Preach on the broken gear treadmill

[Nightstalker]

lol. Preach is probably one of my least favorite YouTubers to listen to.

They're not going to remove Titanforging/Warforging. It's insanely popular with the casuals and the only legitimate complaint that us Mythic raiders had was addressed already. People don't seem to understand just how rare and not worth fishing for a TF proc is.

Preach is an odd one because he doesn't understand that there is nothing that Blizzard can do that's going to make Mythic raiding more appealing. The high end of raiding was stagnant long before they even added Mythic difficulty and that's not going to change. They could remove all other forms of raiding from the game completely and it wouldn't inspire anyone to step into Mythic. We're such a small percentage of the game's population that catering to us would be an absolutely idiotic decision. The casuals prefer the game the way it is now, and they're what keeps this game afloat. Not us. We're here because this game has the best PvE hands down, we're not going anywhere. They can afford to tax us a little. They can't afford to piss off the casuals though.

The previous tier has been obsolete at the start of the next tier for a long time now, that's not going to change either.

If he wants to go back to the old way of doing things that the entire industry has moved away from, he's more than welcome to wait for Classic and see how that works out for him.

But he himself has to bring 1000s of player into the upper echelons of raiding. He is the savior of WoW raiding!

[justandulas]

But he himself has to bring 1000s of player into the upper echolons of raiding. He is the savior of WoW raiding!

You guys can mock him because the game is finally where casuals want it; but preach is right and far from alone. Almost all the big wow youtube have turned on it. Even guys like bellular who are more pro Blizz than even their employees have openly said bfa is fubar in this department.

If you think preach is wrong, what about asmongold? Heelvbabyface? Pretty much every wow YouTuber has turned on bfa and walked away for these reasons and more.

The endgame being devoid of real achievement and power gains and exclusivity may not be a problem to those who love the more casual diablo 3 inspired loot of current wow; but it is a problem since it has ran most mythic raiders and youtubers away.

Legion had nothing but pro youtubers and articles. Only the most casuals whined.

Bfa is dead to hardcore players

[Vampyrr]

Legion is the 3rd-4th most beloved expansion behind WOTLK and TBC. It is held in high regards, especially with mythic raiders and high end gamers. MoP has also aged well because most people feel their particular class played the best during that expac (not for me, but i get the argument)

WoD was generally considered the worst, by far, until BFA. BFA has taken that crown and ran so far ahead with it, WoD can't ever catch it.

Even the most positive youtubers like Bellular, who if you cut him his blood will literally spell out blizzard on the floor, has been honest that BFA is pretty FUBAR.

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vanilla was 10000x the game BFA is. Classes played better. we had agency. Gear MEANT something. the world felt big and alive. social bonds were real and not just LFR. And, most of all, it was an mmo RPG.

There's no RPG mechanics left in WoW. if there are, where are they?! Vanilla WoW was inspired by Everquest. Current WoW has more in common with Diablo 3. BFA is an ARPG at this point.

Vanilla was NOT 10000x the game it was maybe a 10th the game BFA is. Substantially less to do, gearing and farming took significant chunks of time. Raids were braindead easy compared to now. Take off the rose colored glasses a second and you would see that. Vanilla can be described as simple but time consuming. The social aspect was the main saving grace, you KNEW the people on your server who the guilds were and the better players and if you pvpd you even knew the opposite faction. But gameplay wise it doesn't hold a candle to anything in the last decade.

[MasterHamster]

Blizzard has forgotten just how important psychology is when it comes to MMORPGs. Yes, gear will always be the driving factor. But if you drown everyone in loot for no effort they won't care for it. If you allow everyone no matter how little effort into the very latest content, people won't care for it. It's as f'ing simple as that.
When I was gearing my first 60 in classic I had so many goals to work on, in order to get gear good enough to even be considered to get into Molten Core. I couldn't spend 10 hours solo in Kalimdor/EK clearing 3 minute quests that gave me gear better than anything from maxlevel dungeon. Like what the hell?

But hey, people who started playing in WoD or so probably has mostly positive things to say about current state of gearing. Sadly I think people who has joined in WoD or later are now the majority, hence why the game is transitioning into a seasonal 3rd person D3 ARPG. That is at least exactly what it feels like, a major content release is self-contained. Oh nice you farmed your arse off in the last content patch / season? Well no one fucking cares this brand new level 120 will catch up to you in 3 afternoons. Not like factions or anything else actually matters in the new 'season'. Characters used to reset when expansions were released now they are reset whenever a new raid is opened. Garbage.

