Watcher hates striders so much

[TEHPALLYTANK]

The raft is hugely underrated and not at all hard to obtain and it even hops across roots n stuff.

The raft also requires 525 fishing to use, which is a significant barrier to using it on alts.

[Doctor Funkenstein]

This has nothing to do with flying. Don't try to lever it into unrelated discussions.

Except it completely and utterly does, unless one is so completely dimwitted and pigheaded that they refuse (as oppose to can't) see it. It's 100% related to flying. With flying, water striders aren't your only option for getting across water quickly.

[Lane]

Give me flying and you'll see me use more than a strider. Or fix the fucking transportation system beyond a shit flying system.

But those are hard fixes beyond his ability to hate things that aren't slow as fuck.

This. I'll completely take the water strider off my bar when flying is added. Frankly, I think the strider is a pain in the ass to use. Half the time if you try mounting it in water you'll swim your way to shore before you're ever able to get it on the surface (which the conspiracy theorist in me believes is intended :P). Plus, I only have the ugly pink one, it's definitely not my first choice of mount to use just necessary to traverse terrain in a timely manner to get to certain places (that don't always have FPs nearby).

DKs definitely have it best right now. I even use the strider on my shaman because I'm too lazy to have to keep dismounting to reapply water walking.

Waiting on MoP/WoD striders to not work in legion, new dark red or dark blue strider recolor legion only added behind 12 week grind. Because fuck you.

Would not surprise me.

I liked Ion at the start but I honestly think he will do damage to this game in the long term. Tom Chilton was really low key, but the dude's smarts was seriously underrated. He knew, comparatively, how to balance out hardcore and casual players. Under Watcher's rule, this game has definitely become more "hardcore", in the way of being tedious as hell.

Watcher seems like one of those people who won't shed his hardcore player background and lets it color all of his choices as Game Director. There was no good reason to add in Defiled Augment Runes. Yet he did, and makes the lives of raiders harder because we have another thing we must farm/buy. Just a single example.

Agreed. I don't know who does the hiring/promoting at Blizzard, but they really need more progressive thinkers as leads on the design team. The fact that so much of it is comprised of 'old schoolers' who prefer things that way is why WoW is behind other MMOs in terms of both content and features.

I found it somewhat ironic a quest NPC said, "Nostalgia is the enemy of progress."

[Granyala]

If they design terrain that is a PITA to navigate and implement a mount that can circumvent some of the pain, people flock to them.

It doesn't take a genius to realize this.

Personally I mostly use it when the situation calls for it.

[Everwake]

If water weren't so fucking annoying, and if the millions of mobs they pile through every zone weren't chasing me through that water, I wouldn't be on my strider!

[Count Zero]

I'd be using my Dreadsteed if it could still walk on water

[Mormolyce]

Except it completely and utterly does, unless one is so completely dimwitted and pigheaded that they refuse (as oppose to can't) see it. It's 100% related to flying. With flying, water striders aren't your only option for getting across water quickly.

Maybe you should build a bridge and get over it.

[oplawlz]

I think they should remove water striders and go back to having water auto-dismount you, just to stick it to the kids crying over something so trivial.

[Doctor Funkenstein]

Maybe you should build a bridge and get over it.

Why? You're the one who can't see the forest for the trees. I'm not the one burying his head in the sand and wishing everything away because I think I'm the smartest, most intelligent, most gifted person in the world! <twirls around and frolicks like Mormolyce in his fantasy world>

[Deleted]

I've got the Random Mount button ready on my bars, as well as the repair mammoth and the blue Strider. Whenever I need to repair out in the world, I use that mammoth. When I'm not in the Broken Isles, the Random Mount is used, because I've set it to use a good mix of ground and flying mounts. Including the Strider and the mammoth, because I also happen to like those mounts as mounts, not just their utility.

Whenever I am in the Broken Isles areas, where flying is not allowed, I always use the Strider button. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to not use that mount, as long as I cannot fly. Even in Dalaran, where I do not need the waterwalking ability, I use the Strider. Until I can fly.

[Mad_Murdock]

and the other is a huge PITA so in reality you are only going to see strider-riders riding azure striders.

The newer Azure strider is fairly easy to get (compared to the launch of WOD). In fact,you should be able to get it faster than the MOP strider because there really is no limit. One way to cheat a little is that if you have a Garrison with Navy yard, you can attach fishing nets to your boat and those count as catching fish. I got Nat Pagel for my garrison purely by letting the boats do the work. And to make it even easier, it's shared between alts. In my case I had 10+ alts with fishing nets and got the 100 different fish in a week.

From there, its just go out and fish in Spires of Arak for about 6-8 hours and you should have enough lunkers to get the Azure strider.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

The newer Azure strider is fairly easy to get (compared to the launch of WOD). In fact,you should be able to get it faster than the MOP strider because there really is no limit. One way to cheat a little is that if you have a Garrison with Navy yard, you can attach fishing nets to your boat and those count as catching fish. I got Nat Pagel for my garrison purely by letting the boats do the work. And to make it even easier, it's shared between alts. In my case I had 10+ alts with fishing nets and got the 100 different fish in a week.

