – you spend another 60s of standard running. The mine cart chase is roughly 60s of a scripted event. And after it the new respawn point is less than 25s away from the final boss. Quite the mixed bag for this dungeon.
The Rookery is already a short dungeon, and for the start segment we’re looking at roughly 25s back to the first boss with around 11s of scripted flight. From the next spawn point below the first boss it takes you under 55s of standard running back to the 2nd boss and with the shortcut just under 60s after a wipe to the final boss. Given the rather short timer in a 3-boss dungeon, this can get really close for many runs.
Operation Floodgate has a bit of an advantage in comparison due to its open layout and the big outdoor section. Depending on your route to avoid certain trash, you can ride back to the first boss in less than 25s. Once the route gets up to the glider start – also a big wipe spot on the heatmap – and back towards the second boss, you are looking at a full 60s of riding your mount and gliding. 35s alone back up to the glider itself with about 10s of a glider flight.
If you carve out a shortcut towards the 2nd boss from the start, it’s just around 30s long. From the start to the third boss, it is less than 25 seconds. But once this one is defeated, the runback to the final boss after a wipe is 60s of standard running. Definitely some extra lost time. So overall this dungeon is quite okay, though the spawn of the 3rd boss wastes a few unnecessary seconds with its script.
Cinderbrew Meadery has only a single respawn point for the entire dungeon. Towards the first boss, it takes just a few seconds, but the distance towards both of the wing bosses is already uncomfortable with 45s of standard running. The way back to the final boss wouldn’t be that long if it wasn’t for 16s of a scripted bee ride. A terrible example of such a closed dungeon design with just a single respawn point would be Temple of the Jade Serpent returning in Dragonflight Season 1. It had no shortcut towards the middle court and the third boss until that one was defeated.
The Better Dungeons Of This Season
Priory of the Sacred Flame is 50% outdoor and 50% indoor. The first and second boss share the same respawn point at the start. It takes just under 30s of riding to get back to the first boss and just under 40s to get back to the second. After this boss, the new respawn point is just under 40s away from the final boss. However, here your class or group speed cooldowns can cut that down to acceptable levels. Overall a decent pace if you happen to wipe in this dungeon.
The MOTHERLODE is currently the second easiest dungeon to time. Given that you can mount up in the entire dungeon you are rarely wasting much time after a wipe. The first two sections on the heatmap also show most wipes closer to the respawn. The last two sections get rough right before bosses three and four. The distances from boss to boss and from the start towards the first boss vary between 20 and 30s, with the second and fourth segments being closer to 20-25s. So being able to ride through an entire well-paced outdoor dungeon leads to the most forgiving wipe runbacks of the entire season.
In Conclusion And For Your Season 3 Voting Consideration
Having well-designed boss and trash encounters is one way to make a good Mythic+ dungeon. But the time in between these battles is also decisive for a good overall experience. Recently, the developers have started forum polls for the Season 3 selection of The War Within dungeons for their Mythic+ line-up. The new dungeon coming with 11.2 will probably be included, but for the selection of a few places you should think about your choice. A lot of people will go by loot tables and especially desired trinkets. Dawnbreaker and Ara-Kara are already among the top dungeons and fit quite well with their rather short distances and next to no roleplay scripts.
Looking forward, we can only hope that the developers keep wasted time after wipes in mind when choosing respawn points in new dungeons or adding them to returning ones in the future. Let’s just hope it goes better than Grim Batol or Theater of Pain.
