Patch 11.2 Preview: Dungeon Pool Analysis & More

The time has arrived…Patch 11.2 of The War Within, Ghosts of K’aresh, has officially been announced in today’s WoWCast!

What’s in store for Season 3 and why are we heading to K’aresh?

Read on for everything we know so far about TWW Season 3 and our data analysis of the Mythic+ dungeon pool!

Table of Contents

Why K’aresh?

As hinted by the ending of the Patch 11.1 story cinematic and in the 11.1.7 Ethereal Lorewalking campaign, we are heading to what remains of the void-touched and shattered lands of K’aresh — home world of the Ethereals and, as it turns out, the Ve’nari too.

During The Burning Crusade, the Ethereals in Netherstorm told tales of K’aresh and how Dimensius the All-Devouring came to consume its World Soul. We helped the Ethereals get revenge in Netherstorm and thought that the matter was finished, but we just caught wind that Dimensius is being resurrected and turning his sights towards Azeroth.

The Ve’nari have moved the Veiled City of Tazavesh to K’aresh for our new home base as we prepare to face Dimensius in the upcoming raid, Manaforge Omega.

Player Power

CLOAK ARTIFACT: RESHII WRAPS & PHASE DIVING

Reshii Wraps will be our upgradable cloak artifact that will allow us to Phase Dive into untethered space in K’aresh — going in and out of energy forms to see different content, treasures, mobs, and more. We can Phase Dive in Delves, the new raid, and the new dungeon. The Reshii Wraps will not interfere with any tier sets, but there will be cool components for transmog and social features, such as seeing where your friends have recently died and leaving them little messages.

Reshii Wraps Phase Diving. Source: Blizzard

TIER SET BONUSES

The new tier sets will target Hero Talents. With a slew of class tunings on the way for Patch 11.2, hang tight — more info is on the horizon!

Season 3 Mythic+ Updates

Season 3 brings updates to visuals, cast timers, and — most notably — a new feature for dungeon checkpoints called Waystones!

NEW: Waystones

Blizzard has revisited their philosophy on dungeon checkpoints. As a result, they are implementing Waystones, which are giant floating rocks that show up both in the terrain of the dungeon and as icons on your map to indicate where you will resurrect upon an untimely death.

As of right now, we are unsure of any possible implications on how these Waystones will work in terms of Mythic+ routing and quality-of-life. The biggest question on our minds is how these Waystones will activate…will they be triggered after every new boss kill, proximity checkpoints, by various dungeon events, or a combination of these criteria depending on the specific dungeon? If Waystones can activate after lieutenant mobs and not just bosses, that could open up some potential pathing concerns, as it’s common to skip dangerous high-health enemies.

Overall, we’re thrilled to hear that Blizzard has been working on a solution to a common pain point in Mythic+. We’ve all felt that familiar sense of dread when dying in dungeons with long runbacks while the timer ticks away!

Season 3 Mythic+ Dungeon Pool Analysis

For Season 3 Mythic+ of The War Within, we have 1 new dungeon, 3 returning Shadowlands dungeons, and 4 returning TWW dungeons that were left up to a community vote.

Based on past data and community sentiments, we might speculate that voters favored dungeons based on loot, such as the ever-popular Ara-Kara Sacbrood and Tome of the Light’s Devotion trinkets.



However, there are surely other factors at play, whether it be preferences in dungeon timer/length, boss to trash ratio, damage profile, or subtleties like theme and aesthetics. When we polled players about their favorite Mythic+ dungeons of all time over the course of 13 days on Twitter in 2022, dungeon timer was almost never mentioned. However, studies and community anecdotes on social media suggest that dungeon timer length is certainly a common denominator for many fan favorites.

We can see big thematic reasons for bringing back Tazavesh, and we know that Blizzard likes balancing the dungeon pool as a whole to highlight different strengths and weaknesses of the various classes, such as their reasoning for selecting Theater of Pain in TWW Season 2 to throw a dungeon into the mix that focused on big lieutenant creatures rather than massive pulls.

