Arcane torrent needed nerf but shadowmeld is fine??

[Tiwack]

I wish they wouldn't have turned PvE into an E-Sport.

That's entirely on the players, once again blizzard is just giving them what they say they want while flying by the seat of their pants as usual.

[Nathasil]

At some point it is well worth it even if healer has to mass res everyone else. The resto druid dominance was not established yet in Season 1 of BfA M+. But it was already clear that it was very inefficient to clear any trash after 2nd boss in ML. So while running with non-healer druids, I'm afraid to admit, how many +17,+18,+19 keys my groups depleted throughout the 1st Season just because of the failed death skips in ML (we rarely had resto druid, warlock or bdk in group, but often had some boomie that would die before landing a CR on the healer).

There are many other spots across M+ dungeons (especially on void-heavy weeks) where skips are very desirable. Just on top of my head: 2nd pull on the left side after starting a Temple key, which usually gets shrouded when Void emissary is not there.

Also, if you were active in M+ in Legion, you might remember just how powerful Failure Detection Pylons were. It made for a lot of easy skips and easy wipe recoveries. Shadomeld gives a lot of the same. Especially on the healers, since they are normally not the first to die.

Now again, this is a very niche problem. Not even 1%. Make it 0.001% if you wish. But if Shadowmeld was available to some horde race, I think a large fraction of characters starting from ~2.3k score (as of now) would pay for a race change. Especially the healers.

I just checked world top 100 alliance characters in M+. Only 22 of them are not Night Elves:
7 Rogues (they can vanish)
2 Hunter (they can feign death)
4 Shamans (night elf race not available)
5 Paladins (night elf race not available)
3 Prot Warriors (all of them dark iron dwarves)
1 Monk (pandaren)
So there are only 4 chars (warriors and monk) out of 100 that could benefit from playing Night Elf but for some reason decided not to race change. It would be interesting to check similar statistics for top 1000-3000 alliance chars but I know no easy way to do that.

P.S. The first response on this reddit question suggests a lot of different ways how to use Shadowmeld in M+, among other things to avoid certain boss abilities that could one-shot you.

Since you brought up Numbers, which is a GREAT WAY to discuss this topic:
According to
https://raider.io/mythic-plus-charac...ll/all#content
only 24 out of the top 100 M+ players for season 3 are Alliance. Which means 76% of the best M+ players in the world agree that the Nelf racial is worth jack shit.

Meanwhile, of the best 20 Horde M+ players in the world exactly 50% are Blood Elf. And only two of those are Demon Hunters (so they got no options). I did not go over the entire top100 because i could not find an easy way to filter players by race on RIO.

Yes, the Nelf racial is clearly DOMINATING the M+ scene worldwide. Not.

[harruin]

Since you brought up Numbers, which is a GREAT WAY to discuss this topic:
According to
https://raider.io/mythic-plus-charac...ll/all#content
only 24 out of the top 100 M+ players for season 3 are Alliance. Which means 76% of the best M+ players in the world agree that the Nelf racial is worth jack shit.

Meanwhile, of the best 20 Horde M+ players in the world exactly 50% are Blood Elf. And only two of those are Demon Hunters (so they got no options). I did not go over the entire top100 because i could not find an easy way to filter players by race on RIO.

Yes, the Nelf racial is clearly DOMINATING the M+ scene worldwide. Not.

That probably has more to do with them all being mythic raiders which greatly favors horde playerbase wise at the moment.

[ID811717]

That probably has more to do with them all being mythic raiders which greatly favors horde playerbase wise at the moment.

Even outside of mythic raiding, my friend list is literally full of people I met in M+ over the past 2.5 years. (Capped at 200 people or so).

Trading superior player connections for a superior racial trait is just not worth it. Unless a critical mass of players (both from my guild and my friend list) would all move at the same time. And that's outside of the realm of possibility in short term. Otherwise I'd faction change in a heartbeat. @Nathasil

[Nathasil]

Even outside of mythic raiding, my friend list is literally full of people I met in M+ over the past 2.5 years. (Capped at 200 people or so).