MMORPGs doesn't work this way and that is why BFA isn't working out. You can throw gear at players, but there's no value in a random i400 you got from a 5 man dungeon boss you can't even remember the name of. People who defend the current design aren't the kind of players that keeps this game afloat. Just because you enjoy getting vastly overinflated ilvl gear thrown at you for what essentially is as difficult as clearing a leveling dungeon in Classic or BC does not mean that is healthy for the game as a whole. People are growing tired SO F'ING FAST at 120 it's not even funny. Problem is they can't even realize why that is. Why it feels pointless to gear up. You need a more tangible goal in endgame, than to merely have higher dps or HPS in content you've already done.

[natpick]

There are smarter people than him. You should not listen any idiot that is on you tube. His name fits his story - Preaching nostalgic bullshit that no one wants except nostalgic players. Luckily, not everyone is nostalgic.

i agree and have said this many times,these youtubers/twitch people really do not help games in the long run there just bring more negativity than positive to the game and are really only in it for the money.please form your own opinions and stop looking up to these guys like there are gods,there are no more clued up than any other player.

[justandulas]

Vanilla was NOT 10000x the game it was maybe a 10th the game BFA is. Substantially less to do, gearing and farming took significant chunks of time. Raids were braindead easy compared to now. Take off the rose colored glasses a second and you would see that. Vanilla can be described as simple but time consuming. The social aspect was the main saving grace, you KNEW the people on your server who the guilds were and the better players and if you pvpd you even knew the opposite faction. But gameplay wise it doesn't hold a candle to anything in the last decade.

I disagree on most of your points. Raiding, i conceded that the overall designs have improved substantially since vanilla... but the value of them has not. Raiding has never meant LESS in WoW. Gear has never meant LESS.

Sure, you could argue there's more to do with pet battles, warfronts, and islands vs vanilla... but vanilla had more content because everything you did MATTERED. Every bit of farming, exploring, gear hunting... it all meant something. Today's WoW is lacking anything of substantial value in those regards.

It also felt like a real RPG. Something current WoW does not since it resembles ARPG like Diablo 3 more than the MMORPG like EVERQUEST it was originally designed after.

And if we are simply talking gameplay, BFA's gameplay IS worse than Vanilla for some classes. Not all (looking at you paladins). The GCD change absolutely made a lot of classes in the game downright boring to play and not any fun. They were MUCH more fun in Legion to play.

Today's WoW is almost an ARPG for people who don't like MMORPG's.

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Blizzard has forgotten just how important psychology is when it comes to MMORPGs. Yes, gear will always be the driving factor. But if you drown everyone in loot for no effort they won't care for it. If you allow everyone no matter how little effort into the very latest content, people won't care for it. It's as f'ing simple as that.
When I was gearing my first 60 in classic I had so many goals to work on, in order to get gear good enough to even be considered to get into Molten Core. I couldn't spend 10 hours solo in Kalimdor/EK clearing 3 minute quests that gave me gear better than anything from maxlevel dungeon. Like what the hell?

But hey, people who started playing in WoD or so probably has mostly positive things to say about current state of gearing. Sadly I think people who has joined in WoD or later are now the majority, hence why the game is transitioning into a seasonal 3rd person D3 ARPG. That is at least exactly what it feels like, a major content release is self-contained. Oh nice you farmed your arse off in the last content patch / season? Well no one fucking cares this brand new level 120 will catch up to you in 3 afternoons. Not like factions or anything else actually matters in the new 'season'. Characters used to reset when expansions were released now they are reset whenever a new raid is opened. Garbage.

MMORPGs doesn't work this way and that is why BFA isn't working out. You can throw gear at players, but there's no value in a random i400 you got from a 5 man dungeon boss you can't even remember the name of. People who defend the current design aren't the kind of players that keeps this game afloat. Just because you enjoy getting vastly overinflated ilvl gear thrown at you for what essentially is as difficult as clearing a leveling dungeon in Classic or BC does not mean that is healthy for the game as a whole. People are growing tired SO F'ING FAST at 120 it's not even funny. Problem is they can't even realize why that is. Why it feels pointless to gear up. You need a more tangible goal in endgame, than to merely have higher dps or HPS in content you've already done.