When making old dungeons anew, we often see popular skips and tricks return, though Shadowlands dungeons and routing had some help from Covenant abilities like Ashen Hallow. The jury is out on what group compositions may be favored whether we look at past metas or not — especially considering that class tunings and tier set bonuses have not yet been announced.

Below is a comparison of the most popular group compositions seen in Shadowlands Season 3, Shadowlands Season 4, TWW Season 1, and TWW Season 2:


Let’s take a closer look at the 8 dungeons coming in Season 3.

New 3-Boss Dungeon

ECO-DOME AL’DANI

This new dungeon will be a 3-boss instance where we’ll fight off Devourers and forces of Wastelanders. Although not much is known about Eco-Dome Al’dani just yet, Phase Diving will be used in this dungeon and it will be available on Normal, Heroic, and base Mythic upon the Patch 11.2 launch.

The WoWCast shared that the canonical storyline in Season 3 will be different than usual. We’re used to Campaign > Dungeon > Raid for the story track, but this time they’re doing Campaign > Raid > Dungeon. The developers hinted that Eco-Dome Al’dani will have a big surprise at the end. Our guess is that the dungeon endboss will have massive lore implications.

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Returning Shadowlands Dungeons

HALLS OF ATONEMENT

Halls of Atonement is a 3-boss dungeon hailing from Shadowlands. This dungeon was a crowd favorite throughout the expansion due to its Venthyr theme and Revendreth aesthetic, dungeon flow, short timer, and challenging (yet fun) boss fights.



In fact, we did a little dungeon popularity competition back in 2022 to find out the favorite Mythic+ dungeons of all time…and Halls of Atonement won its round by a landslide!



The data supports this loving sentiment since Halls of Atonement was consistently the second most popular keystone to run throughout all three seasons of Shadowlands that it was available in Mythic+!


The relative difficulty of Halls of Atonement in Shadowlands was generally in the middle of the pack, but its popularity still reigned superior in spite of its tight timer and challenging boss encounters!

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TAZAVESH: STREETS OF WONDER

Unlike Halls of Atonement, community sentiment around Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder was a mixed bag…a bag of mostly dread — especially when it was first added to the Mythic+ dungeon pool in Season 3.



Tazavesh first opened its gates as a Megadungeon in Shadowlands Season 2, joined the Mythic+ dungeon pool starting in Season 3, and remained for Season 4. Despite a slew of tunings and nerfs, Streets was the second least popular keystone timed in Season 3, not including the dungeons offered during the Legion Mythic+ Timewalking event. In Season 4, Streets rose in popularity, landing squarely in the middle as the 4th most-run key.


Streets was one of the highest-timed dungeons in terms of raw keystone level in Shadowlands Season 4, but it was not run as often as its Gambit counterpart despite the Dungeon Times (success rates) of Streets being higher and more consistent than Gambit:



Based on the sheer volume of Streets runs and its better-than-average success rate, we’d think that Streets would have been more popular, but looks can be deceiving. The lack of total dungeon runs in Streets compared to Gambit and less-than-satisfactory reputation could have been attributed to it not only being a 5-boss dungeon, but also containing gimmicks such as the gauntlet towards Myza’s Oasis before Zo’gron and the musical instruments feature of that boss. Gimmicks and gauntlets have been known to feel overwhelming to pick-up-groups (PUGs), which typically favor a more straightforward experience in Mythic+.

Furthermore, anyone dreading a Tyrannical week back when Tyrannical and Fortified alternated weekly at all keystone levels could certainly have some reservations of walking into a punishing 5-boss dungeon like Streets. However, with Tyrannical and Fortified working differently in TWW, we’ll see how Streets stacks up against some of the fan favorites in TWW Season 3.

TAZAVESH: SO’LEAH’S GAMBIT

In contrast to Streets, many considered Tazavesh: So’leah’s Gambit to be a fun dungeon…even if the Murlocs in the first area absolutely SLAPPED in high keys.