Trading superior player connections for a superior racial trait is just not worth it. Unless a critical mass of players (both from my guild and my friend list) would all move at the same time. And that's outside of the realm of possibility in short term. Otherwise I'd faction change in a heartbeat. @Nathasil

Still, all the arguments in this thread would suggest that the very best M+ players in the world right now would be able to pull of something even better if they were Nelf. And out of all of them you would think that there are five who transferred just for shits and giggles to be #1 in the world.

Yet, the top5 spots worldwide M+ Season 3 are ALL HORDE. It is obviously not the case that you can simply roll Nelf and improve your score by x...which would be the case if the racial was overpowered.

I will repeat what i said in the very beginning of this thread: The Nelf racial gives you an advantage in a direct timed competition against equally skilled players - which is the case in MDI. It is, however, NOT what you usually do in M+. The Nelf racial is not the best racial in this game if you just want to complete the highest M+ possible to be completed.

Also, the main reason the OP complained about the Nelf racial in the first place was simply that he saw more Nelf asses on the screen than he could handle. If they changed Nelf or simply disabled racials in the MDI all you would see in the MDI would be Belf asses instead (+one druid, of course). And SOMETHING tells me that the OP would be totally fine with seeing absolutely nothing except Belf asses all day....as is already the case in this game outside of the MDI.

[LedZeppelin]

yeah i mean the most broken op racial that literally turned entire pvp era for 3 years of purely humans + dwarf shaman or nelf druid wasn't alliance or something, while even with AT belfs weren't most broke pvp race and the game was actually far more balanced prior to every man for himself with diversity of races in pvp
in fact if not for horde dominance in pve raiding and how top end pve gear is best for pvp too (even if blizz bullsh8t say it doesn't matter, it did for ages), it would probably been alliance f8ck horde since the mass racial horde nerf in cata

3 years of purely human but it was nerfed after 8 years of being out.......

[LuminaL]

Just make your healer shadowmeld and mass res those who could not pass. That might still be better than clearing painful trash (such as ML mobs between 2nd and 3rd bosses, and then between 3rd and 4th bosses).



But we are racing on seconds in live keys as well. Regardless of whether you can time +10 and then deplete +11 by 30 seconds. Or you can time +21 and then deplete +22 by 30 seconds. Either way: getting those 30 seconds from shadowmeld will help you time a higher key (although, if you can not time +11, then lack of shadowmeld is not your biggest problem).

You will probably respond that it's a niche problem for 1% of game's population. And you will be correct. But likewise, the M+ meta should only be a concern for 1% of game's population (people want to invite only warrior tank, druid healer, and preferably only melee DPS players). Yet somehow it tickles down all the way to keys below +10. So I can see why the (lack of) shadowmeld is perceived in a similar way.

by racing on seconds I mean if a group of normal players ( and not crazy ass min/maxers or such ) are good enough to finish a key and make it +3 it hardly matters to them if they do it with 2 minute of extra time or 2:30 .

also as you said yourself, most of the players struggle on a lot more than the lack of shadowmeld, and on many fundamental levels too!

[DotEleven]

At some point it is well worth it even if healer has to mass res everyone else. The resto druid dominance was not established yet in Season 1 of BfA M+. But it was already clear that it was very inefficient to clear any trash after 2nd boss in ML. So while running with non-healer druids, I'm afraid to admit, how many +17,+18,+19 keys my groups depleted throughout the 1st Season just because of the failed death skips in ML (we rarely had resto druid, warlock or bdk in group, but often had some boomie that would die before landing a CR on the healer).

There are many other spots across M+ dungeons (especially on void-heavy weeks) where skips are very desirable. Just on top of my head: 2nd pull on the left side after starting a Temple key, which usually gets shrouded when Void emissary is not there.

Also, if you were active in M+ in Legion, you might remember just how powerful Failure Detection Pylons were. It made for a lot of easy skips and easy wipe recoveries. Shadomeld gives a lot of the same. Especially on the healers, since they are normally not the first to die.

