World of Warcraft is dramatically overhauling its dungeon difficulties moving forward, and while the changes feel long overdue, they’re more than a little confusing.
Blizzard outlined all the dungeon difficulty updates in a new blog post. Come Dragonflight Season 4 and the game’s upcoming The War Within expansion, Heroic, Mythic 0, and Mythic+ keystone dungeons will all have their difficulties tweaked significantly. The changes came as a result of player feedback in regards to the lack of relevancy for Heroic and Mythic 0 dungeons, as well as a dislike of having timers associated with lower level Mythic+ dungeons, Blizzard said.
Specifically, Heroic dungeons will be scaled up to what is currently Mythic 0 difficulty. Conversely, Mythic 0 will become the equivalent of a current Mythic 10 keystone dungeon, albeit without a timer attached to it or seasonal affixes. What is currently a Mythic 15 keystone dungeon will in the future be a Mythic 5, and affixes will begin to kick in at Mythic 2 difficulty. All the rewards and Mythic+ rating associated with completing these dungeons will be overhauled to compensate for their higher difficulty.
Blizzard states its goal is to “recalibrate core difficulties to align with seasonal player experience and progression” and to “serve the community who enjoys dungeon content but feels that Mythic+ content isn’t for them due to the pressures of taking part.” The changes, Blizzard said, will help players do dungeons at their own pace, while improving on what can at times be a toxic Mythic+ environment by removing the requirement to go as fast as possible at lower keystone levels. Below is a chart Blizzard released to help visualize the changes.
It’s a lot to take in, especially since the difficulty of the Mythic+ dungeon system has largely been left unchanged since it was first introduced back in 2016’s Legion expansion. But confusing as they are, the changes do seem welcome. For years, Heroic difficulty dungeons have only felt relevant for the first week or so of an expansion’s launch and have little that distinguish them from the game’s Normal dungeon difficulty (which aren’t being adjusted as part of these changes). Subsequently, current Mythic 0 dungeons are relevant for only a week or two longer than Heroics, as players quickly move on to do Mythic+ keystones.
All of the dungeon difficulty changes will come when Dragonflight Season 4 arrives sometime this spring alongside remixed versions of Dragonflight’s previous raid tiers. A few months later, the game’s next expansion, The War Within, will release and kick off the first part of a three-expansion storyline Blizzard has dubbed The Worldsoul Saga.
It seems Blizzard is keen on taking a deeper look at the game’s group content and endgame activities. The War Within will add a new activity, Delves, which can be played solo or in small groups and will allow more casual players to earn endgame rewards. Earlier this year, Blizzard introduced the ability to do Dragonflight’s Normal difficulty dungeons with NPC followers, letting players learn dungeons or new class roles in a more casual setting without the added pressure of other players.
