NEW PTR Build - Nothing for warlocks

[JustaWarlock]

It's called reality, it's how it works for a long time, I find it surprising people find it surprising.

I'd accept "reality" a lot more if it was applied evenly to all the other classes.

[Baconeggcheese]

It's called reality, it's how it works for a long time, I find it surprising people find it surprising.

It's the usual case of "if it works, don't fix it"

This wasn't the case from vanilla up until 7.2.5, so I'm not sure what you consider a long time. If it worked, it got overhauled at some point during the xpac for better or worse, if it didn't work it got heavily reworked.

Again, the whole point is that they very clearly stopped making changes half way through legion in an *unprecedented* way.

so naturally classes and specs that actually struggle or are broken in some way get changes priority

The point was... if you're paying attention... that they aren't getting those changes either.

The classes that were slated to get significant changes and had the most egregious issues are at best getting mostly number tuning that in the past was typically done in a hotfix... but now is something they're reserving for a major patch.

Hence, this is completely different to how things were handled for most of the games life. (outside of feral druids, which are pretty much always left in a shit spot)

it's that simple. Either you take it or reroll.

The class design is pretty similar across the board. All classes / specs are very shallow right now. I personally tried damn near everything and didn't find anything that motivated me to continue playing, which is why I've almost entirely stopped. BFA has completely burned me out, its not for lack of desire to play either... its because of the design choices they've made.

And I'm very much not alone in this.

This is my most upvoted post on reddit, some post that was buried way far down this thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...e2g/?context=3


Here's asmongolds response to the OP as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...thing/eaer9ws/

With some of the most relevant bits being:

In BFA I feel that a lot of my audience has lost interest with the game and conversely lost interest in consuming content that's centered around BFA.

and

I would also be lying if I didn't acknowledge that BFA itself is partly responsible for my disillusionment of the current game. It's shallow, dull, meaningless, and not fun. On a personal level, I do not enjoy playing my character.

This is a person who this game is effectively their life, who has a massive following to the point where he's putting up near 30k viewers watching him... and those viewers interest in BFA is tanking.

Its not a few dudes crying on mmochamp about the better times man, its really not. I'm glad you're still enjoying the game, that doesn't mean everyone else is. They've fundamentally changed things and left a chunk of their audience behind.

[severan]

Its not that its even a matter of timing or issues they're looking for. As far as I can tell they're just straight up not making changes anymore unless something is an egregious issue.

Its something that took me far too long to come to terms with as well. You need to figure out whatever you enjoy with the state of the game as is, because they're not changing things. Just look at the classes they acknowledged as problem classes even before the xpac launched and what changes they've gotten since. People were expecting the usual hefty changes and they got hotfixable tuning changes in a major patch.

What makes warlock shallow for you? What would you change?

[Baconeggcheese]

What makes warlock shallow for you? What would you change?

So for the first question, its not just locks, its the general class design philosophy they seemed to go with as a whole. Class design is shallow today, its not just warlocks, and its not just "for me". The classes lack depth / agency.

For your 2nd question... Blizzard used to communicate their design goals etc etc once upon a time, so what I would change / give feedback on focused around the stated goals and where the class was currently failing to achieve them or could be made more enjoyable to me within them. Right now I have literally no idea what those goals are as there was clearly a gag order at some point quite a while back, so its hard to say.

If we're talking just me having complete creative freedom, that's a massive post. As I'd probably change more than I wouldn't. And its not just *what* I'd change, but *why* I'd change it.

Sorry if that's not really much of an answer. Not really sure how involved of a convo you're trying to have about this.

[Lucrece]

Plus all you have to do is search posts by Bacon on the Blizzard forum; he's posted several "bibles" already in terms of feedback and there ought to be some archived posts of his feedback for beta on both Legion and BfA. Or even here for that matter, as his viewpoints on destruction are pretty well recorded.

The only spec I can remotely enjoy from a gameplay perspective is demo and even that spec is not only woefully undertuned given its limitations but it needs some weak points seriously addressed (also the forbidden knowledge trait, since the duration is so low for how many molten core procs you deal with by the time it procs and you have to deal with the shard overflow and expenditure to then hope your 3+ second cast demonbolt isn't interrupted by movement in the last remaining few seconds of the buff remaining after you've dumped all molten cores and HoG's to not overcap shards from the hardcast Demonbolt).

[Filipse]

Your spells allready look badass, what more could you possibly want?

[Walrock]

Your spells allready look badass, what more could you possibly want?

So if I make shit look like a delicious chocolate cake, you will eat it?

Im not saying warlock is shit right now, PvE wise we are very good except Demo, PvP wise.. well we are shit.

[wholol]

So for the first question, its not just locks, its the general class design philosophy they seemed to go with as a whole. Class design is shallow today, its not just warlocks, and its not just "for me". The classes lack depth / agency.

For your 2nd question... Blizzard used to communicate their design goals etc etc once upon a time, so what I would change / give feedback on focused around the stated goals and where the class was currently failing to achieve them or could be made more enjoyable to me within them. Right now I have literally no idea what those goals are as there was clearly a gag order at some point quite a while back, so its hard to say.

