MeinMMO demon Cortyn enjoys the depths in World of Warcraft. But with a little trick, they are almost ridiculously easy – you just have to be a tank.
The depths of World of Warcraft: The War Within were not optimal at the launch of the expansion. The balancing was not “a bit odd” – it was complete chaos. Enemies lost health points as soon as you joined a group and both the depths and Brann scaled completely differently depending on the specialization.
This led to very different player experiences. Some could barely defeat a single enemy in a depth of level 8, while others could simply pull everything together and “bomb it down” without their own health points ever being scratched.
In the meantime, the balancing has improved and the depths offer a consistently solid experience – at least for almost everyone.
Because there is still one weakness: As a tank, it feels like cheating.
Tanks can hardly fail in the depths
I got the tip from a friend in the guild who said: “I just did a level 8 depth with my warrior, who has item level 540, it was super easy.”
A depth of level 8 is actually designed for item level 600. A solid 60 item levels below, one should especially kiss the ground and only search for better equipment.
Since I had just leveled a warrior to 80, I thought: “I will take a look for myself.” So I logged onto my warrior, bought her a cheap shield so she also just reached item level 550, and just set off.
Well, what can I say: It is almost ridiculous how easy the depths are as a tank.
Where I as a shadow priest would have to be careful not to pull two groups at the same time, I can simply pull everything together and defeat it as a warrior with poor equipment. Slowly, but guaranteed without ever running the risk of dying myself.
Some will surely write in the comments: “It’s clear, everything is easy solo as tanks, duh.”
But that was not the idea behind the depths. The original idea was that depths should provide an engaging challenge for solo players – regardless of the specialization they start with. As a tank, that is simply not the case.
How can we make depths exciting for tanks?
I don’t know how Blizzard could balance the whole thing so that it’s an interesting experience for tanks that offers similar difficulty to DPS specializations. The levers that can be adjusted are simply very limited:
- If the damage from automatic attacks is too high, tanks simply cannot make it since self-healing and healing from Brann are relatively clearly limited.
- Even more health points would just prolong the depth further – as a tank, it already takes a long time.
The only option I spontaneously see is to increase the lethality of the mobs’ special ability. That is, spells and abilities that almost directly lead to death for other classes would also work that way for tanks. Because in most cases – with a few exceptions – a tank can simply stand in those abilities and completely ignore them.
However, this very combination of circumstances also leads to another problem: Depths as a tank are incredibly boring. While nothing can kill you, everything just takes forever. It is very easy, but also tedious.
So if you want strong loot from the generous depths or want to have several items with item level 616 to choose from for the upcoming Wednesday from the big treasure chamber – just play your character as a tank. It may not be particularly fast, but you are nearly invincible if you don’t make gross mistakes.
Although depths are currently so lucrative, extremely many people play Mythic+.
