9.0 General Discussion

[huth]

Passive talents shouldn't exist imo.

I can't agree with that. Being able to choose how complex your rotation is has advantages and for some players may be a necessity.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Looking at fire nova, if there was a flame shock spreader their AOE might be significantly increased, possibly higher then what Blizzard would want.

I can't agree with that. Being able to choose how complex your rotation is has advantages and for some players may be a necessity.

Yeah, I agree on that. If someone wants to make their rotation just a bit less complex via talent..well I don't see an issue other then some egotistical people having a fit.

[Grimbold21]

Looking at fire nova, if there was a flame shock spreader their AOE might be significantly increased, possibly higher then what Blizzard would want.





Yeah, I agree on that. If someone wants to make their rotation just a bit less complex via talent..well I don't see an issue other then some egotistical people having a fit.

If that was Blizzard's reasoning, then it wouldn't make sense to have FN there as a talent.

- - - Updated - - -

And? So what?

I already agreed that that's the case. But I can't think of any games where it's not the case, where you actually have any significant number of choices. Any game where you have as many choices as WoW, some stuff is going to end up being less effective. In the longer-term, yeah that stuff needs to be buffed or removed (or other stuff nerfed or whatever), but acting like it's some sort of shocking failure that means WoW's devs are unusual or "bad", is just ludicrous.

And "for a while now"? Try "since Vanilla".

If all you mean is that one talent is mechanically dysfunctional, sure, it probably is. But if that's the bar, then it's more like 5% of talents or less that are actually "mechanically dysfunctional".

And? What is your point? That we should be more forgiving of such discrepancies because they exist elsewhere as well? Because it's been a trend for a long time? If anything those are arguments in favor of rectifying such imbalances.

Moreover, given the stark difference between a vanilla and retail talent tree, these differences are exacerbated in the latter, because they are fewer but possibly more impactful.

[Nyel]

And this is what it boils down to - if abilities are theorycrafted to be even slightly better than other abilities, a whole vocal chunk of WoW players just say "These are good, the rest are trash and pointless".

It's just not as simple as stuff like "There are so many things they could and they choose to do nothing." - That's just bollocks. It's intellectually lazy bollocks. It's not a genuine criticism, even. It's not valid. It's just pointless sneering. Can they improve things? Yeah but do you think they aren't trying? Clearly you do think that, and it's ludicrous. That's what's really pointless here - Blizzard actually making an effort to try and give us choices, because however good they do, people will just reject anything but the best couple of choices (numerically, not even in terms of real in-game effectiveness, in a lot of cases), and the rest will be treated as trash.

It has not much to do with theorycrafting in the first place. That comes into play when it’s about tuning. But many Covenant abilities don’t have (just) tuning issues, they have mechanical issues.

Two Covenant skills for priests force you into melee range. A ranged spec in melee range? Not going to happen and people are not hopping into melee range to use a 1m CD. That’s inherently bad design because it’s counterintuitive to your entire class design.

Shamans have four skills that deal AoE damage and healing. For Elemental, only one ability directly interacts with a talent (Chain Harvest with Echo Shock) - this skill will in this case always be better than the others just because of that fact. On top of that it forces you to pick that one talent because this combo is so strong that it’s pretty much mandatory. The Nightfae ability gets its damage split by the amount of targets, e.g. one target means it gets the full damage, two targets it’s 50:50 etc. And then you heal your allies for 40% of that damage done. This sounds neat, right? Oh, but it deals less damage, heals for less, must be channeled (even as Enhancement!) and has a longer cooldown than Chain Harvest. This simply doesn’t make sense in any given case.

And no, it’s not bollocks. If you would follow the beta forums or play beta by yourself, this is what’s happening at the moment and why so so so many people are concerned. Hundreds of people on the forums in the different class threads complaining about this disconnect between theory (devs) and practice (testers. One step forward, two steps back.

A lot of Blizzard‘s design decisions don’t make any sense. It’s like every Covenant has its own designer and they don’t communicate with each other. That’s why you have stuff like the Priest (where nothings really useful) or Shaman (where you basically have four iterations of the same skill but one was designed with talents in their mind and the others weren’t) Covenant skills. If it’s the case or not, it seems like the devs don’t communicate with each other. This is just an observation of what’s happening in this beta (again).

[Aeluron Lightsong]

If that was Blizzard's reasoning, then it wouldn't make sense to have FN there as a talent.

Why not? if you think a lack of flame shock spreader makes fire nova nonfunctional.....you act like it does nothing, which isn't true.

