Preach Developer Interview with Ion Hazzikostas - Patch 9.1

[unknownforce]

So you want the rewards from Torghast, but don't want to run it. I guesds they should mail you BiS gear then too huh?

You clearly didn't understand what I was trying to type. I don't mind running it but I don't want to be forced to run it on every single week on all characters. Does it hurt to have an accumulative? no there's no downside in doing this. You would just get 2280 if you don't run it the previous week.

[Argorwal]

You know.... you are agreeing with them right? You are just mad for the sake of being mad.

Sims are the perfect way to show what GEAR does to damage.

Sims are NOT for shit like rng in a 2 minute fight, getting 7 movement mechanics in a row as an arcane mage, pure skill, phasing bosses at certain times/bosses go immune. More shit i can't think of atm.

Sims show that GEAR is about 1% per ilvl. So GEAR is not an issue when talking about roughly geared toons. Seriously go look at warcraft logs. Every single class will have multiple people at the same ilvl + - 50% dps. The average player in this game is dogshit, complete trash at the game. They blame gear, when in fact its skill.

Absolutely all of this.

[Bigbazz]

I hope you knoe that you can alter sims with custom strings and litrally recreate a mythic raid boss right (with add spawns and downtimes)? if not you know it now, no normal M raider would sim Patchwerk unless WR 2k trash.

You're calling that player a "WR2k trash" then? Because that's exactly what the person who posted the simcraft comparison was using, that I said was useless for real world comparison.

And I've never met anyone who knew how to edit an APL let alone recreate a mythic boss fight within Simcraft and I used to as far back as MOP optimise the APL myself for Arms (in particular in MOP/WOD as it was wonky under some circumstances.) And if it was so easy to do this and recreate these bosses, I think the developers of simcraft would have added in newer fights after 5-6 years of the same defaults, the newest one I think is the dungeon one which is still listed as a "WIP Beta" - I think you're massively underestimating the difficulty of creating good custom strings.

I'm probably WR3000 at the moment, I don't keep track? I log in once a week to raid with my buddies and that's all I do, some of whom consist of past top 100 raiders like myself, current effort you put in the game and/or who you choose to play with for enjoyment doesn't having a bearing on your brain function.

Anyway, I follow Max the raid leader from Limit on Youtube as he always has interesting things to say, and it's interesting he shares my opinion of Simcraft when used for real world situations, he thinks it's trash too. Now the problem with these discussions is you've come in here with a real smug and just negative combative attitude, do you have a reason for that or?

its only you who has 0 idea judging by this post i knwo oyu never progress raided and how what raid execution + kill times are you could be the best boomkin in the world and only have 90% parses cuz half of your raid is dogshit and your kill takes 50% longer than in a normal guild.

PS: SF Logs KEKW /facepalm

It's like here again, you replied to that guy by just being a complete dick. You are right, the kill times matter more than anything when it comes to dps so it's a meaningless comparison unless the kill times are controlled too. But you can say that without that disrespectful attitude that only results in people fighting with each other instead of trying to come to an understanding, it's just pathetic.

Why are you so angry? It's not healthy to talk to people like this.

[Tsarez]

As a new player, I feel the problem is not that the difference in gear is causing a big damage difference. That is quite normal and expected I'd say. On the other hand, the mechanics that make this gear available to new players is quite weird.

You hit this certain ceiling that your skill allows you to achieve. Let's say you're good enough for Heroic CN. That would cap you out shy a few points above 213.

People who have played this game longer than you did, and collected their gear through the weekly vault, can still out-gear you even if they have never set foot in Mythic raiding. The vault gives you 220 just for completing one M+10. M+14, which you can get carried through easily, even gives 226. Over months of the expansion having only one season, most people who have played since start reached already this item level and outperform me at all times.

