9.0 General Discussion

[huth]

How I understood Anima based on the Blizzcon interviews is that it'll just be a currency which will have a weekly cap for how much you can spend to character power and anything excess you earn beyond that, you can dump into getting cosmetics and the like.

That's pretty much verbatim what they said at BlizzCon, yes.

[Nyel]

all this shit really makes you think that Blizzard have 0 idea about what the fuck they're doing

This just shows me that there are different devs for each spec and they don't communicate with each other... at all. I mean there is no other explanation for stuff like this (besides sheer ignorance or incompetence).

[Craaazyyy]

This just shows me that there are different devs for each spec and they don't communicate with each other... at all. I mean there is no other explanation for stuff like this (besides sheer ignorance or incompetence).

nah it would be much worse if they weren't even communicating at all

i dunno, class design fell of a cliff after mop and it's obvious why, but it was on purpose.. they wanted to prune classes, but they clearly don't even know why it was a good idea in their mind and they definitely didn't know what was good to prune(in my opinion almost nothing they pruned was actually find to prune), they had no idea what they were gonna do after they pruned the classes.. So it's a huge mess

[Eapoe]

well again i doubt that..

also how did you determine that for certain classes they've shown all that they gonna get?

anyway, let's just take a look at the abilities that we saw at blizzcon:

DK: AMZ baseline - very useful, garg baseline - very useful, raise dead baseline - very useful(especially if they gonna give pet sac to everyone baseline as well)

Druids: cyclone baseline - very useful, ursol vortex baseline - very useful

Hunters: killshot - pretty fucking useful, Eyes of the Beast - while not insanely useful in many situations there are situations it can be really useful in, hunter's mark(if it's gonna be old style) - pretty useful

Mages: Frostbolt, Fire Blast and Arcane explosion are baseline for all specs - pretty useful, maybe not in your core pve rotation or in every situation, but its very, very useful nonetheless

Paladins: Auras - useful, baseline consecration and hammer of wrath - very useful

Priests: mind blast, flash heal and SW are baseline for all specs - very useful

Rogues: Poisons are baseline for all specs and shiv is baseline for all specs again - very useful

Shamans: many more totems made baseline for all specs - pretty useful, i hope for totem management to be back(not hopeful tho), frost shock is baseline for all specs - very useful

Warlocks: Curse of Tongues, Weakness, Recklessness etc. are all baseline for all specs - very useful, demonic circle is baseline again - very, very useful

Warriors: Shattering throw - pretty useful, Challenging shour and shield block are also pretty useful

so pretty much every ability that we saw is useful in some situations with most of them being very very useful in every part of the game pretty much

Just a quick note: under Hunter, Eyes of the Beast will never be useful unless they make pets so resilient they could pull mobs far enough away in m+ or raids to allow mob skips. Otherwise, it’s just an RP ability. Also, Hunter’s Mark makes me want to quit the class. That’s all I want, a waste of a GCD to Mark new priority targets on every fight. If it became an automatic application when using any ability that would be somewhat better, or if it is not on the GCD, but other than that, fuck right off with GCD usage. Only “very useful” in PvP to keep people from stealthing.
Mages: only useful for when school locked. I get the want of players to have a little more RP with mages, but my god this basically makes them way too strong in PvP if no nerfs to compensate. So yes, while useful, it’s dumb.
Warlocks: no real complaints. Their curses were always unique and interesting.

Most of the “very useful” abilities you mention are great for PvP and have little impact on PvE. I won’t argue whether they are useful or not as most are, but the Hunter ones are just dumb. For Hunter, I’d much rather prefer keep Killshot, remove the other 2, and instead give back Aspect of the Pack (maybe without the daze and instead anyone gets hit it gets placed on CD so people can’t troll raid groups), and either Viper Shot (great for PvP and niche encounters like Maut where you burn down mana) or a new iteration of Aspect of the Fox that might not be as powerful.

