Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Kiria]

Maybe he on drugs, like dev that put "RISE DEAD" icon into sub rogue tree. /LMAO

Not a he but besides the point haters gonna hate regardless of what Blizz does and all some people do is whinge before even trying new things out.

[Xilurm]

The MoP to Shadowlands system works without the illusion of choice. If they can't make every choice viable then the choice shouldn't exist, right? Because then it isn't a choice. This isn't pen and paper or a niche RPG where a bad choice can be part of the design. This is a mass-market MMO where bad choices shouldn't exist. Even more so when WoW also has a toxicity problem that will only get magnified by low performance with bad talents.

Well, no.

The more choices the better. Let people play however they want. If someone isn't good enough they can be let go from the group.

As for toxicity, that should be dealt with as it's own problem. For example people are going to be toxic because of parsers or if you don't have DBM. I'm not gonna use either of those, I don't care how much someone malds.

[Revamp Man]

Here is the thing, if you can build something that focuses on one skill and you are still missing talents, then that skill has too many synergies to begin with and you are probalby on one permutation of whatever build will end up meta. WoW hasn't had this kind of gameplay before but tons of other games have and usually that's how things end shaping up; you focus on whatever spells have the largest amount of synergies and just pick everything that works with them.
Now if the tuning is half decent we will still be switching talents for different content and switching to radically different builds at that. And there should always be at least a few floating points.

It doesn't help that my hunter knowledge is non existent

Maybe the extra 10% damage on the ability is absolutely unnecessary when you can opt for a proc

I am interested in the fact that the trees we just got opt for a full separation of skills instead of investextra points to get one talent because there's only one path

[towelliee]

Man if it is the 14th I'm such a good guesser.

[Nymrohd]

My issues are these:

Far too many utility vs throughput choices both on class and spec tree. That does not mean I am saying one side should be only utility and the other only throughput. However you could place them in such a way that the choice is fully an illusion; e.g. place utility in branching points in the spec tree across the same row so effectively it is in contest with itself. While it is done to some extent, it often has branching points of its own which clearly places it in competition with throughput
Synergy stacking will likely lead to skewed damage distribution. Multiplicative effects effectively force good builds to focus on a small array of skills. That does not mean other skills will go away. We will have fillers floating in the deadspace of rotations that are just pushed just to push something while their interactions are skipped in favour of synergy stacking. This will lead to damage distribution where a couple of skills do the vast majority of your damage while others are just floating at tiny numbers which makes them unsatisfactory.
A major concern I have is with how balancing will be achieved. I know it's been over a decade since we had talent trees that allowed for this much customization and the team is very much different since then. Yet when we last had them, every time players got inventive and figured an alternate path to what the devs wanted us to take, the nerfs were extremely heavy handed. Is the current team going to allow experimentation and allow multiple builds to compete? I don't know. But I have no reason to trust them to. They also have to balance competing interests; it's not just going to be about what is the best balance for the game; a runaway spec will be allowed to stay for a long time because doing otherwise upsets dungeon leaderboards and the MDI. This system will allow that to happen far more often unless they tune early and aggressively.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, no.

The more choices the better. Let people play however they want. If someone isn't good enough they can be let go from the group.

As for toxicity, that should be dealt with as it's own problem. For example people are going to be toxic because of parsers or if you don't have DBM. I'm not gonna use either of those, I don't care how much someone malds.

Why do you hate raid leaders and recruitment officers so much?

[ZyntosAran]

Why do you hate raid leaders and recruitment officers so much?

Fear not, the community will probably come up with an addon to see if the picked talents are matching the BIS Talents / if they are missing some.

[Makabreska]

Fear not, the community will probably come up with an addon to see if the picked talents are matching the BIS Talents / if they are missing some.

Good luck with that. So many talents and so many different bosses/scenarios/preferences.

[Veluren]

I mean I don't see any logic, reason or patter behind this.

It makes sense to me, going on 28 hours of insomnia-driven awakeness.

I should probably try to sleep soon.

[username993720]

This is my first rough draft build, but it has me so excited;

https://www.wowhead.com/dragonflight...MVihAUFAnFQYHA

And what, other than Wailing Arrow, is Dark Ranger about it?

[Catastrophy349]

Let’s have a healthy conversation/speculation session:

Answer one or both of these questions:

1). What is something you “hope” we get or is better explained during the Alpha/Beta cycle of Dragonflight?

2). What are you “most” worried about for Dragonflight?

I’ll start.

1). I would like to know/see a deeper explanation of what Dragonriding entails (blog post similar to Profession one or some gameplay ASAP).

2). That Dragonflight will be too similar to WoD in terms of content to do outside of the norm. (Personally, I don’t see this happening based on what “I” have read/seen. However, I know it’s a large concern for many folks)

[Sondrelk]

Let’s have a healthy conversation/speculation session:

Answer one or both of these questions:

1). What is something you “hope” we get or is better explained during the Alpha/Beta cycle of Dragonflight?

