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

Page 27 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Slacker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
8,623
33
91
Finally got the mount from heroes of the storm, I hate that game soo much.
 

Slacker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
8,623
33
91
Can't fly, worth it for the mount count to me.

I also got ashes of alar on Monday.
 

DreadBelch

Member
Mar 31, 2010
96
11
71
Can anyone identify the pally mod(s) circled here? Thanks.
Edit: Looks like the countdown inside the shield is Weak Auras 2.

tumblr_omiwszVMPz1rcm2lro1_1280.jpg
 
Last edited:

thejunglegod

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2012
1,358
36
91
The RNG is seriously ridiculous. I should get at least one drop (and not a measly 29 gold) if I kill the main boss in a bloody 25 man raid. I kill Gul'dan and get absolutely nothing. Ridiculous!
Is there a change to the loot system in 7.2?
 

JujuFish

Lifer
Feb 3, 2005
10,999
733
136
The RNG is seriously ridiculous. I should get at least one drop (and not a measly 29 gold) if I kill the main boss in a bloody 25 man raid. I kill Gul'dan and get absolutely nothing. Ridiculous!
Is there a change to the loot system in 7.2?
If you're this upset over not getting guaranteed loot from killing a boss, be glad you didn't raid 40-mans in vanilla.
 
  • Like
Reactions: [DHT]Osiris

thejunglegod

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2012
1,358
36
91
Well yeah, probably one of the main reasons I didn't quite enjoy vanilla that much.
One of the other reasons being NO DEADLY BOSS MODS.
 

clok1966

Golden Member
Jul 6, 2004
1,395
13
76
The RNG is seriously ridiculous. I should get at least one drop (and not a measly 29 gold) if I kill the main boss in a bloody 25 man raid. I kill Gul'dan and get absolutely nothing. Ridiculous!
Is there a change to the loot system in 7.2?

Blizzard has an odd way of rewarding its player base, the absolute Hardcore get the most love which is fine, they pay for it all, mounts, etc.. They let them exploit (err maybe a bit to harsh a term) and then 6-10 months down the road when the other 90% of the players get to the same point the hardcore were 3 days after an expansion was released they modify it so its not the same. Loot is a great example.. As expansions come out, they leave it be for 6-12 months, so the max levels can go grind the old max level zones solo and loot and farm gold. then the regular players catch up and they turn off the gold making runs. One could get angry, but if everybody can do it the economy would be 10X the joke it is now. its a Weird balance that anybody sane would think was not going to work but it does. You would think they would cater to the 90% who just play now and again and don't make it a way of life, but they don't, those Hardcore get the content first (as well they should, they are putting the effort in) and get to farm the crap out of the old stuff, and again its fair (*in my mind) but you would think they would cater more to the larger player base. I guess one could argue WoW is so watered down now, everybody can do anything (and you are pretty much right), but its more time now then skill, grind away and you can get anything in the game. EQ (original) is a example of this not working, almost every expansion was just for the GUILDS, anybody who couldn't put 30 people together 2x a week was left out of 90% of every expansion, and they made 5-6 expansions like that till they learned ( to late) you need your core base to get something out of an expansion too, one thing WoW does know. Give the lowlifes who cant play every day a grind, they will do (I am one)..
 

thejunglegod

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2012
1,358
36
91
865 trillion ap to max your weapon, basically intended to never be able to get there.

I'm only at weapon artifact level 46. I didn't even know that it was currently capped at 54.
865 trillion? I don't even know how many zeroes there are on that. XDDDD
 

Slacker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
8,623
33
91
8b6a02994ff9b94a7f6242a88572fefc.jpg


Eight hundred sixty five trillion, eight hundred forty two billion, six hundred forty four million, seven hundred sixty six thousand, three hundred thirty artifact power to max

That is from the 7.2 calc on wowhead
 

Ranulf

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
2,331
1,139
136
Rng, AP and the grinding needed are the biggest problems with this expansion. Most of the people I know who still like the expansion are casuals who don't take things too seriously or the folks who are still addicted and play 15+ hours a week. Even my friendships that have kept me in the game besides raiding are getting strained because I often don't farm enough mythics and other things to maximize my gear for raiding. I have one 110 character with 3 specs at 35+ AP (as I swap roles often enough). Every minute you spend on an alt or not your main spec, is a minute not spent maintaining the grind for your main. It made little sense to level up your off-specs until you got your AK buff up to 25 but that locks you into one spec.

It became obvious to me when they detailed the artifact changes for 7.2 a couple of months ago that it made no sense to farm AP unless you were just that addicted, mythic raiding (and need the buffs to kill bosses) or your class/spec was so imbalanced that a 10% dps buff would help. Only to have it nerfed tomorrow with 7.2. Oh, you get your points back but that just means you'll be about a month ahead of everyone else with a nerfed buff.

