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

[Biomega]

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.

[DesoPL]

HOTS news on MMO-Champion confirmed?

[Arvandor]

hmm new spells animations.. the whole class is broken but we become new animations..

for me 7.2.5 is more important than 7.2..

[yetgdhfgh]

I miss the pelvic thrusting the other barrage had LOL

[Syfus]

Another year of ghostcrawler drama stuffs, if you quit, spare us

[Daedius]

Are priests EVER getting new spell animations? A lot of their abilities have looked the same since Vanilla, the most standing out one being their shield... :|

[Santobimba]

Its getting bored. I was following Ghostcrawler tweets/comments most of time but this is starting to get bored. Why do you bother still putting him in front still ? You are writing "Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard." Then you still highlight his tweets.. Thats not looking well.
If he is no longer works for Blizzard, simply he is a no longer special for Blizzard. Would you dig the internet and bring many people tweets and comments in here then ? Cause there are many people who dont work for Blizzard and speak about Blizzard...

Dont get me wrong. I really like him and I really like what he have done. Also I found him all the time right against many people.. But this has to move out of this forum I believe.

[sociald1077]

Maybe its cause I dont play a hunter, but all those animations look a lot better in 7.2. That Butchery one in particular looks really good!

[Deleted]

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?



Last time i used CC was in TBC Heroics ^^

I remember having CC in some parts of Cata Heroics, like the humanoid packs before the last boss in Vortex Pinnacle, and also have used CC in Wrath HCs - even in random groups after LFD was introduced. But nothing comes near the use of CC in TBC heroics, which also have been much more fun to me, especially Magister's Terrace (granted, I have always played mage as my main, most of the time frost mage for extra roots and kiting possibilities). Pulling trash mobs together and aoe'ing them down may be fun for some people, but I rather would have to kill less trash packs, but with more focus on priority targets and CC / interrupts than mindless aoe.

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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.

Less trash packs could do the trick to save time if you have to go the CC/focus target route.

I also would not mind harder dungeons taking 30-60 minutes if the rewards would be worthwile. But since dungeon loot is still mostly useless and having multiple layers of randomness in it, this is a totally different can of worms. At least, with badges you could get gear upgrades even if you don't get dungeon drops. With random upgrades, you can end up in a situation where you would have gotten some upgrades via badges after a set number of runs, but with bad luck, you get nothing worthwile in terms of random upgrades. It's so obviously created to waste people's times, that I will not buy into it and rather play a different character than to gamble on my main.

[Tupolew519]

Next hots hero as a probe?

[Biomega]

Less trash packs could do the trick to save time if you have to go the CC/focus target route.

I also would not mind harder dungeons taking 30-60 minutes if the rewards would be worthwile. But since dungeon loot is still mostly useless and having multiple layers of randomness in it, this is a totally different can of worms. At least, with badges you could get gear upgrades even if you don't get dungeon drops. With random upgrades, you can end up in a situation where you would have gotten some upgrades via badges after a set number of runs, but with bad luck, you get nothing worthwile in terms of random upgrades. It's so obviously created to waste people's times, that I will not buy into it and rather play a different character than to gamble on my main.

At this point, the changes necessary to make this a different experience are so extensive they're unlikely to ever happen. One big problem is the fact that people WANT bite-sized content. They want their "sessions" to be easily divisible into small chunks, which is why a dungeon taking 60 minutes would never be a reality outside of a very dedicated demographic. They want things to go fast, about 15-25 minutes ideally - but that in turn means you cannot tune rewards to be substantial, as farming them would become trivial. An ARPG-style RNG-based system is the obvious consequence, as we can observe right now. That is just a fundamental problem of the gearing system, which requires various gates in order to modulate progression rates (e.g. with raids it's the weekly lockout). The badges/JP system is one possible counter (especially with a cap), however that system has proven somewhat unpopular in the past as rewards don't "feel" right if they're just X currency. Nevermind the fact that it's at least some form of meaningful cumulative reward, people just don't like earning numbers. They prefer chucking the n-th useless item that didn't roll TF, despite the obvious inefficiencies. What other system there could be to combine both... well, that is quite the design challenge. I think it's also connected to more, fundamental issues about the game and a quick fix is likely not possible. At this point, I'm waiting to see what the next expansion brings, as I'm sure they have learned now that running 250 Maw of Soul keys in a week is not what people had in mind when they wanted dungeons to matter again.

[Maorin]

oh really? you are so wise man... still new hunters animations are ugly, so they could transfer employee to significant work instead making them doing anything just to keep them occupied (stopgaps) . New animation are regressive to old ones, so graphic/animation team is simply wasting resources and getting paid for doing nothing. Examples of what they could do are given in the first post

[Orionid]

Seriously you used a gun instead of a bow to record all the things related to Marksman Hunter....

[Deleted]

At this point, the changes necessary to make this a different experience are so extensive they're unlikely to ever happen. One big problem is the fact that people WANT bite-sized content. They want their "sessions" to be easily divisible into small chunks, which is why a dungeon taking 60 minutes would never be a reality outside of a very dedicated demographic. They want things to go fast, about 15-25 minutes ideally - but that in turn means you cannot tune rewards to be substantial, as farming them would become trivial. An ARPG-style RNG-based system is the obvious consequence, as we can observe right now. That is just a fundamental problem of the gearing system, which requires various gates in order to modulate progression rates (e.g. with raids it's the weekly lockout). The badges/JP system is one possible counter (especially with a cap), however that system has proven somewhat unpopular in the past as rewards don't "feel" right if they're just X currency. Nevermind the fact that it's at least some form of meaningful cumulative reward, people just don't like earning numbers. They prefer chucking the n-th useless item that didn't roll TF, despite the obvious inefficiencies. What other system there could be to combine both... well, that is quite the design challenge. I think it's also connected to more, fundamental issues about the game and a quick fix is likely not possible. At this point, I'm waiting to see what the next expansion brings, as I'm sure they have learned now that running 250 Maw of Soul keys in a week is not what people had in mind when they wanted dungeons to matter again.

