Legion Overview: The Great, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[miffy23]

So I've spent a fair few months in Legion Alpha/Beta and I decided to make a little overview over what I consider good and bad about the expansion, how it rates compared to previous content, and its potential staying power. At this point almost nothing will change in Beta anymore except for numbers and bugfixes, so it's as good an idea of the live content as we will get.

First off: I have played ever since Vanilla all through to current content, and I am predominantly PvE-oriented and a Mythic raider. This just to put my opinions in context. I won't comment much on PvP, for example.

Disclaimer: this is all personal opinion. Feel free to weigh in with your own pro/con tally.

The Great:

Artifacts

I have personally wanted an alternate advancement system/paragon leveling in WoW for a long time. I enjoy these types of meta character progression in many other MMOs and they give the game a lot of staying power and long term motivation. They are beautifully designed, most of them add a bit of depth and "oomph" to the specs and they are tied to some great lore and PvE content. While they come at the cost of not many new weapon skins in Legion, I feel they add a lot to the game. A definite plus in my book overall.

Questing

Following the development of questing from MoP and WoD, it's probably the best questing we've had so far. It incorporates all the elements that were good in the past, whether that be themepark-like exploration and treasure hunting, or the very well done on-rails story experience. There is more voice acting in general questing than there has been in the past.

To top it all off, we have endgame questing content in Suramar now. Suramar is truly an achievement and an experience to play through. It is up there with some of the better solo experiences in other MMOs I've had, such as SWTOR, and gives different types of players something to do besides grind/farm/instanced content.

Mythic+

You asked for it, now you got it. WoW finally has a viable PvE character progression for 5 man content. If you can't be bothered with raids at all, but still want challenging group content, Mythic+ definitely delivers. It draws strongly on the Greater Rift system from Diablo3, and gives dungeons a lot more staying power. It is appealing to more casual players and raiders alike, and simply adds to the palette of things to do in Legion.

World Quests

This system for max level activity is pretty much perfect, in my opinion. Quick and easy rewards that you can access fast, an alternate gearing path you can take if you dislike normal/heroic dungeons and/or crafting, as well as a daily activity system that is both more varied and rewarding than the old system of grinding 25 repetitive dailies.

A return to more PvE content

3 raid Tiers again, more dungeons with one extra one already confirmed for 7.1 and probably more on the way down the line, Mythic+, World Quests, Suramar - honestly I can't think of anything else I would want. Legion is giving me everything I missed in WoD, and started to miss in MoP a little bit, and then some. Big, big bonus points.

The Good

Raids

Anyone that has actively raided throughout the past 10 or so years will probably agree that in terms of encounter design, raids have gone only up and up each expansion. Legion is no exception, and adds to that chain of great raiding content. I have nothing bad to say about Legion raids, and cannot wait to tackle them on live.

Crafting

Crafting is actually fun now. Not only do you get some extra stories and lore to play through as you level, I also enjoy the new system of destroying average products to create higher ilvl. Add in that rare crafting mats are BoP and no longer tradeable, it shifts the weight of the market to active crafters again, which is always good.

Transmog

Already on live now, and also directly taken from Diablo, it gives old content a lot more replayability. Simply no negatives to this, it was long overdue and it is very welcome indeed.

Lore & Story

Personally speaking, I was kind of irritated with MoP, that sort of "took a break" from most of the ongoing plotlines, and was full-on exasperated with WoD, which just completely gave a giant "f*ck you" to them. I could not be happier with the veritable flood of actually interesting lore that matters that we are getting in Legion. Just leveling to max tons of exciting stuff happens, and Suramar is actually interesting because it directly ties into the history of several ongoing meta threats and looming story arcs. It just feels good to be "back on track".

PvP

I've played PvP more or less competitively, most notably in Vanilla and in the first few arena seasons, but I sort of grew bored and tired of it over the latter half of WoW's lifetime. Mostly thanks to the extra gear grind and horrible balancing, I guess. Legion doesn't really solve the balancing issues inherent to the game system that will always be there, but it does finally do away with PvP gear, which definitely makes me want to play it again occasionally, so it's already a success in my book.

The Bad

Class Halls

I'll be honest, I don't see much that's bad about Legion after playing it for a while. Class Halls is one of those not-so-great aspects.
It's important to note that Class Halls really are NOT like Garrisons from WoD, which were atrocious. There are no profession buildings or other buildings, you don't hang around in it on your own all the time, and it doesn't flood you in gold anymore. In fact, Class Halls actually make you go out into the world - a lot. You want resources for your Artifact Knowledge work orders (more on that later), for your missions, for Class Hall upgrades. And those missions in turn actually lead to new quests. So it's not horrible. But overall I don't see the need for the follower/mission system at all, especially in Legion with the metric tons of content it offers to do. It feels tacked on, unnecessary, but thankfully not as intrusive as it used to be.

