AT World of Warcraft Thread (Legion, Where do you play, General BS and all that)

[Rebel_L]

A big problem blizz has been having is contending with player ilvls. Player level has been expanding at an exponential rate from expansion to expansion, and now it's happening within a single expansion. Molten core's ilvl was 70-75, old naxx was around 85-88, that's a delta of about 10-15 ilvls. Kara was 115, sunwell 154, delta of 29 ilvls. Normal/heroic dungeons floated below that. Emerald Nightmare LFR starts at 835 for LFR, nighthold mythic STARTS at 905, with titanforging taking it up much higher (very rare chance). That's a delta of 70 ilvls, and while the percentage of power increase might be relatively similar (10%ish), it's almost the entire delta of ilvls from mulgore-molten core from vanilla. To add to that, they've fiddled with mechanics so much that almost everyone has some kind of super-whammy alpha strike which is capable of one-shotting mundane npcs, and completely trivializing 'hard' encounters. We're getting to the point (actually, we have been for a bit) of seeing things like blood DKs soloing bosses from the existing expansion, during the expansion (albiet from earlier content). Unfortunately blizz doesn't seem to know how to wrangle it under control.

There is more too it than ilevel too, if you take a look at weapons for instance, the dps change from a 800 level weapon to an 880 level weapon seems to be a fair bit more than 10%. Although it was never straight about ilevel back in vanilla either. Purple items of the same ilevel had more stats than blue items of the same ilevel at the time, now the color is simply determined by the ilevel.

It really does seem like its too much of a power boost base max level gear to maxed out gear. I personally would be much happier if the focused a little less on the gear progression and maybe instead of handing out higher ilevel gear for each higher difficulty, keep the gear the same and hand out more titles, mounts, pets instead.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

There is more too it than ilevel too, if you take a look at weapons for instance, the dps change from a 800 level weapon to an 880 level weapon seems to be a fair bit more than 10%. Although it was never straight about ilevel back in vanilla either. Purple items of the same ilevel had more stats than blue items of the same ilevel at the time, now the color is simply determined by the ilevel.

It really does seem like its too much of a power boost base max level gear to maxed out gear. I personally would be much happier if the focused a little less on the gear progression and maybe instead of handing out higher ilevel gear for each higher difficulty, keep the gear the same and hand out more titles, mounts, pets instead.

It is true that the percentage increase in power for ilvl isn't static, and yeah gear used to not be so 'flat'. Hell prior to the exposure of ilvls in Wrath the same zone might drop different ilvl items due to whatever the stats scaled to (the stats were more the concern).

Gear progression is simply out of whack in the game now, and I don't realistically think they can get it under control. They'd need a cataclysm 'supernuke' that reset everyone to lvl 1 with greys to address it.

Also: handing out mounts and pets and stuff for raiding would exclude most of the players that are running the raids. Only a few weirdos like me care about those things, and generally spend more time gathering them than raiding.

IMO they never should have done the easymode raids, their stance on 'everyone must see all content' was stupid from the start, and it's been stupid since. Welfare epics are one thing, but giving the exact same item (with a recolor and ilvl difference) has thrashed the notions of progression, desire to play at a higher level, and has totally ripped apart power levels. What would normally be truly 'raid level' gear is now LFR, and the three tiers + warforged/titanforged must flex muscles above that level.

 

[Rebel_L]

Also: handing out mounts and pets and stuff for raiding would exclude most of the players that are running the raids. Only a few weirdos like me care about those things, and generally spend more time gathering them than raiding.

IMO they never should have done the easymode raids, their stance on 'everyone must see all content' was stupid from the start, and it's been stupid since. Welfare epics are one thing, but giving the exact same item (with a recolor and ilvl difference) has thrashed the notions of progression, desire to play at a higher level, and has totally ripped apart power levels. What would normally be truly 'raid level' gear is now LFR, and the three tiers + warforged/titanforged must flex muscles above that level.

I think you underestimate the draw of things like titles and mounts. In the end though the majority of the user base is not the mythic raider type, to create a whole ton of content for just them seems like an unreasonable waste of development resources.

Getting players to feel like they are making progress is a bit of an art form, it depends partly on what they have done in the past and partly on how people perceive things and partly based on math. I dont envy the balancing act they have to try and maintain to keep sense of forward progression, but I can certainly see that having more ways to think of progression other than gear would be very helpful to the balancing act. You could also be right that its to late in the games life cycle to get people to see other things as progression.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I think you underestimate the draw of things like titles and mounts. In the end though the majority of the user base is not the mythic raider type, to create a whole ton of content for just them seems like an unreasonable waste of development resources.

