The fans of World of Warcraft are screaming, because the coolest raid is now the worst dungeon. Karazhan hurts. Really hurts.
The current season in World of Warcraft brought a lot of variety, but also a whole range of problems. Especially one of the formerly most popular raids is now a dungeon that many want to avoid. The old tower of the guardian Medivh is so hard that entire hordes (and alliances) of “Mythic+” veterans simply avoid it.
Which dungeon are we talking about? We are referring to Karazhan. It was a raid in “The Burning Crusade,” but was later revamped in “Legion” into a “Mega-Dungeon,” which was then split into two smaller instances.
Now, in season 4, the two dungeons are back and offer strong items as rewards, but also a lot of frustration. Both “Lower Karazhan” and “Upper Karazhan” cause problems and present many groups with insurmountable obstacles.
Numbers back up the problem: In the WoW Subreddit, the community looked at the statistics and listed the number of dungeons completed on time at “+15 or higher” this week, which is based on the data from raider.io:
| Dungeon Name | Completion min. M+15 (US) |
|---|---|
| Lower Karazhan | 3,646 |
| Upper Karazhan | 11,266 |
| Iron Docks | 16,201 |
| Grimrail Depot | 16,617 |
| Mechagon: Workshop | 17,171 |
| Tazavesh: So’leah’s Gambit | 20,255 |
| Tazavesh: Streets | 21,240 |
| Mechagon: Junkyard | 24,291 |
While “Junkyard” and “Tazavesh: Streets” were completed extremely often, the number of successful dungeons drastically decreases in Upper and even more so in Lower Karazhan. Just under 2,000 successful runs occurred in recent days on the American realms.
The “Lower Karazhan” is thus the hardest dungeon that hardly any groups can complete at high difficulty within the time limit, but the “Upper” variant is also unpopular.
However, one must take into account that the community reaction plays a role in the numbers. After all, the Lower Karazhan has gained a bad reputation, and fewer groups are attempting this dungeon at all. This in turn only reinforces the effect that hardly any group completes the key stone there – it is a vicious circle.
What makes Karazhan so difficult? There are a whole range of problems that come together in Karazhan:
- Bosses and mechanics are too hard. There are extremely many “oneshot” mechanics, where a single mistake causes the group to fail immediately.
- There are many trash enemies that also have devastating abilities.
- Some ground effects (for example, with the Curator) have a much smaller target circle than the actual effect afterwards has on the ground.
- New spell effects from current expansions make it difficult to recognize the small effects from enemies that deal significant damage.
- Affixes like “Explosive” cause problems. Because many additional enemies summon so many explosions that it’s barely possible to keep up with eliminating them.
This is what the community says: The perception of Karazhan in the community is devastating. For many groups, a keystone above difficulty +10 in Karazhan is an alarm signal that leads to an immediate withdrawal. Currently, Karazhan keystones are seen as a “waste of time.” Here are some opinions from the WoW Subreddit on this matter:
- “I have no idea what the hell happened on the PTR, but Lower Karazhan somehow managed to get absolutely overtuned through.”
- “My keystone for Lower Karazhan is basically trash. We just can’t do it. This is +15. I play in Europe and we have Westfall story [as a theater event]. That’s clearly way too hard and the only barrier. Honestly, all the theater bosses are terrible.”
- “Season 4 made me realize that WoW desperately needs a revamp of its spell effects. So much junk happens that you can only see extremely difficult. Then throw in abilities like the spear from Bastion and it’s literally impossible to see the negative stuff sometimes.”
It seems that only drastic nerfs could still save the dungeons in the community’s perception.
What do you think about the current “Mythic+” season and Karazhan? Is the dungeon just hell or not as bad as everyone thinks?
