Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

There being bad options shouldnt be a shield to buffing worse builds, even if just to make them less weak compared to the actual viable ones. A hypothetical petless Unholy build shouldnt be made completely unviable in all forms of contet just because the developers wants everyone to play with a pet.

That's the thing though, this revamp started with the clear premise that there WILL be bad builds.

[Chickat]

I think they did it before, datamineable build on a friday then public alpha in the middle of the week after. I'm not sure which expansion it was though.

I definitely think we will get something from July 5th through the 8th even if its just an announcement, or datamineable build. Followed by the actual Alpha the week later.

[loras]

Wouldn't Alleria also not be considered a mortal then? She hasn't aged or suffered disease. Reality rules don't apply since those rules differ based on what dimension, plane, or other place you currently are at in WoW. Etherals being pure magic is also debatable since Etherals used technology to convert their physical bodies to energy. They "stay alive" with wrappings that have special enchantments. Energy isn't necessarily pure magic.

In my opinion they would be closer to Chaos rather then Order since it was the Twisting Nether that helped changed them.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ask...wers_-_Round_1

How did ethereals get so... ethereal? They seem to act a lot more like a mortal race than other energy beings we meet, such as elementals.
K'aresh was an arid planet, home to a thriving ecosystem and several sentient species before the arrival of Dimensius the All-Devouring. How the void lord found K'aresh is still hotly debated among the surviving ethereals, but the effects of his coming were unmistakable: he opened countless gateways into the void and the Twisting Nether around the planet, bathing K'aresh in arcane and dark energies. Using every scrap of its advanced technology, one of the mortal races hastily attempted to construct magical barriers around its cities, but it was only partially successful; although the dark energies were blocked, the unimpeded flood of arcane energy tore away the mortals' corporeal shells and infused their souls with enough energy so that they could subsist without a body… barely. Members of this race, now called ethereals, took to binding themselves with enchanted strips of cloth to provide their souls with enough structure to survive. This altered state proved to be a blessing in disguise, as their enhanced minds and magical abilities allowed the ethereals to fight Dimensius and his limited forces to a standstill. Over the years, however, Dimensius eventually grew powerful enough to summon armies of fellow void creatures, forcing the ethereals to flee into the Twisting Nether.

Ah, not magic, but an unbound soul then, infused with arcane and void (they would need to consume fel to align with chaos, i know of none like that).
Still, it seems hard to mistake their form of immortality with Alleria's, likewise their ignoring rules of reality is hard to mistake for Alleria's.

I mean for the sake of an argument you might want to pretend they're equal, but it does not seem worthwhile to take that claim seriously given these extremely obvious disqualifications - per your own source. And while the claim regarding Alleria still seems spurious, Locus-Walker being infused with void and mastering it is irrelevant.

[Sondrelk]

That's the thing though, this revamp started with the clear premise that there WILL be bad builds.

Thats kinda my point though. Just because there are bad builds doesnt mean that Blizzard shouldnt consider buffing them slightly if they turn out popular.
I don't need perfect viability, but if someone finds a really fun shockadin build or something then Blizzard should be willing to slightly buff parts of it to make it more viable instead of constantly talking about not everything being perfect.

Before this might have been difficult as each individual talent was such a massive investment that buffing a playstyle might end up making the regular one extremely powerful, but now that individual talents are less powerful Blizzard should be willing to buff underperforming ones more often.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

That's the thing though, this revamp started with the clear premise that there WILL be bad builds.

Sure but going the route of say a petless Unholy DK IMO isnt a bad idea and shouldn't be seen as "This is a bad build." Not that I'm expecting two types of builds in an Unholy DK but the very idea Sondrelk was talking about sounds interesting to me.

[Nymrohd]

I definitely think we will get something from July 5th through the 8th even if its just an announcement, or datamineable build. Followed by the actual Alpha the week later.

