It looks like Battle for Azeroth broke most Timewalking dungeons — but Sylvanas doesn’t seem to mind

Yes, that’s me, holding down the floor at the first boss of Vortex Pinnacle. Why? Because this week marks the very first Timewalking dungeon event of Battle for Azeroth. With baseline 335 loot, they’re a great way to gear up if you need a few slots filled. Plus, characters below level 120 get experience. However, it’s not all rosy drops and blasting through dungeons. Tuning for this first wave of Timewalking dungeons is off. Very off.

The first dungeon I ran is my favorite from Cataclysm, Grim Batol. We had the, “Gee, I forget what this boss does” stutters, but beyond needing a bit more crowd control on some trash packs, things went well. Bombing of the mobs off the back of a red drake worked as I remembered, with us downing over half of the trash between the beginning and the third boss. Our tank had never done this dungeon, and I had concerns about Throngus, but he went down easily — as did the final boss, Erudax. After Grim Batol, the wheels, so to speak, came off.

We got End Time. If you remember, you get two of four possible encounters before you get the final boss. Going in, we’d heard stories about Echo of Sylvanas. Let me tell you, those stories are true.

This dungeon is not tuned properly. We could DPS Sylvanas easily, but when she calls her ghouls, their health pool is far and away higher than it should be. Redditors are speculating that Sylvanas has not been adjusted to scale with our level. Supposedly, there was a tuning pass… but it doesn’t appear to have made a difference. People are reporting needing 15 minutes to kill her — and that’s assuming party members can DPS the ghouls properly. We could get the first ghoul wave done, but after that, it felt like their health went up with each wave.

Other issues are being reported, too. The lava around Baine is killing people before they get to him. It was always problematic, but not like it is now. One WoW forum poster reports the trash in some dungeons has 35,000 health — more than trash in Mythic mode of some Legion dungeons. People are reporting being one-shot by something they can’t find and which isn’t showing up on their attack mods. We did make it through our Vortex Pinnacle run, but the lightning off the first boss seemed to hit way harder than any of us remembered.

So how do you get through the dungeons?

First of all, you’re going to need to remember how to do these. Use the Dungeon Journal to refresh your memory. We’d just come from Wrath of the Lich King where crowd control was a distant afterthought. Cataclysm brought crowd control back with a vengeance, and you need it in these dungeons.

Second, bring those Artifact weapons out of storage and use them. Players report much better results with those weapons than what weapon drops you get in Battle for Azeroth. A few players are even setting aside their BFA gear and using Cata gear — going as far as tracking down vendors with gear.

Lastly, have a bit of patience. There are quite a few players who skipped this content when it was fresh. “Does everyone remember these fights?” will go a long way toward getting through them.

Some people aren’t having a problem with Timewalking dungeons. Grim Batol and Throne of Tides seem to be the “easiest” to complete. End Time with Sylvanas seems to be the hardest. Most people talking about these are not having the fun time they remember from Timewalking past. I did get an upgrade, so it was worth it to keep plugging along. Just know you may be in for quite a few runs back. Let’s hope the next batch of Timewalking dungeons are better tuned for us.