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(Updated)Ranking the War Within Season 2 Keys

Ranking War Within Season 2 World of Warcraft
img of (Updated)Ranking the War Within Season 2 Keys
  • Revised as of March 3rd. Cinderbrew drops from 7th to 6th. Floodgate moves up to 7th. Priory remains the same but is much easier
  • Revised as of March 8th. Rookery goes from 4th to 1st. ToP 1st to 4th. Priory and Floodgate are arguably equal difficulty. Workshop goes from 2nd to 3rd and Darkflame Cleft from 3rd to 2nd. I have timed/done all of these on a 10 on live as of week one (except Motherlode) as either a DPS or Tank.

TL;DR - Easiest to Hardest

  1. Rookery
  2. Darkflame Cleft
  3. Operation: Mechagon - Workshop
  4. Theater of Pain
  5. Motherlode
  6. Cinderbrew Meadery
  7. Operation: Floodgate
  8. Priory of the Sacred Flame

Rookery - 1

With all the nerfs racking up, this dungeon somehow turned from the second hardest to indisputably easiest key on live. It’s short with easy bosses (mechanically), and the trash is a shadow of what it once was. If you queue into this key, expect to time it unless your grief is hard inting you.

Darkflame Cleft - 2

With one of the most forgiving timers in the dungeon pool, beaten only by Rookery, this has fallen a spot to become another prime weekly key target. You can have some issues in the first area if you don’t skip most of it, but the bosses (sans Candle King) are easy so long as you perform them correctly and the Mine cart event is actually, dare I say it, quite interesting to do now if you know how to execute it.

Operation: Mechagon - Workshop

I still don’t find this key that hard, but in PUGs or less skilled guild groups the timer can be a concern at times, and the only way to improve that is to play pulls that are much harder than they are by themselves (whole first room pull, doing Waste Processing Units with Gunks, etc). 3rd boss is, unsurprisingly, much easier when you can actually see every mechanic.

Theater of Pain - 4

While it seemed like the prime weekly key on PTR, I think it’s one of the keys that gets hit hardest by tuning, as with week one gear the timer can actually feel a little tight. The last boss buffs, from early reports on Reddit and word-of-mouth, have made it a bit of a PUG check as well, though I personally have seen no issue with this boss at all (compared to SL, at least).

Motherlode - 5

Not much to say here. Hasn’t moved spots but the Crawler Mine nerf makes going left at the end the right answer 100% of the time, so you just need to pull enough that you end up with 90% at 3rd boss, which isn’t too tough. Still a big tank test as there’s lot of little techical minutiae to be tested on, although the Laborer nerfs massively reduce the stops requirement.

Cinderbrew Meadery - 6

This has some of the harder trash of the season, and a lot of it. Almost every pack has some dangerous combos that can kill a player if they don’t manage their defensives properly, and the timer in this dungeon can feel quite tight without pulling massive, and even then it is still a little close. The bosses in here are also all quite easy to wipe too, and particularly Benk and Goldie will probably be outliers on the heat map for deaths in this dungeon.

Operation: Floodgate - 7

This is put here mostly due to it being a new dungeon, and all the difficulties that come with that. Besides that, the trash can be nasty at times, with the final trash on the way to the last boss being the outlier and quite difficult, especially the mini-boss Bubbles. As well as this, all the bosses in this dungeon can be challenging and have several mechanics that can wipe the entire group if failed. Lastly, the final boss Geezle Gigazap, is the current hardest boss of all dungeons, being a significant healing and mechanic check. Swampface also has the potential of being quite difficult for players first seeing it.

Priory of the Sacred Flame - 8

The indisputable king for the entirety of the PTR cycle, Priory is definitely the key to avoid as of current tuning. Like Dawnbreaker in Season 1, this could end up being exactly the opposite, and somehow end up the free-est key of the pool, but right now, if I had to bet money, I’d say this is a certified BRICK (tm) for 95% of players on a 10 or higher the first week.

I’m hopeful that these dungeons will not launch with the health they had on PTR and Blizzard tunes them accordingly as we were quite high ilvl, but we shall see.

  • Crazy how Blizzard just doesn’t listen, huh?