Ion Hazzikostas needs to return to Lead Encounter Designer

[styil]

Love him or hate him, at least we can all agree that raid balance under his leadership was better than under the current leadership. The current encounter design team has managed to completely mess up on all 5 occasions in Legion:

Emerald Nightmare - grossly undertuned
Trial of Valor - grossly overtuned
Nighthold - the 2 heal raid
Tomb of Sargeras - the soak raid
Antorus - undertuned

There is clearly a systemic problem with the current team. I think that Ion should step down from his duties as Game Director and get the raiding ship back on course. He can't do that while directing the rest of the game. Otherwise, the future of raiding in WoW is looking bleak. Maybe with a new Game Director some of the terrible design decisions of Legion like Titanforging may go away as well. Does anybody else agree? Or should the current mob stay?

[Radaney]

Overall I think the raids have been fine except Xavius and ToS.

ToV and NH were great IMO and bit too early to give my opinion on Antorus.

I don't think Titanforging is bad either.

[camicio]

you think 1 guy just crunches numbers all day to tune bosses? if he had a different title, tuning would still be the same. its just too difficult to tune this tier properly with traits and TFs

[Mosotti]

you think 1 guy just crunches numbers all day to tune bosses? if he had a different title, tuning would still be the same. its just too difficult to tune this tier properly with traits and TFs

Correct, when Ion has encounter designer there was no bullshit like artifact weapon and RNG fiesta.

[Nitros14]

Overall I think the raids have been fine except Xavius and ToS.

ToV and NH were great IMO and bit too early to give my opinion on Antorus.

I don't think Titanforging is bad either.

Titanforging is the worst. Disenchant drops from new boss kills all the time. Makes tuning a nightmare. I bet the reason WHY tuning is so off all the time is titanforging.

[Radaney]

Titanforging is the worst. Disenchant drops from new boss kills all the time. Makes tuning a nightmare. I bet the reason WHY tuning is so off all the time is titanforging.

TF makes it so there are less disenchant drops. That's actually the point of it. So useful things can still drop after clearing the raid for the 4th+ week the raid is out. Also makes M+ more appealing.

They should just nerf previous tier set bonus' and trinkets when the new tier comes out.

[Nitros14]

TF makes it so there are less disenchant drops. That's actually the point of it. So useful things can still drop after clearing the raid for the 4th+ week the raid is out. Also makes M+ more appealing.

They should just nerf previous tier set bonus' and trinkets when the new tier comes out.

Less disenchanting from farming, more disenchanting from first mythic kills. So you feel obligated to do boring things and doing fun things is less rewarding. It's the worst possible design for the consumer, just exists to make you feel obligated to play more.

[krl]

EN was voluntarily easily tuned, no mistake there, beside Xavius maybe.

ToV and NH were correctly tuned. Helya was a roadblock, but after all she was the true boss of Legion T0.5 . No problem imho. NH had 3 very apparent difficulty tiers, I don't see the problem either.
Both were very good raids.

ToS is a different beast entirely.

[Gaidax]

you think 1 guy just crunches numbers all day to tune bosses? if he had a different title, tuning would still be the same. its just too difficult to tune this tier properly with traits and TFs

No problem, he would just waltz in and set it all right with his magical wand of fireballs.

[Siglius]

Hell no. He needs to stay right where he fucking is, so we can have a good game as a whole. Instead if only good raids.

[rda]

This isn't an encounter-level issue, this is a reward-level issue. The range of things that players can do to prepare for raids has grown much wider than it was before. When you tune for the higher end of the range, you get impossible encounters. When you tune for anything else, you get encounters that are way too easy for some.

What's especially ironic is that it's Ion who is responsible for the rewards. It's him who largely made this mess, not the other way around.

[Deleted]

What's especially ironic is that it's Ion who is responsible for the rewards. It's him who largely made this mess, not the other way around.

Bingo.
Looking at the long term issues caused by the implemented systems, the encounter design and the reward structure *and* the fact that the Blizzard internal raidteam is treated like junior employees and no one listens to them because of huge developer egos (thus Blizzard having to rely heavily on PTR testing which just makes this whole situation much worse) is the root cause of this whole situation - and if you're looking for a saviour, it's really not Ion you should turn to.

[Narveid]

This isn't an encounter-level issue, this is a reward-level issue. The range of things that players can do to prepare for raids has grown much wider than it was before. When you tune for the higher end of the range, you get impossible encounters. When you tune for anything else, you get encounters that are way too easy for some.

What's especially ironic is that it's Ion who is responsible for the rewards. It's him who largely made this mess, not the other way around.

You honestly think one guy is responsible for the reward structure, and not a whole bunch of game designers working together?

[rda]

You honestly think one guy is responsible for the reward structure, and not a whole bunch of game designers working together?

More or less in that he provides vision or at least is responsible for accepting vision suggested by others.

[Deleted]

Trial of Valor was the best raid this game had in a crazy long time... Nighthold was pretty good as well. On others, you are right.

[Kurunir]

Lots of people in this thread are pointing fingers at Ion as though the extensive amount of item level inflation via the RNG Titanforging system is a big misstep on his part as Game Director.

Ion Hazzikostas stepped into the shoes of game director in October of 2016, roughly 1.5 months after the release of Legion. Tom Chilton was Game Director from Cataclysm, up until the point that Ion took over. Titanforging was originally introduced with the Throne of Thunder raid in Mists of Pandaria as Thunderforging, and has only grown since then, under the guidance of Chilton. Love or hate Ion, love or hate Legion, it's just ignorant to say this is all somehow his fault when the initial development of the expansion, and the systems that were built into it, were under the direction of a different pair of hands. If you want to point fingers for this system, don't point them at Ion, Legion was not his baby, and neither was Titanforging

Now, you could point to the fact that he's chosen to keep the system in BfA (despite obvious attempts to curb the system by reducing chance of titanforging and outright eliminating it from Azerite attuned gear), but that's not really relevant to whats going on in Legion.

[Zelk]

the raids have also been much worse than in MoP and WoD

[XDurionX]

Trial of Valor was the best raid this game had in a crazy long time... Nighthold was pretty good as well. On others, you are right.

Trial of Valor was the worst tuned raid in years.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Well titanforging is the reason mythic plus works so that's not going anywhere. It is the reason the raids are tuned poorly though. With 7.3 they seemingly doubled the chance of titanforging from the weekly chest so a lot more people are walking into the raid with gear that isn't even being replaced in heroic. That's a problem.it has nothing to do with the encounters.

[Jotaux]

The only issue I've had is all the class stacking and soaking mechanics. There's just no one to look at the whole picture. All the fights are done in a bubble and they all rely on these soaking mechanics. Not to mention the bugs and lazy coding. Seriously, every time we go to do Gul'dan for the mount on mythic we have to one shot it or someone will be bugged. One time we even had our tank become invincible somehow. Then theres Tichondrius where they didn't consider what would happen if there were no ranged. Coven isn't really a bug just poor design but that one you have to bring only ranged on mythic. It's just feels like no one is guiding the ship.