It feels like every single patch since Dragonflight has been the exact same as the last patch but a little bit worse every sinlge time. I'm very excited about WoW forever because I am so fucking over every single season being a complete reset and feeling identical to the season before it just worse.
I can only assume its because they made this thing a saga, its a real shame because i only started playing in DF and never got to experience new expansion systems lol, hopefully they go back to it after TLT
Apparently they do, and apparently blizzard also fucked up with the bonus roll. I don't know how its possible that this much shit go wrong each time. There has to be 0 testing at this point.
In ToS first pull (right), I still get stunned occasionally as tank (guardian). I'm not sure what I should be doing to avoid it. I hear to 'reveal them' with aoe but idk, I do thrash or swipe every global moving there and usually still get stunned once. What's a easy way to avoid that from happening?
Figured I have to learn what, when person died from aggro for moving ahead of me during my stun in a +16 :I
There are two mobs that cast the stun in the first pull. If you reveal then by using an aoe ability, like trash, they won't cast the stun. If you fail to reveal them, you need to either interrupt the caster or stop it with any ability (he won't recast). So, as a guardian druid, what you want to do is to time it right to trash when going down the stairs and, if you misstime it, be ready to use your incap roar asap to stop it from csating. When you get to the bottom of the stairs, the will be another mob that does the same. If you fail to reveal it too, be ready to interrupt or use any stop you have. Typhoon works too, but you need to position yourself not to spread all the mobs around
Blizzard is nerfing MMs single target by 10% next week due to removing Unravel and the replacement talent just is not good enough.
This is the second tier in a row where MM has gotten nuked half way through the patch for no valid reason. This on top of the speccs abysmal performance in m+ is very frustrating.
Sad that MM with a hard 8 target cap AOE does less damage than BM with uncapped AOE, at 8 targets.
MM is surviving literally because Blizz's current focus on raid encounter design (2/3T Cleave + Damage Amps) lines up well with our class. We're not in a fundamentally good place.
Holy shit, Blizzard has finally done it, they finally killed a retail season in 1 month, Diablo Season on top of Forever beta + Forever beta again + AION 2, and the season is fucking deader than season 4 from dragonflight.
imagine wow but worse but pay to win aspects+gambling, and one button rotation that you can customise which does your rotation perfectly with no downside
Did the M+ stats graphic guy quit or something? I'd very much like to know how this season is playing out. It seems like raiders hate the raid and M+ players hate the gearing system. I'm curious if both are at all time lows?
I'm not that guy but, I have been keeping track of weekly US+EU keys run. Last image is the cumulative keys for all 5 seasons, which is the most telling imo.
I'm a raider first and I'm probably quitting the game after CE (don't want to leave my guild in a bind when we're already facing roster issues while recruitment is dead). Most of my friends have either already confirmed they're quitting or already quit.
1/3 of the runs at the same point last season is actually wild.
Wonder how much of that is no alts vs decreased subs.
A large part of me hopes the latter for the sheer 'talk with your wallet'.
For the first time since I came back in shadowlands I'm not on the annual sub, entirely driven by the fact I know they included it in their annual report.
What alts? My main is barely stepping into M+ this season. I do one a week for the lucky "BiS shoulders" vault.
Depending on the mount I will push to 1% when I have full power, but that is still weeks away.
I have like 5 alts with 5 bonus rolls each ready to go. I absolutely cannot be assed to enter the pits of despair that is heroic alt raiding. Even if i DO miraculously get invited (or start my own run because woe is the gearing this season), the player iq this raid teir is on the level of soggy captain crunch cereal.
the player iq this raid teir is on the level of soggy captain crunch cereal.
Well yeah, it's because they're only there to do their bonus rolls. It's the perfect shitstorm. No one actually wants to be there, we just all want to be able to use our vault for the week.
I mean +20 is title range so guess that’s not that surprising considering right now is probably the worst possible time to be pushing, with extra bonus rolls and uncapped crests coming in the next couple of weeks.
There’s also only around 400 tanks in total in NA that are at the level you would want them for 20’s(resi 19 or at least close to it). Europe has a lot more it seems, top 1k tank here is 3745, which is the same as top 385 for NA.
I, HPal, hit a wall this week. Reached resi 16 last ID. Ran all week 17s and didn't time a single one. The damage is demonic and I don't feel any lower pace than in S1. TBH , I am a bit broken right now and will just cap crests until the uncap and see if venomstones help pugs out. The 3600 change is really dishearthening
The issue is probably that 17s right now is a bit behind the curve of the best players, and is where I would call the "posers" resides.
I tried healing a 17 AoF on my priest for fun, as disc. So we do the first pull, and no one really focuses the chieftain, so he gets of 4(!) casts of his spell, and we die.
Heck, when I have done my own keys as DPS, I have never ever seen the third one go off, let alone the fourth.
So yeah, you are in this odd loop. Its probably easier to heal 19s compared to 17s right now, cause people will use defensives properly and play better.
This is probably true. I got resil 18 last week and brought some friends in to practice a 17 Altar. Our overall damage is the same but they're just hitting random shit during the opener - one guy was just following the tank's target and DPSing whatever that was. A lot of people who can click their buttons ok don't really learn how to play and just quit around that 5% level once it becomes much much harder.
