World of Warcraft: Current Year

Burns

Burns

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jayrebb said:
What percentage of Azerite would you say was finished compared to covenants?

What burns describes sounds like BFA launch azerite to me, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you don't make the wrong decision.

You had 1 or maybe 2 viable azerite effects per class. But often times just 1.
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IMO Azerite was worse, by far. They sold it as changing your rotation, and it did nothing of the sort. From what Velk is saying, the main issue looks like it is going to be the bugs in other parts of the game (outside of the underlying problem of not being able to switch convent abilities at will).

I looked at Rogue, DK, and Druid (feral/bear).

In addition to what I said above, two of the rogue abilities look fine (Serrated Bone Spike & Flagellation), and just need tuning; the third, from Night Fae (Sepsis), will just be annoying, almost unusable in solo, but fine everywhere else (with proper tuning). I am betting Sepsis will be the top single target dps ability, and maybe even AoE due to Mark of the Master Assassin making a comeback on ledgendaries.

The DK abilities all look fine, but are specialized in purpose, again, depending on tuning. Shackle the Unworthy is best for single target, Swarming Mist is best for AoE, and Death's Due the most versatile. Abomination Limb should be awesome in PvP & tanking.

I haven't seriously played feral/bear for 3 xpacs now, so druid is harder to judge, but Convoke the Spirits looks clunky, as it interrupts if you move, but the others look ok.
 
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Balmung

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As a player that just came back from the WoTLK era, I can't say I like many of the newer systems they've put in place over the last few expansions. Mission tables are an odd one. Feels alright to log in and have a few missions done, but it doesn't seem to fit the game to me. World quests and invasions are whatever. It's pretty hard to make dailies interesting I suppose, so I don't mind too much. Azerite Traits, Corruption, the neck with its special abilities and even PvP only talents... I don't really like any of it. Feels garbage to me, but maybe I'm just too oldschool for this stuff. They seem to be ignoring class balancing in favor of this bullshite, and it's apparently grindy as all hell and very RNG dependent to get what you need. If I had started playing earlier and needed to get multiple characters up to speed I would have probably quit. Blizzard completely ignoring specs for entire expansions while they play like dogshit just doesn't make enough sense to me to continue throwing money at them. Moving my alts to the same server would have been a few hundred bucks, so I just made new characters. I'm not super attached to any of them. Still excited for Shadowlands, but I have to say, the new systems look much like the old to me but with a different skin. I'm not looking forward to many or any of them. New zones look nice though.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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That's just kinda the direction they went with during legion(maybe before too but legion especially with legendaries), and the whole "borrowed power" stuff, where basically a lot of classes barely function on their own and only become good once you have whatever is this expansion's flavor of power increase, which are obviously gated via RNG or grind, to increase early retention.

You don't get your fully functionning character when you finish leveling anymore, but instead you need to build it out of random parts, that then become obsolete a patch or two later so you're forced to get another version of the same item with slightly stronger numbers to keep your class working at a standard level. It also creates issues where an item that's like 60ilvl lower might be better than another just because it has better skills on it, but it isn't like the old school EQ "farm this super rare item for its proc/use thing and use it forever" and more like "this item has -1 class ressource cost for your main skill so it's better than anything else besides a higher version of the same -1 class ressource stat item".

And then every expansions just throws everything before in the bin, and you have to level with your broken unfinished shit again, until you can unlock the new shiny system and regrind your old skills to get your class working properly again. It more or less extends the leveling without actually needing real leveling content.

It is a fairly shitty way to do things but I assume "the metrics" and the "level of engagement" are higher or whatever so that's what they do now.
 
Qhue

Qhue

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I feel that BFA was an entire expansion where the hero gets shunted off to a secondary plotline in a much bigger movie. Like there was some other main plotline taking place that we were just not part of...but alas no.

At the end of Legion it seemed as if we opened up a whole universe of other worlds out in the twisted nether that we would have to scour in order to solve the calamity facing Azeroth due to the giant sword. In this context all the stuff about Zandalar and Kul Tiras seems trite. We have starships and the ability to travel to completely new worlds...who the fuck cares about a couple of islands and their navies?

In this sense Shadowlands seems a bit more interesting in that it explores another big idea -- how does the cosmology of the Warcraft universe handle death given all the spirit healers etc stuff we see.
 
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Rezz

Rezz

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I haven't looked into spoilers at all; I'm just hoping the main base area isn't a f'n pyramid. Zuldazar was terrible.
 
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Neranja

Neranja

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Balmung said:
Azerite Traits, Corruption, the neck with its special abilities and even PvP only talents... I don't really like any of it.
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The designers get to experiment with new systems in an enclosed sandbox: The abilities/passives are contained in your items and not tied to you as a player.

