A deeper look into The War Within Season 3’s Mythic+ dungeons

It won’t be that before patch 11.2 of The War Within is upon us, which means a new Mythic+ season, and Ghosts of K’aresh is coming with an interesting set of dungeons — a few old returning favorites we haven’t seen in a while, one brand new dungeon that comes with the patch, and then a small pool of The War Within‘s dungeons that the community voted on. Did democracy pay off, or are we stuck with some stinkers? Well, that depends on who you ask, but we can at least look at the set of dungeons and get a general feel for what the next season has in store for us.

New dungeon: Eco-Dome Al’dani

Briefly mentioned in our list of what’s coming in 11.2, we’ve now had an actual chance to test Eco-Dome Al’dani and it’s an interesting mix of older creatures and new mechanics. Apparently set after the events of Manaforge Omega — but don’t worry, there are no actual spoilers for the raid in here — Al’dani features the return of a creature we haven’t seen since Shadowlands, the devourers, as well as the Wastelanders, a subset of Ethereals sworn to Nexus-King Salhadaar who have been waging a war of revenge for ages. This dungeon seems open, but it’s truthfully fairly linear once you get into it — and short, at three bosses, much like The Rookery in the current season. Azhiccar will evoke memories of the similar worm boss Skolex from Sepulcher of the First Ones, Taah’bat and his pet warp stalker A’wazj have cool mechanics where you can make them hit each other to stop a spellcast (one of my favorite boss gimmicks), and Soul-Scribe tries to pull your soul out of your body a little bit at a time and smack it around. So far it looks fun, but parts of this dungeon — especially on Soul-Scribe — might be difficult for pick-up groups without voice communication.

Back from the beyond: Halls of Atonement and Tazavesh, the Veiled Market

It’s been a little bit since we had a Shadowlands dungeon in the Mythic+ pool, so why not have three? Season 3 will feature (unsurprisingly) both halves of Tazavesh — Streets of Wonder, which encompasses the first five bosses of the dungeon in the city, and So’leah’s Gambit, which hops through other worlds to fight three bosses and ends back in the city against the artifact-stealing boss of Cartel So. These two were popular, not just because of the fun items available in their loot pool — though that helps — both of them were popular in their own right, although final boss So’leah has a reputation of being very strict in terms of character deaths, with sometimes even one making the fight near-unwinnable due to mechanics, not numbers.

We also have the return of Halls of Atonement. This dungeon doesn’t necessarily have an interesting loot pool, but it’s a very evocative Venthyr-themed dungeon (with four bosses) with both indoor and outdoor segments; the first third of the dungeon probably takes the longest and allows a lot of different options for how you want to get your mob count for the run. Apologies in advance for any class that relies on putting targeted AOE circles on the ground, though; the third boss is absolutely miserable for this. I have a lot of not-so-fond memories of putting Death and Decay on top of a candlestick six feet over my head, where it did exactly nothing.

Season 2 returning dungeons: Operation Floodgate and Priory of the Sacred Flame

Now we come to the first two dungeons that were voted on by the community, and we start to run into the problem of people voting on dungeons that contain really good loot but which can be really miserable dungeons to run. Operation Floodgate was brand new in season 2 and generally a popular dungeon: it has a tight but not terrible timer, it has a large variety of ways to path from boss to boss and pick up trash in different places, and it contains a variety of decent loot (example: the Improved Seaforium Pacemaker, coveted by tanks and DPS of all stripes).

Then, on the flip side, we’ve got Priory of the Sacred Flame. I’ve discussed this dungeon pool with a number of people at all skill levels, from people casually hitting +10s for their vault slots to people regularly pushing +18s and +19s for title, and I don’t think literally anyone is happy to see this dungeon return — yet it got a number of votes. What gives? Unfortunately, the answer is probably Signet of the Priory and Tome of Light’s Devotion. Get ready for more linear and unsatisfying trash pulls and overwhelming rot damage combined with absurd targeted damage and giant ground AOEs.

Season 1 returning dungeons: The Dawnbreaker and Ara-Kara, City of Echoes

Last but not least, we have the same situation as the other pair of returning The War Within dungeons: one is fun and open and heavily non-linear, and the other one is only on this table because it has a very desirable piece of loot in it. The former is The Dawnbreaker; while it has its bugs (the airships at the beginning are remarkably non-solid sometimes), it’s generally a fun romp of a dungeon, and deciding how you want to path through the town and fight off the Nerubian lieutenants is enjoyable. I’m very happy to see this one; I think once we set a good path for this dungeon, I was always happy to run The Dawnbreaker, and I hear a lot of similar sentiment from other quarters.

On the flip side, we have Ara-Kara again. There is a single, two-word reason this dungeon is back on the menu: Ara-Kara Sacbrood. Casters love the Sacbrood (I can’t blame them: I had one in Season 1 and it’s really good). But the price of having it in the dungeon pool is dealing with one of the most miserable three-boss dungeons ever created and dropped into the dungeon pool. Even disregarding the giant spider Avanoxx with her million children at the start and the sometimes-unavoidable damage of Nerubian general Anub’zekt, we have Ki’katal the Harvester at the end, whose annoyingly fiddly mechanics and high constant outgoing damage at all times can brick a key entirely on their own. I am not thrilled to see this back, and I will be happy to see the end of it when this season ends; I hope all the casters enjoy their bag of spider eggs. Was it worth it?

Overall: a mixed bag

Like most seasons, The War Within‘s Season 3 Mythic+ dungeon pool contains both good and bad. This is one of the first times I’ve really seen the unlikable dungeons be really unlikable — given that Season 2 generally trended towards a lower complexity and difficulty of dungeon, many will be looking to see if Ara-Kara especially will see any changes to offset how generally unfun it can be. It will also be interesting to see more groups start tackling the brand new Eco-Dome Al’dani; it’s got some interesting new mechanics that we haven’t seen in a dungeon before, and it’s always fun to see Blizzard experimenting with small-group content in this manner. Hopefully now with experience under our belt, and some adjustments from the developers, we might see Ara-Kara and Priory brought in line to make them as fun to run as the rest of this group is slated to be.