Thank you! Precicely the points i've been making. especially how WoW today has more in common than Diablo 3 with group que, than it does it's MMORPG roots like EQ1 and vanilla WoW.

[Softbottom]

lol. Preach is probably one of my least favorite YouTubers to listen to.

They're not going to remove Titanforging/Warforging. It's insanely popular with the casuals and the only legitimate complaint that us Mythic raiders had was addressed already. People don't seem to understand just how rare and not worth fishing for a TF proc is.

Preach is an odd one because he doesn't understand that there is nothing that Blizzard can do that's going to make Mythic raiding more appealing. The high end of raiding was stagnant long before they even added Mythic difficulty and that's not going to change. They could remove all other forms of raiding from the game completely and it wouldn't inspire anyone to step into Mythic. We're such a small percentage of the game's population that catering to us would be an absolutely idiotic decision. The casuals prefer the game the way it is now, and they're what keeps this game afloat. Not us. We're here because this game has the best PvE hands down, we're not going anywhere. They can afford to tax us a little. They can't afford to piss off the casuals though.

The previous tier has been obsolete at the start of the next tier for a long time now, that's not going to change either.

If he wants to go back to the old way of doing things that the entire industry has moved away from, he's more than welcome to wait for Classic and see how that works out for him.

This is pretty much spot on in every possible way. good post..

[justandulas]

i agree and have said this many times,these youtubers/twitch people really do not help games in the long run there just bring more negativity than positive to the game and are really only in it for the money.please form your own opinions and stop looking up to these guys like there are gods,there are no more clued up than any other player.

These guys aren’t your toxic youtubers like heelvbabyface that feed off toxicity and negativity. These are guys like preach, asmongold, etc who do nothing but wow 24/7 and love the game and it kills them to see wow dying like this.

Despite how good it is for those at the bottom of the food chain in bfa, it’s the complete opposite at the top end. Higher end raiding and mythic have never been devalued to this extent. It’s pointless

[Gaidax]

And if we are simply talking gameplay, BFA's gameplay IS worse than Vanilla for some classes. Not all (looking at you paladins). The GCD change absolutely made a lot of classes in the game downright boring to play and not any fun. They were MUCH more fun in Legion to play.

Oh? Care to give an example?

Because fuck me, Vanilla gameplay was so basic that for BfA to be worse than that you literally need to have a class that has no attacking abilities worth using at all... oh wait Vanilla had that. Like I could name maybe 1 class that legit was more than one or two buttons rotations in PvE.

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These guys aren’t your toxic youtubers like heelvbabyface that feed off toxicity and negativity. These are guys like preach, asmongold, etc who do nothing but wow 24/7 and love the game and it kills them to see wow dying like this.

Despite how good it is for those at the bottom of the food chain in bfa, it’s the complete opposite at the top end. Higher end raiding and mythic have never been devalued to this extent. It’s pointless

Puhlease, don't turn these shitters into some kind of saints now. Especially not fucking Asmongold - a bloody clown that got his panties in a twist over Blizzard putting him back into his place.

They are literally psychological vampires feeding on negativity.

[justandulas]

Oh? Care to give an example?

Of which? Classes playing better in legion or classic? Warlocks played better in classic. Veng DH significantly better in Legion

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Oh? Care to give an example?

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Puhlease, don't turn these shitters into some kind of saints now.

They aren’t the toxic youtubers. They even hold weekly wow talk shows and are positive. If you had watched preach’s video instead of being negative yourself; you’d know he avoided being negative on purpose and said he thinks it’s gonna turn a corner with 8.2

Go watch an asmongold or preach video and tell me it’s toxic. Then go watch heelvsbabyface talk wow.

Like it or not wow is not in a good place with bfa

[Akka]

My Naxx gear was useless after Ulduar and my Ulduar stuff was useless after the coloseum and... do I need to continue ? And if you have forgotten r10 gear was far inferior to r25 gear. So people actually cleaning the content could not have the best loot, its a lot better now even if I dont really like the WF/TF system

The gap was not as big by far.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

The majority of hardcore players (high rated PvP and Mythic raiders) seem to agree with Preach more often than not... it generally seems to be lower skilled/casual players that aren't affected by the systems that people are talking about who disagree.

because they are so bad that they do not even know that they are bad, surfing @50% parses and think that they are gods.
And now they are afraid that their free gear will be taken .