I found a guild to raid Heroic with. They already do Mythic, but won't take me because my gear doesn't produce the needed DPS. But according to my parses, I am somewhere between 50-90 on any given fight. Considering I'm basically still learning this game I find that okay. The other hunter who sometimes joins us either dicks around in Heroic, or is just terrible. Despite being Mythic geared with 225+ item level, his parses are gray. Always. He still does more net damage than I do.

This is where my frustration comes from. I have no way to jump from 213 (and I'm not even there yet) to above that, other than waiting weeks and months until the vault gives me upgrades. This, or I manage to bring my guild to carry me through Mythic, which they won't, since they're still progressing on 5/10.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

You're calling that player a "WR2k trash" then? Because that's exactly what the person who posted the simcraft comparison was using, that I said was useless for real world comparison.

And I've never met anyone who knew how to edit an APL let alone recreate a mythic boss fight within Simcraft and I used to as far back as MOP optimise the APL myself for Arms (in particular in MOP/WOD as it was wonky under some circumstances.) And if it was so easy to do this and recreate these bosses, I think the developers of simcraft would have added in newer fights after 5-6 years of the same defaults, the newest one I think is the dungeon one which is still listed as a "WIP Beta" - I think you're massively underestimating the difficulty of creating good custom strings.

I'm probably WR3000 at the moment, I don't keep track? I log in once a week to raid with my buddies and that's all I do, some of whom consist of past top 100 raiders like myself, current effort you put in the game and/or who you choose to play with for enjoyment doesn't having a bearing on your brain function.

Anyway, I follow Max the raid leader from Limit on Youtube as he always has interesting things to say, and it's interesting he shares my opinion of Simcraft when used for real world situations, he thinks it's trash too. Now the problem with these discussions is you've come in here with a real smug and just negative combative attitude, do you have a reason for that or?




It's like here again, you replied to that guy by just being a complete dick. You are right, the kill times matter more than anything when it comes to dps so it's a meaningless comparison unless the kill times are controlled too. But you can say that without that disrespectful attitude that only results in people fighting with each other instead of trying to come to an understanding, it's just pathetic.

Why are you so angry? It's not healthy to talk to people like this.

i did not call that player anythig he prob know too that you never sim ST ever he just trowed in a quick sim for sake of it
and here is a site you can start with https://github.com/simulationcraft/s...ki/ActionLists
but players @ my lvl <WR50 know how to eddit a boss apl, we even have special boss gear sets for aoe and cleave

[Bigbazz]

They already do Mythic, but won't take me because my gear doesn't produce the needed DPS. But according to my parses, I am somewhere between 50-90 on any given fight. Considering I'm basically still learning this game I find that okay. The other hunter who sometimes joins us either dicks around in Heroic, or is just terrible. Despite being Mythic geared with 225+ item level, his parses are gray. Always. He still does more net damage than I do.

Well gear is always going to be a big factor, Preach was just arguing it had a larger factor than in the past. Confirming that isn't something you can easily prove but people in this thread have already made up their minds one way or another.

Being good enough for Mythic is more about just learning and understanding the fights, it's not a skill you can learn in heroic. I started raiding in this expansion in January after 4 years off and I think was around 213 when we killed Shriekwing Mythic, with a few pugs in group (guild didn't have a mythic roster then, and had no prior plans to raid mythic), but most of my gear came from M+ and I've been ilvl226 for a good while, not doing any content other than logging in once a week 2 hours of raiding. A lot of guilds are at this point or have stopped entirely.

Getting gear is easy, you can do M+ and get up to 220 via valor and a 226 vault. If you want to move forward you have to take some inititive here and do what you must (ask for help?) to get geared. You said you get 50-90 parses but the 225 hunter gets grey but does more dps, that doesn't make sense unless you're talking about Ilvl bracket, by which point the comparison is kinda meaningless because higher ilvl bracket is where all the good players currently are. You can literally have a 99% parse on heroic and in the same guild on Mythic end up with green or grey parses just due to a scuffed strategy or execution, or because you were cheesing on Heroic and on Mythic you don't cheese because you need to kill the boss. Your parses are closely tied to the entire performance of your raid, at least for most classes on most bosses.

