Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Gurkan]

Seeing all kinds of specs getting extensive work based on feedback, and seeing Enha get 0 since the talents came live is depressing and gives the same old feeling of how I know from experience they won't "fix it later".

From feedback I heard that Enh is in a pretty good spot right now, is that not true?

[Sondrelk]

WotLK, Cata, MoP, BfA and Shadowlands also didn't have them. They put portals when it makes sense. What sense would it make to put a Dark Portal variation in Dragon Isles?

WotLK was definitely the odd one out, but Cata had the Stormwind gates, MoP had the two giant statues, BfA had the Lordaeron gates, and Shadowlands had the giant portal to the Shadowlands.
It's not strictly speaking the old style of portal, but they all seemed to go for a generic theme of portal or gate, or at the very least some kind of entrance. MoP was definitely a bit more abstract, but with the two statues on either side with their spears crossed you do most definitely have the vague outline of a gate underneath.

Just seems weird to completely abandon that motif for this one. Not that it's bad by any stretch, but it is a clear departure from previous login screens.

[infinitemeridian]

Why would they update animations for classes that don't need it as much as others? All of them need it, don't get me wrong, but UH / Blood DK, hunters, and maybe rogues need it the most for sure.

[klaps_05]

Congrats to monks, they got a guaranteed raid spot with the new passive 4% leech AND 4% avoidance for the raid.

[Sondrelk]

Well neither did Cata or MoP or BfA.

Portal, gate, or generic entrance. With the exception of WotLK all login screens have had some kind of prominent gate or otherwise entrance to something or other. Just look at the MoP one and tell me you don't notice the giant statues with their spears crossed creating a vague outline of a gate underneath.

[Feali]

If Blizzard releases Dragonflight on November 28, 2022, and gives us the usual 14-days off-season, the Raid will be opened on December 13, 2022, and Mythic on December 20, 2022, these dates are insane and never before we had a raid release so close to the holiday season. Would be a lot better if the expansion could be released on December 7/8, or 12/13, and the first Season on January 3, 2023.

God, I hope they just release the expansion and wait with the raid til after the new year. There would also be close to no maintenance over the holidays and it would just be a shitshow.

[Makabreska]

WotLK was definitely the odd one out, but Cata had the Stormwind gates, MoP had the two giant statues, BfA had the Lordaeron gates, and Shadowlands had the giant portal to the Shadowlands.
It's not strictly speaking the old style of portal, but they all seemed to go for a generic theme of portal or gate, or at the very least some kind of entrance. MoP was definitely a bit more abstract, but with the two statues on either side with their spears crossed you do most definitely have the vague outline of a gate underneath.

Just seems weird to completely abandon that motif for this one. Not that it's bad by any stretch, but it is a clear departure from previous login screens.

Man, don't start looking for some weird patterns now, like certain other posters here.

[Sondrelk]

I mean, it's not how it usually goes...

[IMG]

Back in the day, the closest expansion/raid releases we had for Christmas were:

* Barely near the holidays. - Wrath of the Lich King: November 14, 2008 - Raids opened the same day.

Warlords of Draenor: November 13, 2014 - Highmaul opened on December 2, 2014.

Cataclysm: December 7, 2010 - Raids opened the same day.

Shadowlands: November 23, 2020 - Castle Nathria opened on December 8, 2020.

--

If Blizzard releases Dragonflight on November 28, 2022, and gives us the usual 14-days off-season, the Raid will be opened on December 13, 2022, and Mythic on December 20, 2022, these dates are insane and never before we had a raid release so close to the holiday season. Would be a lot better if the expansion could be released on December 7/8, or 12/13, and the first Season on January 3, 2023.

Crossed fingers that if we get a launch close to December, that we get a longer wait until the raid opens. Might be a bit annoying to have to wait, but as we saw with Legion, the willingness to delay the launch of the raids from the patch launch pays dividens in spades when it comes to pacing.

- - - Updated - - -

Man, don't look for some weird patterns now, like certain other posters here.

It's literally one of the most obvious motifs in WoW. I mean honestly, the gate is literally right there. The SL one even has both a gate, AND a portal.

[stormgust]

They said same for priests. I guess unreleased classes have prio so they can gather first feedback.

That wouldn't explain why hunter has been receiving updates every week, and warrior just got a major update this week?

[Makabreska]

It's literally one of the most obvious motifs in WoW. I mean honestly, the gate is literally right there. The SL one even has both a gate, AND a portal.

Ye, ye. Motifs, pasterns and The Grand Design.

[Gurkan]

If you think about it, the "beacon" is sort of the gate/portal, as it opened the way into the Dragon Isles.

[Nymrohd]

Congrats to monks, they got a guaranteed raid spot with the new passive 4% leech AND 4% avoidance for the raid.

All these crazy passive buffs will be such a mess.

[Sondrelk]

That wouldn't explain why hunter has been receiving updates every week, and warrior just got a major update this week?

Class devs are seemingly given free reign to fix the classes the way they want. The hunter one (who I think also is in charge of Shaman) is just the most active in terms of Blueposts. The Rogue one is not as apparent, but supposedly very active on the class Discords.
In a sense it's just luck of the draw sadly, some classes got lucky and got great developers who want to do good work, and some like Druid got unlucky and had the developer leave the office, whether for vacation or permanently.