[Edward Wu]

And so it begins...

Dawn of the final week.
??? hours remain.

[Craaazyyy]

Just a quick note: under Hunter, Eyes of the Beast will never be useful unless they make pets so resilient they could pull mobs far enough away in m+ or raids to allow mob skips. Otherwise, it’s just an RP ability. Also, Hunter’s Mark makes me want to quit the class. That’s all I want, a waste of a GCD to Mark new priority targets on every fight. If it became an automatic application when using any ability that would be somewhat better, or if it is not on the GCD, but other than that, fuck right off with GCD usage. Only “very useful” in PvP to keep people from stealthing.
Mages: only useful for when school locked. I get the want of players to have a little more RP with mages, but my god this basically makes them way too strong in PvP if no nerfs to compensate. So yes, while useful, it’s dumb.
Warlocks: no real complaints. Their curses were always unique and interesting.

Most of the “very useful” abilities you mention are great for PvP and have little impact on PvE. I won’t argue whether they are useful or not as most are, but the Hunter ones are just dumb. For Hunter, I’d much rather prefer keep Killshot, remove the other 2, and instead give back Aspect of the Pack (maybe without the daze and instead anyone gets hit it gets placed on CD so people can’t troll raid groups), and either Viper Shot (great for PvP and niche encounters like Maut where you burn down mana) or a new iteration of Aspect of the Fox that might not be as powerful.

well obviously they will compensate in other ways after adding back abilities.. mages had those forever and it wasn't making them op on its own

[Cherry123]

beta will be in August-September, maybe later

[ercarp]

beta will be in August-September, maybe later

That's highly unlikely. It will be much earlier than that unless they change the release date for 2021.

[Kereberus]

Guys I just spoke with Ion at the break room. He said beta is tomorrow.

[Eurhetemec]

Some great examples of totally non-constructive "criticism" which is actually pure cynicism above. There's literally nothing Blizzard could do which would make committed cynics that extreme remotely happy. When you're dismissing anyone who disagrees as a "bot" (denying their basic humanity and capacity for reason), you're way outside the bounds of criticism and into mere ranting. Equally claims like "only incompetence or no communication could lead to this" aren't criticism and aren't constructive. That's just insulting the devs personally. That's fine if that's how one wants to roll, but don't pretend it's criticism or has value beyond making the person who says it feel good emotionally.

It's sad because there is plenty of potential for legitimate questioning and criticism of Blizzard's decisions and approaches, but people so often prefer knee-jerk cynicism or insults and complaining over that.

I've been guilty of it myself. With Cataclysm my overwhelming impression was that the devs were high on cocaine and ego when they made that expansion, and I've said so. But that's not criticism. That's just an insulting complaint/claim.

Whereas pointing out the actual issues like the heavy deprotagonization of the PC, poor quest flow, tedious quests, poorly judged "humour" and so on in say Uldum is actually criticism and potentially has some kind of value.

But if I bring up Cataclysm to suggest SL will suck, that makes little sense. Likewise bringing up design changes from a decade ago to suggest the un-pruning will suck makes little sense and is more in the region of cynicism than criticism.

[Taeldorian]

Well said.

If a new race carries an expansion, why didn't the plethora of new races released during BfA, carry it...?
If a new class carries an expansion, why is it only a minority that actually bothers with playing said class as a main?

WoD had not been saved by a new class or a new race. It wasn't even saved by the visual update of EVERY race, practically making many feel brand spanking new.

If Shadowlands cannot stand on its own without a new race (ahem customizations giving you access to skins of other races) or a new class to someone and the allure of new shit to do in WoW isn't enough of a draw for them, then that's rough, but a new class for a minority doesn't trump fixing classes for everyone having a gripe with their established mains at this point.

I'd dare say that content release schedule + class design (players having fun just playing) + a variety in content on offer, carries an expansion. A bit more complex than "ooh, shinies!", in other words.