If we're talking just me having complete creative freedom, that's a massive post. As I'd probably change more than I wouldn't. And its not just *what* I'd change, but *why* I'd change it.

Sorry if that's not really much of an answer. Not really sure how involved of a convo you're trying to have about this.

I've been saying this for a while now , not as a doom and gloom but rather from a business pov, WoW is blizzard's cash cow.

A cash cow in business terms is when a product is no longer a star ,aka potential growth has reached it's limit and is now in depreciation, it's ability to attract new consumers has almost gone completely and the only option left for this product is to be milked of every penny it can potentially generate , aka cash cow.

This is no longer the case of blizzard innovation reaching a limit or failing, shareholders are pressuring devs to generate as much profit with the least effort ( cost) involved and BFA reflects that entirely, at this point in time I highly doubt the game will take on a new direction or undergo any serious changes since that would involve needing more resources than it can generate, which means it's pretty much downhill from here.

This is as real as I can give it, I know a lot of people here will ignore or just refuse what I've said but it's the truth.

[Walrock]

I've been saying this for a while now , not as a doom and gloom but rather from a business pov, WoW is blizzard's cash cow.

A cash cow in business terms is when a product is no longer a star ,aka potential growth has reached it's limit and is now in depreciation, it's ability to attract new consumers has almost gone completely and the only option left for this product is to be milked of every penny it can potentially generate , aka cash cow.

This is no longer the case of blizzard innovation reaching a limit or failing, shareholders are pressuring devs to generate as much profit with the least effort ( cost) involved and BFA reflects that entirely, at this point in time I highly doubt the game will take on a new direction or undergo any serious changes since that would involve needing more resources than it can generate, which means it's pretty much downhill from here.

This is as real as I can give it, I know a lot of people here will ignore or just refuse what I've said but it's the truth.

People said the same thing in WoD, and then Legion came with M+, World Quests and the Artifact System.
Who knows what the future holds, if they dont step up then yes many people will stop playing wow until we get Legion 2.0.

[Gaidax]

I've been saying this for a while now , not as a doom and gloom but rather from a business pov, WoW is blizzard's cash cow.

A cash cow in business terms is when a product is no longer a star ,aka potential growth has reached it's limit and is now in depreciation, it's ability to attract new consumers has almost gone completely and the only option left for this product is to be milked of every penny it can potentially generate , aka cash cow.

This is no longer the case of blizzard innovation reaching a limit or failing, shareholders are pressuring devs to generate as much profit with the least effort ( cost) involved and BFA reflects that entirely, at this point in time I highly doubt the game will take on a new direction or undergo any serious changes since that would involve needing more resources than it can generate, which means it's pretty much downhill from here.

This is as real as I can give it, I know a lot of people here will ignore or just refuse what I've said but it's the truth.

This is pure bullshit, because Legion happened.

Blizzard is investing plenty into WoW, it does not mean that everything ends up being a smash hit. For example Warfronts and Isles are a pretty big investment and you need to be a fool to think that's some sort of maintenance shit going on there, but they don't seem to be successful, at least yet. The point is they genuinely try to innovate and you can't say they don't if the feature ends up being not successful.

[JustaWarlock]

For example Warfronts and Isles are a pretty big investment <snip> (and) they genuinely try to innovate

Lol, you really are ratcheting the trolling up to a whole new level. There is NOTHING innovative or unique about Isles. All they are a scenarios from MoP. That's it. They aren't even a bunch of unique scenarios. Same with the warfront. It's just a scenario set in Arathi that's almost impossible to lose unless 3/4 of the group are AFK.

Reusing art assetts and existing systems is not a big investment or innovative - in fact the only reason we got them was because it was so easy and effortless for them to throw out a few new scenarios and call it content.

They're not even good, fun or engaging scenarios.

[Gaidax]

Lol, you really are ratcheting the trolling up to a whole new level. There is NOTHING innovative or unique about Isles. All they are a scenarios from MoP. That's it. They aren't even a bunch of unique scenarios. Same with the warfront. It's just a scenario set in Arathi that's almost impossible to lose unless 3/4 of the group are AFK.

Reusing art assetts and existing systems is not a big investment or innovative - in fact the only reason we got them was because it was so easy and effortless for them to throw out a few new scenarios and call it content.

They're not even good, fun or engaging scenarios.

Yes, nothing innovative, except full fledged AI enemy faction and randomized events and spawns based on weekly event. But I bet that was done over the coffee break by an intern there.

Totally like MoP scenarios breh.

[JustaWarlock]

Yes, nothing innovative, except full fledged AI enemy faction and randomized events and spawns based on weekly event. But I bet that was done over the coffee break by an intern there.

Randomised events and spawns are not innovative, they're cost cutting exercises. Rather than design proper instances etc, they just develop a couple of scenarios and randomly spawn different (but mostly the same) mobs. Real difficult to do and massive innovation at work there! Oh gee what pack of mobs will be in the same place today? Will they look like pirates or naga or mogu?