Now again, this is a very niche problem. Not even 1%. Make it 0.001% if you wish. But if Shadowmeld was available to some horde race, I think a large fraction of characters starting from ~2.3k score (as of now) would pay for a race change. Especially the healers.

I just checked world top 100 alliance characters in M+. Only 22 of them are not Night Elves:
7 Rogues (they can vanish)
2 Hunter (they can feign death)
4 Shamans (night elf race not available)
5 Paladins (night elf race not available)
3 Prot Warriors (all of them dark iron dwarves)
1 Monk (pandaren)
So there are only 4 chars (warriors and monk) out of 100 that could benefit from playing Night Elf but for some reason decided not to race change. It would be interesting to check similar statistics for top 1000-3000 alliance chars but I know no easy way to do that.

P.S. The first response on this reddit question suggests a lot of different ways how to use Shadowmeld in M+, among other things to avoid certain boss abilities that could one-shot you.

In which case now we aren't talking about skipping trash so now we're focused on combat. In which case Shadowmeld would make it safer, but perhaps not as fast as an actual dps racial (granted, we do still get touch of elune, but that's either 1% haste or crit compared to like any of the Loa from Zandalari or Light's Judgement from LD or Berserking/Regeneration from Troll)

[sam86]

3 years of purely human but it was nerfed after 8 years of being out.......

only in tournaments too with pre-request chars...
During WoD pvp was dominated by horde even with the most broken OP racial to ever exist every man for himself because simply most top players play horde already and the extreme minority group who play wow only for arena still need to do hardcore raid to get best gear in non-tournament servers, and fastest way (and in BFA is getting to be 'only' way sadly, check how many alliance guilds did cruicible of storms mythic raid... i think 18?) was to play horde
So even with broken racial most wow hardcore players still played horde, while when they go tournament they make an alliance character since blizz give u full decked out one for tournament specifically
I'm horde since the days that alliance was majority, blizz need extreme action to fix it or game is just ruined, or the sadly most realistic solution they will probably just remove faction barrier and make alliance and horde kiss each others in raids and arenas, they did that already in lore anyway specially with reskinned races (seriously draenei HD should NEVER been alliance, they should hate the normal draenei with 25k+ year with passion since they left them and run away, heck joining old gods would make more sense than joining alliance!)

[ID811717]

Night Elf will not make anyone time keys 2 levels higher than they did before, and not even reliably 1 level across all keys. It's just an extra comfort level, and an extra safety net. Shadowmeld allows to simplify the gameplay: you learn new tactics faster, and you fail to execute them less often. All the ML+19 keys I depleted due to failed skips in Season 1 turned into +18s, and with Shadowmeld at least half of them would turn into +20s. I would have more shots at +20 keys, and ultimately more timed +20 keys. It's a little advantage in any given dungeon, but the cumulative effect can be great over a longer period of time.

All my M+ experience is on horde, and I mostly inhibit world 400-1000 bracket, never world 100. It is convenient to be making arguments about world 100 players, but it also makes for some superficial arguments about spherical cows. But I like cows, so let's continue.
- One aspect of Shadowmeld that would really help my groups is the quick wipe-recovery, allowing someone to Shadowmeld and res the group on spot instead of everyone respawning and running back (after trash/boss pulls gone wrong, or after some failed non-Shadowmeld skips). But most groups pushing for rank 1 timed keys likely can not afford even that quick recovery time, so this aspect of Shadowmeld is less valuable to them. (Or may be the cumulative effect from timing more rank-20 keys is still a big deal for them?)
- One-shots from boss abilities is a much bigger problem for rank 1 groups than for me.
- I also think that rank 1 key groups eventually run into scaling problems where Shadowmeld will not be the determining factor. It would be a determining factor for lower rank players like me.

To me personally, Shadowmeld is very appealing as a versatile racial that feels very good to have. Most of the keys that I'm doing are depleted due to stupidity and personal mistakes (not DPS), and Shadowmeld fixes a lot of that. So even if another racial gave an extra % of DPS - fuck it. Having more utility (in Shadowmeld) is more important than putting out better DPS numbers.