I don't know if it counts but Diablo Immortal very likely will have an announcement on July 5th. The first battle pass ends on the 6th and they need to announce the cosmetics and whatever else for the second one.

[Chickat]

Its like how you change talents now. You can also save builds, so once you've set it up you can basically switch to "dps leveling mode" in 1 click in a rested area.

And presumably in an instance, or away from rested areas with a tome.

[Nymrohd]

Sure but going the route of say a petless Unholy DK IMO isnt a bad idea and shouldn't be seen as "This is a bad build." Not that I'm expecting two types of builds in an Unholy DK but the very idea Sondrelk was talking about sounds interesting to me.

Oh I agree. I think a lot of things should be viable; Demonology with just imps, non voidform or low DoT shadow (we had it in WoD and it played great), a frostfire version for both frost and fire. Ranged Survival or melee Beastmastery.

[Nyel]

Yeah, guessing we get a standard 10.1 patch, but maybe 10.2 will be bigger than we are used to?

Or it could be that we will get Legion level patches every 3-4 months with less of a wait before 11.0. More frequent medium sized patches, instead of less frequent very large patches is my guess.

In recent history the .2 patches usually are the biggest patches of each expansion, I have a hard time imagining how they could make them even bigger (Cataclysm - Firelands, MoP - Isle of Thunder, WoD - Tanaan Jungle, BfA - Nazjatar, Shadowlands - Zereth Mortis; granted, in WoD and Shadowlands they've been the final patch on top of that). Only in Legion 7.3 was bigger, but that was really an exception.

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Hopefully Blizzard is more willing to buf or nerf various talents now that each one is a comparitively weaker single choice, as opposed to all throughput talents currently being major choices. Or if nothing else, keep slightly balancing various smaller ones.
There being bad options shouldnt be a shield to buffing worse builds, even if just to make them less weak compared to the actual viable ones. A hypothetical petless Unholy build shouldnt be made completely unviable in all forms of contet just because the developers wants everyone to play with a pet.

I just hope they're enforcing and enabling different playstyles, because now they have the option to do so. And I'd love to have a Shadow Priest without the atrocious Voidform.

[Chickat]

I hope the warlock talents open up the use for more demons than just the felguard.
Could be builds to strengthen the other demons or could just be returning perma doomguard/infernal. (Though if blizzard didn’t want to get rid of Ritual of Doom or step on the toes of Destro they could just use different demons but have the same purpose of a pure ST/AOE focus.)

Though what could be interesting would be if we got a perma tyrant in some form. Could be focused on buffing/extending current active demons while still doing their little bit of damage.
It wouldn’t be compatible with Demonic Consumption unless that was like a separate CD or something.

I want a cooldown where a demo lock summons all demons to swarm the enemy. A void walker, imp, succubus etc. 5 min cd. Really powerful.

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I don't know if it counts but Diablo Immortal very likely will have an announcement on July 5th. The first battle pass ends on the 6th and they need to announce the cosmetics and whatever else for the second one.

Ah, maybe they will do both games? Although I guess they tend to separate games to different days/weeks.

[rhorle]

Ah, not magic, but an unbound soul then, infused with arcane and void (they would need to consume fel to align with chaos, i know of none like that).

The Twisting Nether is a chaos-aligned realm. It is where Demons naturally go to regenerate. So if and cosmic-force were to be given to Etherals it would likely be Chaos. It doesn't matter if Etherals immortality is different than Alleria's. They would both be immortal. Etherals don't really ignore rules of reality though because formless beings exist naturally in WoW. Primarily seen with Elementals. Ghosts also exist. Your hedging all your bets on "reality" with out actually making an argument to prove it. Hence why you have to pretend for the sake of argument rather then actually having one.