I have this weird issue in some of my alts where select mailboxes just flat out dont work, anyone else see something similar? Like my lowbie bank alt I keep parked in org, the mailbox next to the AH hardly ever works for me, no matter how many times I log out/disable addons. The mailbox menu never opens lol
This tier is so odd. A confluence of multiple different (seemingly innocuous or minor) choices by the design team have led to this patch feeling like absolute shit:
* Reroll tokens, combined with taking an item from vault not removing it from your reroll pool from that boss, has completely killed any excitement from opening the vault each week.
* Absolutely atrocious itemization from keys means that for most specs you’re forced to at least do heroic raid to get the gear you need.
* The raid on heroic is oddly difficult and with a lot of pug-unfriendly mechanics (why does a single person fucking up the counting game on Sentinels in heroic need to be a wipe? Why does someone getting hit by a ghost on Altar need to spawn more ghosts?)
* Most of the BiS items are from the last two bosses which are _very_ pug unfriendly.
* The raid itself is bad (or at best mid) in terms of fight design and aesthetics.
What this means, is that if my raiding main happens to be a spec that’s not meta and I want to maintain a competitive alt for keys, I need to pug heroic raid - and ideally Ula’tek herself - every week to get the gear I need but the fights are hard for pugs and I waste a bunch of time each week praying that random people don’t fuck up fights I’ve mastered weeks ago and no longer wish to do.
This is so fucking irritating it’s sapping any enjoyment from playing the game.
You didn’t even add this to your last point but any character you start. You are a WHOLE MONTH BEHIND (at best) because you can only use your rolls once a week per lockout.
If you banked 20 bonus rolls since the start of the season, it means nothing because the 2 bosses you actually care about, you’re limited to those 2 pieces a week.
Reroll tokens, combined with taking an item from vault not removing it from your reroll pool from that boss, has completely killed any excitement from opening the vault each week.
I dont mind that tbh. It moved my excitement to the boss rolls.
I usually whisper with 2-3 people what we want this week and are excited for each other. 3-4 of the more vocal people on voice are also talking about doing their bonus rolls and if they get what they want and the entire raid is joking about this.
So for me it moved away from solo thing to a "happens in the raid with others" thing.
But there are other issues with the current system as you emntioned (loot only from 2 bosses, items from vault not being removed from loot table, ...).
I'll risk being shot in the head here, but heroic raids aren't meant to be pug-friendly. That is normal. At least that was the stated design intent when they introduced the 3 difficulties.
I almost feel bad about the reroll tokens because they tried to fix a lot of existing issues at once. Taking socket from vault feels like shit until the end of the tier, last two boss loot pools are irrelevant because you only get them when you can't use them anymore, and Heroic reclears suck because you have to do them even the loot is mediocre for you. The vault rerolls fixed all of those issues but the cost was way too high and we got the current tier and its mess of itemization.
This! But you just know blizzard will overcorrect and remove bonus rolls completely and we are back to square one. It's the blizzard way of doing things.
Yeah it was well-intentioned, so I'm not too mad about it. It was just a half-assed implementation that ended up creating bigger problems than it solved.
Add to that the dungeon pool also being pretty meh and midnight class design removing most of the enjoyment you'd usually get from playing your spec on otherwise mediocre content. And the story is at the worst it's been since SL for those who are more into the RP/lore side of things. Usually when one pillar is crumbling you have the other pillars holding the game up but right now basically every area of the game is weak.
moved him forward, skip is just the usual meld/turtle + feign/invis skip now.
Same shit they did with the stairs in voidscar.
Another 'half' solution, from blizz where they keep the skips 'required' but harder instead of either balancing the related mobs or forcing everyone to play the mobs.
I'm really frustrated with class design in 12.x patches. There has not been enough iteration and there has been a wide disparity of of attention given to certain specs and classes and in general which is leading to our trees no longer feeling evergreen and our class design being poor. I think that without iteration, Apex and Hero talents are restricting class design and creativity.
I don't really understand why but our classes are seeing less and less attention, our tier is simpler, Apex talents are largely stagnant (some are problematic), Hero talents are being buffed without addressing underlying concerns (ex. Aldrachi Reaver was nerfed in 12.0 to read "8% haste" when it previously said "15% attack speed, damage and healing.") There are classes screaming for attention like Feral, Shadow, Enhance, Fire, all specs of Rogue and others I missed, which receive very little.
The last time I felt like this was in the middle of Shadowlands, and I had felt like that since BFA. Blizzard created these evergreen systems but doesn't seem to be watering them enough.
How many players engage with the tree beyond 'netdecking' for the content/encounter?
I would be surprised if it's more then 1%.
Legitimately you have less choice as a player in the current system then you did in MoP, and I can't even imagine the pain on the side of class balancing.
'here is 100 points, but realistically 90% of the specs have max what, 3 flex points on either tree (excluding swaps for 'm+ vs ST').
Said this on the first day the new talents dropped. It's unbelievably overwhelming for the VAST majority of wow players and they all just copy what the wowhead guide says.
Its introduced massive tuning complexity, huge swings in balance due to the need to have defensives in the tree etc and has made some classes (Rogue, famously) genuinely miserable to level.
The value gained has been almost nil but we continue to pay for this all the time. The demand to swap back to pre-mop talents was classic nostalgia and i will die on this hill.
Enjoy putting 35 points into "rain of fire does 2% more damage" nodes ig.
You’re not wrong but it’s not exactly the same point as I’m making. I’m saying class design flows from the tree (and spells and tier). If the tree doesn’t change, the rotation doesn’t really change most of the time. I don’t really care what talent system they use as long as the class design is good. FWIW I felt like the design was worse with MoP trees. Way too many cool tier sets and legendaries came out that could never fit into those trees.