The AI is a joke and hardly innovative. They had alliance npc's fighting us in ToC, and they were more intelligent than this island AI, unless you consider randomly jumping around, chain stunning and running away at a set health % as innovative AI.

The AI never does anything unique or special - to call it AI is a joke. It's just a little bit of scripting. If the AI actually tried to stop us taking objectives, tried to steal tags, picked off healers etc then maybe it might be more.

[Gaidax]

Randomised events and spawns are not innovative, they're cost cutting exercises. Rather than design proper instances etc, they just develop a couple of scenarios and randomly spawn different (but mostly the same) mobs. Real difficult to do and massive innovation at work there! Oh gee what pack of mobs will be in the same place today? Will they look like pirates or naga or mogu?

The AI is a joke and hardly innovative. They had alliance npc's fighting us in ToC, and they were more intelligent than this island AI, unless you consider randomly jumping around, chain stunning and running away at a set health % as innovative AI.

The AI never does anything unique or special - to call it AI is a joke. It's just a little bit of scripting. If the AI actually tried to stop us taking objectives, tried to steal tags, picked off healers etc then maybe it might be more.

You can prance around this all you want, but reality is these are new and pretty substantial pieces of content that did not exist before and took quite a lot of effort to implement, so honestly - cut the crap.

If you don't like something or something fell short - it does not automatically invalidate the considerable effort put into it and every intelligent person with a lick of common sense can see that Warfronts and Isles with accompanying mechanics took a lot of effort to produce and yes, they are innovative when it comes to WoW because it's something you did not have before.


And no, if something took an effort to make it does not necessarily guarantee it will be a success, that's life. That does not invalidate the effort though.

[JustaWarlock]

You can prance around this all you want, but reality is these are new and pretty substantial pieces of content that did not exist before and took quite a lot of effort to implement

That's why we disagree. I don't believe they are substantial at all. What's substantial reusing a system from legion to collect mats to spawn a scenario that gives free 370 and 340 loot? What's innovative about that? It's all reused systems. Even the zone and art assetts are reused.

Islands also reuse most of their systems and assetts. How are island scenarios "new" when they're just reusing scenario tech from MoP, and how are they substantial at all? They would have to be one of the easiest pieces of "content" to add too, because it's all reuse of existing systems and assetts.

[MrCool]

Yes, nothing innovative, except full fledged AI enemy faction and randomized events and spawns based on weekly event. But I bet that was done over the coffee break by an intern there.

You must suck at PvP (or ignorant) to call that "full fleged AI"

[Gaidax]

You must suck at PvP (or ignorant) to call that "full fleged AI"

It acts within parameters it was given - abilities it has, tuning it has and difficulty level it is supposed to give, does not make it less of an AI.

The fact that I can wreck solo all 3 of them at the same time is not AI issue, but simply a massive gap between power and tools I have and they have.

I thought this much was obvious... but hey it's MMO-C...

[Urgfelstorm]

Yes, nothing innovative, except full fledged AI enemy faction and randomized events and spawns based on weekly event. But I bet that was done over the coffee break by an intern there.

Totally like MoP scenarios breh.

All of this has been in the game for a long time. There is nothing new about full fledged enemy faction AI, its just another word for moderately more interactive boss AI.

Randomized events, spawns based on weekly's have been around since mop. This expansion is by far the most shittiest one they've put out, stop digging the hole admit it and move on.

Does it have interesting things? sure absolutely. Are they interesting enough to hold long term interest? Not really.

You like the class changes and thats fine, you like the new destro or affliction or whatever the devs cooked up? great! most of us dont. Affliction is by far so one dimensional its absolutely boring, some of us HATE hard casting fillers but thats a discussion for another time.

The reality is that developers are there to get paid, they make these new "exciting" design choices because quite frankly they need to introduce change to justify their existence. Its not about creation its about getting paid. Thats how most design / dev teams work no offense to devs that frequent here.

Stop drinking the kool aid or waiting for the comet to take you away, reality is this expansion pales in comparison to legion, its just a cut down bastardized blown up shadow of legion and quite frankly if you ask me this expansion was designed by the "B" dev team. You will see an excellent one next go

I mean they did pull holinka back into wow on the class design team....

[Gaidax]

All of this has been in the game for a long time. There is nothing new about full fledged enemy faction AI, its just another word for moderately more interactive boss AI.

Boss is a pure 100% script sitting in its 100% predictable environment, there is nothing "AI" about it.

I mean, cmon bruh...

[Urgfelstorm]

Dude have you done mythic islands? its the same predictable shitty casts every time, you cant possibly think thats "AI" all they do is seek out player targets and simply go through their rotation. That isnt AI. Not by a long shot, its about as predictable and scripty as a BOSS with a mutable environment.

This is oversimplified but its literally, scan player class, scan spec, if healer found use following script.

You either dont code or dont work in computing, i can write the pseudo code for you if you like. Shit i could literally text code it using powershell if you want to see it? I bet it will come close to the script they use lol.

Just a bunch of if then else statements youre calling AI