Artifact Experience

While I really enjoy having a paragon leveling system, the way it was implemented poses significant problems. Specifically, the way it affects secondary specs and alts. Simply put, in order to be optimized for high level raiding, you need to focus completely on your main spec, and your secondary spec will inevitably suffer and lag behind. I would have far preferred if AP were allocated to all of one's artifacts equally whenever one receives any. The way it will go live only serves to dissuade raiders from playing their secondary specs much at first or investing into them, and I'm rather sad about that.

The Ugly

Specs (some of them, at least)

This depends on your personal preference and what spec you play, but while some specs (thankfully most of my favourite ones) have been revamped nicely and are great fun to play, several specs in Legion feel utterly gutted to me and are frankly appalling to play. I've utterly lost interest in my Hunter alt, I was never really into Rogue but Legion made it even worse, and Discipline has turned into a very, very niche spec that will appeal to only a small group of people. I could have put this further up and talked more about the specs that are actually quite fantastic - which is the majority. But I feel that the fact that there are quite a few devastatingly dull and uninteresting specs is more of a detriment than the ones that are enjoyable are an asset to Legion.

Summary and Final Verdict:

There are a few things I haven't mentioned that don't affect me, but are generally considered positives. For example, LFR has Tier loot again. I don't really play LFR except very rarely on my lowest-geared alts, and I don't really consider it attractive content for...well, anyone. But I guess the people that do enjoy it have something to look forward to again. Legendary items are fairly divisive for some, personally I'm totally neutral on them. They just add something else to hunt for and be occupied with, and they won't break balance any more than basic spec tuning/design would in PvE. And finally flying is going the way of WoD again - something I am more in favour of than against. Flying is nice to have, but I do believe it significantly detracts from the zone experience, and I'm fine with getting it later once I've seen and done everything and just want to get from A to B faster.

Overall I find Legion to be a return to form for the game. I've more or less enjoyed MoP, I endured WoD. I raided actively in both expansions and thoroughly enjoyed that, but the rest of the content was "eh" in MoP, and simply not there in WoD. Legion makes me want to play again, as in doing everything, experiencing everything, and finally offers a lot more than just raiding again, at least for me. PvPers may be disappointed that there is no new BG (again), and balance may be bad again, but at least it is more attractive to more players again without gear requirements.


I honestly consider Legion to have the potential to be one of the, if not the best expansion to date. The few annoyances that plague it could still be remedied down the line, and the good far outweighs the bad in my opinion.

Maybe you gleaned some information from this wall of text you were looking for. In any case, here's to a hopefully successful expansion launch!

[Deleted]

Wow, this is an absolutely great post: Objective, well-informed and generally well written. Rare to have those gems on a forum that sometimes seems to be a sandbox for children arguing "I'm right", "No, I'm right", "No, I'm right and you are stupid", "No, I'm right and you are stupid x2"

Thanks for your viewpoints, although I don't fully agree with all of them:
- World Quests seem interesting at first, but have the potential to quickly become the dailies of MoP: Boring and Forced. Although, I have to say, that I rarely had so much fun in a scenario as in the Withered Army World Quest. Some genius that thought that up!

- Crafting. I disagree that Legion will make them more fun. They are immensely grindy with the amount of materials you need and the "rare BOP resource" is actually so widespread that it is not a constraint at all any more. The rare resource from gathering professions is much much rarer and therefore they will win out again.
While I see the appeal of making professions relevant by requiring max character level again, as a semi-hardcore raider, this will heavily impact my time requirements in game. What I still have to get to terms with is that they effectively removed the skill level requirements. This might actually make it much easier to switch professions now.

- Mythic+: While i absolutely LOVE this concept, we will run into real issues with rostering... Gear that is dropped in those will quickly become requirement for Mythic raids, but in a standard mythic raid, you will have only 2 tanks and 4-5 healers in a 25-30 people roster. This means that there can only really be 2 internal groups (limited by tanks) and if you find others, you will be limited by the amount of healers eventually, too. We will have to see how this pans out.

Fully agree on
- Artifact Power: Absolutely do not understand how Blizzard can be so arrogant as to imply they can perfectly balance 36 specs when they failed to do so in every single expansion so far, but still they require you to invest heavily in one spec at the beginning of a new expac.
- Ugly specs: As a warlock, I can fully relate. Being forced to decide between single-target and AoE talents to be viable, but then being limited to when I can switch those talents is simply idiotic.