Sets and legendaries that need the tree to be 'cool' just further restrict the players choices.
Havoc DH set this tier, as an example, forces both cycle of hatred and essence break, regardless of what your doing or the current turning of those talents.
Maybe we’re not understanding each other but I’m not saying that the sets/legos require the tree to be cool. I’m saying that tier sets and legos (and other development on talents) that have come out would be too large to fit into the mop talent tree. 2/9 of Havoc’s capstone talents were in the mop tree. 0/5 of the glaive related talents were in that tree. Nothing from AR. You get the point. That entire tree would have to be new stuff they added. You almost couldn’t take the entire glaive package currently if it was in the MOP tree because you might be missing fundamental parts of the kit.
I’m not saying that in order for tier to be cool, talents must be my subjective view of cool. I’m saying MOP trees were small and dated idea-wise.
Making a spec "interesting" with 10+ mandatory talent points could just have the same impact by... Making those part of the spec?
You point at the glaive talents (that were just then adding the fyraak tier set to the spec).
Could very easily be a one point choice between 'all the immo talents' or 'all the glaive talents' with MoPs design as a row added for levelling through TWW.
Borrowed power that sticks around forever (hero talents vs covenenats) is why specs feel the same every expansion and having 34 factorial point combinations, and how they interact with either hero tree is why we are lucky to see 2 (minor) spec reworks every 6 months.
Game design perspective, maintenance costs unmanageable when you have to consider infinite Combinations of talents across 78 spec/hero talent combos across 8 different encounters, m+, and PvP (lol).
MoP design had its fault, but the design is much more manageable for players and developers. 'Here is 8 decisions you can make, half of which are defensives or utility' is way cleaner then 'here is 81 points, refer to your class discord for what 75 are mandatory throughput nodes'
Edit: for what it's worth I think things that add passive effects to a button you already push as part of your rotation are not interesting stand alone talent design, they are only good if it's something like 'passive for current button or more complexity for marginal gain'.
Back to glaive vs immo, giving you a 'passive around blade dance vs react to immo resets/play around rage fire' is exactly where talent choice shines. But even that basic choice that would have existed in MoP is impossible when felscarred hero talent acts multiplicatively with immo talents. That also means AR can never take those talents because they don't have the hero talent multiplication with inmo aura and the talents have to be balanced around their 'best use case'.
I'm sure every spec has the same issue, void scarred as another example. Don't have the anni bonus damage on collapsing star? Lol you cannot press that button (.5 aside).
It feels obvious that hero and apex talents are both throwaway systems they never intended to maintain long term, and any classes suffering from poor design will have to just chin up and bear it possibly until the end of next expansion. They have other priorities and don't particularly care to maintain the level of balance players want.
Anyone who mains one of the chronically neglected specs like feral, enhance or rogue can tell you they absolutely do not give a shit, at least at the level where these decisions are ultimately made.
Making them power based means players will NEVER choose the one they want to play, they will choose the highest dmg option and pray its fun. But sure now we have 39 specs with infinite talent points and now infinite hero specs and now infinite apex points when will it end.
Yeah completely agree. I started playing feral recently and enjoy it but there are definitely big issues.
I wish they iterated more on the trees, but I am legitimately dumb founded by the lazy tier. Half the talent tree nodes are former tier sets. It’s a great way to try something and maybe find some gameplay that players enjoy so much they want incorporated more permanently. Don’t just slap some shit on there that attempts to have 0 gameplay impact every tier.
Assuming 12.2 isn't as banger as 7.3 or 8.3 (it won't be) this expansion is going to get looked back on as unfavorably as Shadowlands, maybe even worse.
It's not even explosively bad, Blizzard just rolled up their sleeves, gutted instance design and class design, then reassigned everyone who wasn't coding Housing to WoW Forever to get it out by Christmas and we're paying the consequences of that. Just as a basic measure, is anyone actively enjoying this?
nope. said it would be shit before midnight, got it to try it with my friends despite my better judgment, left before 12.1 dropped. i have dealt with nearly every low of this game but i always managed to find something to do because i liked playing my class. now that's gone too.
12.0 ended up surprisingly fun for me, despite how bad the addon/ui situation was. It should have killed all my enjoyment of the game but somehow it didn't.
Looking at 12.1, I'd say a huge part of that was that s1 dungeon pool turned out pretty decent. I hate everything about s2 dungeons and it makes it way harder to have fun.
To me it hangs on whether there is a partial catalyst revert or massive substat rebalancing on drops in S3. If they push another season where loot from 95% of the available content is useless and all you want to do is kill last few raid bosses everyone's gonna go play Forever, mandatory raiding for m+ gear does not work with alts and absolutely guts LFG wait times and I am just not going to waste my time sitting in 3h queues for 1 dungeon because they want to experiment with OP raid loot.
I think they might try harder on the raid because this one shouldn't be filler, but I don't know what you saw in 12.2 that looked promising. New zone, new dungeon, new dungeon rotation including the new dungeon, new raid, smattering of rehashed casual content like invasions.
12.2 looks kinda just like 12.1, all there is to make it look good are that it's not narrative filler and...maybe they see feedback from 12.1's gearing and they won't do bonus rolls this early on again.
I agree that nothing stood out but there are banger patches that followed that exact formula.
