Just completed my first solo Warlord's Ruin. Definitely died a few times, so no flawless clear. But I don't think I'm going to attempt to do it again. A final boss with 14,000,000 HP drags on for ages and it feels like anything could kill you at any moment. For most players, I can say for certain that something like Restoration will feel necessary at least for the final encounter because it is rough. And then if you go into final stand without heavy ammo... Bless the pillar I dodged around crouched for 2 minutes.
[spoiler]I've heard that you can actually jump down from the final stand tower, but I don't know if there's faults with that.[/spoiler]
Most of the dungeon I cleared using a Fusion Grenade-spam Verity's Brow Warlock with Well of Radiance. I also had Heat Rises equipped so that I could consume the grenade to heal if necessary. My first death was after the second boss (the Taken Ogre) during the parkour bit with the flying rocks. They took me out. Then I died multiple times to the final boss. But I eventually beat it by swapping to a Solar Karnstein Armlets Restoration build.
Also shoutouts to Dragon's Breath. I don't know how else I would've beaten it without that beautiful rocket launcher.
...Feedback-wise, I do still think that future dungeons need toned down a bit. I'm not even going to attempt to solo Ghosts of the Deep at all with how it is. It's just that if you keep ramping up the difficulty to put a lot of challenge on players with newer end-game builds, things are going to get out of hand. It's like power creep, but the enemies have it. It could potentially turn into a situation where most of the LFG posts are asking for carries or offering carries. Of course, that's if future dungeons are somehow even harder than what we got.
Maybe dungeons need a Contest mode on release like raids. Not turned up to 11 like raids, but something challenging with a reward for those try-hards who are just built for the challenge. Then after Contest mode, it can ease back down to something... bearable for most. I'm not talking Shattered Throne-easy, but maybe something like Duality.
EDIT: I've had some time to think about the Warlord's Ruin dungeon some more. For what it is, yes, it is a good dungeon (rewards be debatable). It is also still the newest dungeon, so being able to solo it, I guess, is a bit more impressive than older dungeons at this point, even comparing it to Duality. Something like Duality has a low power recommendation at this point unless you play it on Master difficulty, but enemies are still as aggressive as usual. Though what I think really helps players solo these newer dungeons is Solo Operative from the seasonal artifact. It doesn't make you any tankier, but dealing 25% bonus damage for being on your own is a massive effect. I also might not have completed my solo Warlord's Ruin without Solo Operative either. The dungeon could've been much harder and longer without it.
So, I have mixed feelings about it, but thinking about it, I bet that if the dungeon's recommended power was 1600 like the old dungeons, this would probably be on par with them. I've soloed many of the older dungeons without Solo Operative and they weren't that bad. They're definitely more survivable due to their recommended power. I don't think the same way for Ghosts of the Deep regardless. It would probably still be pretty annoying even at 1600 power. I have no clue how people have the patience to do that one.
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I think it often gets overlooked that older Dungeons were hard. Solo Prophecy in Season 11 was [i]brutal[/i], and that was at the height of Mountaintop + Recluse + Anarchy meta. They might be jokes now, but Pit of Heresy and Shattered Throne were also very tough, back in the day. To the best of my memory, must Dungeon bosses have been between 3 and 5 phases for a solo in their season of release, with an appropriate loadout and build. It's also somewhat disingenuous to only refer to raw HP values. A boss that has 1,000x more health than normal is nothing if it receives 10,000x more damage. I don't know if there is a newer version of this to include Crota's End and/or Warlord's Ruin, but here is a good breakdown of Raid and Dungeon boss health when properly compared to one another. https://twitter.com/TheAegisRelic/status/1681164947856736257 As an example, Caretaker has by far the most raw HP of any boss, at nearly 29 million, but also takes significantly more damage, so the [i]effective[/i] HP is less than that of Rhulk, despite his raw HP being lower by more than 13 million.