[miffy23]

Wow, this is an absolutely great post: Objective, well-informed and generally well written. Rare to have those gems on a forum that sometimes seems to be a sandbox for children arguing "I'm right", "No, I'm right", "No, I'm right and you are stupid", "No, I'm right and you are stupid x2"

Thanks for your viewpoints, although I don't fully agree with all of them:
- World Quests seem interesting at first, but have the potential to quickly become the dailies of MoP: Boring and Forced. Although, I have to say, that I rarely had so much fun in a scenario as in the Withered Army World Quest. Some genius that thought that up!

- Crafting. I disagree that Legion will make them more fun. They are immensely grindy with the amount of materials you need and the "rare BOP resource" is actually so widespread that it is not a constraint at all any more. The rare resource from gathering professions is much much rarer and therefore they will win out again.
While I see the appeal of making professions relevant by requiring max character level again, as a semi-hardcore raider, this will heavily impact my time requirements in game. What I still have to get to terms with is that they effectively removed the skill level requirements. This might actually make it much easier to switch professions now.

- Mythic+: While i absolutely LOVE this concept, we will run into real issues with rostering... Gear that is dropped in those will quickly become requirement for Mythic raids, but in a standard mythic raid, you will have only 2 tanks and 4-5 healers in a 25-30 people roster. This means that there can only really be 2 internal groups (limited by tanks) and if you find others, you will be limited by the amount of healers eventually, too. We will have to see how this pans out.

Fully agree on
- Artifact Power: Absolutely do not understand how Blizzard can be so arrogant as to imply they can perfectly balance 36 specs when they failed to do so in every single expansion so far, but still they require you to invest heavily in one spec at the beginning of a new expac.
- Ugly specs: As a warlock, I can fully relate. Being forced to decide between single-target and AoE talents to be viable, but then being limited to when I can switch those talents is simply idiotic.

@ world quests I just feel based on how quick they are to do and how many there are (many hundreds to thousands apparently, with more being added anytime they want to, quite quickly) that there is little chance of them feeling repetitive in a bad way. Not the way oldschool dailies would, for example, when you had to do 25 out of a pool of maybe 50 or so for weeks on end. That + the way they interact with PvP, reputations and crafting makes them far more interesting and enjoyable imo.
@Crafting I think it only got better compared to WoD. Crafting should involve farming and spending time on collecting mats, and I kind of enjoy the flavour of deconstructing and redoing for better results. It just feels more immersive than before for me.

As for Mythic+ gear, it won't be a requirement. The best gear you get from it is once a week based on your highest achieved time - you will get pieces competitive with or better than Mythic raid gear, if you got high enough, but not enough to deck yourself out in it by any means. As for roster: any decent mythic roster has much more than 2 tanks and 4-5 healers if you include offspecs. We've already set up 6 groups of 5 with some DPS volunteering their offspecs for Mythic+ to gear up =) I can't really comment on what pugs do, I really don't pug at all.

Ah yes, I forgot the Tomes for talent switching. It's a minor nuisance, definitely an utterly unnecessary one.

Oh, and thanks!

[Schmilblick]

Artifacts are great ? now that's a bad review.

[Ragetacular]

Artifacts are great ? now that's a bad review.

What a well thought out post that prevents a verifiable point to the contrary! Thanks for the contribution

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk

[Deleted]

Thanks for the great review! Can't wait for Legion. Regarding LFR, it obviously isn't challenging content, but some people simply don't have the time to raid more seriously and still would like to experience the cool raids. And tier loot means different recolors for transmog, so I'm happy about that

[miffy23]

Thanks for the great review! Can't wait for Legion. Regarding LFR, it obviously isn't challenging content, but some people simply don't have the time to raid more seriously and still would like to experience the cool raids. And tier loot means different recolors for transmog, so I'm happy about that

Aye and I don't begrudge them that. I still don't think LFR as a concept really works, and really does raid content a huge disservice, but it has an audience and it doesn't hurt me, so whatever.

It might be fun to hope for titanforged set items on my alts later =)

[Shizari]

this is honestly one of the most in depth reviews i've read so far of the expansion. I've been hyped since the beginning, and enjoy reading in-depth reviews like this.

#ChooChooHypeTrain

[Gaidax]

Legion is going to be good, but I think some features like World Quests are overestimated in their usefulness, after months in Beta I can tell that they quickly become obsolete and even annoying. Literally the only kind of World Quest I want now is AP one, because the rest is useless and I have to do the useless ones for emissary daily. It is not helping that I know these world quests by heart as well now, there is quite a bit, but it gets repetitive fast.


BUT, admittedly, that's about the only bad thing I can think of. Specs I do not agree, I think many specs got massively improved and some that miss the mark will likely get improved. Artifacts also add a lot of spice to each spec.

