Patch 7.2 - Hunter Spell Animations, New Fishing Bobbers, Tweets, Probius, DLC #574

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

As a player, I didn’t enjoy the late Wrath dungeons where we just AE’d everything down and the tank was running ahead into the next room. Why should my healer have single-target heals and group heals if I only ever used the group heal? Why should I have crowd control abilities if I never used them? What interesting decisions was I making if I approached 2 pulls, 5 pulls and the boss with the same tool set.

So I advocated (and largely got) Cataclysm dungeons that required using the full tool set. You had to strategize and not just run through the dungeon.

Yeah, and it turned out so well. /s


And I think his thinking then/now is mixed up. The ICC dungeons were still no cakewalk in LFD even if the average person in the group had an item level of 251 (in the 232 version). It was the 3.0 heroics where you'd pull an entire room and mow them down with AoE. And why not, since people were rocking ICC 25 gear in ilvl 200 heroics. If there were anything to be blamed for this, it was the ballooning stat values in WotLK (which Blizzard explicitly admitted its failure to control). Towards the end of the expansion, for example, 100% armor penetration wasn't unheard of (albeit not easily reached).

/rant

Making dungeons into pure AoE fests is one of the biggest mistakes WoW has done. Dungeons are the other bread-and-butter when it comes to endgame in PvE, and it's sad to see that other than high level Mythic+, it's still just mindless. And leveling, just as with dungeons, you don't have to think. Put damage abilities on actionbar and gogogogogogogoggogogogogogogogogogo and hopefully dinging every 11 minutes will keep you entertained.

Sadly it can't easily be reversed, and people would just bitch and moan about dungeons taking longer if Blizzard made radical changes to mob/boss health and damage in order to avoid it in further expansions... when a lot of the issue with why everyone wants them over with quickly is because they are so mindnumbingly easy you fall asleep. But whenever you try to argue that you miss doing things like sapping/trapping, you just get rebuttals of "lul well i just wanna finish the dungeon cc doesn't require any skill lul"
Well at least it activates parts of the brain. When mobs actually can pose a threat, things get interesting. When key mobs use very dangerous abilities your toolkits become relevant.

But alas, it's more important to make sure that every group is 100% viable. Heaven forbid a group realizes no one has Polymorph. How did we ever survive classic and BC.

It's a result of snowballing design over years. If you want a challenge anywhere in WoW you can only find it in organized raids or high keystones. Everything else is made to be guaranteed success for the new kind of MMO player that rather whine than improve.

Originally Posted by MasterHamster

Making dungeons into pure AoE fests is one of the biggest mistakes WoW has done. Dungeons are the other bread-and-butter when it comes to endgame in PvE, and it's sad to see that other than high level Mythic+, it's still just mindless. And leveling, just as with dungeons, you don't have to think. Put damage abilities on actionbar and gogogogogogogoggogogogogogogogogogo and hopefully dinging every 11 minutes will keep you entertained.

Sadly it can't easily be reversed, and people would just bitch and moan about dungeons taking longer if Blizzard made radical changes to mob/boss health and damage in order to avoid it in further expansions... when a lot of the issue with why everyone wants them over with quickly is because they are so mindnumbingly easy you fall asleep. But whenever you try to argue that you miss doing things like sapping/trapping, you just get rebuttals of "lul well i just wanna finish the dungeon cc doesn't require any skill lul"
Well at least it activates parts of the brain. When mobs actually can pose a threat, things get interesting. When key mobs use very dangerous abilities your toolkits become relevant.

But alas, it's more important to make sure that every group is 100% viable. Heaven forbid a group realizes no one has Polymorph. How did we ever survive classic and BC.

It's a result of snowballing design over years. If you want a challenge anywhere in WoW you can only find it in organized raids or high keystones. Everything else is made to be guaranteed success for the new kind of MMO player that rather whine than improve.

Yes unfortunately it is a pandora's box scenario I suppose at the time it was seen that have a group of complete strangers would be asking too much in terms of CCing.. Unfortunately in catering to that it has made the normal/heroic dungeon a blur of action then finished.. What will be interesting is 7.2 and the upping of the item level requirement for heroic dungeons but will see..

CC is dead, even in mythic +20 you're not going to CC anything because thats a dps loss to kill 1 mob instead of aoe a pack and you're against a timer.

CC is just for making the game really fucking annoying in pvp now, ah yes thank you demon hunter for stunning me for a total 8 seconds and interrupting when i tried to cast, that 10 seconds of my keyboard doing sweet FUCK ALL felt good.

i mean i guess CC is used in mythic+ but its more aoe stuns aoe slows not the original hex this sap that sheep that trap that, hunter you kite those 2 mobs when we've killed these FD and they'll come running back tank will pick them up or we can sheep 1 kill 1 etc. only way to bring that back is trash literally 4 shotting tanks so you can't even handle 4 melee swings but no tank is going to enjoy that anymore.

