I ran around 5 different Nightmare Dungeons, and my feelings on them are mixed. For one, you aren’t taken directly to the dungeon entrance (and the distinct icon on the map, is often times not easy to see or completely obscured; especially ones near a waypoint or altar). The system is glitchy because it often times does not display the actual zoomed in location when opening the map (that worked for me only twice so far). This is in contrast to D3’s obelisk (while in town) where you just port directly into a rift. Now I do get the designers decision of making you run around like this in D4; it’s to make the game world they designed relevant (where you take part in things along the way). But it’s going to get old very quickly.
I also believe it’s part of the ulterior motive of intended time sinks (the game world being large for the sake of being large, a lot of running around in hubs to utilize the different systems, etc). It wouldn’t be so bad if the mount system wasn’t as “flawed” as it is (flawed in quotes since I also believe this design is on purpose; where you run into obstacles, having to dismount to deal with blocks in a path, having a cooldown when your mount “dies”, etc). I often times just don’t bother using the mount in some zones where you get slowed/have respawning barriers.
Digressing back to the Nightmare dungeons, the system feels half-baked (and that includes the sigils themselves). The sigils end up filling up your consumables tab in no time (it reminded of the initial rift keys in D3). As for the dungeon modifiers, some mechanics are designed annoyance (some of this brings back memories of the D3 designers having this similar tendency). The lightning storm one where you need to get under the bubble (to avoid significant damage) is one of those as is the blood blister explosion (where killing a monster results in a chance for this blister to spawn and then explode causing huge AoE damage; I found this happened most of the time and often times at choke points). Again, I realize these are designed so that you have to change your play style (unless you are geared enough to just tank these). I personally don’t find their designs really enjoyable. The rewards for completing these Nightmare dungeons are also lackluster and given the huge nerf to glyphs, the incentive of running these (to level up glpyhs) are diminished. Backing up a bit, most normal dungeons (these are the same dungeons with added mechanics) are hit/miss in terms of their design (and some are just more efficient). So I can see why some players simply just dump a lot of their sigils on the ground if it’s a bad modifier/dungeon.
For myself (at least the ones I tried), I found none of them really fun (imagine getting mostly sigils that have the kill all enemies objective dungeons as the base, then with annoying modifiers that adds tedium to completing the dungeon quickly). Such is the case with RNG… But this brings me back to my impression of the end game design in D4. A lot of it is a twist on D3’s (much of which came about over time with Reaper of Souls). None of it is ground breaking nor extraordinarily fun/enjoyable (at least to me).
I can also see why some players were rushing to get into T3 and then T4; if you’re going to grind for gear, it made better sense to just not grind too long for T1/T2/T3 gear, and just grind for Ancestral (with some obvious struggles early on). And given the level scaling (and thus ever increasing level on gear until you hit 100), you are pretty much going to be replacing pieces until max level (and if RNG isn’t playing in your favor, could result in pain points with ones build). Most of my non-jewelry slots are now Sacred (and I found enough items from Helltides to keep using my Ice Shard build). But I’m missing a few key aspects (like the one that has a chance of casting Frost Nova if enemies are frozen).
Until I get actual uniques (which have a lot more +skill properties) though, sustain is going to be an issue. And preferably, I’d want to get into tier 4 to just vie for Ancestral gear. But just like with the first Capstone dungeon, I’m not going to bother trying it until I meet some of the breakpoints with the gear check (that is, if I make it that far since I’m not sure if I can sustain this grind (which as I’ve written before, is something I no longer have an appetite for). I’ll probably see what happens in the next 10 levels (when I am closer to 70) to see where my gear/stats are at. If I’m not having fun, I’ll probably start playing the other classes in casual potato fashion.