2). What are you “most” worried about for Dragonflight?

I’ll start.

1). I would like to know/see a deeper explanation of what Dragonriding entails (blog post similar to Profession one or some gameplay ASAP).

2). That Dragonflight will be too similar to WoD in terms of content to do outside of the norm. (Personally, I don’t see this happening based on what “I” have read/seen. However, I know it’s a large concern for many folks)

I hope for a really in-depth dragonriding system, specifically in terms of rewards and challenges in the open world.

I am most worried about the opposite, a lack of open world content to really fuel the Dragonriding mechanic. Flying around should be inherently fun and rewarding, but I fear that it will be a once and done thing that the game quickly has you abandon outside simple movement.


Beyond that I would be quite disappointed if the "Bad choices" the developers talked about in regards to talent trees ended up essentially being only one or two predetermined paths being "accepted", instead of a variety of builds being possible with hotfixes being somewhat frequent to allow interesting combinations. (As an example. MM currently has the ability to completely omit Rapid Fire from their build in favor of going all-in on Aimed Shot. It would be a crying shame if this ended up being an unintentional build that Blizzard assumes is just inherently bad).

[Aeluron Lightsong]

More worried and patch content schedule(I prefer a the whole 3 content tiers(Or haha raid tiers). But its a low amount of worry since I can't predict the future and well worrying over something I barely know anything about isn't healthy. Any hope I have is mostly class related to what I want in terms of how I play but its not a overall design decision more like a class decision.

As usual though outdoor content needs to be added more then what we expect(World quests treasures etc). Its nice that its there but it needs more, I've said this for years though so this is just ad nauseum.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Would also make sense from a lore standpoint, even before he became Deathwing Neltharian was arrogant as hell and a bit of a supremacist, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that Black Flight was the base of their magic, then the capability for the other four flights on the side.

Add to that the practical necessity of it—he likely would have to use the Black Dragonflight as a base for his new invention.

[Teriz]

Would also make sense from a lore standpoint, even before he became Deathwing Neltharian was arrogant as hell and a bit of a supremacist, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that Black Flight was the base of their magic, then the capability for the other four flights on the side.

Well based on that, the core abilities will more than likely be coming from the following characters;

Deathwing WoW
Deathwing HotS
Onyxia
Sintharia
Neferian
Wrathion
Nyxondra
Ebyssian

Might be more, but that's where I would look. Especially under Deathwing HotS.

[Catastrophy349]

Makes sense with Towelliee taking off stream Tuesday/Wednesday before Thursday’s Alpha launch (for us plebs).

https://twitter.com/marlamin/status/...9OV1gAGP8X6E6w

[Nightshade711]

Ah yeah these are way better, the cromie one reads similar to current Fae Guardians but the Alex one is perfect for a healing CD (to compete with disc/paladin)!

Also I'm looking forward to seeing how they implement the black dragonflight into the trees (probably defensives) since they said it was so important to incorporate all 5 flights.

Oh yeah I guarantee that the black flight will be represented in the class trees.

Though we have seen one black dragon ability already, but it is a DPS ability from what it seems.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Since we're talking about Black Dragons IMO we should see a mostly wise and benevolent Neltharion but very obvious nods to his future corruption I.E. Small things, not blatent, just very small moments that he's already being poked and prodded. That is if the Drac'thyr starting area even witnesses him.

[therumblings]

Since we're talking about Black Dragons IMO we should see a mostly wise and benevolent Neltharion but very obvious nods to his future corruption I.E. Small things, not blatent, just very small moments that he's already being poked and prodded. That is if the Drac'thyr starting area even witnesses him.

It never even occurred to me that the Dracthyr starting zone could take place thousands of years ago, then end waking up at present day, similar to DH. That's a ton of story potential.

[Nightshade711]

Since we're talking about Black Dragons IMO we should see a mostly wise and benevolent Neltharion but very obvious nods to his future corruption I.E. Small things, not blatent, just very small moments that he's already being poked and prodded. That is if the Drac'thyr starting area even witnesses him.

Part of me hopes that we’d get something akin to the DH starting zone where we start in the past then go through the “big battle” that Blizzard talked about that put the Dracthyr in stasis… then we wake up in present day.

Or they could do something similar as a “memory” because supposedly the starting zone will have us all having amnesia and finding their story/what happened along the way.

[rhorle]

The more choices the better. Let people play however they want. If someone isn't good enough they can be let go from the group.

That doesn't work for a mass market game. Toxicity won't be dealt with as its own problem because it would be linked directly to the talent choices a person picks. If they have X, Y, Z that are known bad choices that don't produce viable performance for that spec then they won't be invited or kicked out of any group they do get it. If you don't see how balance contributes to toxicity in the game then you don't understand much about the design of the game.

Choice just for the sake of choice isn't better. Good choices is better but we know that bad choices will exist and then we fall back in to the illusion of choice. Something you may be fine with because you get "tricked" into thinking you have a real choice. But something that won't really be a choice for the performance-gated game that WoW is.