If your guild is progressing on 5/10 a lot of guilds at this point are just extending the lock anyway and gearing via M+ and I think it's a hard sell to bring an inexperienced 213 hunter to Mythic Artificer/Lady. You either need to just get in M+ and gear fast or set your sights on the next tier.

i did not call that player anythig he prob know too that you never sim ST ever he just trowed in a quick sim for sake of it
and here is a site you can start with https://github.com/simulationcraft/s...ki/ActionLists
but players @ my lvl <WR50 know how to eddit a boss apl, we even have special boss gear sets for aoe and cleave

I used to run all sorts of sims in the past to narrow down optimisation as we were going for rank 1 speed kills in HFC (we held a few of them for a bit and some of our players went on to world first race raiding, like Zix who went to Pieces). I have a good idea about high parsing optimisation but quite frankly these days I just don't have the time or care for it, I log in once a week and smash my keyboard and I log out, happy.

But that guy was using a single target patchwerk 5 min sim, which just has no comparisons to in game. If you're comparing how gear affects dps in a real world setting you need to simulate how things correlate in a real world, not something that equates to smacking a dummy for 5mins, which is my point. Because you may get one result while doing that 5 min patchwerk but then see different results in realistic situations, for reasons that are more niche (like my anger management lining up with add spawns example)

But also the point is I don't think the sims are that accurate or representitive, like do we really think that Fury Warriors have better single target than Affliction locks? Simcraft would suggest that. So if the correlation between the ingame and simcraft isn't fully reliable, how can we use it for this conversation?

Now I believe you that you have APL for specific bosses and if I was effort raiding I would use them too (I've been using sims and spreadsheets since the 2008 TBC Landsoul sheet), but when I hear the raid leader of the rank 1 guild calling simcraft trash for similar reasons I mentioned I take that as some confirmation my line of thinking on the right track.

Ask Mr Robot were doing impressive things with simming every single raid boss in that it mimmicked top logs back in Legion, but it didn't catch on and people just meme'd on them. I compared their sim of my char on Krosus with my R1 parse and it was almost perfect to every phase of the fight, they had a few small APL optimisations to get it to match my numbers.. If simcraft could do that it'd be so much more useful, but it doesn't appear it can, and if it can it's certainly not widely used or discussed.

we even have special boss gear sets for aoe and cleave

The rest of your post bragging was a lot more impressive, I don't mean to rag on you but rank 5000 players have speciar gear sets for AOE and Cleave, pretty normal.

[Sithalos]

I just want Torghast to not be a brainless cannot fail if my monitor was turned off piece of content anymore. If they can actually pull that off and revert those nerfs, I'll be happy.

[Barzotti]

The rest of your post bragging was a lot more impressive, I don't mean to rag on you but rank 5000 players have speciar gear sets for AOE and Cleave, pretty normal.

I think he meant "special gear sets according to the sims, depending on the number of adds/length of the cleave" etc. For example some secondary stats don't hold the same value depending on the nature of the boss fight and the change in a few parameters.

[Bigbazz]

I think he meant "special gear sets according to the sims, depending on the number of adds/length of the cleave" etc. For example some secondary stats don't hold the same value depending on the nature of the boss fight and the change in a few parameters.

Ahh yeah well if that's what he meant it makes sense. But yeah it's still pretty normal to sim separately for AOE or single target/cleave, we can see that where hectic add cleave for Fury will often show haste as the strongest stat because of how good it is over a continuous combat while when combat is broken and more emphases is put on the larger cooldown bursts we see mastery come top.

But of course everyone uses different gearsets, and I think most players can identify for example if you have a pillar coming up at 2minutes then a 2min on-use trinket might be more valuable than something that sustains well on a long generic fight. And I guess Sludgefist in that example would be one of the easier fights to write a custom APL for.