I would not deny that I like fast dungeon runs in the LFD tool, this is what it's for. Quickly assemble a group, get through a dungeon without much hassle. Ideal for doing quests or finishing objectives like running 100 dungeons for a hidden skin colour variant. And I was hoping that mythic dungeons in Legion would be more like heroics in TBC, but unfortunately, they are more like mythics in WoD combined with CMs, which I did not liked that much. We already have the GoGoGo! mentality in LFD heroics, it's sad that we technically have the same approach to mythics, where overgearing the place is more important than knowledge of different mobs and their abilities a.k.a. strategy of a dungeon.

[Biomega]

I would not deny that I like fast dungeon runs in the LFD tool, this is what it's for. Quickly assemble a group, get through a dungeon without much hassle. Ideal for doing quests or finishing objectives like running 100 dungeons for a hidden skin colour variant. And I was hoping that mythic dungeons in Legion would be more like heroics in TBC, but unfortunately, they are more like mythics in WoD combined with CMs, which I did not liked that much. We already have the GoGoGo! mentality in LFD heroics, it's sad that we technically have the same approach to mythics, where overgearing the place is more important than knowledge of different mobs and their abilities a.k.a. strategy of a dungeon.

Fully agreed, however the underlying dilemma remains. If you make dungeons longer and super hard, people will want a reason to run it, i.e. a good reward. Good rewards make people want them, which in turn causes a lot of complaints from people that can't or won't put in the effort required to beat the hard dungeon. It also causes inflation because people who CAN get those rewards will get a lot of them, because dungeons lack the moderator of weekly lockouts like raids do. And if you put dungeons on a lockout, people complain they don't have enough to do, or that they want something to chain-run for rewards. Etc.

The problem is really deeply rooted in the way gearing works. For the longest time, WoW simply had two basic tiers of gear: raid gear, and everything else. If you raided, there was little reason to ever run dungeons. They tried addressing that with currencies, which failed for obvious reasons (see earlier post). Next came the current system of RNG loot, which also has some inherent flaws. And the problem of making both dungeons AND raids matter to the same people remains.

I don't really have a solution in mind that isn't a radical overhaul of the entire gear system. I also think that speedrun mechanics or mentalities add another critical dimension that exacerbates certain problems, though I am equally at a loss as to how to address that issue.

[Leonir406]

Seriously you used a gun instead of a bow to record all the things related to Marksman Hunter....

I know!!!! I was thinking the same for the entire video, so annoying.

[Deleted]

If they could just make spell effect sounds good in addition to visuals.... Just replace the hunter gun sound with Quake 3 arena shotgun sound and playing feels 10 times better. Just one sound and it made me play a hunter. Some abilities sound really lame and boring.

[gunchix]

gosh look at those fishing bobbers, what the hell. how lazy are blizz employees, I know it's a small model, but freaking jagged shit model? nowadays? that's just lazy.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Can't wait for new animations, especially the one which stops my Cobra shots from sounding like a wet towel hitting a wall...

[Gadzooks]

Fully agreed, however the underlying dilemma remains. If you make dungeons longer and super hard, people will want a reason to run it, i.e. a good reward. Good rewards make people want them, which in turn causes a lot of complaints from people that can't or won't put in the effort required to beat the hard dungeon. It also causes inflation because people who CAN get those rewards will get a lot of them, because dungeons lack the moderator of weekly lockouts like raids do. And if you put dungeons on a lockout, people complain they don't have enough to do, or that they want something to chain-run for rewards. Etc.

The problem is really deeply rooted in the way gearing works. For the longest time, WoW simply had two basic tiers of gear: raid gear, and everything else. If you raided, there was little reason to ever run dungeons. They tried addressing that with currencies, which failed for obvious reasons (see earlier post). Next came the current system of RNG loot, which also has some inherent flaws. And the problem of making both dungeons AND raids matter to the same people remains.

I don't really have a solution in mind that isn't a radical overhaul of the entire gear system. I also think that speedrun mechanics or mentalities add another critical dimension that exacerbates certain problems, though I am equally at a loss as to how to address that issue.

There is no solution, because the players won't change.

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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

Yeah. No. Every group I was in was AOEing in every dungeon starting from release. It was a problem for me, well, a problem for other players, because as a rogue, AoE isn't our strong suit. I once offered to cc a mob, and got threatened with a kick. I was shocked in the first dungeon I ran, because stuff was dying do fast, I couldn't get to them in time to get any damage on the meters, I had to stealth up to them ahead of the pack with the tank to get any stabs in.

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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.

I remember in vanilla, running BRD with my guild, for attunements, Dark Iron rep, and the forge. We'd break it up, over two nights, or when we could, just spend 6 hours in there, only to end up wiping to the emperor over and over - but we had fun, used all of our abilities (locking picking ftw!) and never complained.

Today's snowflakes would ragequit, "It's taking to LOOOOOONG". They'd never have gotten through Uldaman, or Scholomance, let alone Dire Maul or doing a complete clear of Blackrock, all 3 instances, like we'd do on occasion.

They call it "dungeon crawling" for a reason, not "dungeon sprinting".