As an example, it wasn't Pandas or Monks that carried MoP through 14 months of drought yet retaining 5 million players. It was a solid base of systems, class design, content delivered and variety in what players could do in-game, that saw it pull off such a feat.

I know youre done with this convo but just wanted to point something out.

WoD launched with one of the highest sub counts the game has had. It’s very clear you don’t need a new race/class for hype to be generated for wow. They marketed WoD relentlessly with commercials and that drew people in+features like garrisons (that obviously turned out poor). Saying a race/class is necessary for hype is absolutely incorrect when you consider how strong WoDs launch was in terms of subs and when you consider how monk is still the least played class 6-7 years later.

- - - Updated - - -

Having back useless skills doesn't rewind unpruning. They didn't prune only useless stuff (buffs you barely used, skills that were mostly pointless). They turned basic skills into talents, they removed legendary effects and artifact skills, they removed skills that served a purpose... Earthliving Weapon comes to my mind. That was a great weapon enchantment for Restoration Shamans and there was ZERO reason to remove it. I don't need useless totems back just for the nostalgia, I want things back that made sense and improved my gameplay.

How can you say you liked earthliving weapon for class fantasy but you don’t care for totems? Earthliving weapon was something you pressed every hour lmao, it was a set and forget kind of thing.

I agree that having enchants for shamans was cool but that’s not a good example over totems. Getting earthliving weapon back would do absolutely nothing, it’s crazy that you can say you don’t want “useless totems” but you do want a “useless enchant”. Very weird. Putting on an enchant that buffs your damage/healing doesn’t feel any more rpg like than putting down a totem that buffs your damage/healing.

Either way totems have been important in the past. MoP had a version that required you to throw down totems like Searing totem every 15 seconds and it increased damage. I have no idea if that’s what we’ll get back and I’m not sure people even really want that, I recall a lot of complaints about searing totem just being a management ability.

I also agree that the shields were good class fantasy. Water shield/lightning shield were great imo, that’s a perfect example of something that isn’t useless and also adds the RPG feeling back.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Give Fury and Arms thunderclap...that would be nice to >.>

[Edward Wu]

There's literally nothing Blizzard could do which would make committed cynics that extreme remotely happy.

Starting your counter-argument off with hyperbolic nonsense is a great way for people to stop taking you seriously.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

beta will be in August-September, maybe later

Nope. The game will release in August. There's no way they'll let the sub numbers drop that far.

[Nyel]

Nope. The game will release in August. There's no way they'll let the sub numbers drop that far.

An August release is de facto out of reach and we already have the proof for that: the deadline in December.

[Sondrelk]

An August release is de facto out of reach and we already have the proof for that: the deadline in December.

The deadline is proof of nothing other than Blizzard not shooting themselves in the foot by makinga promise they migth have to break.
The expansion could come out August, or it coudl come out late october. There is no way to know until we are some ways into Alpha.

[matrix123mko]

Dragon guard

Dragons would be cool too.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Well, I would like a tinker.

I'd like a Necromancer, but I know people will get mad and say that we already have them (Death Knights)

[Jamie081]

To be clear, 1-60 in shadowlands is ~70% faster than 1-120 in BFA, not 1-60.

My mistake!

Nope. The game will release in August. There's no way they'll let the sub numbers drop that far.

They would... they did it in WoD. They know people always come back. There's nothing pointing towards August other than Legion and BFA, and BFA was rushed so they're not going to do that again.

[Nyel]

The deadline is proof of nothing other than Blizzard not shooting themselves in the foot by makinga promise they migth have to break.
The expansion could come out August, or it coudl come out late october. There is no way to know until we are some ways into Alpha.

I mean... it is a proof. For Legion and BfA the deadline was set in Q3 with a reason. They released it a few weeks before that. The deadline for Shadowlands is in Q4 because they plan to release it in Q4. With the delayed Alpha / Beta there is absolutely no way they'll push this expansion out within the next 5-6 months.