The only thing I massively dislike is how mandatory priests became. They can solo handle bursting and incorporeal, deal with afflicted, mass dispel has massive value in dungeons like VP, HOI, Uldaman and more, purge and disease cleanse. On top of that shadow also deals very good damage and bring another PI. Priests are giga busted
I feel this is the easiest season to date, up to around the 20 mark as someone who 99% PUGs. (new upgrade system/S1 sets, super fotm classes etc) Then it starts to scale well above what I think is reasonable for PUG's. Mainly healing checks with unavoidable damage tbh. For an organised group stacking fotm classes, this season in a joke.Around the 20 mark I find most groups only pick up the current FOTM classes, normally super easy aoe and/or can face tank healing check with their hp/survivability.I have found this season pretty fun - I do NOT enjoy having to get BIS drops 3 x (champ/heroic/20vault) I feel that could be streamlined.I think it is time to retire Typrannical and Fort weeks - each week makes a set of the dungeons pool super boring and/or frustrating to play - but you cant afford to fall behind on vaults etc.
I dont have time to learn all of these dungeons and have experienced toxic players that traumatized the experience. Meanwhile my friends are playing higher keys and I will not risk their keys or my embarrassment learning at high levels. The link between il and playing m+ means that I trail and am not contributing in raid like I felt I could in the past. These changes have not been great for this casual raider.
It was also a big problem in S1 that well known old dungeon bosses worked completely different in the m+ version.e.g. the Temple of the Jade Serpent was a big mess:The first boss, Wise Mari introduced completely new mechanics, not known by anyone before, which led to loss of time and frustration.The third boss, Liu Flameheart, was completely bugged in the beginning and did not disappear in phase 2 of the encounterThe additional trash in the end boss room appeared to be heavily overtuned, especially on fortified on high keys, and if you lack a CC or interrupts to handle the fear add.They should have kept the dungeon mechanics as they were in the non-mythic version.
This fascinating argument with a troll aside, the main issue I see with M+ this season is not about the dungeons themselves, which are easier overall than S1 and better balanced. Rather, it's the breakpoints for crests meaning that there's very little incentive to push past +16 unless you are deliberately going for +20 to get portals/cred.The most efficient use of time is farming +16s, as long as you get at least one 18 or 20 in for a 444/447 GV option that week, since Aspect's crests are awarded at the same rate regardless and Aspects are all you need to push to 441 on Hero gear or 447 on crafted. It means that if you want to PUG a +20, you need to have already been doing +20s or nobody will invite you, and it's hard to find intermediate keys. Moreover, failing a key is a much greater penalty, since you only get five crest fragments. This leads to groups not wanting to push out of their comfort zones.Having done both organized raiding and organized M+ with my guild, I continue to find it odd that you can get Mythic item levels from five-man content with significantly less effort than Mythic raiding itself, just time investment and a minimum level of competence. I guess that's the intended experience for most casual guilds: get your Heroic raid clear in, then farm +16s all week for crests.
My main complaint about DF is that they've set the healing requirements way too high in dungeons.DF S1 had TJS, NoK, and RLP which was just non-stop group damage from start to finish of the dungeon. I couldn't even heal some of these bosses until they were nerfed.DF S2 set the healing requirements even higher. There's multiple bosses that require you to do sustained 150k+ hps from start to finish even on a +20 level. There's a very noticeable difference on Tyrannical vs Fortified weeks because the bosses last +1 minute longer on Tyrannical weeks. Not only does it strain my mana, but I have to be playing literally at a top tier level just to keep the group alive. Blizzard should have already nerfed the damage and hp on several of these bosses already.Lastly, a lot of the hardest hitting damage boss abilities are physical damage so cloth players are taking 20-30% more damage than plate wearers. If I'm doing +22 and +23s I take about 100k more damage from boss knockbacks alone.