Getting players to feel like they are making progress is a bit of an art form, it depends partly on what they have done in the past and partly on how people perceive things and partly based on math. I dont envy the balancing act they have to try and maintain to keep sense of forward progression, but I can certainly see that having more ways to think of progression other than gear would be very helpful to the balancing act. You could also be right that its to late in the games life cycle to get people to see other things as progression.

I might be old-school in my mentality of this, but I'm used to players feeling progression by actually progressing, and one of the big driving forces from that was seeing players decked out in gear from that_zone that you could never see because it was a raid. Seeing that rogue with vision of sargeras and 2x warglaives was impressive, because you knew what it take to get that. That's been taken away (or at minimum massively reduced) with the various versions of watered-down raids, to the point that I can't name a single item from any specific raid, because they're essentially a name buffer in front of an ilvl. It's like the gaming equivalent of a DNS entry masking an ipv6 address.

Imo it's not a waste of resources because that's your driver for game content and the desire to play. Something that got lost with blizzard was the idea that content can be important without people seeing it. Vast swathes of the game's playerbase never got to 'experience' Naxxramas, despite it being one of the best raids in WoW, and arguably one of the best in any MMO, ever, yet they aren't keeping it up to date so as not to 'waste' the resources spent on it. I just personally feel like that this notion was a huge misstep they made.

 

[Rebel_L]

I might be old-school in my mentality of this, but I'm used to players feeling progression by actually progressing, and one of the big driving forces from that was seeing players decked out in gear from that_zone that you could never see because it was a raid. Seeing that rogue with vision of sargeras and 2x warglaives was impressive, because you knew what it take to get that. That's been taken away (or at minimum massively reduced) with the various versions of watered-down raids, to the point that I can't name a single item from any specific raid, because they're essentially a name buffer in front of an ilvl. It's like the gaming equivalent of a DNS entry masking an ipv6 address.

Progression comes in many forms of which gear is just one, and actually progressing in something doesnt necessarily make it feel like progression. If you next gear upgrade for instance added a +1 to each of the stats on the piece its replacing would you feel like you upgraded your gear? Im sure if all you gear was adjusted in that manner overnight you wouldnt even notice it happened. Visual inspirations are also incredibly subjective (me for instance would have been glad that I didnt have warglaives as I cant stand the look) and its the tmog system that changed that aspect of the game.

Imo it's not a waste of resources because that's your driver for game content and the desire to play. Something that got lost with blizzard was the idea that content can be important without people seeing it. Vast swathes of the game's playerbase never got to 'experience' Naxxramas, despite it being one of the best raids in WoW, and arguably one of the best in any MMO, ever, yet they aren't keeping it up to date so as not to 'waste' the resources spent on it. I just personally feel like that this notion was a huge misstep they made.

Nax might have been the best raid in wow if you are going by exclusivity in the players who finished it. I was raiding at the time and if had not taken a break from playing wow shortly after Nax's release I even would have had some progression in it before BC was out, but of my friends who didnt have the time or inclination to raid none of them cared in the least about the existence of Nax as it wasnt going to enter into their experience. If anything it was going to be an annoyance as some new quest chains could start an interesting story only to come to a dead end as the conclusion might have come in the raid. Challenging people and giving them something to look forward can indeed be valuable motivators, but when you know the goal is not actually achievable for you it usually stops being a motivator.

 

[lupi]

They've put some fixes in for the mob scaling. Mob damage will not scale with item level. Amount of mob health has been reduced based on item level, and unequiping gear shouldn't be a benefit anymore.

 

[Ranulf]

Early Sunday taking off gear still helped. It wasn't too much HP if I remember right but annoying. I actually died while farming a wq thanks to aoe spam and fast respawns. It was rather annoying having to stop and actually heal myself after every 1-2 fights.

 

[lupi]

So Mage Tower is up, and goes away in a couple days...WTF is up with that crap?

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

So Mage Tower is up, and goes away in a couple days...WTF is up with that crap?

Grind for the grind gods.

I tried the scenario last night as a 880 war tank, got the crap kicked out of me, not even close to success. Def need to be higher ilvl.

 

[lupi]

And because stupidity rules, they're still planning on removing access to completing all these appearances at end of the expansion.

 

[lupi]

People realize before devs how stupid this new building mechanic is and this is the result.


One of the core mechanics of Broken Shore gameplay is that of acquiring Legionfall War Supplies to put towards constructing buildings, which in turn unlock various content and bonuses. Recently, we’ve begun to notice that some players have begun stockpiling their Legionfall War Supplies in order to use them at a later time. While this is fine to some degree, if it were to become a more widespread behavior, it could have severely negative effects on the rate at which buildings are constructed, thereby preventing those bonuses and content pieces from being made available.

Therefore, on Thursday, April 6 at roughly 8 PM CEST, we’ll be applying a hotfix that will reduce the maximum amount of Legionfall War Supplies a player can stockpile to 1000. This will ensure that building construction can proceed at a regular pace, while still allowing you to keep hold of several turn-ins worth of War Supplies if you like.