In a showdown of favorite Shadowlands dungeons by @Lofibanshee on Twitter, Halls of Atonement may have edged out Gambit in popularity, but not by much:



We even saw some issues with Gambit auto-filling as Streets in the Group Finder:



Inconveniences aside, nothing seemed to stop Gambit from being the second most-run dungeon by Shadowlands Season 4:



In terms of difficulty, Gambit was just above the middle-of-the-pack, directly after Streets:


Although dungeons with short timers and less bosses tend to be popular as mentioned earlier, this can also make them more punishing in PUGs and high keystone levels alike.

Given that Mythic+ dungeons in The War Within no longer alternate between Tyrannical and Fortified weeks in keystone levels +12 and up, we’ll see how the Tazavesh dungeons pan out next season!

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Returning Shadowlands Dungeons

ARA-KARA, CITY OF ECHOES

Ara-Kara scored at the top of the All Dungeons Leaderboard in TWW Season 1. It was also the second most commonly run key all season and the third most timed:



In terms of dungeon difficulty, it was the most successfully-timed key in Season 1:



If we look at the Y-axis of the box plot above, we might assume that Ara-Kara was the “easiest” ranked key in Season 1. But…was it?

When looking closer at the box plot, notice how far the “whiskers” span for Ara-Kara. This suggests there is a wide range of dungeon clear times, meaning the performance varies more. So in this way, Ara-Kara had a pretty wide variety of results…such as wiping to the final boss over and over again.



For some of us, the final boss was an absolute warzone of dodging and dispel spamming, and without the Tailoring buff on the early minibosses or big cooldown coordination, Ara-Kara was a common place to RIP. Depending on how Ara-Kara is tuned for Season 3 and what classes wind up in the meta, we should be careful about underestimating this 3-boss dungeon just yet.

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THE DAWNBREAKER

The Dawnbreaker is back, so we hope you’re ready to get on those mounts and do some more Dragonriding.

In Season 1, Dawnbreaker ranked as the fifth most run (and most timed) dungeon:


The biggest issue with Dawnbreaker for most people was that the ships, even late into the season, were still extremely buggy with many mechanics, and flying in general. You would often see ground based-abilities that were placed on the deck of the ship just fly behind the ship and disappear into the ether. Sometimes the ships wouldn't appear at all, and sometimes you’d fall through them instead. Because we were fighting dungeon bugs as well as enemies, this was a difficult dungeon to complete OR enjoy.



PUG groups also tended to struggle in Dawnbreaker, given that there were four or five different routes that tanks could take at any given time. If group communication was poor, players who were unfamiliar with the meta routes or uncomfortable with the dungeon map (or flying) were at risk of falling behind or getting lost. Given the frequent struggles with this key, it’s very interesting that Dawnbreaker was voted into the Season 3 pool, but we'll see what happens when the PTR rolls around!

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OPERATION: FLOODGATE

Operation: Floodgate quickly became a crowd pleaser in TWW Season 2 due to its room for routing creativity in map design, cool boss fights, and big pulls. However, Operation Floodgate has a weird difficulty curve in that it’s generally fine until you hit a certain key level…and then it's just all of the most punishing mechanics you could possibly think up piled together in one dungeon.

Regardless, Floodgate is the fourth most run dungeon this season and fifth on the list for in-time completion, so it's right in the middle. The difficulty matches roughly where it is for popularity.



Floodgate offers the Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker trinket, which, much like the Ara-Kara Sacbrood, is so strong that we expect to see it undergo some tuning for next season.

Overall, Floodgate is a fun dungeon, and luckily people will be quite familiar with it heading into Season 3.

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PRIORY OF THE SACRED FLAME

Priory of the Sacred Flame is the second most run dungeon this season. It's a very popular dungeon and it is in the top half for in-time completion with only a 2% difference between it and second place.