GC mentioned Cata dungeons in another post:

In WoW, as a player I always enjoyed dungeons and raids the most out of any content in the game. What I really enjoyed was the problem-solving aspect. “We don’t have a mage for Polymorph, so how can we make that 5 pull?” That sort of thing.

As a player, I didn’t enjoy the late Wrath dungeons where we just AE’d everything down and the tank was running ahead into the next room. Why should my healer have single-target heals and group heals if I only ever used the group heal? Why should I have crowd control abilities if I never used them? What interesting decisions was I making if I approached 2 pulls, 5 pulls and the boss with the same tool set.

So I advocated (and largely got) Cataclysm dungeons that required using the full tool set. You had to strategize and not just run through the dungeon.

A lot of players enjoyed this change. However, some did not, and their response surprised me. For these players, they didn’t want dungeons that were stressful. For them, running through a dungeon and blowing everything up with very low risk was a nice way to unwind and chill with friends after what may have been a stressful day of real life. If I had been a better designer, I should have anticipated this response.

I don’t think the right answer would have been to nerf all of the content. I think the right answer was to make sure the “interesting decision / strategy” crowd and the “chill / blow shit up” crowd both had content suitable for them.

And now, as a result of 'basic that shit' or 'chill/blow shit up' mentality.
We have neutered classes, and previously baseline abilities now gated behind Honour talents or removed completely.
#feelsbadman

Originally Posted by blitz156

And now, as a result of 'basic that shit' or 'chill/blow shit up' mentality.
We have neutered classes, and previously baseline abilities now gated behind Honour talents or removed completely.
#feelsbadman

aren't honor talents only working in pvp? ^^

I still get blamed for buffing Frost mages (which is a class I never played) and nerfing Ret paladins (which was a forum joke that somehow became accepted as reality).

Because you were the name everyone knew, and Cata didn't hit Ret Paladins with the retard stick, they hit Ret Paladin's with the entire retard tree. Repeatedly. God, early Cata Ret Paladin was as shit and unfun as BC Ret Paladin, and moving into later Cata, it stayed just as unfun but at least the numbers weren't still a bad joke.

Yeah, and it turned out so well. /s

I find it hilarious that something so much easier than BC heroics caused so many tears. Sadly, Wrath trained the player base to expect every dungeon run to be a complete and effortless success. So honestly, Cata dungeons turned out quite well for me

It was the 3.0 heroics where you'd pull an entire room and mow them down with AoE. And why not, since people were rocking ICC 25 gear in ilvl 200 heroics.

Dude, we AoE'd entire rooms in heroics before we even started Naxx. Wrath dungeons were a complete joke, except for Occulus since you had to be not-retarded, and that was an extremely high bar for most the player base.

A neat analogy; for those familiar with hack and slash/action combat games. And how much you need to think and strategise.

We went from Dark Souls, to Dynasty Warriors.

Generally, both are fun, but one is a chill-grindy pass time and the other is one constantly challenging you and you strive to conquer.

Originally Posted by Shambulanced

Yeah. Well, now they do. High M+ runs.

They just haven't tuned the difficulty/affixes/timers correctly. Timers should be more lenient, but foes more punishing at higher levels, so that CC is necessary.

I like M+, but I think Blizz should add an affix that would punish people for CCing, so it'd turn things into "gogogo on steroids"... Some people will like it, others will hate it

Problem w/ current M+ system is that people prefer to use lower level keys, just because they can roflstomp everything in there, many people don't want to do M+ of an appropriate level, they just want easy and smooth runs. Guys who should be doing M+25, are running M+20 and lower, CC is irrelevant in this case....

M+ system should reward people for pushing as hard/far as they can.

Originally Posted by Alayea

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

As a player, I didn’t enjoy the late Wrath dungeons where we just AE’d everything down and the tank was running ahead into the next room. Why should my healer have single-target heals and group heals if I only ever used the group heal? Why should I have crowd control abilities if I never used them? What interesting decisions was I making if I approached 2 pulls, 5 pulls and the boss with the same tool set.

So I advocated (and largely got) Cataclysm dungeons that required using the full tool set. You had to strategize and not just run through the dungeon.

Yeah, and it turned out so well. /s


And I think his thinking then/now is mixed up. The ICC dungeons were still no cakewalk in LFD even if the average person in the group had an item level of 251 (in the 232 version). It was the 3.0 heroics where you'd pull an entire room and mow them down with AoE. And why not, since people were rocking ICC 25 gear in ilvl 200 heroics. If there were anything to be blamed for this, it was the ballooning stat values in WotLK (which Blizzard explicitly admitted its failure to control). Towards the end of the expansion, for example, 100% armor penetration wasn't unheard of (albeit not easily reached).

/rant

While I tepidly agree that Wrath dungeon difficulty were diminished due to the inflating stat issue (Though I'd argue they didn't take much thought even at launch.) I'm tempted to ask what you thought was wrong with the Cataclysm heroics. In my experience, they were incredibly fun to do and massively rewarding to beat. I was always struck and dumbfounded at the community response to them in the past.