Note that, when this hotfix is applied, any Legionfall War Supplies you have over the cap of 1000 will be lost. If you’re currently carrying more than that, please make sure to turn those extra War Supplies in before Thursday.

 

[Ranulf]

ROFL. The devs really are pathetic at this point, its worse, far worse than last expansion. Also, on the tank scenario, I've read its all but impossible due to some mechanics. Yesterday I read a thread where only bear tanks were clearing it, mostly due to a bug/glitch with the boss mechanics. I can't really be bothered to worry about doing the dps or healing ones.

Like WoD, this expansion has me not taking much of anything seriously. It has been hard not to laugh in friends faces (except when they complain others aren't making as much effort as they are) who grinded max AP before 7.2. Yay, you were 10% more powerful than others for 2-3 months tops. Well, unless others had BiS legendaries and you didn't. Were you mythic raiding? No? Let met laugh even harder.

 

[thejunglegod]

Yeah, this grind proved to be a little bit too much for me and I ended up canceling my subscription. Had my share of fun but this AP farm, and now the Nethershard farm just felt like a chore. All the best guys.

 

[lupi]

just skimmed through latest destro changes, looks like taking shard management back to ember management style.

 

[JujuFish]

The "Fate Smiles Upon You" bonus from the Nether Disruptor seems to be pretty crappy. I've gotten 0 refunds on 8 rolls.

 

[Slacker]

Got two i900 pieces from the shore world boss, helm and legs. Was a four item level boost for me

 

[Rebel_L]

I logged in today flew to the broken shore and was going to run the dailies, just couldnt bring myself to do it. Im at about 5500 rep into honored but I have a feeling I wont end up with flying before my sub runs out at the end of may.

 

[clok1966]

Whatever they did to level scaling is horrible, my windwalker monk was soloing stuff at 98-99 that most of my other classes had to work harder at. Now i step into legion do the artifact quest, and i have to pop every cooldown i have to live if to mobs attack. I had a bit of this problem with my Rogue too, but a singel level and a few steps in the artifact solved his whoa's... not so much on Monk, horribly underpowered at 100 with a couple points in.. I suspect a few more points and maybe a level will solve this.. but its pretty brutal right now. Especially having just took my druid through same content.. was almost a yawner, couple of buttons, no danger at all.

 

[JujuFish]

I got my flying today. I hopped on a druid I'm leveling and confirmed that he was able to fly as well (as expected).

My windwalker monk was one of the easiest classes I've leveled so far. So many hard hitting AOE abilities. Gather up some mobs and AOE down. Piece of cake.

 

[Slacker]

I logged in today flew to the broken shore and was going to run the dailies, just couldnt bring myself to do it. Im at about 5500 rep into honored but I have a feeling I wont end up with flying before my sub runs out at the end of may.

I got 2500 rep yesterday, 1500 from the follower quest chain and did 2 resource turn ins, the rest from world quests on the isle.

 

[clok1966]

I got my flying today. I hopped on a druid I'm leveling and confirmed that he was able to fly as well (as expected).

My windwalker monk was one of the easiest classes I've leveled so far. So many hard hitting AOE abilities. Gather up some mobs and AOE down. Piece of cake.

Im guessing much like my rogue i must suck at it, i leveled my warrior, Hunter, lock, Druid, Dk all without ever breaking a sweat. The mage, rogue and now my Monk are giving me fits (at very start of legion).. the Mage and Rogue both where pretty simple a at 102 or so when the artifact had built up a bit and I suspect the monk will be too. You are right i can kill 4-5 mobs at a time with all cooldowns, but if some are not ready yet and i get 2 mobs and am 60% or so.. they win.. just didn't have that issue with most the other classes. I was never a Druid person, but damn if that class doesn't have everything and then some, I am starting to get why everybody and there mother played them. I guess my frustration is really how i can click two buttons on many classes and just mow um down and with the monk im playing piano on the keys and just killing when all cooldowns are gone..

 

[Adrenaline]

I have been playing on TBS a lot. I have gotten three legendaries from TBS for my Destruction Warlock:

5 Shoulders (turned in 100 resources)
6 Belt (gambled)
7 Neck (turned in 100 resources)
The legendary system is still garbage.

I just hit 11033 / 21000 for rep. This patch is nothing but one entire gate towards flying and class mounts.

 

[lupi]

Got a box in loot other day, thought that was odd as I hadn't noticed any this expansion till then. Then saw this and everything was hole again.

http://darklegacycomics.com/580

 

[Ranulf]

Jewelcrafters can make keys to unlock boxes now.

 

[lupi]

Got my first legendary, from a blingtron box.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=132444/prydaz-xavarics-magnum-opus