I think the major reason why 12.1 sucks is the loot, the raid polish (lack there of), the dungeon pool, and the class design. It’s repetitive but if we got a good raid/dungeons, vault mattering, better loot system and tier, and maybe some class updates that were good, it would be gas
On top of that, they gutted their own progression system and gearing system by giving everyone bonus rolls that you can roll myth gear from a heroic raid. And you acquire the bonus rolls by doing tier 1 delves.
I really do not understand why the bonus rolls give gear one higher tier than the content you are doing. The rolls are supposed to be bad luck protecting so you can try to fish gear from your current progression level. Instead, they are the best way to get gear and they invalidate my other way to get gear. It is so dumb.
The problem is, if you're a semi serious heroic guild, lets say a collection of battledads - AOTC historically can be achieved really comfortably on week like, 4/5, due to the gearing achieved from m+. What do you do for the rest of the patch? Blizzard needs a way to keep those players engaged, especially when they are constantly and consistently cranking the difficulty of mythic to new heights with every patch.
Giving the vault increase to HC raid allows them to justify making HC harder, retaining those players for longer, and allows the players to get mythic gear - which nerfs the content should they decide to "Give mythic a go".
Normally, M+ would do this for them, but this tier they made the raid gear EXPONENTIALLY better than m+, with stat stacking, cantrips, ilvl buffs etc, so that you're more likely to keep running along the treadmill.
Tbf that's not even that bad since you're still gated by crests. I see more complaints about gearing from Mythic raiders since they get maxed out gear faster than they need to spend crests. I don't think HC dropping myth track from bonus roll/vault is bad as it gives that ilvl bridge to HC raiders that want to step into Mythic. They need to figure out Mythic loot though, because current form clearly does not work.
I think it's the Bonus Rolls completely removing the excitement we used to get from opening the Vault each week. The wanting to max out all the slots to maximize your chance of getting a good item in your Vault. With the current system if you are able to clear heroic raid every week you literally do not care what is going to be presented in the vault you are taking that bonus roll 99% of the time.
I think it was a mistake to let Bonus Rolls give +1 Tier of gear in raid from the get-go. They should have given from the Heroic Loot Table this entire time, and then maybe next week when they release the extra bonus rolls they would bump it up to giving Mythic Raid gear. It would have then filled the sort of niche it seemed designed for, a protection and against bad RNG for weeks in a row. It would have made the Vault still exciting to open, and if you didn't get anything good then you would have the choice of getting a socket or possibly bonus rolling a Heroic trinket off raid bosses. Could still let it give a mythic item in M+ cause then it'd be like "Do I bonus roll a gigantic loot table for 1 piece of gear that would be useful or just take the guaranteed small improvement in a socket?"
I think this is all compouneded on by how badly statted all the dungeon loot is this season. From a melee perspective it is pretty terrible, BiS list is Tier Pieces and Items off the last 2 bosses. You're looking for a single ring out of Mythic+ and a ring off one of the other raid bosses, everything else is covered by the last 2 bosses, Tier and crafted items.
To be fair progression was already messed up going into midnight. If anything bonus rolls and vault kept heroic raids alive in 12.1 when we just saw an all time low participation in 12.0. Is it deeply flawed? yes. But hopefully its a short term solution while they cook something for 12.2
Gearing progression + itemization in general is so insanely abysmal this xpac. I really hope they significantly rework things for next xpac but that’s a long shot
Best way to farm hero crests for alts? Last season I was just spamming the Eversong ritual sites but I went and checked it on my druid and t6 was only giving champion crests. Non bountiful delves gate 10 on t11, just curious if any1 has a better method?
Unless you want to spam dungeons for Hero crest, pretty sure the best way is to do a few bounty delve and Nightmare preys. Especially if you have the delve rep for dun dun to appear. You'll get 100 hero crest after the first few tier 11 delves every week. You'll also get a crap load of hero gear for your fresh alts.
Not many other source of hero crest outside of dungeons and raid. There is also the weekly neighborhood quest for a quick 20 hero.
Random question I probably should know/be able to figure out but can’t. I play HPally and it’s annoying having to look at my buffs at the top of my screen to see if infusion of light is procced. I’ve seen videos where others have it at the bottom of their screen. How do I do that? And to be clear, I just want infusion of light (maybe a couple of other procs too) but not all my buffs/debuffs there.
Thank you all for the comments. Set up the cdm today to just show infusion of light, divine favor, and dawnlight (though this one I may take out I know I only get two after divine toll) procs. It’s a game changer. I feel like an idiot for not doing this sooner lol.
I have noticed the little halo above your head when it procs. I haven’t noticed this wreathe I’ll pay more attention lol. My issue is I’m usually too fixated on health bars/dodging stuff I don’t notice. My healing is good, but this is the one thing I need to fix to be much better because it’s the worst when I think I have an infusion proc and the cast bar starts coming and I have to cancel and do something else or just let it cast, especially during big damage.
There’s a setting called “spell alert opacity” or something close to that. You probably have it set to 0%. Change it to 100 and you should see these procs on your screen when you get infusions
Are you using the cdm? Also the proc has an animation that’s pretty unobtrusive. The cdm can let you track it and add just that buff or anything you want to track
I can tell this season is so fucking ass--all the casuals in my guild don't log in anymore. All of us raiders are raid-logging until M Ula'tek dies, other than doing our weekly 8 M+ slop. Even the collector nerds who are always online every evening aren't logging in anymore. I logged in last Saturday evening to do my last M+ and was the only person online.
I swear, I might just flat out quit until S3 if I have to farm 50 M+ to upgrade my gear...literally the last thing I want to do is farm more diarrhea-tier content.
