by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Angels and demons are bound to their natures. Demons are given to chaos and deceit; angels to truth and order. That much is known …The Nephalem alone have choice. ~Archangel Itherael.

Welcome to Wishful Wednesdays where we will attempt to show some ideas from fellow Nephalem who want to see something added to the game: whether that be builds that need items to make them work, a new or revamped mode of game-play that they would enjoy, holiday buffs or just QoL improvements.

Patch 2.4 is, arguably, one of the biggest updates to date for Diablo 3, and has brought many great changes to the game with both major quality of life changes and more diverse and fun to play builds. One of the things introduced that a lot of players were excited about was the set dungeons which seemed to fall short of expectations. None of them are impossible, in fact the majority of them are tests of how well you play your class even if it’s not always about the set, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues.

I am going to try to not give too many spoilers but any links given are probably going to  have some. If you’re looking for an overview on the dungeons Minerva has some great articles for each class.

The Issues:

MeWhenum summed up the feelings that a lot of players have been discussing in a post that is high on the popular topics right now, The set dungeons are….really bad.: “I (and others) have no issue with the idea of set dungeons I think; the issue we have is that they’re hard for the wrong reasons.”.

The reasons brought up in the thread most often are the damage requirements being too low, objectives not being about the set or even the class and the extreme variation in difficulty between them.

Damage Adjusting:

It was mentioned even before they were available on the PTR that some of them would not be doable with top end gear just because you would not be able to complete the objectives, but in quite a few of them you have too much damage with the first set pieces you find. A lot of times you seem to accidentally kill enemies before you have a chance to complete one of the objectives. If you lower your damage too much though you might not have enough to kill all enemies before the time runs out (a requirement for ALL set dungeons). Playing with the numbers to find the perfect amount is not fun and a lot of players are bringing in another person for cleanup, which should not feel required for your set dungeon. It felt like the dungeons with this problem were tuned around having the damage set low enough for the first time you have all legendaries but having set bonuses on top means you are almost always going to be at a higher damage capability if you are not lowering it by finding the worst gear,  switching to items that go against your set or even taking off some non set slots entirely.

It’s Not About the Set:

Some of the dungeons have objectives that are not actually tied to the set in any way, sometimes this is not a bad thing when it is something your class should excel at (Marauder) but others seem like they were added instead of another objective for the set (Wastes).  Others have a requirement that is easier when you go against the set bonuses in order to complete (Jade). Still others narrow down a general/multi specialized set as if it were a specialized set (Roland’s). While these objectives are not too taxing to do and some of them are not even against the set itself, it does lower the enjoyment of “mastering” your set when it’s not about how well you play the set but how lucky you get.

Not Created Equal:

The difficulty of mastering the sets is extremely varied. Some of them all you need to do is get your set and go to the dungeon and you can master it with only a couple tries. Others require a lot of luck and management that doesn’t have anything to do with the set itself.  Neither extreme seem to reach the goal of feeling like you have mastered your set. Monstrous, an MVP on the forums, had a lot of positive things to say about set dungeons (the only thing he sees as a detriment was the fact that you can bring help) but he ranked the difficulty of the Barbarians set dungeons in a post on the same forum linked above:

Wrath of the Wastes (9/10)
Might of the Earth (7/10)
The Legacy of Raekor (4/10)
Immortal King’s (2/10)

This seems to be quite a wide range from really easy to quite frustrating, but some people say they prefer having the range between sets so this is not necessarily a negative towards set dungeons in general.

Possible Solutions:

As there have been quite a few players to master them all and even more that have mastered all set dungeons for some of the classes I’m not sure if they actually need a change as any changes to them might make these players feel let down if the rewards become easier to achieve.

But, here are some solutions brought up in many places anyway:

The damage problem should be the easiest to fix by giving slightly beefier small mobs, tuning the dungeons to the 400-500k damage range with the set bonuses factored on top of it. This is about how much damage the average player will have with no ancient items, no paragon and no emerald in the weapon without taking off entire gear slots. Some of them, at the moment, seem to be tuned to where you need less than 300k.

The other problems will be harder to make a change that makes a majority of people happy, but overall some of them need an adjustment to at least make it about the set.

Using Monstrous’ difficulty ranking I, personally, would like to see them more in line with the 7/10 difficulty or higher. The Might of the Earth requires you to make some changes from the “best” build for the set but still uses the set bonuses to achieve the objectives. It requires skill and gearing choices that you might not think about otherwise. It’s challenging enough that it takes a few tries to figure it out and make real progress towards the mastery and quite a few more tries, or more if you weren’t familiar with the play-style at all, to actually master. It really feels like it’s about getting the most out of the set that you can in order to master it, and feels like you have mastered the set when done. Although, having mastering a dungeon a requirement for the new stash tab would make this an overall disliked change.

Others prefer the idea of an easier (2-4/10) dungeon, a harder (8-10/10) dungeon and two middle of the road (5-7/10) dungeons for each class in which case they usually are just not happy with why those harder ones are harder; objectives that make no sense for the set, taking off/replacing with white gear to not one shot smaller mobs or fishing for the one that has large groups in rooms instead of hallways.

Overall, the majority of the dungeons are okay-fine with only a few being way out there.  A lot of them, even most that are arguably broken, require thought, skill and time.  I love the idea of set dungeons though and will most likely eventually master them all if only for the achievements.

Have something you wish would be added to the game? Whether you have ideas on how to make a build work, a mode of game-play you’d like to see changed or an improvement added to the general game, I’d love to hear about it.