WoW: The War Within's new mini dungeons are annihilating solo players while groups sleepwalk through them for 'free' loot

Delves are World of Warcraft's new mini dungeons that can be done solo, and they reward some of the best loot in The War Within's first season. But players have found that they're exponentially harder alone than with a group, which has squashed the hope that they would be a new solo alternative to normal endgame activities like raids and Mythic+ dungeons.

The problem is how Delves scale enemy difficulty for solo players versus groups. Many players say they're an obstacle course of environmental hazards and brutal enemies when you're alone, but a breeze in a group of five. Even the NPC ally who joins you in solo runs, Brann Bronzebeard, struggles to heal through normal enemy attacks, let alone boss attacks, in the high-level Delves. And on top of that, solo players have to use up one of their limited respawns every time they die because Bronzebeard, unlike other players, can't resurrect you.

Several players say that grouping up with even one person alleviates most of these problems and renders some Delves surprisingly trivial for how good the loot rewards are. WoW raider Sloot did the math and found that for some reason solo players have to fight enemies with strictly more health than two players do. I'm no game designer but that makes no sense to me. You'd think enemy health would scale up with each new player you add.

The weird scaling and the disparity between different classes and roles have made the WoW subreddit resemble the Elden Ring one earlier this year when players were furious about Shadow of the Erdtree's difficulty. Some posts beg Blizzard not to nerf the difficulty while others say «it's almost ridiculous to consider them solo content.»

«Right now, duo delves are free gear, and solo is nearly impossible for some classes.»

«Right now, duo delves are free gear, and solo is nearly impossible for some classes,» Reddit user Kyuuki_Kitsune said.

Most people say the problem isn't actually a skill issue, but a balancing issue. Enemies deal absurd amounts of