Confirmation that they’re being removed for improvement:

The Breach is (was) one of those missions players either loved or hated.  Launched in November 2013, The Breach was one of two new PVE queues added with the launch of Season 8: The Sphere.  After joining forces with the Romulan Republic and Klingon Defense Forces to explore the Solanae Dyson Sphere, you are forced to deal with the Voth and the Undine who have other intentions for the Sphere.

The Breach focused on a mission to strike at a 159 km long Voth City ship inside the Sphere.  This mission was the first modern complex PVE queue with multiple stages that took the battle from outside the city ship, to inside it’s massive hangar and deep within the inner workings of the ship itself.

There is no doubt that mission was inspired by both attack runs on the Death Star(s) in Star Wars and Return of the Jedi.  While Voyager only showed brief glimpses of one hangar, nothing comes close to describing the beauty of the interior of the Voth City Ship.  From the trench run on the exterior of the ship, to the hangars, the power cores and finally the escape from the exploding ship – The Breach offered a level of excitement not seen often in PVE queues.

The escape from the exploding core at the end of mission was in my opinion the one PVE element that got my heart pounding each and every time I played it.

For me personally, I rank this as one of the better multi-stage PVE queues.  Beyond the need for Voth Marks and Cybernetic Implants, The Breach was a mission players actively avoided due to it’s difficulty and the length of time the mission took to complete.  With the ground Battle Zone within the Sphere being much easier to complete for marks and Elite marks, The Breach fell out of favor with those players I regularly flew with.

I believe the ‘nail in the coffin’ was the difficulty increase applied during the launch of Delta Rising,   The advanced queue was still doable, but the elite queue became practically impossible,  I can remember slogging through the elite queue thinking to myself – why am I punishing myself with this queue?  It’s not fun anymore – it’s actually work.

I understand that some at Cryptic take exception to use of the term ‘punishing’ when we describe some features of the game.  I hesitate to use it, but this was the one case where I believe it fit.  The Voth are a particularly difficult foe to deal with if you’re not prepared,  The difficulty increase, added to the unrealistic HP increase for NPC’s sucked the life out of this mission, and it never fully recovered.

Back in 2014 Yuzral produced an excellent walkthrough:

Tonight I did my best to capture a few shots of what it’s like inside this mission.   Each image is HD – take the time to revisit the beautiful interior work.  Thumbs up to the design team 😉

The mission is broken into Six Stages:

Stage One: Outside the Voth City Ship
Unfortunately I missed getting a shot of this tonight.

Stage Two: Initial Breach

Stage Three: Citadel Hangar

Stage Four: Subpower Core

Stage Five: Power Core

Final Stage: Escape!

I’m hoping that this mission returns in the future as a limited time event.  It was both challenging and enjoyable, something that few PVE queues can say after the umpteenth time you’ve completed them.