In the end, the grind of Legion just never ever ends. Add in the nerfs forcing respecs/re-rolls with another AP grind, master loot requirement changes screwing up raids (all to supposedly benefit pugs), people begging for loot from people in lfr since you can trade gear now, and legendary item RNG so bad such that mythic raiders are re-rolling classes if they don't get best in slot items for their spec instead of farming more 5mans/bosses/world quests to get a new legendary item.. It is a recipe for burn out. At this point, I figure this is my last expansion and I doubt I'll make it past the summer.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,004
12,070
146
Rng, AP and the grinding needed are the biggest problems with this expansion. Most of the people I know who still like the expansion are casuals who don't take things too seriously or the folks who are still addicted and play 15+ hours a week. Even my friendships that have kept me in the game besides raiding are getting strained because I often don't farm enough mythics and other things to maximize my gear for raiding. I have one 110 character with 3 specs at 35+ AP (as I swap roles often enough). Every minute you spend on an alt or not your main spec, is a minute not spent maintaining the grind for your main. It made little sense to level up your off-specs until you got your AK buff up to 25 but that locks you into one spec.

It became obvious to me when they detailed the artifact changes for 7.2 a couple of months ago that it made no sense to farm AP unless you were just that addicted, mythic raiding (and need the buffs to kill bosses) or your class/spec was so imbalanced that a 10% dps buff would help. Only to have it nerfed tomorrow with 7.2. Oh, you get your points back but that just means you'll be about a month ahead of everyone else with a nerfed buff.

In the end, the grind of Legion just never ever ends. Add in the nerfs forcing respecs/re-rolls with another AP grind, master loot requirement changes screwing up raids (all to supposedly benefit pugs), people begging for loot from people in lfr since you can trade gear now, and legendary item RNG so bad such that mythic raiders are re-rolling classes if they don't get best in slot items for their spec instead of farming more 5mans/bosses/world quests to get a new legendary item.. It is a recipe for burn out. At this point, I figure this is my last expansion and I doubt I'll make it past the summer.

Here's my take on the infinite grind... I think they've been trying for years to implement something that EQ/EQ2 has had for about a decade, and that's Alternate Advancement, a way to improve your character beyond just the levels. They fiddled with gearing upgrades (normal vs heroic vs mythic vs warforged of each, titanforged of each), fiddled with different ways of enhancing gear (gemming, enchanting, reforging), etc, fiddled with upgrade-able gear (think legendary cloaks/rings, old kara/ICC rings, etc) but kept focusing a lot on gear itself which IMO was a silly mistake. This expansion they've gone slightly saner and made you enhance a weapon that's more integral to your character, which is sorta like upgrading the character, by way of a point system that technically doesn't have a limit (beyond how many points they give in the tree itself), which is much closer to EQ1's AA system of near-infinite grind for infinite advancement system.

That's all well and good but they've run into a problem with WoW in that probably 90% of people have more than one max level character, and in addition they have multiple specs for each character that now has an infinite-advancement tree. And the worst part is this will all go away next expansion so it will be even more meaningless than gearing up to begin with (something that was a very dramatic shock to most people that hit hellfire back in BC and invalidated all their raid gear). Blizz should have incorporated an AA system a long, long time ago, giving you a way to make a single 'main' that you could no-kidding focus on, instead of logging in once a week for your token raid (at whatever level you raid at) and then go back to gearing up xyz alts you happen to have. Starting this up this late in the game (pun inteaded) is going to give people a sour taste in their mouth if they've grown to enjoy a half dozen characters that now they have to abandon to realistically play one at a level that Blizz has now blessed off on.

EDIT: Forgot to add, Blizz actually had an alternate advancement system back in Beta (like vanilla's beta), they abandoned it somewhere around the lvl 30-35 horde push, and IMO it was a huge, huge mistake. It was really cool, you got points periodically while playing... it wasn't something exposed to the user (though at that time APIs were really leaky so someone coulda made an add-on for it I'm sure). You'd just be fighting and mid-combat a point would be gained, and you could throw it into things like stats, resistances (relevant at that time), chance to hit with x weapon type, modifications to damage types like fire, frost, etc. Neat idea, got dropped, no idea why.
 

Ranulf

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
2,331
1,139
136
"Starting this up this late in the game (pun inteaded) is going to give people a sour taste in their mouth if they've grown to enjoy a half dozen characters that now they have to abandon to realistically play one at a level that Blizz has now blessed off on."

Yup.

The problem with the system you describe is, all of your time is negated/wasted the second they nerf your spec/class let alone worrying about your raid gear being made pointless in a new expansion. The shock in BC expansion was because it was the first expansion and in later ones, your raid gear usually meant you just sold quest rewards as you leveled up. The problem with the Diablo3 version of WoW is that RNG sucks for this type of game when it is infested in every aspect of the game. When legendaries have more impact on your performance than Artifact Power and they drop randomly... it is gonna piss people off. Especially when some specs/classes are balanced around those legendaries. I got lucky with 1 or my 2 legendaries being a BiS for my spec but it also is kinda meh for other specs. It also took me two months to get legendary #2 because I wasn't grinding dailies, 5mans, LFR, and regular raids every week. All for one character.

