Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The talent trees will be significantly easier to balance than the current systems. It is a single self contained system instead of 3-4 stacked ones. The balance between talents within a given tree may be dog shit, which is to be expected if you've played wow for any length of time, but in terms of spec parity the classes should be the easiest to balance they have been since WoD. Besides, if the current (lingering) state of aoe dps balance is any indication, Blizzard doesn't give a flying fuck about class balance anymore.

Obviously they care about class balance. But ok dude.

[Forum Man]

Ppl focused on DF a lot, but how is season 4 gonna work for guilds on lower schedule like 4/3 days? Having a progression week once in 3 weeks? Or will all guilds just not bother with season 4?

Season 4 is essentially just gearing

[cordrann]

Obviously they care about class balance. But ok dude.

Then how do you explain a 50% delta that's existed for months at this point?

[ExiHext]

Can you answer why specific content needs 6+ months of testing in order to be good? And why that testing can't occur faster?

Because historically Blizz is really slow in fixing things. As a paladin main believe me, I know the pain of adressing the same problem week over week over week again.

[Ersula]

Talent trees have already been broken down why they essentially require the bare minimum of testing.

Balancing combat abilities, both passive & active require the MOST testing actually. Most of these abilities are coming back from previous iterations of the game so that takes a bit of the edge off but the actual values need extensive testing. I think they'll be able to handle it but the statement the new talent trees would require "the bare minimum" is just absurd. About 15% of those previewed Death Knight passives are completely new.

Then how do you explain a 50% delta that's existed for months at this point?

Considering the history of this game? There's been a lot of specs that have been completely irrelevant for entire expansions. You might be looking at DPS rankings for Sepulcher but you need to keep it in context; the difference in dps among classes are actually the lowest they've ever been. The ilevel squish in 9.0 makes 50% seem like a huge swing but it's really not.

[Sondrelk]

Season 4 is essentially just gearing

It does have its own set of rewards, so unless guilds are solely raid progression focused it's going to be hard to ignore the decently hefty rewards.

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Then how do you explain a 50% delta that's existed for months at this point?

It's down to looking at one specific type of damage, primarily stemming from a set bonus, which itself is from the last raid, end of expansions further having a reputation for throwing balance out the window in the name of fun.

Some classes will always dominate in certain patches depending on damage type and unique power gains. Expecting perfect parity in all forms of content at all times is not just unrealistic, it's downright antithetical to class diversity.

[klaps_05]

With the class talents being so incredibly late and practically just your current abilities you have to pick up, this leaves little to no hope for actual class revamps and fixes, despite a ton of complaints on a lot of specs.

[Skildar]

I'm wondering if not testing the last three bosses of the Sepulcher encouraged the team to limit a bit more from public testing the competitive content

[Nymrohd]

With the class talents being so incredibly late and practically just your current abilities you have to pick up, this leaves little to no hope for actual class revamps and fixes, despite a ton of complaints on a lot of specs.

What do you mean? Practically ever spec is getting an effective revamp. Tbh until numbers are down and simulations start running, we have no idea how far from current builds the trees might land. And they could land very far.

[Sondrelk]

With the class talents being so incredibly late and practically just your current abilities you have to pick up, this leaves little to no hope for actual class revamps and fixes, despite a ton of complaints on a lot of specs.

Basically all classes and specs that are dependent on talents for their core rotation is effectively getting a revamp.

[Lady Atia]

I'm wondering if not testing the last three bosses of the Sepulcher encouraged the team to limit a bit more from public testing the competitive content

I honestly hope they are using 9.2/9.2.5 ptr's as formula for future testing. 9.2 testing felt like it took ages to launch but we got 95% of it's content with the first build iirc. Maybe that's the reason alpha is so late because they don't want too much unfinished stuff that may or may not even make it into the final game?

Regarding testing of competitive content - Lihuvim, Halondrus and Anduin all had far more tuning issues than the last three bosses, meanwhile the last wing didn't had any glaring bugs besides maybe the last phase of Mythic Jailer but that wouldn't have been tested anyways. I really hope they continue this together with the encryption of any story. It felt so much better to discover both the last bosses aswell as the lordaeron questline together with anyone else instead of reading about it on wowhead or seeing it on a half-finished ptr.

[micwini]

News today? Otherwise ill be really worried and expecting it to release in..... in.... well.... december 2022! Fuck.

[Hyrja]

Maybe some news next week? its been weeks now since we've had any info (pre orders wasnt news)

[Dioporco]

News today? Otherwise ill be really worried and expecting it to release in..... in.... well.... december 2022! Fuck.

They need to count all the money people throw them for a game that doesnt exist yet, give them time dude

[Arafal]

Maybe they'll pull another wrath and just announce the beta and have it be available right after.

[Lady Atia]

They need to count all the money people throw them for a game that doesnt exist yet, give them time dude

You mean they have to count all the money people throw at them for items that are available right now in game aswell as an expansion that will release this year, right?

Well, I hate to break it for you but accountants aren't working on the game so I think that's prolly not the reason. I guess instead of that they want just atleast one week of a buffer between that unnecessary wotlk beta and the dragonflight alpha. Although I think the overlap between people wanting to test the classic thing and the retail one isn't that big anyways, on top of .... well wotlk doesn't really need all that much testing or pr anyways.

PS: Yes, I'm still mad they released the wotlk beta before dragonflight alpha.

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Maybe they'll pull another wrath and just announce the beta and have it be available right after.

I'm actually wondering if they will pull another Overwatch 2 and make the beta available via twitch or the store.

[Nymrohd]

Is it possible there is an actual F&F Alpha going on that we don't know about? I think it used to be that alpha was not early beta access for streamers but an actual stability test that was not dataminable.

[Makabreska]

Woooo, 3000th page hype \o/

[micwini]

3000 pages. Can't believe it.

[Gifdwarf]

Happy Page 3000 everyone. I like to go back a few hundred pages at every milestone. I'm looking back on the pages just before the announcement. That was such a fun and confusing time.