[miffy23]

Legion is going to be good, but I think some features like World Quests are overestimated in their usefulness, after months in Beta I can tell that they quickly become obsolete and even annoying. Literally the only kind of World Quest I want now is AP one, because the rest is useless and I have to do the useless ones for emissary daily. It is not helping that I know these world quests by heart as well now, there is quite a bit, but it gets repetitive fast.


BUT, admittedly, that's about the only bad thing I can think of. Specs I do not agree, I think many specs got massively improved and some that miss the mark will likely get improved. Artifacts also add a lot of spice to each spec.

I agree that most specs are improved, I just find that the few that are really horrible are an eyesore to me.

[Army Dreamer]

Legion Overview: The Great, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

How did you manage to finish the expansion before it even started? O_o

[miffy23]

How did you manage to finish the expansion before it even started? O_o

It's an overview based on Beta, not a review.
Should be fairly obvious..

[Pattiecakes]

I wish the new transmog system was taken from Diablo 3. Being able to unlock all models on all classes regardless if they could use the transmog or not would have been amazing. I do enjoy the organization and space saver the changes have brought but I will wish for what could have been.

[miffy23]

I wish the new transmog system was taken from Diablo 3. Being able to unlock all models on all classes regardless if they could use the transmog or not would have been amazing. I do enjoy the organization and space saver the changes have brought but I will wish for what could have been.

Even in Diablo you can't do that. You can't wear Barbarian armor on a Wizard, for example.

[Pattiecakes]

You can unlock Barbarian armor on a Wizard however. It almost never drops but I have unlocked a Mojo on a Crusader for example.

[miffy23]

You can unlock Barbarian armor on a Wizard however. It almost never drops but I have unlocked a Mojo on a Crusader for example.

Yeah but even then you don't get the Barb armor archetypes from earlier levels.
Just set items etc if they possibly drop for you once in a blue moon.

[RadiationWoW]

Just came here to say that well put thread you've made here B)

[Tainted0ne]

I would have rather Blizzard make artifact traits much more expensive and grant that AP to all specs, than have it the way it is now. If you are any sort of progession raider you will be crazy to start putting AP in another spec. If I get 10k AP, I would like all my specs to get 10K ap. Even if the first trait costs 10k and I'm getting 100 AP per WQ or random dng q. I would rather it take longer to fill out my artifact weapon while simultaneously progessing all artifacts, than to make a choice and end up biting me in the ass when Blizzard feels a spec is too strong and another is too weak.

[Deleted]

A well written overview, which I mostly agree with. However it is not objective as some claim it to be. Since you rank them and lists what is good/bad, it is obviously your subjective opinion, which others may agree/disagree upon. This is not a criticism of your work, as you obviously state that it is in your opinion, it is just a note .

Classhalls:WHile I think classhalls are a rather cool idea. I can see what you mean in them being unnecessary. However one could also state that it means they won't be as mandatory as the garrison in WoD turned out to be. I consider them a tool to add more class specific content throughout the expansion. Such as the Legion class order hall campaign, that I am really looking forward to experience. I would place them in the "good" part.

Other things I would like to add is:

Addition of demon hunters: I love the implementation of them (thinking storywise). I did not play them much during the alpha/beta, just a few levels. They seemed interesting but not overwhelming to me. I can see that some players will fall in love with them. I will naturally make one myself, but won't reroll. I predict SW/Ogr being full with DH's starting next week. Will be fun to see.
I would however say that the next class blizzard implements should have the opportunity to be a ranged as there are quite a bit of melee classes now!.

The pre-expansion event: To some it is is a small deal. And arguably it is only a few weeks of content. But them adding a solid pre-event is a big plus in my book. It adds to the hype and also tells me that they are really investing in Legion and tries to reach out towards the players. A good expansion should imo be accompanied by a good pre-event, think wotlk. The pre-events in 5.0 (a shitty 5 min scenario and that was it) and 6.0 (7-8 quests and a 5-10 min dungeon) felt scrapped in my eyes and not as if Blizzard really invested in it. Especially when considering what 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 offered.


Naturally this is also just my opinion

[miffy23]

Thanks =)

Yeah I actually totally forgot about Demon Hunters. I personally just don't care about them at all, not a class that appeals to me. Something more to do though, and certainly something that appeals to many people! Same with the pre-launch event, it's something people wanted again for a long time. The last few expansions didn't really have satisfying ones.

The Class Halls, unfortunately, are unavoidable and rather mandatory, as they make you do missions to advance your campaign just like in WoD. Which feels rather forced and tacked on, because absolutely everything sends you out into the world. The Class Halls are a great concept for the lore and the spec flavour, but the missions in them feel intrusive. It's almost as if they couldn't admit to themselves that the missions system was an abysmal failure and just had to keep it around in a minor way to justify it.