World of Warcraft: Current Year

Shouldnt the Rune Carver be the one making whatever is being hammered on? Is that crystal what is eventually going to become the sword that she wields or is that a variation of Frostmorne?

Someone said that N'Zoth could have saved us all in BFA and Im unsure if they were being stupid or just know the story?

Daidraco said:

Shouldnt the Rune Carver be the one making whatever is being hammered on? Is that crystal what is eventually going to become the sword that she wields or is that a variation of Frostmorne?

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That's a runeblade version of Shalamayne, Varian's sword now wielded by Anduin. There's also a callback to the Lich King by how she holds the sword towards Anduin, very reminiscent of how Arthas held his sword before raising Sindragosa from the dead. It is assumed from the video that the Jailer intends to use that sword to break Anduin's soul into servitude, much like Arthas did Sylvanas with Frostmourne.

I'm guessing the blue crystal is whatever imbues those items with the enormous powers we have seen so far.. the Helm of Domination, Frostmourne, and now this sword. Probably also part of the Jailer's armor, and even the blacksmith and the hammer seem imbued with those icy runes. I'm also guessing they used the real Shalamayne confiscated from Anduin and corrupted it.

As to why this is being forged by Grunt McRandom, remember that the Runecarver had most his craft secrets stolen from him, apparently imparted into another blacksmith serving the Jailer.. so that's that.

What is the TLDR on shadowlands? Better or worse than BFA?

Warrik said:

What is the TLDR on shadowlands? Better or worse than BFA?

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I wouldn’t say the verdict is in yet. A lot of the things that were concerning from the beta are not even in the realm of a realistic problem. Not near as many came back at launch, but instead are filtering in now.. a month later.

1. Covenants are no where near balanced as far as abilities. But generally, 2 of the 4 are at least viable picks. Whatever. Fairly easy to change to a brand new one and catch up quickly.

2. Soul Binds are an after thought and you basically get them from everything you do. I have Ilvl 200 on 90% of them and that’s really good. The differences are really small between ilvls though.

3. There is no AP grind in terms of character power. Everything related to anima is quality of life or cosmetic. Good.

4. WQ’s are an afterthought but the daily calling is a good source of money for 15-20 minutes of WQing at 2kish. Good.

5. The Maw is a shit hole. It doesn’t get better. The best thing that’ll happen to you is getting exalted with Ve’Nari so you can finally take a break from the place (until you need sockets. Which is idiotic if anyone is putting them on anything less than heroic bis. Weekly quests should be enough Stygia after the rep grind. I’m at 37k. Bad.

6. Torghast is very much lack luster. The “idea” of it was beautiful and everyone hoped for Hades. Instead, it’s just a half brained attempt at putting WOW classes into Hades. You’ll leave the place thinking “they could do so much more”. Soul ash for legendaries is all you’ll get and you’ll just want to get it over with rather than play it randomly. Bad.

7. Rep grinds outside of the maw are really only necessary for professions or cosmetics. Which is nice imo. I’m revered for the main ones just by doing the weekly and callings.

8. Legendaries are a lot easier to get than what beta alluded to. You get enough soul ash to build them fairly quickly. I have two at 210 and saving up soul ash for my 235 tank one on Tuesday. Its basically an upgrade a week which is a good feeling.

9. Professions seem empty or gutted? But have enough in them to keep people busy. The legendary base pieces are some real Grindy shit though. Thankfully time is on the buyers side as prices continue to fall. Hopefully they’ll add more recipes etc. - “so-so”

10. Mythic + didn’t change much. Dungeons are all around well received, though. Kite meta is a thing for tanks at high keys and won’t change from that at least in this season. Hello demon hunters. Not a fan of this meta but it’s tolerable. -“So-so”

11. The raid is fun. Overturned in some parts, but the change in loot drops and difficulty has basically extended the raids longevity for the better. Mythic wasn’t beaten in a day, but took ..8? 9? Days to clear. Itemization could have been better. I have almost no interest in the raid since just about everything in there is not bis for any slot for my class. - So-so.