Still, all the arguments in this thread would suggest that the very best M+ players in the world right now would be able to pull of something even better if they were Nelf. And out of all of them you would think that there are five who transferred just for shits and giggles to be #1 in the world.

Yet, the top5 spots worldwide M+ Season 3 are ALL HORDE. It is obviously not the case that you can simply roll Nelf and improve your score by x...which would be the case if the racial was overpowered.

I think a lot of this comes down to logistics. If someone transfers to Alliance for a single push week, and then back to horde, they will get a lot of hate from community. And they need to pay the transfer money on top of that... Is it worth doing?

If they transfer to Alliance long-term, then they better bring a lot more than 5 people over. Even getting 5 people online can be a challenge, so you need capable friends to fill in spots (and friends need their own friends down the ladder... so you need to transfer an entire player ecosystem with you).

In which case now we aren't talking about skipping trash so now we're focused on combat. In which case Shadowmeld would make it safer, but perhaps not as fast as an actual dps racial (granted, we do still get touch of elune, but that's either 1% haste or crit compared to like any of the Loa from Zandalari or Light's Judgement from LD or Berserking/Regeneration from Troll)

Using Shadowmeld to avoid one-shots is something I was not even aware until I finished writing my previous post. I still think of Shadowmeld mostly as skip and recovery ability.

by racing on seconds I mean if a group of normal players ( and not crazy ass min/maxers or such ) are good enough to finish a key and make it +3 it hardly matters to them if they do it with 2 minute of extra time or 2:30 .

But 95% of normal player groups do not 3-chest their keys. Even on my alts I prefer to join key levels that will be 50% timed/50% depleted. More gear and more AP for a reasonable difficulty level.

[munkeyinorbit]

If they nerf shadowmeld there will be absolutely zero point playing alliance. It already is now but it will be even less.

If it already is zero point playing alliance then you shouldn't care. Remove shadowmeld. Make NE unable to use range weapons. Make dwarfs 20% slower. Who cares? There's zero point playing alliance.

I think it should stay as it is. I don't use it myself but I know people who use it and they have fun with it. Any change would make no difference to me but I don't want other people's fun reduced.

[Caus]

How would you nerf shadowmeld without making it complete garbage?

If it doesnt drop combat when you stealth, it would effectively go from being one of the strongest and most applicable racial, to be a weak niché battleground racial.

[DotEleven]

Using Shadowmeld to avoid one-shots is something I was not even aware until I finished writing my previous post. I still think of Shadowmeld mostly as skip and recovery ability.

Still, then we still have 2 options. Yeah, it's now more versatile. But it still either needs to be stacked or you lose 30 seconds vs the time saved or it's being used as an aggro drop which means we're not even saving time which is most people's complaint "It allows you to skip trash to save time"

[LuminaL]

But 95% of normal player groups do not 3-chest their keys. Even on my alts I prefer to join key levels that will be 50% timed/50% depleted. More gear and more AP for a reasonable difficulty level.

you got the idea Im talking about tho, It doesnt necessarily have to be +3. anything between +1 to +3 and Im sure 99% of those groups dont even use this mechanic with night elves.

yea in motherlode we do death runs and we dont even care what is the healer, its just a very, very small bonus point that we dont even consider when we are gathering players because any class with CR will do the trick, and there is many of them there. so what if our whole team is night elves? nothing worth mentioning at all, because for example as long as its a +1 we dont care if we end up with 1 extra second or 30.

most of the time I use shadowmeld in an event of wipe so I dont have to run from the start again or pay for repairs.