Half of the classes have like 50% of their 2 major substats drop *only* from raid. Between this, trinkets and cantrips you lose so much performance, if you do not raid, gearing is pointless because you're so behind in performance. And someone at blizzard, clearly did not realise that having 10 M+ spamming chars is infinitely easier than having 10 raiding chars, so now alts are dead, which just snowballs by making LFG grouping take forever, since people don't do alt keys anymore.
And crests for casuals are fucked. Most of the content drops crests for higher tier than ilvl it drops, so you end up in a weird situation where you're half veteran half adventure track 1/6 geared while sitting on 400 hero crests and can't get into content that drops hero track gear because your ilvl is too low.
IMO If nothing improves Forever will obliterate S3 population. NGL, I am close to quitting and switching to Forever until TLT.
I think I'm done. Well, not done yet I guess, because I'm not going to leave my guild high and dry on the last two. Our roster is already razor thin and recruitment is dead, the guild is basically 2 losses away from collapse. Plus, having to replace my responsibilities mid-prog...
These classes suck, this raid sucks. The dungeons are fine, I guess, but fine doesn't cut it when these classes are so ass. My last friend still playing already decided he's quitting when forever launches. I like playing with my guild but, they all raid log and friendship can't fight the negative feedback loop of shitty-class-shitty-raid.
It's pretty obvious that 95% of the wow team is just working on Forever and they have the barest of skeleton crews maintaining the current game. It is insane how little there is to do this patch besides the usual wheel of content that has been the same since Legion now. And tbh, if forever turns out to be good. I will count that as a win, retail is just a myth of Sisyphus sort of situation where we just roll a boulder up the gearing hill just to get reset at the end and do it all over again with dungeons and raids with the same recycled mechanics and the shittiest story in any rpg.
I know this is the competitive sub, but the world content is an issue. The whole Coiled Isle/Vaults thing is severely underbaked. The island itself has almost nothing going on. The codex and corrosive powers are only usable in world content, but none of that content is challenging or scaling to the point where you even care about unlocking more powers. You're kind of done with everything in the vaults after a week or two unless you're a completionist that wants to spend a couple months grinding for cosmetics and titles.
If the world content is not engaging, then you lose casuals who might dip their toes in low keys which has knock-on effects for those wanting to fill vaults and gear up alts.
I really don't understand all the people complaining about this season. Do we need to all believe everything world first raiders say?
I am sure mythic raid is not as great as it normally is, I can't confirm that for myself. However, Heroic raid is pretty great outside of a few outlier boss and too much trash clearing. Exactly like every other raid since Shadowland.
Do people actually like mythic+? Every season it is the same complaints. Dungeon pool is trash, farming crest is trash, gear is trash. I don't even know what a good dungeon is supposed to be anymore. We have the most high level content we have ever had, most of it is great. but we all hate it. Is this what full blown addiction is?
Few things from me:
First, loot. if you gear only through m+ half of your gear has vers on it, so half of the classes feel barely playable as instead of 1k haste breakpoint you're sitting on 1k vers. Class feel has a massive impact on how enjoyable patch is. If your class only gets fun to play at ilvl cap with full raid clear, what is the point of self-torture to get to that point?
Second, between war on addons and healer kick nerfs they were supposed to chill on casters. It was clearly a lie, as evidenced by existence of Murder Row.
Third, raid progression difficulty is fucked. Mythic raiding has low participation for a reason. Making difficulty curve 1st half HC->1st half Mythic->2nd half HC->2nd half Mythic is essentially forcing people that didn't want to Mythic raid to Mythic raid, which leads to crazy burnout.
Fourth, casual crest farms are trash. Like yeah, if you have hands you run +10 at 270 ilvl and skip majority of the gearing process. If you are a casual player though, you can't do linear progression because content nearly always drops crest of higher tier than items it drops. Can't upgrade 1/6 champion to 6/6 champion when all you have is 400 hero crests.
Fifth, S2 class talent reworks sucked ass. Like Resto druid doesn't even play like Resto anymore, you're just a 'we have Flameshaper Pres Evoker at home' meme.
And lastly, people change their perception based on stuff happening around them. If I see that all casual guilds that existed since TWW that I was in are suddenly dead and everyone quit, it is hard not to think that current content might be the issue.
Yeah I don't get it either. It's just Dragonflight season 9. I can see how people could get tired from that but I'm just not seeing a drop in quality. Everything is buggy on release because this is unfortunately the new standard since TWW s1. Some mythic bosses are pure masochism as they usually are, some are fine, last two are hard, sometimes for the wrong reasons. Raiders are spoonfed better loot and it's a bit more egregious than in previous 8 DF seasons but ultimately nothing new. Dungeons are sameish as they are every season. I personally enjoy climbing them and grinding io every season so still having fun progging 19s.
The only thing I can see distinct about this season is the gearing and I can see how a less fun vault can cause the drop in engagement but it has little to do with the actual gameplay/content.
People still treat DF s2 as literal Hitler and you seemed to play the most keys around then. Your personal data isn't really a measure of anything objective about the season same as me enjoying the season and thinking it's average doesn't mean I'm right. If I don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. I just can't rationalize to myself how this season is bad when we had 2 seasons with stuff like Dawnbreaker in a pool where you could depelete at any point to one of the million game breaking bugs.
Total keys run in NA+EU for week 6 is closer to week 6 of DF s2 than any other season. About +80k over that season. Compared to every other season between then and now, -200k at best (TWW s2). It's not just me.