[Gaidax]

Of which? Classes playing better in legion or classic? Warlocks played better in classic.

You are telling this to a guy who rolled a warlock in the sig in Vanilla. You want to tell me Vanilla warlock had better gameplay than BfA one?

Are you trolling or something?

In raid you set CoS/E simply spammed the shit out of Shadowbolt and Life Tap and watched threat hard because you had 0 threat management. In PvP it was more engaging, but not anything more than what you have now, far from it.

First bloody time when Warlock legit had any sort of higher PvE of gameplay that did not involve mashing one button was WoTLK. Oh and I guess there was a small sliver of time in the beginning of TBC when DS/Ruin still did not outscale off build.

[Lazuli]

I agree with the video. At this stage of WoW gear feels completely pointless to where I ask myself.. why not just go cosmetic if you're not going to take gear seriously? I mean really it is just vomited at you and you replace your entire set within very short periods of time completely invalidating your efforts. BiS? Who cares when it will just be replaced soon, oh and it's impossible to BiS with RNG procs WF/TF for the endless carrot, shameful design..

It feels like gear is in the same black hole that leveling is today, there is no point to leveling, we gain no new abilities or talents no sort of customization at all and in fact we got weaker in BfA as we leveled. This game is entirely ass backwards.

[redwolfrain]

There are smarter people than him. You should not listen any idiot that is on you tube. His name fits his story - Preaching nostalgic bullshit that no one wants except nostalgic players. Luckily, not everyone is nostalgic.

Sadly those "smarter" people have let ilvls inflate so much that we have to do a stat squish every two years. Its silly when you think about it, we started at 30kish hp in legion, and now are topping 200-220k as geared dps in the 2nd content patch. As soon as BFA is coming to an end another squish will come along and take us back to 40-50k hp ready to start the madness again.

[Skildar]

so we're back to making post promoting shitty videos...

[justandulas]

You are telling this to a guy who rolled a warlock in the sig in Vanilla. You want to tell me Vanilla warlock had better gameplay than BfA one?

Are you trolling or something?

In raid you set CoS/E simply spammed the shit out of Shadowbolt and Life Tap and watched threat hard because you had 0 threat management. In PvP it was more engaging, but not anything more than what you have now, far from it.

First bloody time when Warlock legit had any sort of higher PvE of gameplay that did not involve mashing one button was WoTLK. Oh and I guess there was a small sliver of time in the beginning of TBC when DS/Ruin still did not outscale off build.

I played vanilla warlock hardcore through naxx. Warlock ABSOLUTELY played better and had more class identity in Vanilla vs today where we are just sbolt mages.

In classic, you had dots, pets to manage, and were usually in charge of a curse. You know, that AWESOME mechanic that blizz removed because asking people to be competent is too hard?

Also, if you played BC at any level besides ultra mega casual... you'd know Warlocks SL/SL owned Arena PVP in TBC and 0/21/40 (sbolt locks) RAN high end raiding to the point where mages were asked not to come. You wanted nothing BUT PVE warlocks in Sunwell and BT.

Also, Life tap itself was a much more interesting mechanic then vs now because they really had a risk vs reward element to it.

[KaPe]

New raid hints at some attempts at creating items that might be more interesting and thus desirable, but it won't be enough - and really, it can't be enough as long as M+ is supposed to be a legitimate progress path. You can't add powerful set bonuses to raids, because it excludes people focusing on five mans - unless it's limited to specific raid instane, like stacking Uldir buff or two mini-sets in BDA. Then there's the matter of constantly bumping the item levels, which means World Quest/5 man trinket can be BiS for the entire expansion, constantly requiring a lucky Titanforge to keep up. It's not as bad as Arcanocrystal was in Legion, but still a huge mess. Had it happen to myself - ran across some random WQ mob at 20% on my way to the raid, got +40 TF trinket and thus made raid drops for that slot completely useless. Totally deserved.

