Waycrest Manor - This dungeon is slotted third in the final series, and it’ll be a doozy of a tiebreaker if the teams make it there. Sanguine is always going to be an issue in a dungeon as tight as Waycrest, and it’s especially bad when you’re trying to pull big and fast. It also negates the ever-popular MDI strategy of pulling trash on to bosses and burning it all down together since even one tick of Sanguine on a boss can undo any time savings you might reap.
Explosive is what really makes this dungeon a pain, though. Waycrest has plenty of trash packs with lots of small mobs, and with each of them throwing off their own Explosive orbs it doesn’t take much bad luck to end up with five or six orbs up simultaneously. And the trash in Waycrest is some of the worst in M+ right now in terms of spells that randomly target party members, meaning one orb going off might kill a party member that’s sitting at half health. Don’t expect this to make teams any less aggressive, though, as everyone will probably just cross their fingers and hope that the orb spawns remain manageable.
Since the keys are all +13, none of the boss fights are ever going to be terrible, but Tyrannical Waycrest will present some of the more challenging encounters in the All Stars tournament. But mostly this dungeon will be dictated by who can manage their Explosives the cleanest.
Temple of Sethraliss - This is another Explosive map, and you might begin to detect a theme in the “Most Challenging” category. Fortified Temple isn’t a particularly scary dungeon, and while Bolstering will slow it down, it won’t make it “hard” per se.
But all bets are off when you add Explosive to a dungeon, and it’s one of the things that frustrates MDI teams. Most affixes are challenging in one way or another, but they’re also mostly predictable. But Explosive always has the potential to randomly spit out five or six orbs during a modest-sized pull and instantly wipe the group. And Temple’s bosses are some of the worst when it comes to Explosive. Adderis and Aspix will both spawn orbs and have a proclivity for attacking people that get near them when they aren’t being actively tanked, so it can be dicey to send in a melee DPS. And using any attack that cleaves can proc Lightning Shield, so someone might get zapped. Merektha’s snake adds will also spawn orbs when they come out, which isn’t a big deal on the transitions but can become a big deal when spawned in the third phase as the floor is filled with venom. And Avatar is one of the most dangerous Explosive fights in the game, as each of the humanoid adds can spawn orbs (the frogs were mercifully hotfixed not to) so there might be six or seven potential spawn points at any given point in the fight. Don’t be surprised if there are some “oopsie” deaths in here.
King’s Rest - King’s Rest will be a tough dungeon simply because it’s over-tuned as is. If you check the M+ leaderboards, you’ll notice that King’s Rest always lags one or two key levels behind virtually every other dungeon, and that’s because King’s Rest just hits hard. Throw Quaking (one of the worst affixes for unavoidable damage) into the mix, and this dungeon suddenly isn’t a cakewalk even if you aren’t attempting giga pulls.
Some of the bosses in here are legitimately tough with Tyrannical, and I wouldn’t be surprised if bad Quaking timing clipped someone with the Gold Spit or Severing Axe debuffs.