That being said though, Priory is considered the hardest dungeon to complete in terms of raw keystone level. The highest Priory key timed on the retail Leaderboard for TWW Season 2 is currently a +20. Compared to keys like Darkflame Cleft and The MOTHERLODE!! being completed on retail as high as +22 and everything else being completed up to level +21, there’s about a multi-keystone level difference between what’s possible in Priory vs. the top keys.


If we look closer at Priory’s “whiskers” in the Dungeon Times box plot for Season 2, we can see a pretty wide range of success rates, indicating that it’s not been the most consistently successful dungeon out there:


Priory is sort of “Dawnbreaker-lite” in that there are several different pathing options groups can take. In the PUG world, you're looking at a multitude of different potential routes, but that's okay because people will be familiar with it; they've been running it all season! And, unsurprisingly, Priory has good trinkets in the Signet of the Priory and the Tome of Light's Devotion. Overall though, Priory can be quite punishing for PUG groups and competitive Mythic+ teams alike, so we’re curious to see if it will undergo any tuning for Season 3 to bring it more in line with the rest of the dungeon pool.

Raid

NEW: MANAFORGE OMEGA

Blizzard also gave us a sneak peek at the upcoming raid, which is called Manaforge: Omega. We don’t know the full boss count, but they did mention four that we know of for sure, one of which is a mysterious council of Demon Hunters. They're probably looking for trouble.

We’ll also face the creature who makes the Ethereals’ silk wrappings. It looks almost like a giant furry spider. Of course, in true Blizzard fashion, the first boss that we fight is a sewer guard because, naturally, we'll be using the Reshii Wraps to sneak in through the sewers, taking down the guard with aspects of Phase Diving on our way into the Manaforge.

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DIMENSIUS: A MASSIVE ENDBOSS

Once just an overgrown blueberry, the Dimensius endboss we’ll face in Season 3 is described as a “cosmic level battle.” We’re told the encounter is going to be roughly the size of Stormwind!

This is clearly going to be an epic and intense fight, so we took a look back at the total pulls on endbosses from raids all the way back to the first streamed Race to World First. The RWF really blew up in the Battle of Dazar’alor when more teams started streaming it live. Not including the 2-boss raid in Battle for Azeroth (Crucible of Storms) or any endbosses prior to the RWF becoming a widely “televised” competitive event, endboss pulls have ranged from 100 pulls on the low end (Chrome King Gallywix) to 404 pulls (Queen Ansurek). There is a huge range of pull counts in between.



Looking at these endboss pull counts though, we wouldn't describe any as “cosmic level” encounters. It’s fun to try and guess where we think Dimensius will land for fight difficulty and pull count now that we’re expecting that he is a boss on a scale Blizzard have never attempted before. What do you think a “cosmic-level boss fight” means?

Delves

NEW: ARCHIVAL ASSAULT

In the last of our 11.2 PvE news, we also have a new delve coming! Archival Assault is the Azure Vaults, but now with 100% more Ethereals. Bran is the seasonal companion again, of course, but our seasonal nemesis is Nexus Princess Ky’veza…and they said this time she's not holding back. We don't know what she was holding back the first time we fought her, but we definitely did not feel like she took it easy on us in Nerub-ar Palace.


One of the Delve features Blizzard mentioned, and we think this is tied to Reshii Wraps, is a social function much like those you’d find in Demon's Souls or Dark Souls games. You'll be able to see phased versions of your friends, including where they died, and your friends will be able to leave messages for you.

PVP

NEW: VANQUISHER’S WAKE

Last but not least, for the PvPers out there, Blizzard have made you your very own Gank Island. It's a world PvP playground specifically designed for PvPers to go and ruin each other's days. If you enjoy sneaking up on somebody skipping merrily down the road picking flowers, have a real good time on Vanquishers Wake Island. This sounds like just the place to have an all-out world PvP brawl.



Prefer to get your info in video format? Check out our Season 3 Announcement Reaction and Analysis on YouTube!

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