12. Class balance is no where near as bad as it was in bfa. Still some outliers, but I haven’t heard of anyone being in a complete shit hole. Mostly a good improvement over last expansion. The community will make you think warriors are in a tough spot, but I had a warrior in an 8 mots group that was constantly in the 3.8-5.2k range. /friend request - good.

13. Gear drops have been neutered. You can kill the entire raid and might get just 1 piece if you’re lucky. You can run several mythics and not get shit (been ilvl 200 for about a week now.) I have yet to get gear from lfr or the world bosses, regardless if I need it. Debatable if this is a good change or not. I’m happy to just get a piece of gear now. But there was a while where my secondary stats were just flat out awful.

13(cont) - the vault that resets weekly has been a pretty good change over the weekly chest. I really only have 5-6 options a week, but you can have up to 9. Seems like shit at first cause you might want them all - but I really only wanted 1 thing out of all 6 options I had this past week. Thankful I could choose that one over the other possible outcomes, basically. - Unsure.

14. Nerfs. They have touched covenant abilities and legendaries but they haven’t neutered them. Subtle changes only. It’s been said there are some changes coming, but they won’t happen till a major patch. - good.

At this point, I really just want to know what’s next and when it’s coming. Feels like plenty to do this expansion, but not really. There really isn’t a lot you can do to improve your character. I enjoyed Legion a lot more, but by no means has this been a shit expansion so far.

So you got someone posting raider IO top 20 runs to try to prove some kind of point that boomkins aren't meta, or should we go by aggregate runs in 15+ key?

It doesn't matter what 20 top runs say when I have 500k to 1million runs of 15 key data to look at.

The fact they still have visible representation at 20 key is a mic drop walk off.

We call that meta where I'm from.

So druids get less representation and hunters get more the higher you go, and somehow that shows druids are better than hunters. Ok, take your pills dude.

I doubt there is a whole lot of data for 20+ keys at this point. Or am I nuts?

The spike in balance representation from 11 key to 15 key is all I need to affirm the meta. The trend goes up the closer you get to very high keys, which jives with what I said about balance continuing to grow in demand as more people adjust to the true meta.

There's no reason for a spike the closer you get to 15 other than being current meta.

I mean I may have missed it, but I dont think anyone here was disagreeing with you or really even talking about the meta of Mythic Keys. At least not in recent pages? Im not doing anywhere near 20 and I dont know anyone that is. I continue to see the same people in the top runs which would be my only question in the data concerning class meta. But again, since Im nowhere near doing that.. much less do I want to bust my balls that high into Mythic Keys.. Im not sure I even care.

Daidraco said:

much less do I want to bust my balls that high into Mythic Keys.. Im not sure I even care.

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No one should. This isn't BFA and key rewards are nerfed. PvP is top ilevel progression.

You have to do all three to not fall off. I preferred BFA where you could just grind keys to keep pace with the raid game and PvPers.

My one SL mechanics complaint is the M+ loot. Pushing people toward PvP and forced raiding has been interesting though.

jayrebb said:

No one should. This isn't BFA and key rewards are nerfed. PvP is top ilevel progression.

You have to do all three to not fall off. I preferred BFA where you could just grind keys to keep pace with the raid game and PvPers.

My one SL mechanics complaint is the M+ loot. Pushing people toward PvP and forced raiding has been interesting though.

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Yeah I would prefer there be a route for all 3 options, but I really dislike pvp being raised so much when the secondary stats for pvp gear are so slanted towards vers for classes that don't want much of it.

+1 for Ulduar. I replaced 3 pieces of gear when I ran it. There were only two plate people in the raid but we traded whatever we didn’t need and everyone else was pretty cool about doing the same. Flame Leviathan was a bitch (wiped 5 times) but we pretty much one shot everything else after that except Hodir and Yogg.

Geared my warrior and rogue pretty easily there.

If you are sub 200 in any slot, it is very worth it to get into a raid and take a shot at fixing that.

My ilvl 140 rogue left with about 5 pieces of gear and shot up to ilvl 158ish.

RIP king.