[Eurhetemec]

And? What is your point? That we should be more forgiving of such discrepancies because they exist elsewhere as well? Because it's been a trend for a long time? If anything those are arguments in favor of rectifying such imbalances.

Moreover, given the stark difference between a vanilla and retail talent tree, these differences are exacerbated in the latter, because they are fewer but possibly more impactful.

My point is that it's totally unrealistic to expect all these imbalances to be "rectified".

It's not about being "forgiving". It's about not having completely unreasonable beliefs that are totally divorced from reality. If you live in the real world, you point out the imbalances sure, you want them to be improved or fixed, but you also accept that just because one thing is slightly better than one other thing, it doesn't mean the designers are "shit" or "terrible" or "bad" or "lazy".

I've just really had enough of all this bollocks about the designers being "bad". It's not just WoW. It's fucking every multiplayer game in the entire world. The same tired fucking pointless arguments. "Oh one ability is slightly better than another one, the designers are so bad and lazy! They should all be fired and replaced with real designers!" and the best bit is sometimes people say the game they think has "real designers", and you go over to the forums for that game, and the players are saying the same tired hyperbolic overwrought overemotional overdramatic shit - "Omg my class is BROKEN because I do 5% less damage but I have to press 1 more button every 30 seconds to do it!!!! LAZY STUPID DESIGNERS!!!!!!111".

Why not, y'know, just identify the abilities that aren't up to scratch, and why they aren't, instead of all this drama and hyperbole? Nyel literally admitted he was exaggerating - and obviously he was, claiming 4/4 abilities for multiple classes were worthless. But that sort of exaggeration and hyperbole is the opposite of helpful in getting stuff fixed. That kind of hyperbole stops stuff getting fixed.

Why not accept that the designers are competent and trying, but that some of the abilities actually need fixing? Why not accept that occasionally, an ability you think is "broken", is in fact, perfectly good, just not your cup of tea?

[Xilurm]

So any druid that levels through legion with chromie time doesn't get "dreamwalk" right? Wish they would fix this. You can fly there but still...

[Blayze]

Passive talents shouldn't exist imo.

I prefer passive talents because I don't want buttons for the sake of buttons, or at least four different AoE abilities or something.

[Revamp Man]

Looking at Ret's they seem fine up until NightFae's one, thats the only one I am a bit "Umm ok I guess."

well with ret you get an aoe judgement which would be ok if it wasnt such a long CD
the venthyr 4m cd with a 30s duration of "makes hammer cleave if it procs" is weird
night fae....i dont think they understand how blessings work

[Aeluron Lightsong]

well with ret you get an aoe judgement which would be ok if it wasnt such a long CD
the venthyr 4m cd with a 30s duration of "makes hammer cleave if it procs" is weird
night fae....i dont think they understand how blessings work

Like I said, compared to the over covanents offerings, I think 2/3 is pretty good considering. The blessing of seasons well it just left me confused.

[formerShandalay]

So any druid that levels through legion with chromie time doesn't get "dreamwalk" right? Wish they would fix this. You can fly there but still...

I leveled a druid a few days ago, through Exile's Reach and WoD. At lvl 50 I went to Legion Dalaran and the first thing that happened was Hamuul Runetotem giving me the quest for the dreamwalk (sending you to Moonglade to partake in the ritual etc).
So you can get it no problem.
Also, for anyone who might want a Dalaran Hearthstone the Innkeeper Amisi Azuregaze in the central inn (forgot the name, the one that's not faction bound) gives you one if you tell her you lost yours.

[Nagawithlegs]

Between the nice ship they have and the two wackier characters on Exiles Reach, does anyone else think Blizz is trying to make the Forsaken more likeable/pitiable for new players?

BFA's storyline for them might make more sense to a new player that way. Arguably moreso than the old lore diehards that think all of them are inherently bad.

[TomatoBisque]

Between the nice ship they have and the two wackier characters on Exiles Reach, does anyone else think Blizz is trying to make the Forsaken more likeable/pitiable for new players?

BFA's storyline for them might make more sense to a new player that way. Arguably moreso than the old lore diehards that think all of them are inherently bad.

eh, it's not like they haven't had wacky Forsaken characters before or moments involving them being pitiable. It's just their aesthetic is pretty dark and dreary, and a lot of their humor tends to be pretty morbid. But the biggest thing is that their big name characters are pretty much all assholes and traitors: Sylvanas, Putress, Nathanos. The only one left out there is Lilian, who pretty much only became a member of the Forsaken in Legion/BFA. After that there's uh... more apothecaries who are also evil?