WoW is not EQ and doing it now has been stupid. At the very least they should have made AP class based not weapon based. All of the good of legion has been marred by these problems. I don't think it is hyperbole to say that the WoW devs don't play their game anymore or know what their customer base even thinks.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,004
12,070
146
"Starting this up this late in the game (pun inteaded) is going to give people a sour taste in their mouth if they've grown to enjoy a half dozen characters that now they have to abandon to realistically play one at a level that Blizz has now blessed off on."

Yup.

The problem with the system you describe is, all of your time is negated/wasted the second they nerf your spec/class let alone worrying about your raid gear being made pointless in a new expansion. The shock in BC expansion was because it was the first expansion and in later ones, your raid gear usually meant you just sold quest rewards as you leveled up. The problem with the Diablo3 version of WoW is that RNG sucks for this type of game when it is infested in every aspect of the game. When legendaries have more impact on your performance than Artifact Power and they drop randomly... it is gonna piss people off. Especially when some specs/classes are balanced around those legendaries. I got lucky with 1 or my 2 legendaries being a BiS for my spec but it also is kinda meh for other specs. It also took me two months to get legendary #2 because I wasn't grinding dailies, 5mans, LFR, and regular raids every week. All for one character.

WoW is not EQ and doing it now has been stupid. At the very least they should have made AP class based not weapon based. All of the good of legion has been marred by these problems. I don't think it is hyperbole to say that the WoW devs don't play their game anymore or know what their customer base even thinks.

Agreed on class-based AP vs weapon-based. There should be several spec-level "AA's", and several class-level ones (+runspeed, +haste, whatever). But yeah they're boning people who love playing a ton of classes to a certain level (my GF sits in that category, she normally plays a class to LFR level then finds another), boning people who put in a lot of time into a single char (by dumping these weapons after this expac, and tying player power to RNG), and boning people who don't have time to play (baseline power related to artifact power, which is tied to either time played for AP or time played for OH resources for missions for AP).

Regarding your first point... Funny thing about EQ, people complained when their class got the nerfbat because it was the only character they had. They still stuck with it, like an abused dog sticking with their master, because it took like 8 damn months to level another character up. But all your advancement was tied to your *character*, not your gear. Hell half the gear you'd use in that game was droppable anyhow so it went back on the AH or to a twink alt (who didn't have a monk twink?). But now? Yeah, gonna suck when these artifact weapons end up in the bank and we get obligatory transmog additions and nothing more to show for this expansion.

Most people were totally shocked at the beginning of BC because they were coming from the EQ model where expansions compounded on each other, and raid gear often was relevant cross-expansion. It was pretty unusual in EQ for a player to be in NToV (Velious, 2nd expansion) without some kind of gear from a raid_somethingorother from vanilla (FBSS, ... runed bolster belt? or whatever from the vanilla dragons, Epics from Kunark, stuff from Trakanon), and I knew more than a few people raiding in PoP with Velious stuff. When BC hit and anything that wasn't from Naxx got dumped by the end of HFP, it was rather remarkable. I don't think anyone who wasn't clued in via beta knew that was coming (I know I didn't).
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Seems they modified mob scaling to include player item level, and boy are people happy.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,004
12,070
146
Seems they modified mob scaling to include player item level, and boy are people happy.

So things are harder if you're higher ilevel? I would assume most people would complain about this. What's the point of having a higher gear level if things never get easier to fight (outside raids)?
 

Ranulf

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
2,331
1,139
136
Yet more doubling down on insanity by the devs. How many people complained about Suramar as a fresh 110, myself included? Gotta make people spend more time grinding quests I guess. Seconds of kill time matter to maximize subscriptions.
 

JujuFish

Lifer
Feb 3, 2005
10,999
733
136
Yet more doubling down on insanity by the devs. How many people complained about Suramar as a fresh 110, myself included? Gotta make people spend more time grinding quests I guess. Seconds of kill time matter to maximize subscriptions.

With 9 110s (and working on a 10th here and there), I've never had a problem with Suramar. That said, mobs scaling with ilvl now is one of the dumbest ideas they've ever had.
 

thejunglegod

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2012
1,358
36
91
Wasn't mob scaling taken care off after TES Oblivion? I was so annoyed when I first realized that at no point am I ever going to feel safe thanks to a portal opening up with a gazillion level monsters coming out from it.
I cannot believe that they implemented this in 7.2. I saw a video which showed a ridiculous increase in mob HP just due to the equipping of an epic item. This is just so wrong on so many levels.
Why can't I feel all powerful? The satisfaction of one shotting a mob that once took a couple of minutes of kiting and dodging when you were lower gear equipped is unparalleled. That is precisely why we have higher level enemies. Now if every mob is a bloody tank, how do you even run through world quests and farm for that quantagazillatrillion AP?
 

Ranulf

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
2,331
1,139
136
They're already back tracking a fair amount. A couple of 100+ page threads on the official forums shows how most are not fans of this.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,004
12,070
146
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.