After a whirlwind of patches, World of Warcraft: The War Within’s Delves are at least in a more stable spot than they were a week ago. Enemies no longer inexplicably become easier to defeat in groups than they are as a solo player, and the run-ending attacks have been pruned back. Delves are currently the challenging solo alternative to normal dungeons that Blizzard said they would be, but a few nagging problems remain.
After some confusion last week, Blizzard swooped in and tweaked a number of things in Delves to make them harder for group players than solo players. In fact, it may have made them too hard for groups, which now have to grind through enemies with millions more health and dodge more fatal attacks than you do alone.
And then there’s Brann Bronzebeard, your NPC ally in solo Delves, who remains mouthy and impotent. He’s a bad healer, a bad damage dealer, and a bad shot caller, yelling at you to stay out of poison pools while standing in them at the same time. He’s such a pain that someone went and made an addon that puts him on mute.
Plenty of people were relieved that someone did the work to shut him up, but some, like Reddit user Ragnarolls, prefer him at full volume: “I appreciate ol’ uncle Brann being annoying. Getting into imaginary arguments and rolling my eyes every few seconds really makes the game experience more immersive.”
The real, fundamental problem with Delves is that they still don’t quite fit the identity that Blizzard pitched for them. They aren’t actually the class-agnostic answer to WoW’s dungeons and raids, where tank, healer, and damage dealer roles shape the experience and the queue times. Healers and squishy damage classes have it rough in Delves, while tank players can bash their way through with powerful defensive abilities.
So how did everyone’s first week of T8 Delves go? from r/wow
They’re also just legitimately difficult to finish compared to WoW’s long history of easy soloable activities. It’s refreshing to see Blizzard willing to subvert expectations that have been around for almost 20 years, but players seem a little torn on accepting that something could be simply too hard to finish for their particular class or gear level. There are entire Reddit threads of people discussing which classes are the best for Delves. Those who are shackled to the weakest classes are going so far as to swap their specialization mid-run just to survive. “It isn’t fun, but it can be done,” Reddit user designerlemons wrote. That sure sounds like a glowing endorsement to me!
All of this is fascinating as someone who has been following Diablo 4’s revival over the last year. As Blizzard adds new endgame dungeon types that demand different skills than normal dungeons, the concept of a ‘best build’ has been fractured, and now players have to commit to a particular type of activity they want to do. A Lightning Spear sorceress can instantly obliterate waves of enemies in the new Infernal Hordes mode, for example, but struggle to kill bosses in other modes like the Pit. Luckily, Diablo 4 makes it fairly easy to level up secondary characters in a few hours. WoW leveling, however, is much more of a chore.
It’s possible that Blizzard will leave Delves as an activity that everyone won’t be equally capable of clearing. We might eventually see tier lists dedicated specifically to classes that are more effective in Delves, which, to me, would be cool for an MMO that’s usually only about how well you fit into a group. It’s also possible that Blizzard finds a way to scale everything perfectly so everyone is happy, but I suspect that’s going to take some time as it works out other kinks, like all the players who can’t seem to find anything but capes in the treasure chests at the end.