That being said I think the Warrior one was supposedly in quite a good place comparatively, so that developer might just be focusing on other stuff, they do afterall take care of more than one class at a time.

[SunspotAnims]

One can only hope. Unholy DK is one of those specs that is in fire need of someone to come in and fix the mess. For one maybe they can finally decide whether it's a Necromancer with a sword, or a really confused Arms Warrior that dabbles in Necromancy on the side.

Might be an unpopular opinion, but if there ever was a class that should make the transition from Melee to Ranged beyond Survival its definitely Unholy. That spec would barely need any changes to become a staff wielding Necromancer.

I think in theory a carefully-crafted talent tree would make it possible for each player to choose more necromancer or more towards knight, but I doubt it'll happen, at least not currently. Personally I prefer they lean into the necromancer side, mainly because it just matches the theme better and further differentiates the spec from Frost, but also because it's cool.

[infinitemeridian]

Seeing all kinds of specs getting extensive work based on feedback, and seeing Enha get 0 since the talents came live is depressing and gives the same old feeling of how I know from experience they won't "fix it later".

Enhance is one of the best specs, shaman in general needs very little changes.

[Sondrelk]

If you think about it, the "beacon" is sort of the gate/portal, as it opened the way into the Dragon Isles.

That is true, it's just the framing of the login screen that is way off. No clear central motif, no apparent continuation of the portal theme. Might be different once I see it animated though.

That being said, I guess it's only a small thing anyways, I barely ever even see the login screen between logging in from Battle.net and going to the Character selection.

[stormgust]

Seeing all kinds of specs getting extensive work based on feedback, and seeing Enha get 0 since the talents came live is depressing and gives the same old feeling of how I know from experience they won't "fix it later".

Druids being the first tree previewed and recieving at most a handful of changes since then is quite bad as well. Why preview if you don't care about feedback?

[Sondrelk]

I think in theory a carefully-crafted talent tree would make it possible for each player to choose more necromancer or more towards knight, but I doubt it'll happen, at least not currently. Personally I prefer they lean into the necromancer side, mainly because it just matches the theme better and further differentiates the spec from Frost, but also because it's cool.

Might just be me, but whenever I play Unholy I always feel the melee stuff just gets in the way of the Necromancer theme. I want to see my diseases spread like a contagion, and summon ghouls to overwhelm my enemies, not laboriously give my enemies zits that I can pop.

[Feali]

Might just be me, but whenever I play Unholy I always feel the melee stuff just gets in the way of the Necromancer theme. I want to see my diseases spread like a contagion, and summon ghouls to overwhelm my enemies, not laboriously give my enemies zits that I can pop.

Army of the Dead seriously is one of the greatest spells in the game. Need more shit like that. I want an army of ghouls, skeletons, abominations and shit. Much more like the Necromancer in Diablo or the one in the Wrath trailer.

[infinitemeridian]

Army of the Dead seriously is one of the greatest spells in the game. Need more shit like that. I want an army of ghouls, skeletons, abominations and shit. Much more like the Necromancer in Diablo or the one in the Wrath trailer.

Personally, I don't like the wound mechanic. It slows down the spec and makes it feel like I'm constantly setting up for damage, rather than doing damage. This is only further compounded in open-world content and pvp, where I find the spec cumbersome and un-intuitive. Add on Unholy being a Pet AND a dot spec just makes this worse. There are also too many cooldowns (Transformation, Soul Reaper, Army of the Dead, Apocalypse, Unholy Frenzy, Gargoyle), so when they aren't up, I feel like I'm not really doing anything, which is made worse by the fact that I need to "set up" my wounds to feel like I'm doing anything in the first place. The large number of cooldowns only exacerbates the GCD as well. The flow of gameplay seems to be too much of setting up wounds, wanting to spend them, but being interrupted by higher priority cooldowns.

The abilities and feel of the spec just feels weak, even if I'm topping meters - there's too much damage spread out, so the spec feels like "death from 1000 cuts", which seems wrong for a Death Knight. I would remove army of the dead and spread that damage into more commonly used abilities like Scourge Strike / Death Coil. Plus, the spec is slow and immobile and doesn't feel particularly tanky, especially compared to other classes like DH, monks, or warriors.

Too much of the ghoul is passive as well - it would be nice to have some sort of kill command-esque ability for the ghoul, rather than just hit a button every 40-60 seconds. The ghoul is just window-dressing at this point and doesn't feel like I'm doing anything with it. Maybe give us a KC - like ability that serves as an execute? Sense Death or something like that which makes the Pet feel impactful in some way.

Also, Unholy has really weak animations / spell effects. The fantasy is great, the spec just lacks any sort of "coolness" factor. Give me bigger and better pets, and more of them. Give Death and Decay a new animation (Why is this using the same effect as Blood?). Make scourge strike cleave the same animation that Blood has for Heartstrike cleave. Clawing shadows should release some sort purple claw from your weapon. There's a lot of potential here, and I would look at the necromancer in D3 for inspiration, but right now the only cool looking ability is Apocalypse then some random green auras from WoTLK to indicate a disease.