It's not even that Titanforge kills the desire for Mythic raiding, but rewards feel really weird. There's rarely the feeling of "we'll kill boss X and get nice +15 upgrades" (unless you're amongst the top 50 or something), since you'll have plenty of TFs, M+ or other loot that's almost as good. You rarely even remember specific loot pieces, because "BiS" is "whatever rolls the highest and has socket", not "ring from X, belt from Y, weapon from Z." You don't farm gear, you play lottery with more rng layers than ever before.

Oh, and nice to see that "He's just whining for them clicks" is alive and well. I mean, you could just listen to the first 30 seconds and hear the opposite, but that wouldn't fit the narrative of "these damn Youtubers! "

[Gaidax]

I played vanilla warlock hardcore through naxx. Warlock ABSOLUTELY played better and had more class identity in Vanilla vs today where we are just sbolt mages.

In classic, you had dots, pets to manage, and were usually in charge of a curse. You know, that AWESOME mechanic that blizz removed because asking people to be competent is too hard?

Also, if you played BC at any level besides ultra mega casual... you'd know Warlocks SL/SL owned Arena PVP in TBC and 0/21/40 (sbolt locks) RAN high end raiding to the point where mages were asked not to come. You wanted nothing BUT PVE warlocks in Sunwell and BT.

Also, Life tap itself was a much more interesting mechanic then vs now because they really had a risk vs reward element to it.

In classic you had dots that you could not use in raid because of precious debuff slots limit, pets that you sacrificed because you ran DS/Ruin (as pets died like paper due to no resistance and no AoE protection), except for some odd blood pact bitch and your "in charge of curses" was literally tossing one instant every LONG time.

It's hilarious how you say that warlocks today are "sbolt mages" where in Vanilla and TBC they were LITERALLY that due to what I wrote above. I'm literally rolling over the floor laughing your bullshit. The audacity of saying that TODAY warlocks are shadow bolt mages, when they were fucking literally that in Vanilla/TBC is almost hilarious - it's like you point your finger at green coloured wall and casually say "it's red, man".

You try that shit now - wonder if you will manage to outdps your bloody imp.


And yes SL/SL owned, because it was braindead as fuck, you simply stacked dots, kited and drained - the end - the engaging gameplay.

Warlocks could be bloody played by a goddamn amoeba all the way up to WoTLK when Blizz finally realised that maybe pressing one button all over again in raids is not the best gameplay there is.


And yes I raided whole TBC up to and including Sunwell and as a warlock - you basically put CoE/CoS up or Doom if you were lucky (though not a big deal, because it did about same damage single Shadow Bolt did) and then you rolled your face over Shadow Bolt forever and ever with Life Tap during movement.

Oh and you had SoC for AoE woo.

Shit man engaging gameplay. So 'ard.


The engaging raid lock gameplay guide for Sunwell... phew, hope it's not too hard man. And it was basically same shit in Vanilla, except you were not OP as fuck.

[potis]

I played vanilla warlock hardcore through naxx. Warlock ABSOLUTELY played better and had more class identity in Vanilla vs today where we are just sbolt mages.

In classic, you had dots, pets to manage, and were usually in charge of a curse. You know, that AWESOME mechanic that blizz removed because asking people to be competent is too hard?

Also, if you played BC at any level besides ultra mega casual... you'd know Warlocks SL/SL owned Arena PVP in TBC and 0/21/40 (sbolt locks) RAN high end raiding to the point where mages were asked not to come. You wanted nothing BUT PVE warlocks in Sunwell and BT.

Also, Life tap itself was a much more interesting mechanic then vs now because they really had a risk vs reward element to it.

I am gonna agree with @Gaidax here.

This is an amazing pile of bullshit right here, this is why no one takes mmo-champion and "Vanilla/Classic" supporters seriously, dear god did you guys even play the game past UBRS? Or were you one of the 10 your guild was carrying cause no one knew better back then that finally managed to clear MC with 2.0.1 gear?

Any warlock that didnt only cast Shadow Bolt (with the occasional refresh the curse/dot) was terrible at the game and a waste of raid slot cause if you did anything else, you were wasting DPS.

Wasnt "First on the DPS with 1 button" the meme of World of Warcraft cause of Brutalus and Warlocks the last months of TBC?

Literally Shadow Bolt mages for 2 expansions?