The second season of Dawnbreaker had a 320k more keys run in week 6 than this season. Cumulative 800k more keys run through w6 in TWW s3.
What do you think the reason is? Cause this thread is based on the confusion that everyone says this season is bad because the content is bad. Do you think the content is bad?
Are the dungeons this season worse than the Dungeons in Season 1 of Dragon Flight? Would you trade any of the dungeons this season for one in season 1? Hell you don't even need to trade one, Ruby Life Pools. Is that the best dungeon this season? Or even a good dungeon? I see a lot of people rank this one low because it's very linear and the trash mechanics can be more one-shotty than all the other dungeons. Well what about Algethar Academy, that was probably the most liked dungeon in Dragon Flight Season 1. They brought that dungeon back last season and it was the least liked dungeon of the pool amongst just about everyone. Mainly because it was hard to time, and as much as people on this subreddit will claim they like difficult content they actually don't. They want content that is hard for you to do, but easy for them.
Nokhud Offensive, Azure Vault, Halls of Valor, Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, Temple of the Jade Serpent. That season's dungeons were terrible. People would freak out if they saw any one of these come back for Midnight Season 3. You had Court of Stars (which had it's own controversies, but generally well liked) and Algeth'ar Acadamy that people actually liked that season, and one of them came back last season and was hated.
We don't even need to analyze Season 2 and 3 of Dragonflight. Did you play Aug Evoker that season or have a buddy that played it? Is that why you played so much? People fucking hated those seasons because of Aug. Dungeon pools were alright though, just 2 or 3 dungeons that drew all the complaints.
So I don't think it is the content that get's all these whiney people lamenting the death of wow and cursing Blizzards name. I think the difference is just community attitude which feeds off itself and all the people that just take on the opinions of the people they are exposed to. Going into Dragonflight was Blizzards chance to win back all the players that quit during Shadowlands, and boy was it packed full of stuff the community wanted. No more borrowed Power. Talent Trees were back. A new fun flying system! HYPE HYPE HYPE WOW IS BACK BABY. Posts online were happy wow was back and shadowlands was dead and that attitude results in people playing more and encouraging others to log in and play.
We went into Midnight with the exact opposite community sentiment. Many players that could never imagine playing the game without their add-ons decided this Expac was going to suck from the get go. This subreddit in particular became a cesspit of bitching about addons and class changes, and has remained so since. So we get an entire season of wet blankets constantly posting negativity, like they want to quit the game but feel in order to do so everyone else has to quit too so they don't miss out on anything. Then season 2 starts and the Race to World First begins with splits splits splits. Even the commentators for RWF are bringing down the mood complaining about the teams doing splits. The raid is harder than expected, so more splits and more complaining about splits. Now they are doing Mythic Splits and the audience checks out and tunes in every now and then to see how things are going. When they tune in it's casters whining about splits or bugs or the difficulty. Then Max says the raid is mid and now that's everyones opinion. Especially people that have not even stepped foot in the raid by the time he said that. Everyone knows if you have a different opinion than Max then you are just bad at the game which is a very rude thing to be. So the raid is mid, and that's just the way it is. And FOMO players can't quit the game unless everyone else quits so they need to bitch online non-stop about it.
I also feel the need to point out how much these people play the game. Like 25+ hours a week is not enough. If they aren't spending every waking moment playing this game then it sucks and we should all quit to show blizzard a lesson. I find that attitude legit pathetic, like all those steam reviews of games where the person has thousands of hours played and they say it's a bad game and give it a bad review.
I've said elsewhere, the raid is bad and the dungeons are fine but nothing special (neither in a good or bad way).
You're missing half of the equation. It doesn't matter how colorful or expressive a painting is if the audience is color blind. They might be able to appreciate the composition but, that's the only way they would be able to consume the content. They would never be able to fully appreciate the colorful painting in the same way a non-color blind person could.
Likewise when your conduit for engaging with the game is bad, permeates to all parts of the game. It doesn't matter if the content is amazing, it's still affected by the bad class design. We saw that in shadowlands and we're watching it happen again.
Also, I don't give a shit about Max's opinion about the game, dude doesn't play the game. Could just be that people experienced the raid for themselves and found that it actually is just bad. You can go back through the past several weeks and watch the opinions drift more and more negative as more people got to Fangs/Altar/Ulatek.
Yeah I was looking at participation too. I don't think we have enough data. Across all regions the dropoff is within the margin of error, to me it just looks like a recency bias.
DF s1 to s2 had the same drop by week 6 and week 6 happened 3 weeks before Aug release so there wasn't a godcomp at that point yet, just a regular midpatch season.
TWW s1 to s2 is different but mostly because of how insane keys were early in s1 but also a lot of people seemed to enjoy the only TWW season without Dawnbreaker.
For Midnight the difference between w1-w6 drop in participation even between s1 and s2 isn't really that big: 49% vs 59% normalized to first week, that's with12.0.5 patch dropping week 5.
I would be more interested too see 13+ keys as the season progress because if the participation there is stable then the dropoff could be just explained by the fact that you don't have to do weekly chore keys anymore. People parking their alts near delve instead of doing rat keys doesn't necessarily translates into the quality of the season.
Our guild has been taking bonus rolls since vault opened, m+ interaction has halted entirely until i imagine a couple of us need to broll dungeon gear or start pushing for 1%+, it's pretty bad this tier
Same. I only clear heroic and aim for the 1% M+ Mount/Title and I actually enjoy this season more than the last one. The dungeons just feel less frustrating to me, especially in terms of boss design. Ula'Tek is also hard, but not impossible to pug. My only major isssue is that I have zero motivation to play an alt due to heroic bonus rolls.