I do think there's definitely an attempt to show the likeable or empathetic qualities of the Forsaken recently with characters like Derek Proudmoore and Calia, although it's weird that they choose to use them instead of something like the Desolate Council. The former have big names but had basically no personality or appearance before this, so the value of having a totally original character who has been in Forsaken society this whole time would have more value. Unfortunately they all got murdered to make Sylvanas look more evil so meh

it's not like Blizzard storytelling has ever been amazing. Even back in the "golden days" of SC1/WC3, the story beats across both those games are incredibly similar. People like to go on about how Illidan or Sylvanas or whoever is gonna be the next Kerrigan because of SC2 lolz, but Arthas's story across WC3 was pretty similar to hers in SC1, and the Arthas redemption has been hinted at since Wrath

[Eurhetemec]

Between the nice ship they have and the two wackier characters on Exiles Reach, does anyone else think Blizz is trying to make the Forsaken more likeable/pitiable for new players?

BFA's storyline for them might make more sense to a new player that way. Arguably moreso than the old lore diehards that think all of them are inherently bad.

I don't think this is anything new. The Forsaken in Exile's Reach are very like the Forsaken in Vanilla. So any "old lore diehard" who is mad about that is not really much of an "old lore diehard", more like they're one of those weirdos who is too into one of the sides in the lore and likes to write overblown internet-person screeds about how everyone who plays a Forsaken is a baby-eating monster and should be banned from WoW. That's died down a bit nowadays thankfully.

I think cleanly separating them from Sylvanas will involve making them a bit more sympathetic, but they've always been somewhat sympathetic. They have their baddies, but so do most races in WoW (it's less obvious with Night Elves because all their baddy versions are Satyrs, Naga, and so on).

[huth]

(it's less obvious with Night Elves because all their baddy versions are Satyrs, Naga, and so on).

Most of, you mean. Do i have to remind you of Cataclysm?

[Eurhetemec]

Most of, you mean. Do i have to remind you of Cataclysm?

Please don't make me think about Cataclysm. < weeps >

But yeah okay I'd forgotten that guy. Thanks for ruining my perfectly good suppressed memories!

[Xilurm]

I leveled a druid a few days ago, through Exile's Reach and WoD. At lvl 50 I went to Legion Dalaran and the first thing that happened was Hamuul Runetotem giving me the quest for the dreamwalk (sending you to Moonglade to partake in the ritual etc).
So you can get it no problem.
Also, for anyone who might want a Dalaran Hearthstone the Innkeeper Amisi Azuregaze in the central inn (forgot the name, the one that's not faction bound) gives you one if you tell her you lost yours.

Doesn't work if you wanna level through Legion though, with Chromie Time. And it seems a lot of people have this problem.

Apparently they put a hotfix out but it only works for players that haven't done said quest. If you have a druid that's done it you're screwed.

[Nyel]

After doing Suramar again on another toon to unlock Highborne, I just have to say how much WoW needs a proper endgame zone like Suramar and what an amazing job Blizzard did back in Legion with it. It might be the best zone they've done yet, in every aspect. Revendreth comes pretty close, but is no endgame zone (unfortunately).

I'm sure the development of Suramar was a ton of work and most likely took twice the resources that they needed for Azsuna, Highmountain etc., but it just was worth it. And not having something similar in BfA and Shadowlands hurts a lot in my opinion (no, the Maw really isn't something like Suramar).

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I enjoyed Suramar but if I went purely by this forum, it wasn't always the case. I've said many times I'm fine with more Suramar esque endgame zone long as it keeps you busy but not in a way you feel you have to stay ahead so to speak. I don't even think they are lazy, I think its more of what they vision for whatever area they are working on. The Maw wouldn't work for a Suramar place. It almost seems like its not a place for extended endgame time which is anti gameplay but thematically it fits.

[Sondrelk]

Looking back most of what made Suramar great was that it was a unique zone though. If you try to htink back you will quickly remember that there was a large percentage of that zone was that the same boring stuff the other zones had like the Vrykul town or the giant Legion infested area.
I really feel that Revendreth should in theory scratch that same itch if you choose the Venthyr covenant. Now if you want a dedicated endgame made with the care and attention you get when the entire playerbase is supposed to experience the same thing then I can get behind that, but other than that I really feel like Suramar was a zone like most others when it came to questing, with the thing that made it unique being the actual city.