From there, its just go out and fish in Spires of Arak for about 6-8 hours and you should have enough lunkers to get the Azure strider.

6-8 hours? How exactly is that easier than parking a character at the Angler's and doing the daily each day? The daily takes at most 5 minutes each day, and you only need to do it for a couple of weeks.

[Normie]

Guess I just don't get it about the controversy on this issue. If anything, the obstructiveness of terrain, the up and down and around the mountain, through the cave annoys me much much more

I liked the good old days of Barrens and knowing how to get somewhere.

I love the three dimensionality of it, but some of the terrain in Legion is truly irritating. More of it than in WoD or MoP. Jade Forest is where it all started. Spires of Arak and pretty much all the max level daily zones in WoD, also. I don't know how a strider helps solve the problem of trying to find a ramp up a hill though.

[Nayami]

Are you feeling bad because you can't use your favourite mount? Having to ride your water strider all the time instead of your awesome moose mount that you earned?

Well worry not, as I have the solution!

For only $9.99 per hour, I will be your personal water walker!

About to do some world questing in the southern part of Azsuna? Path of Frost!

Want to cross easily between Suramar City areas? Path of Frost!

Additional bonuses include:
- Path of Frost-ing between DoT ticks
- Yak mount for your transmog needs
- Sindragosa as your personal bodyguard to one shot those annoying gankers

Call now on 999-PATH-OF-FROST

[tehpwner]

They've always hated things to be useful beyond the expansion they came it. It's not just this thing, or even "utility" things. They've just ALWAYS gutted things once a new expansion hits.

WoD profession-agnostic Loot-a-rang as another example. Though I guess tbf that really did encroach on Engi specific things.

You can't be serious. Really? Of course you aren't going to see people use water walking mounts when there is no water. Seriously what the actual fuck? You armchair developers need to take a step back and actually pay attention to what Blizzard developers are saying before whining.

Might as well remove the Yak, Mammoth, heirloom and other such situationally useful for XYZ-scenario mounts as well by that logic. All those fit similar criteria of being "objectively" better than other mounts due to doing XYZ thing after all.

I forget sometimes that one can't have a balanced viewpoint without apparently enraging one side of the blizzard hate/fan club like a Tasmanian devil.

[clevin]

I have the strider and am already not using it. I use the artifact fishing rod if I ever end up in the water.

It's not about making people "suffer" but rather being consistent with mounts. It makes zero sense to have 200+ ground mounts being equally good at running, jumping etc but have one mount which happens to be just as fast and good at jumping, but also able to run on water.

Do you people think before typing things like this? the ENTIRE point of the Strider was the water walking. That's why people got it. If it 'makes zero sense' then Blizzard shouldn't have created it... but they did. And again... who fucking CARES? Get it if you want. Use it if you want. Or don't (I don't have it because I don't care that much about water obstacles.

This is just another variation on "I can't mind my own business and have to worry about what others have and how they should play the game." Grow up.

- - - Updated - - -

Striders are somewhat between regular mounts and flying. Makes it easy to bypass areas and standard routes. Should be gated behind pathfinder achievement.

it's already gated behind a rep. Quit telling other people how they should experience the game.

[Mad_Murdock]

6-8 hours? How exactly is that easier than parking a character at the Angler's and doing the daily each day? The daily takes at most 5 minutes each day, and you only need to do it for a couple of weeks.

It's been a while since I did the mop one, so maybe I'm mis-remembering the process. but don't you need to catch the 3 rare fish to get rep up with Nat Pagel? Which back in the day wasn't bad, but was more than 5 mins.

[reef]

I agree with him. I think that water walking is part of class fantasy. Allowing every class to mount up and run across water does not support that fantasy. A somewhat good analogy would be if they implemented scrolls with no cooldown for all classes to teleport to all of the mage teleport locations. Now that the strider is in and as the OP stated, players had to work towards the reward, I don't think it would be fair to remove it from the game. Perhaps they shouldn't have added it to begin with, though.

[Protean]

Dude won't let it go, like people (from both sides) who are still arguing about the election.

I kinda sorta see where he's coming from, but frankly the only place I regularly see striders is on the water. I only mount up on a strider when I'm going to be, well, striding.

Plus, acquiring them was kind of tedious and if you have a crimson strider, holy crap, VERY tedious. And the fishing raft is better in many regards (if not as speedy).

At least he bowed to pressure/outrage on this one.

I want back my loot-a-rang though. Maybe engineers could make an expendable one a la thermal anvils?

I agree with Watcher.

Striders are boring.
They shouldn't be the only option for water walking mounts.

What's even there to discuss?

[Drefanator]

I think Sky Golems are more of a problem then waterstriders.

Being able to just gather mats without dismounting is ridiculous.