Locus-walker mastering the void isn't irrelevant if we are discussing "the first mortal" to do so and his possibility of being a mortal. It should be clear that the line is meant as a dramatic flair. Exaggeration, hyberbole, etc. Twilight Drakes, Arrakoa, and more could all be mortals that mastered the void as well. We know that not Arrakoa gave in to "the whispers" and Twilight Drakes might not all be crazy as well. So it relegates "the first" to some super specific type of mastery that is also made effectively meaningless because of the rest of the Ren'dori mastering it as well.

[Revamp Man]

To be honest I cannot find that statement…the only thing I found about spriest is the replacement of Dark Thoughts with Vampiric Thoughts.

Purify: Dispels harmful effects on the target, removing all Magic effects. Combines with Purify Disease if known.

Developer Note: Purify is currently a talent on the Discipline tree, but will be moved to be a baseline Discipline ability at a later time. A talent will be moved to its current position to keep the overall tree structure intact.

honestly i thought there was more in terms of power word shield and others but i seem to have overreacted

[Nightshade711]

I want a cooldown where a demo lock summons all demons to swarm the enemy. A void walker, imp, succubus etc. 5 min cd. Really powerful.

That would be nice. Ideally, that is what Nether Portal should be, but right now (especially with the talent row it is in on live) it is pretty lackluster.
Though on the topic of demo... The Fel Obelisk PvP talent should absolutely be baseline or a talent as well.

[Revamp Man]

Oh I agree. I think a lot of things should be viable; Demonology with just imps, non voidform or low DoT shadow (we had it in WoD and it played great), a frostfire version for both frost and fire. Ranged Survival or melee Beastmastery.

interestingly enough shadow did not seem to be much in the way of focusing on void form

[rhorle]

The Fel Obelisk PvP talent should absolutely be baseline or a talent as well.

I would prefer it just gets baked in to Demonic Tyrant rather then having another ability to manage. I'd hate to see different tyrants locked behind talent choices but it could be cool to have a different model based on a talent you pick. Obelisk, Pit Lord, Void creature, Imp Mother, and more could easily be viable additions.

I could also see a passive that summons a obelisk interesting as well. Dogs or Imps could proc it and offer a small buff.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Oh I agree. I think a lot of things should be viable; Demonology with just imps,

Haven’t played a lock since mop but I’d love the idea of having nothing but swarms of imps would defiantly get me to dust off the class for casual play.

[Chickat]

Haven’t played a lock since mop but I’d love the idea of having nothing but swarms of imps would defiantly get me to dust off the class for casual play.

Summon your regular imps with hand of Gul'dan
Summon Hellfire Imps with Call Hellfire Imps instead of Call Dreadstalkers.
Summon Imp Mother instead of the tyrant.

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Tbh, I personally want a demo lock with nothing but succubai.

[Nymrohd]

I would prefer it just gets baked in to Demonic Tyrant rather then having another ability to manage. I'd hate to see different tyrants locked behind talent choices but it could be cool to have a different model based on a talent you pick. Obelisk, Pit Lord, Void creature, Imp Mother, and more could easily be viable additions.

I could also see a passive that summons a obelisk interesting as well. Dogs or Imps could proc it and offer a small buff.

I wish we could customize our Tyrant. Like, maybe use Alythess or Sacrolass; we captured them back in legion. OR as you said, use a Pit Lord or an Imp Mother. Heck I think Shivarra make far more sense as a Tyrant than as a Succubus glyph.

[Makorus]

I feel like Warlocks should get a hunter-esque system where you can customize every single demon type with different types of demons.

Legion added so many cool demon types, and I am sure you could add them as a customization for some of the demons.

Only difficult ones to add something to would be Void Walkers, I guess.

[Chickat]

I feel like Warlocks should get a hunter-esque system where you can customize every single demon type with different types of demons.

Legion added so many cool demon types, and I am sure you could add them as a customization for some of the demons.

Only difficult ones to add something to would be Void Walkers, I guess.

A pocopoc customization style demon tree. Dress up, change the colors, armor, spell effects of every demon. Collect all the appearances.