The reason for this is most likely that they don't want to give that stuff to the players as new abilities or talents, only to find out they suck or are overpowered. This makes it easier to remove them next expansion at the latest, if not the next raid tier. They fear the shitstorm to face if they add and remove those things to the player directly.

It's like trying to fit in an EverQuest AA-like progression system without actually giving it to the player. Instead of AA points you grind Azerite. But players start to really hate such systems, because they get the feeling that they are just carrying around their items, who do all the heavy lifting.
 
Merrith

Merrith

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I thought the general consensus was the SL beta was light years better than the BFA beta as far as feedback, etc went. Whether that translates into "polish", I have no idea. Seems like it could use another month or two, but they want to time out the releases of SL and Naxx in Classic.
 
Neranja

Neranja

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Merrith said:
I thought the general consensus was the SL beta was light years better than the BFA beta as far as feedback, etc went.
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Everything currently is light years better regarding communication. Even Ion talking to Preach about Covenants was a "what happened to the ivory tower?" moment.

After WoD and the Legion beta there was a slight hope in the air because people could see the new ideas and them working: Legendary weapons, class halls, world quests, mythic+ dungeons etc. This time around there is a slight apprehension. Not only because of the state of the beta, but also by them being firm on covenants as an "impactful decision".

Them disabling Torghast endless floors is one of the major paint points for me, because that was a feature I loved from FFXIV.
 
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Secrets

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Rezz said:
I haven't looked into spoilers at all; I'm just hoping the main base area isn't a f'n pyramid. Zuldazar was terrible.
Click to expand...

The best expansions were when you could run around the hub zone in a circle. Scientific fact.

-Wrath
-Legion

Maybe...
-Shadowlands?
 
Qhue

Qhue

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Secrets said:
The best expansions were when you could run around the hub zone in a circle. Scientific fact.

-Wrath
-Legion

Maybe...
-Shadowlands?
Click to expand...

Or just expansions where the hub zone was Dalaran? It is still the champion in terms of effective and efficient design while retaining distinct flavor.
 
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velk

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Burns said:
The DK abilities all look fine, but are specialized in purpose, again, depending on tuning. Shackle the Unworthy is best for single target, Swarming Mist is best for AoE, and Death's Due the most versatile. Abomination Limb should be awesome in PvP & tanking.
Click to expand...

Shackle is worthless in all situations.
Death's Due is best at aoe, single target and tanking, even after being nerfed in 3 different ways.
Swarming Mist's uptime is too low to make any impact outside of giant pad pulls, which won't happen due to target caps.
Abomination Limb is best at pulling extra packs in M+

If they tune them properly and fix the bugs what you said could be accurate - but think about it for a moment - even if that was the case, is that a good way to balance something that you only have one of and are locked into and also directly drives a huge amount of cosmetic and non-combat options ?

'Oh you took Kyrian for mythic raiding ? No PVP for you, you worthless scrub'
 
Big Phoenix

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Im gonna go with the Convenent system is going to make Azerite gear/traits and corruption look perfectly balanced in comparison.
 
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jayrebb

jayrebb

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I'm gonna go with the Covenent system is gonna favor Rogues and Warriors in terms of "balance" and other classes pound sand.

If the rumor is true about staffing problems, then we already know after a decade of predictability where all the remaining class resources go.
 
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Burns

Burns

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velk said:
Shackle is worthless in all situations.
Death's Due is best at aoe, single target and tanking, even after being nerfed in 3 different ways.
Swarming Mist's uptime is too low to make any impact outside of giant pad pulls, which won't happen due to target caps.
Abomination Limb is best at pulling extra packs in M+

If they tune them properly and fix the bugs what you said could be accurate - but think about it for a moment - even if that was the case, is that a good way to balance something that you only have one of and are locked into and also directly drives a huge amount of cosmetic and non-combat options ?

'Oh you took Kyrian for mythic raiding ? No PVP for you, you worthless scrub'
Click to expand...

I'm not saying the covenant system is good, just that, if they get 80% of the abilities tuned fairly close (to what they want), then it will be a slightly better tasting shit sandwich (when compared to the 8.0 azurite shit sandwich).

Furthermore, the BFA islands fucking sucked, and they gimped me more than any covenant looks to do, because I refused to do them after the first week.

Maybe I just have shit tinted glasses on, though; as I actually believed them, when they said Azurite would replace set bonuses and change how you play.
 
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Khane

Khane

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Burns said:
Maybe I just have shit tinted glasses on, though; as I actually believed them, when they said Azurite would replace set bonuses and change how you play.
Click to expand...

It did... for Warlocks... and that's about it.
 
Raes

Raes

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Balmung said:
Anyone else think it's funny that they added black blood elves?
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Your commanding officer in the new 1-10 starter area. Black, female, dreadlocks...trifecta? Hilarious to me because, with all the shit going on, and how game devs get called out for not being woke enough, I couldn't remember if WoW had any black humans.

1601210949892.png
 
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