Timewalker Dungeons: Why Bother?

I touched on this on Twitter earlier, and others did too, but today I’m going to write my FEELINGS down, because I have FEELINGS and I am not an emotionless machine with no FEELINGS.

Introduced in patch 6.2 will be “bonus events” that occur on certain days, affect the game in some way, then vanish 1 or 2 days later. These apparently occur on some sort of cycle. The events are:

• Timewalking Dungeon Event: Players 71+/81+ can queue for special “Timewalker” dungeons where you are scaled down to the level the content appeared in, but earn rewards appropriate for the level you are when you queue.
• Pet Battle Event: Earn triple the pet experience!
• Draenor Dungeon Event: Killing stuff in level 100 Heroic or Mythic dungeons earns reputation with Draenor factions.
• Apexis Bonus Event: Apexis Crystals appear more frequently when killing stuff in Draenor.
• Battleground/Arena Skirmish Bonus Events: Earn triple the Honor Points when participating in a battleground, or arena skirmish.

All well and good. Stuff to encourage you to play the game, at least on those days. These seem like weekend bonuses. Other games do this too. Call of Duty sometimes does triple XP weekends, for example.

Issues?

In the video above, Qelric eloquently elaborates on her issues with Timewalker content. TL;DW?

• It’s too fucking easy. This is indicative of what the content was at the end of the relevant expansion, when people have fantastic gear and faceroll everything. Rooms can be mass-pulled, trash can be engaged with the boss, healers can spend time DPSing instead of actually healing.
• The rewards are just not up to snuff. 640 gear? You get better gear from LFR or your garrison, and when 6.2 hits, you can also get tokens from enemies in Tanaan that create 640 gear, much like with the 496 tokens on the Timeless Isle. What’s the incentive to run this content?

What IS the incentive? It’s not rewards, it’s DEFINITELY not the challenge.

For some people, these dungeons will trigger memories of “glory days” or of better times, which will then be stomped all over by the fact that these are still not the experiences you will have. You will go into this Timewalker content and you will storm through it, you will be aghast at how trivial it all is. If you’re going in there for the challenges you remember, be prepared for disappointment.

But maybe this is part of the plan? Maybe this is merely seen by Blizzard as an alternate avenue of gearing alts? That every once in a while, you can do something DIFFERENT from LFR, or grinding stupid gear tokens, and do a laughably easy dungeon for weirdly-coloured BC-era loot.

I’m not really sure I like that.

I don’t have the emotional attachment to these dungeons as Qelric does, primarily as I never ran them “at level”, I only started playing at the tail-end of Wrath. For me, the equivalent would be… Cataclysm heroics, maybe. I remember them being horrendously difficult. My guild and I did these places together, and we felt such achievement and accomplishment at merely doing this. My memories of the places are tied to the people I ran those dungeons with, and if they were butchered in the same way, I imagine I’d have much the same reaction.

In Other News

Destruction has updated tier bonuses.

• 2pc: Reduces cast time of Chaos Bolt by 1 second and increases damage by 5%.
• 4pc: Your Chaos Bolt has a 9% chance to not consume an ember.

Simple, relatively unexciting boosts to DPS. The 2 piece allows for more embers to be cast in a shorter window (thus maybe making Glyph of Dark Soul more viable?) and the 4 piece boosts DPS by offering the occasional free Chaos Bolt. It’s not quite the instant Chaos Bolts we were seeing before the change, but still good.

Destruction still sucks at movement though.

Demonology has a changed bonus too.

• 2pc: Your Soul Fire increases the damage done by your Demons by 5% for 15 seconds.

Seems straight forward. Cast Soul Fire, demon does more damage. Does this extend to Guardian pets as well? Your summoned imps and your Doomguard cooldown? TESTING NEEDED.

Not to be outdone, Affliction has a change too.

• 2pc: Each time Drain Soul deals damage, it has a 20% chance to extend the duration of Dark Soul: Misery by 2 seconds.

So, your primary filler spell increases the duration of your primary DPS cooldown. Bit RNG, bit boring, but still a DPS boost if you get even just 1 timer extension.

They all boost DPS, but in very unexciting ways. It’s a shame.

(obviously stuff mentioned in both sections of this post are PTR stuff and are therefore subject to change, so take stuff with pinches of salt galore)