We are more than two months into World of Warcraft's latest expansion, and one of its signature features still feels like an ugly duckling waiting to become a swan.
Delves, The War Within's new mini-dungeons, were supposed to be an exciting way for solo players to achieve the highest levels of gear and content in WoW. Don't want to raid? Don't have 35 minutes for a dungeon or a group of friends who want to join you? Delves were supposed to be an alternative track with scaling difficulty like the Legion expansion's Mage Tower challenges. They were supposed to give terrific rewards for a short investment of time and skill, but Blizzard can’t seem to figure out how to balance them in a way that makes everyone happy.
A promising start
Blizzard put solid time and development into the new feature, creating a full dozen of the tiny dungeons (13 if you count the ultimate solo-boss Zekvir encounter), combining features from previous game modes and brand new mechanics along with some partially procedurally-generated content. The vault, which WoW players can fill out by doing a variety of content in exchange for a shot at a weekly piece of high level gear, included a new line that could award Heroic raid level gear from doing Delves.
"Delves are catered towards players who want to play either solo or in a flexible size group," Blizzard associate art director Tina Wang said in an interview with me before the expansion launched. "They'll be able to earn better rewards than those types of players have ever been able to. We want to make sure we're allowing them an avenue to be able to have that end game progression system but not say, 'Hey everyone, you have to do Delves.'"
But many players did feel like they had to do Delves at TWW's launch, in part because large-group raids and Mythic dungeons weren’t yet available to play. That predictably led to issues as players min-maxed their Delves, loading up on experience for their companion Brann Bronzebeard until he was a mini god, and rapidly figuring out the quickest ways to max out gear and their weekly vault slots.
How to train your Bronzebeard
Brann has been one of the most problematic parts of Delves. Initially designed to be a full party member with tanking, healing, and damage abilities, he got slapped with a hefty nerf on the first day of the expansion. Then, when min-maxing players leveled him up too quickly by doing too many Delves, he was capped at level 15, which caused some players’ Branns to be rolled back to a lower level.
Subsequent hotfixes buffed him, then nerfed him, then buffed him, then nerfed him, trying to find an impossible balance: making him useful enough for less-obsessive players (or new alt characters) while still avoiding making him overpowered for highly-geared players that just wanted to spam Delves for vault slots, reputation, or specific pieces of gear.
When solo content is easier with a party
At the same time, a new conflict was developing: solo vs group content. Delves had always been advertised as a solo endeavor, but you could bring up to a full group with you as part of Warcraft's commitment to supporting group play.
Effectively balancing Delves for solo players and groups has proved elusive.
The core community, that idea that you are better together is vital to who and what we are," Holly Longdale, Blizzard vice president and executive producer for Warcraft, told me in an interview this spring. "It is a foundational pillar."
But effectively balancing Delves for solo players and groups has proved elusive.
After launch, players quickly discovered that these "solo mini dungeons" were much, much easier to do as a group—in some cases, actually scaling down monster health and power as you added more players. Hotfixes attempted to correct that, but that felt like a nerf to groups, making people who wanted to bring friends feel punished for doing so.
Got a priest? Pray for an interrupt
As if balancing Brann and group vs solo play wasn't bad enough, Blizzard also had a battle trying to balance the core mechanics of Delves with the abilities of various classes and their talent trees. WoW has 13 classes with a total of 39 different talent specifications, each with dozens of ability choices, making perfect balance for a solo experience nearly impossible.
Legion's Mage Tower challenges dealt with that issue by using specific encounters for specific class specializations. And in Shadowlands, the special abilities players could pick up along the way in the solo and group versions of the Torghast dungeon were often so overpowered that the core abilities of a class often really didn't matter. If something was missing, like an interrupt, those ‘dropped’ abilities provided it.
In Delves, however, anyone who plays a class that lacks certain abilities and high damage has struggled.
In Delves, however, anyone who plays a class that lacks certain abilities and high damage has struggled. Characters that have tanking specifications sometimes have an easier time with the encounters. Some Delves favor melee classes, or those with frequent interrupt abilities. The final megaboss Zekvir in particular requires spell interrupts to survive, which is a particular challenge for some priests and druids, whose interrupts come with a 45-second and one-minute cooldown, respectively.
Pet classes have a hard time with high level delves too. Their pets can be one-shot even when the player is in Mythic raiding gear. That’s a problem when the vast majority of the damage done from one of WoW’s most popular classes, Beast Mastery hunters, comes from their pets.
BM hunters not only have to ensure their pets don't taunt enemies so that the player can handle them instead—a role their class abilities are not designed to support—but also have to manage pet aggro carefully, since their supersized chunk of damage means that even without taunting, pets can swiftly take over tanking duty.
Brann was originally supposed to help resolve all this. His talent tree and relics include abilities that might shore up where players are lacking. But with his many nerfs and his non-existent tanking role (which is finally coming in patch 11.1), his support is frankly lacking even for players of high gear level and skill.
Getting into gear with Delves
Then there's the gear from Delves. Players can earn Restored Coffer Keys doing other open world activities, and can use up to four of them a week to increase Delve loot rewards in a rotating set of special ‘bountiful’ Delves. Doing the highest tiers of difficulty in these with a Coffer Key awards up to Normal raid level loot, with the weekly vault reward at Heroic level.
While less than the rewards from the hardest dungeons, it doesn't feel like a terrible tradeoff for shorter, solo-oriented content—assuming the mini-dungeons are in fact balanced correctly for completion by solo players of all classes, of course.
But some gear in Delves are oddly tuned, making them wildly overpowered for some characters in the game despite recent nerfs. That's led some players even in Mythic raid gear looking to maximize their output by endlessly farming for elusive items, or a shot at them once a week with the vault.
An uncertain purpose
The end result of all the balancing issues and endless hotfixes is an uncertain mess. Who are Delves really for? Are they for solo players looking to have their own gearing path, despite the hard cap on the item levels you can earn? Are they a source for alternate items of power for players even at the highest levels, or are they for casual players with less practice, less gear and perhaps less skill? Are they for individuals, or for groups? Only certain classes, or for everyone? For alternate characters to gear up in, or for mains looking to improve?
Game director Ion Hazzikostas told us that Delves are going well. And if I were him, I'd also be looking at the dwindling bugs-that-need-killing list, and the player counts, and think this is good. (Blizzard has done a metric ton of fixes alongside the Brann rollercoaster, and some were super helpful.) I believe there are plenty of people trying Delves; and I think they're convenient, and in a much better place now from a balance and bugs perspective.
Delves need a vision
For a new instance type that was specifically sold as the new solo progression experience in WoW, the vision feels diluted.
But I don't agree that they're going well, and it's not because they're inherently bad—it's because they're not targeted at any type of player. They're generic. They're not fabulous for all soloers. They're not amazing for all groups. They're not perfect for casuals, and they're not wonderful for sweaties. For every group, Blizzard is making significant compromises to allow gameplay for some other group. For a new instance type that was specifically sold as the new solo progression experience in WoW, the vision feels diluted.
Parties already have dungeons—but Delves felt lonely in a social game. The challenge is as high as the Mage Tower, but doesn't offer its specific cosmetic rewards. The gear is too low level to be truly competitive for sweaty players, but a couple of those trinkets are still OP even for some of them. It's a camel built by a committee.
The truth is that Delves aren't perfect for any of those types of players, and repeated changes have made them worse for one group as Blizzard has tried to improve them for another. Without a clear view of the target they're trying to hit, hotfix after hotfix make it clear that the company is struggling to find the identity for one of the landmark features in its new expansion—just as players are.
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