The Probius trailer delivered a critical strike right into my feels. As a dedicated Protoss player, I must have trained hundreds of thousands of these little guys back in the days of Brood War, and well into Wings of Liberty.

During those times, I often had to stay home throughout the weekend to take care of an ill relative, and I had to watch from afar as everyone else would happily head out into the city. But, I would like to think that I did not miss out on anything - I was merely living in a different world. An awesome world of aliens, advanced technology, telepathy... and a world where heroes fought and perished because, apparently, they forgot to change the battery of their psi blades before heading out to battle the Zerg at the province of Antioch.

Ew Hunter spell animations.

And yeah, OF COURSE the casuals are going to want to blow through those dungeons and relax after their day. That's what they do; they come in droves to some of the best video games ever released, then encrust themselves within and ruin everything.

Fun fact: Vanilla primarily targeted an audience of players in their twenties, who already had jobs and were well on their way to saving up for a mortgage at the time. Vanilla was a HUGE success. So why the sudden shift toward accommodating those players who only have 1-2 hours to play per day, despite the general truism that WoW's audience has only been getting younger? Did the vocal minority drown out reality, or is there something we don't know?

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

As a player, I didn’t enjoy the late Wrath dungeons where we just AE’d everything down and the tank was running ahead into the next room. Why should my healer have single-target heals and group heals if I only ever used the group heal? Why should I have crowd control abilities if I never used them? What interesting decisions was I making if I approached 2 pulls, 5 pulls and the boss with the same tool set.

So I advocated (and largely got) Cataclysm dungeons that required using the full tool set. You had to strategize and not just run through the dungeon.

Wrong. Sorry, but when one mistake = wipe, then there is no room for actually playing the game and learning game mechanics. There is no learning curve - it's just brick wall. Yeah, there are hardcore games, like Battletoads, where one mistake = death and therefore whole game is one big trial'n'error-fest. But overall - it's BAD GAME DESIGN, because hardcore tryhards - are minority. For example ICC heroics were hard, but at the same time mistakes didn't cause instant wipes - players were able to continue playing the game and learning fight, till healer wasn't going OOM. They were able to ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME - not perform endless corpse-run-fest.

I actually prefer the old hunter animations, the new ones just look messy

Wish they focus on story and new world quests instead of class spells animation, cos 7.2 animations sucks balls. It looks like driving on reverse gear on a highway, dk's spells - worse, hunters spells - worse. Please Blizzard, pretty please, leave animations alone and do something important - new world quests, strike animation (TBC swords had nice striking animations, why new ones looks like choping the wood?).

Originally Posted by Maorin

Wish they focus on story and new world quests instead of class spells animation, cos 7.2 animations sucks balls. It looks like driving on reverse gear on a highway, dk's spells - worse, hunters spells - worse. Please Blizzard, pretty please, leave animations alone and do something important - new world quests, strike animation (TBC swords had nice striking animations, why new ones looks like choping the wood?).

You do understand that there are multiple quite independent teams that work on different aspects of the game, right? o_O

underwhelmed by the hunter shots because of how how bad the shooting animations still are...

concussive shot is really cool though, kill command I need to see in-game

Man, Undead Hunter Animations really look poo...

That being said, what does Kill Command look like for the player? Still that silly animation breaking finger pointing?

Originally Posted by Socialhealer

CC is dead, even in mythic +20 you're not going to CC anything because thats a dps loss to kill 1 mob instead of aoe a pack and you're against a timer.

CC is just for making the game really fucking annoying in pvp now, ah yes thank you demon hunter for stunning me for a total 8 seconds and interrupting when i tried to cast, that 10 seconds of my keyboard doing sweet FUCK ALL felt good.

i mean i guess CC is used in mythic+ but its more aoe stuns aoe slows not the original hex this sap that sheep that trap that, hunter you kite those 2 mobs when we've killed these FD and they'll come running back tank will pick them up or we can sheep 1 kill 1 etc. only way to bring that back is trash literally 4 shotting tanks so you can't even handle 4 melee swings but no tank is going to enjoy that anymore.

Last time i used CC was in TBC Heroics ^^

I like the Pandora's Box analogy. Ever since those ICC times, we've essentially become stuck viewing dungeons as speedrun challenges on every level. Systems like CMs and now M+ made it official. As a result, we're back to AoE > all and ignoring everything that isn't conducive to that - even up the point where you don't take healers along at all because why would you. CC, as was already mentioned, has become a PvP meme pretty much exclusively. Classes that can't provide an AoEgasm feel underpowered even if they do just fine in other content. The stress of rushgogogogo to meet that +3 timer turns away many people from M+.

But how to solve this dilemma? I think it's hard to go back to the Cata pre-nerf heroics paradigm. People are too used to runs taking >30 minutes, and likely unwilling to stick to anything longer. The box has been open too long. They tried stratifying the content more with M+ scaling, but neglected to change the base paradigm - now instead of having runs for those who like speed and those who prefer a more strategic puzzle, they have speedruns for geared people and speedruns for less-geared people. Great.