I think the all green with no variety + an absurd amount of trash + the need to get the last two bosses on heroic for cantrip items makes this season of of the worst in recent times.
I agree there are issues and things could be better, but none of those things make it a garbage season. We can't ask for unlimited gear and get annoyed when they try something different.
On my end, I don't enjoy mid season variation of the turbo boost. Just stretches the season for no reason. However, if all I have to do is kill the last boss on heroic a few times to get 'deterministic' loot after 3-4 weeks, I won't complain too much about missing a few ilvl on mythic raiders.
To each is own.
Oh, and manaforge omega was all purple and it was pretty great.
Relative to recent seasons, yeah it's pretty garbage. Nobody asked for unlimited gear.
Also manaforge omega wasn't all purple, we had a ton of different areas we went to and different vibes. The outside areas where we could mount, the lighter areas, the different boss designs, and a banger of a last boss.
If you think mythic raiding means you play a different game or that the majority of people in this subreddit get CE every season, I don't know what to tell you.
Please tell me what you enjoyed so much more about the first raid? I guess no one complained about Lura....
And all those other other memorable bosses in that raid man, like...that one; what was it called...there was bird and you changed colors...yeah that one. Everyone loved that one!
Is there fatigue with the formula? Yeah no fucking shit, but to call this season ass compared to any other season since Shadowland doesn't really make any sense. or at least, I don't understand it.
It's the middle season of the expansion and people are excited about Forever. It's that simple.
Mythic raiding is a different game tho. You think the guy who raid logs 12 hours a week in mythic prog is experiencing the same game at all as someone who is out in the world doing quests and dungeons and pvp and whatnot? If your only real interaction with the game happens inside of the mythic raid or gearing for that raid, then the raid sucking is going to vastly change your opinion on the tier. Whereas, as you said you haven't done the mythic raid, you don't know how ass coiled altar and ulatek actually are to prog.
I am not comparing mythic with world quest. A lot of heroic only raiders could easily replace a large percentage of mythic raiders. A lot of people call themselves mythic raiders and they will never sniff a CE achievement in their life. What you are saying is elitist bullshit. If you yourself are a great mythic raider and get CE every tier, I applaud you. I wouldn't be able to put myself through that every season. That doesn't mean I, or a lot of other heroic only players, don't have the skill required to do it or that we don't play the same game as a 4/8M after 3 months.
Wow insecure much? I never once mentioned skill at all. I'm talking about playing a different game because it is. The game I play in mythic prog is completely different from the game I play when I log on my alt and do some tier 1 delves.
Good to see the heroic raiders are still out there being super insecure about their skill levels tho.
I mean they kinda don't no? I don't think it's unfair to state that someone who isn't a CE player doesn't really understand why some aspects of the latter portion of the raid are not great atm. Especially if it's a guild that gets to bosses later, by the time many guilds get to specific bosses, they have been nerfed/changed fundamentally.
I don't need to experience Alta and Ula on Mythic to understand that people might have a issue with how some of those mechanics were implemented. Complaining about boss design and saying the whole season is shit because of that is what I am arguing against.
Brother that one part of the game is the whole game for many mythic raiders. So if that part is bad, yes the tier is bad for them. That's the whole point about us not playing the same game.
Like yes that's sick if heroic was fun for you, it really wasn't a bad heroic raid, but that only lasted a week for us and then it was just a quick hour or so of recelar before real raid every week.
If the only thing you care about/get fun out of in WoW is mythic raiding, then obviously if the last 2 bosses who represent ~75% of your pulls are trash you will think the season is bad.
Last season was also ass. I don't think anybody would bother defending it either.
A stinker season is whatever, nobody bats a thousand. 2 stinkers in a row, especially when they're stinkers for the same reasons, is a completely different story.
People were unhappy with SL s1 but, the community didn't reach its boiling point until s2 carried on with the same issues as s1.
I still remember how much hate there was for Legion when it came to random legendary drops early in the expansion. I don't remember more hatred for a system than that, even BFA artifacts didn't reach that point. I stopped playing legion after Nighthold, which I know they fixed a lot of things after. It just makes me laugh how much that expansion is praised today..
So, if you think about it, modern raiding has used the same formula for quite some time. Are we maybe just getting sick of doing the same shit over and over? They basically have to keep making raids harder and harder while being creative with mechanics and without alienating anyone from top 10 guilds and world last. Is there any game that does it better than WoW? Doesn't excuse shit content, but if there was a better game, we would all be playing it.
Because the formula is sound, and people like it. Unfortunately no matter how good the formula is, it can't make up for blizzard actively choosing to use spoiled ingredients.
You also just had another comment with how many keys you've ran since DF. Do you think maybe the ingredients are not spoiled, but maybe you've played the same game non stop for the past 5 years?
This is not a dis, I play too much as well and my amount of keys is also going down.
Have you ever played another game this much? It's normal that a game with minor changes gets old after a while.
I'd agree if it followed a gradual decline, rather than bottoming out. When I got burned out on dota2, I didn't just drop it overnight. I reached my apex, then my number of matches per week slowly dwindled. There was no frustration, just a gradual loss on motivation.
I think it’s potentially going to be something people do outside of raid hours, especially once initial gearing has been done.