[ElDoorO]

It's not fake, he had a transplant procedure

On another note, I love how Ion shuts down all the common idiotic arguments against systems in wow, and the trolls don't even know what to reply anymore. They can just throw insults and cry

Except they're not idiotic. People straight up said leaving Legion was going to suck. BfA systems sucked. The majority were right -- Ion was wrong. Then he doubled down.

I've yet to meet anyone IRL that isn't happy we left BfA. Literally, the only thing people seem to miss is flying but that's a given.

So far it's been proven that every other expansion basically sucks. And, even then, the first patch is very... meh.

As far as I've been able to observe -- people strongly prefer the end patches of an expansion WAY more than the initial patches and middle. Often because catch up mechanisms or the game speed isn't so painfully slow.

What this means is Ion and his team haven't figured out how to make the start of an expansion fun and still haven't learned how to fix their borrowed power problem people have talked about.

Gear tier was probably their best idea they threw away.

But until they fix the simplest of issues most other MMO's fixed, transportation (flight paths / early xpac no flying), it shows that there's no way they could survive in any other franchise that didn't already have the ball rolling. Therefore, I still think Ion makes poor decisions and simply needs to be let go.

But you seem to have your pride and personality invested into Ion, so you'll defend him until you're tired of the game because you feel he can do no wrong and criticism of him means people hate WoW entirely and utterly.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

Now I believe you that you have APL for specific bosses and if I was effort raiding I would use them too (I've been using sims and spreadsheets since the 2008 TBC Landsoul sheet), but when I hear the raid leader of the rank 1 guild calling simcraft trash for similar reasons I mentioned I take that as some confirmation my line of thinking on the right track



The rest of your post bragging was a lot more impressive, I don't mean to rag on you but rank 5000 players have speciar gear sets for AOE and Cleave, pretty normal.

and i agree that sims are "trash" im comparison to the math/theorycraft guys that those WF guilds have they dont even need to sim they have ppl that do it for them same for special WAs they dont even need/have bossmodes

but custom boss apls is the best thing you can have in a normal guild that dont have payed math/theorycraft guys

PS special gear sets depending on bosses not some rnd cleave sets, i have 4 cleave sets with diffrent trinkets and stats depending on uptimes

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I think he meant "special gear sets according to the sims, depending on the number of adds/length of the cleave" etc. For example some secondary stats don't hold the same value depending on the nature of the boss fight and the change in a few parameters.

^ Exactly

[TyrannicalPuppy]

It is the truth.

Whelp, that settles it! You say it’s the truth, so it must be.

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The question I have is why? Why does a casual with zero interest in high M+ keys or Mythic raiding need gear at ilv 220+? Sure I get that we all may want BiS top end gear but for most players, reward = effort put in and for a casual, the effort is relatively low in comparison to a dedicated Mythic raider who also pushes high (above 15+) keys on a regular basis including Tyrannical weeks.

And then there's also the question of effort on the part of the casual: Honestly it doesn't take much effort to clear a handful of +4s for the weekly chest or even do a few YOLO RBGs up to 1400 PvP rating (even as Alliance).

Because PvP exists, first off?? Pretending you aren’t grossly misusing the term casual, let’s look at the fact that the ilvl 200 ceiling exists across the board, and PvP focused players are hit even harder by this because the 200/226 difference is MASSIVE to the point that, at this point in the season, it’s almost impossible to jump into rated PvP without already being geared and having rating, but you also can’t get above ilvl 200 without a significant rating. It’s made even worse for me playing on Moon Guard and getting rejected across the board because “HURR DURR MOON GUARD PLAYER DEGENERATE FUNNY GOLDSHIRE JOKE XD”

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Then what are casuals asking for? 210? 207? Regardless of what the number is, my question remains: What does a Casual need the gear for if they aren't engaging in content that requires it? Alternatively, ilv 200 is sufficient enough to go back and solo most things back in BFA (maybe not Mythic Ny'alotha raid).