[Mintra]

you got the idea Im talking about tho, It doesnt necessarily have to be +3. anything between +1 to +3 and Im sure 99% of those groups dont even use this mechanic with night elves.

yea in motherlode we do death runs and we dont even care what is the healer, its just a very, very small bonus point that we dont even consider when we are gathering players because any class with CR will do the trick, and there is many of them there. so what if our whole team is night elves? nothing worth mentioning at all, because for example as long as its a +1 we dont care if we end up with 1 extra second or 30.

most of the time I use shadowmeld in an event of wipe so I dont have to run from the start again or pay for repairs.

Well, I guess you never had your 20 key depleted with 5-10 seconds after the timer, so you can care less. I had. I had Atal dasar depleted with 3 seconds over the timer - with shadowmeld it would be in time, because either we could do an easier cleaner skip or someone could use it on first boss to avoid mechanic and dps more, same with motherlode last week. I know, only a few people compete on those m+ leaderboards, but it’s pretty important stuff for us, as we can run only a few dungeons per week, and might not even get the one key that we want, so every deplete this close is a real bummer.
All I want is for Blizzard to make all dungeons and raids cross-faction, so we can choose any race we want.

[ID811717]

Well, I guess you never had your 20 key depleted with 5-10 seconds after the timer, so you can care less. I had. I had Atal dasar depleted with 3 seconds over the timer - with shadowmeld it would be in time, because either we could do an easier cleaner skip or someone could use it on first boss to avoid mechanic and dps more, same with motherlode last week. I know, only a few people compete on those m+ leaderboards, but it’s pretty important stuff for us, as we can run only a few dungeons per week, and might not even get the one key that we want, so every deplete this close is a real bummer.
All I want is for Blizzard to make all dungeons and raids cross-faction, so we can choose any race we want.

This happens all the time if you are trying to push, when every other key is 1 level higher than you previously managed to time in a specific dungeon. So it's always about figuring out slightly better pulls, plan cooldowns better, and not die to simple stuff. And otherwise you will deplete the key by just a couple of seconds.

But pushing M+ is also a very niche activity so most people around here are basing their opinion on their M+ farm experience. Can't blame them for that.

[ID811717]

Still, all the arguments in this thread would suggest that the very best M+ players in the world right now would be able to pull of something even better if they were Nelf. And out of all of them you would think that there are five who transferred just for shits and giggles to be #1 in the world.

I think they heard you.

Lashga already transferred to alliance before we had the conversation in this thread. Now Ramfam, Drjay, Vibezz, Stonee[face], Zmug, Vira, Floorpov are following the suit.

[Nathasil]

I think they heard you.

Lashga already transferred to alliance before we had the conversation in this thread. Now Ramfam, Drjay, Vibezz, Stonee[face], Zmug, Vira, Floorpov are following the suit.

That's good to see. Because: https://raider.io/mythic-plus-charac...ll/all#content

As of the moment of this writing...
- 75% of the top20 M+ characters in the world are Horde
- 74% of the top100 M+ characters in the world are Horde
- 72.6% of the top1000 M+ characters in the world are Horde

unrelated, but still a number to think about: Eternal HoF is at 66 raids for Alliance, has been full for the Horde for an entire month now

When i first commented on the "balance" (or lack thereof) it was half a month ago. Since then the "balance" has shifted from 76% Horde in top100 to now 74%. At this pace we will have parity in ~6 months.

[Maquegyver]

Easy. Arcane Torrent is Horde, so it must be nerfed to the ground. Shadowmeld is Alliance so it's fine.
Biased designers are biased.

Thanks for the laugh but please do go to your special ed classes.

[Aleax]

Arcane torrent got gutted because it was "too op for dungeons and m+" but I just watched a team of 5 nelf skip all the trash between boss 2-3 and 3-4 in motherlode during the mdi and crush the time of a +18.

Is it next on the nerf list, or is it fine because its not a popular horde race.

Shadowmeld is probably the best talent for Mythic+ yet ... but that's irrelevant because players should not care about optimization like Method for example. Bring the player and have fun, it should be your motto anyway.

Also I think that racials should be useful. Well god forbids a racial to be useful. Shadowmeld is useful in a dungeon, but that's fantastic.

That being said maybie it will be nerfed, I hope not, it won't be a good move.