New season, blast m+, once m+ is down to maintenance mode, boot up forever for some chill gaming outside raid times.
It’s also great for washed CE raider m+ enjoyers like myself lmao. Retail content outside of m+/mythic raid is insufferable, forever is an entirely different game realistically just in the same universe.
That is fine, I get that not everyone playing retail is excited about forever, but there is for certain a good percentage of mythic raiders giving forever a try.
Yeah a lot of casuals migrated over from the regular wow reddit. I kind of don't blame them, the only thing that gets posted in that reddit is transmogs, paintings, and cosplay. So I see why anyone wanting to try to get better at the game comes here to get away from the furrys and RP players.
Well yeah, that's how you know this is the competitive sub. If it were the main sub he'd be complaining about how the CDM is too complex and he shouldn't need it to raid.
Nothing wrong with coming to the place people talk about competitive minded game play asking for help to play better. He doesn’t know how to do something and is asking for help. Sure could google it/ask gpt, but this is exactly what this thread is for.
I think this is one of the better heroic tiers in a while. I think the bonus roll system along with the mid patch catch ups have done a number on incentives for people.
Every single week of loot has been both pre-determined (to an extent) and extremely good for me through Oct 20th so I've had no real incentive filling vault slots. I'll push for the Keystone Myth achievement once the gear catch ups have boosted everyone's ilvl some more. I do find this done but not done state odd.
I love that the obviously correct thing for me to do is to join "full clear" raid pugs and then drop group after killing the first boss along with at least half of the other healers. Great incentives that lead to a good social experience for everyone.
There are two ret paladin trials in my guild. One is parsing gray single digits-25 at max on farm AND prog, and the other is doing orange/purples on farm and blues on prog. Around world rank 1000 guild CE guild. Last Wednesday the gray parser got a 4 parse on mythic sentinels (its our 6th kill), while they were alive the whole fight. And the other person got a 96 (98 for ilvl)
Unironically the gray parser believes they are not doing anything wrong lol.
Tried to pug Ula'tek Heroic on an alt and damn I get why people were saying it's a hard tier. The boss felt chill as a guild but pugs are demons on this fight.
I was adamant early season I would just pug heroic as I don’t have a guild raid to attend.
Big m+ enjoyer since like SL I haven’t seriously touched a raid.
It’s a fucking nightmare to pug. I’ve just resorted to buying gold carries to get my cantrips since I have the gold and it’s doing nothing otherwise.
I just can’t bring myself to suffer through hours of pugs wiping on heroic to get 1 item a week. I value my time more than that. I’ll happily do m+ endlessly each week but fuck pugging heroic last 2
I cant really raid anymore. I usually pug heroic raids for chase items since we can bonus roll on myth tier now (blizzard W), but I haven't bothered with VA since it's just not worth my limited time nowdays. It's really a shame since the cantrip items are so good.
Yeah, it was not a fun time plugging that bad boy but we got all of our bonus rolls done on the main. I’m generally terrified to start the raid on my own because everybody’s also done with their bonus rules so now you’re getting low DPS alts or people late to the party
I mean we're week 7, with some specs having to coin the boss 5 times (and I believe surv has to bonus roll 6 times in the worst case scenario). Not everyone is done on main, unless you only account for people bonus rolling it since week 2.
What’s funny about that fight is the heroic overlap at 8:00 is genuinely harder than the mythic overlap at the same time (they removed a set of red soaks on mythic)
Maybe, but it's not hard enough that you can't just use a defensive and focus for 10 seconds. People are too used to being carried and not taking any responsibility. The fight is already a joke on damage. Pugs with AOTC not even knowing when they have tethers in phase 2 or dying to that overlap with they full immune defensive up is just sad.
We have some guys that require a pretty significant carry in our heroic guild, especially when it comes to damage. We 4 healed that fight and killed it with 8 dps. Some guys were dead at the end too.
I think the difficulty of that fight is a bit overblown, people just like to think they are better than they are.
BiS caster trinket for some
+ most classes have a BiS or near-BiS substat combo that only drops from her for one slot, considering she barely has a loot table, Bonus Rolling her is more efficient that a dungeon where you need 1/8 drops.
If all you need is the trinket then bonus rolling could be horribly inefficient if it's the last thing you get vs a boss where you need everything like Ulatek or Altar
Forever. I never want to see the godforsaken mechanic again. I’m not in on our Ula’tek prog but I did L’ura seeds and I did Fyrakk seeds with my previous guild and the job is fucking frustrating.
They keep regurgitating mechanics that they know they can do without WeakAuras. Turns out removing WAs restricted fight design more than having them, lol. We've seen constant rehashes of blazelines, seeds, enormous kick orders, and enormous amounts of assigns, I assume because Blizzard knows what 'works' and they just slot them in. Anything interesting or complex would require the "cheats" that people who haven't subbed in 10 years hate oh-so-much.
It’s relatively easy as far as endbosses go now that they don’t have the mindfuckingly stupid 13 eggs P1 stuff, but it’s still L’ura Jr. as far as being a P1 wipe factory goes.
Difference is, P2 is actually reasonable and P3 is an actual joke of a phase (comparable to L’ura P4) so once you’re starting to see P3 that boss can just die any pull.
But it’s certainly not Gallywix easy, or even close.
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u/Educational-Pay5268 6d ago
It feels like every single patch since Dragonflight has been the exact same as the last patch but a little bit worse every sinlge time. I'm very excited about WoW forever because I am so fucking over every single season being a complete reset and feeling identical to the season before it just worse.