And that's another issue, WoW is built as a MMORPG. Certain activities require group/team play in the current content. If folks don't want to group up, there are more than a handful of prior expansions content that is soloable but current content in WoW has always required some level group effort for dungeons/raids/BGs/Arenas. There are exceptional players that are able to pull off solo current content but those are exceptions and not the norm.

Yeah, fallacy. The novelty of MMOs being a social experience is a thing of the past. Get over it. Designing an MMO around a solo play experience in a persistent world where you can watch other players do their own thing, solo or in a group, doesn’t make it not Massively Multiplayer.

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Scenarios did not, they lead to currencies which could be used for gear. almost like soul ash leading to legendaries...
Mop challenge mode had cosmetic rewards. just like how torghast has cosmetic rewards!
also yes it was a wholly seperate feature, it took them a fair bit of work to get it set up.

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Torghast gives you one of the only mounts to work in the maw
it also gives you a title, a pet, and a toy that transforms you.
and also we are getting much more added to it in 9.1. reminder that challenge mode wasnt even in launch of mop.

So, translation, Scenarios led to gear. Glad you agreed and disagreed with that at the same time.

Meanwhile Torghast gives you gear that can only be worn one piece at a time and for many classes is bound to have an almost useless effect

[FelPlague]

So, translation, Scenarios led to gear. Glad you agreed and disagreed with that at the same time.

Meanwhile Torghast gives you gear that can only be worn one piece at a time and for many classes is bound to have an almost useless effect

Really now? Many classes legendries are almost useless effects? really now? uh huh...

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I don't know what's worse, the fact that Blizzard wasted time giving Preach the time of day, or Preach's new horrendous fake hair . Grow old with dignity dude.

fake hair? its real hair my dude... do you even follow preach? he had a procedure done so he could finally stop being bald...

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... was he implying that 20% power difference is low ? That's plain retarded.

20% dps increase from the start of normal to the end of heroic is low.
maybe you should get yourself checked out.

cause i danm well know someone who is fully final bosses of heroic geared, should be 20% stronger then someone in only the basic normal first few bosses gear.

[ashblond]

Low point.

This xpac literally has more players than the last 4xpacs.

My guid has gotten 200 new members in the last month. Returning players.

Clearly trolling with 0 credibility.

This guy is 100% sarcastic, mocking Blizzard and laughing at Ion.

[Skylarking]

World Quests fucking blow in Shittylands, it's like clocking into a factory job. Time to get to work. And they drop useless crap.

No flight whistle. Ugh.

Still needing to travel through Oribos to get between each zone is ridiculous.

Covenants are stupid and useless.
Soulbinds and the stuff is dumb
Anima is stupid
Soul Ash another grind

These stupid game systems need to fucking go and never return.

Bored-ghast a fucking sad tedious joke waste of time, that for some reason doesn't drop gear rewards.


Man I miss MoP style expansion.

Quality over quantity. Unfortunately though quality content eventually runs out and people stop playing which makes their MAU look bad. Which I'm fine with, as long as I had fun. I would rather stop playing the game from having no more content than stop playing from apathy and frustration. But blizzard doesn't share the same sentiments.

[Caerrona]

Anyone that wants a good laugh, go check out the wowhead post.

A bunch of morons posting shit like "uh big bad ion is wrong cuz my 200 ilvl mage is doing 1.5k (lol so fucking bad) and 226 mages are doing like 8k!!! Gear bad! Blizz bad!"

Definently a big skill issue with this community and glad Ion told bads to git gud.

[shise]

This guy is a part of the game=s downfall.
It is fun how they consider "new features" for Torghast as something actually new... it is the same shit. More trash mobs in a trash mobs tower.
More borrowed power systems.

They should get the hint from all the people playing on Classic... we want WoW to be WoW, not some modern quick match making crap.

[Alanious]

It's so weird that this community will idolize a completely out-of-touch man like Jeff Kaplan but hate Ion. Ion at least acknowledges that his game has to be made fun for a wide variety of players. Blizzard is failing at it miserably right now, but that's not necessarily Ion's fault.

Shadowlands is definitely a low point for the franchise though. I think WoD is the only other time in the history of WoW that I stopped playing before the first major content patch.

His game? you're fucking delusional. The people who made this game are no longer with blizzard. The current Person who owns this game is Activision, the person who is in charge of World of Warcraft is Ion dickhead. He's the person who is making all the decisions in-game so yes he's at fault?. Why are more players active in classic than retail?. Is this bullshit?, log in retail go find anyone out in the retail world other than Orobus, it's Covid in Shadowlands right now. The devs make decisions without reaching out to the majority of the community. The only way things are going to change is if Activision implements a system where whenever the Dev's decision to "talk to themselves and make decisions" the community has a voting system to shut their stupid ideas down. This puts them in the open and exposes them to explain their stupidity rather than promote ignorance.

[pfbe]

Anyone that wants a good laugh, go check out the wowhead post.

A bunch of morons posting shit like "uh big bad ion is wrong cuz my 200 ilvl mage is doing 1.5k (lol so fucking bad) and 226 mages are doing like 8k!!! Gear bad! Blizz bad!"

Definently a big skill issue with this community and glad Ion told bads to git gud.

Yes. But also no. Here's an example:

Two characters, A and B, equal in every other respect except ilvl. B has higher ilvl than A, and to simplify things lets just assume that translates to B doing 20% more damage than A. If A deals 5 dmg, B deals 6. Now, assume they have to kill a 70 health npc, and they both open with a cooldown that doubles their damage output for 4 seconds. Here is their per second output and cummulative damage, in the format "damage done this second (cummulative damage)":

A - 10dmg(10total), 10(20), 10(30), 10(40), 5(45), 5(50), 5(55), 5(60), 5(65), 5(70) - Mob dead in 10 seconds, 7dps.
B - 12dmg(12total), 12(24), 12(36), 12(48), 6(54), 6(60), 6(66), 6(72) - Mob dead in 8 seconds, 8.75dps.

B had a DPS 25% higher than A. The idea I'm trying to convey is that things like burst windows, fight duration and douple-dipping cooldowns surely account for at least part of the perceived "non-linear scaling". That said, yes, skill is still the major factor.

[Caerrona]

Yes. But also no. Here's an example:

Two characters, A and B, equal in every other respect except ilvl. B has higher ilvl than A, and to simplify things lets just assume that translates to B doing 20% more damage than A. If A deals 5 dmg, B deals 6. Now, assume they have to kill a 70 health npc, and they both open with a cooldown that doubles their damage output for 4 seconds. Here is their per second output and cummulative damage, in the format "damage done this second (cummulative damage)":

A - 10dmg(10total), 10(20), 10(30), 10(40), 5(45), 5(50), 5(55), 5(60), 5(65), 5(70) - Mob dead in 10 seconds, 7dps.
B - 12dmg(12total), 12(24), 12(36), 12(48), 6(54), 6(60), 6(66), 6(72) - Mob dead in 8 seconds, 8.75dps.

B had a DPS 25% higher than A. The idea I'm trying to convey is that things like burst windows, fight duration and douple-dipping cooldowns surely account for at least part of the perceived "non-linear scaling". That said, yes, skill is still the major factor.

Yes... that's how the video game works...

You also have 210 alts of non trash players pulling more dps than full 226 "waited on the vault for weeks" dumpsters who gray parse.

If you have the skill you get better gear. If you have the skill you play with better people. If you have the skill you do more damage.

Pretty simple really. So when people with garbage stats, low ilvl and no clue how to play their class complain, I just laugh and tell them they are trash because killing a boss in 8 minutes when players are killing it in 3 is a pretty big deal.