Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nyel]

Dragonflight probably has a lot more hype solely from the fact there is no major system gimmick grind this time around.

Curious, based on what, how do you come to that conclusion?
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While I really like the new profession icons in a vacuum, I'm sad to see the old ones go. They have been such a staple for all of WoW's life cycle, getting new ones feels weird, although I understand the update.

[therumblings]

Curious, based on what, how do you come to that conclusion?.

I recall a massive sense of dread about how covenants worked just before the launch of SL, Dragonflight having basically nothing other than talents, dragonriding talents and renown as reputations is very refreshing.

[AngerFork]

All this is very confusing for a mongo like myself.. whos hyped for Dragonflight though? Pre patch in a week!

Super hyped! New class for the first time since Legion which absolutely feels different from any other class. A plot that feels very much like what WoW should feel like as opposed to bizarre afterlife stuff. No required grinds to raid or whatever else. UI & Talent updates to refresh how the game feels. There's a lot to be excited about IMO!

I will say I do wish they'd delay it by a month for bug fixes (there's still lots of weird ones), but thus far there's a lot of good to be found here!

[Gloriandus]

I would love to think Blizzard has finally learned its lesson with borrowed power/systems, but the stone-hearted part of me fully expects them to put one in at some point during Dragonflight's lifespan.

[Le Conceptuel]

People will complain it's just illusion of choice, but I'd much prefer illusion of choice than just 7 talents to pick from. Even if people go with meta builds if they want to at least the choice is there.

Absolutely. Even a facsimile of RPG elements would be better than the set of lobby game-tier traits we're given currently. Even then, the increased flexibility may allow for some flexibility among viable builds, even if viable builds will be grossly outnumbered by nonviable builds.

- - - Updated - - -

Illusion or no, the new Talent system in Dragonflight already feels a lot better to me just in terms of being able to fine-tune and change up my playstyle without making massive swings in power or comprehensive useability like the previous Talent system. The ability to have multiple presets or loadouts also makes it easier for me to shift between overworld adventuring, running Mythics, or raiding without the same aforementioned gaps or loss in ability. There were always be optimal builds for any given task, but the new system's freedom to change and adapt is very welcome.

Effectively my feelings on the matter.

[8bithamster]

People will complain it's just illusion of choice, but I'd much prefer illusion of choice than just 7 talents to pick from. Even if people go with meta builds if they want to at least the choice is there.

exactly this. But this is MMO Champion, like reddit, they will always complain. There is not a day where people agree that anything in WoW is a good change. And then they wonder why Blizzard doesn't listen.

[Le Conceptuel]

exactly this. But this is MMO Champion, like reddit, they will always complain. There is not a day where people agree that anything in WoW is a good change. And then they wonder why Blizzard doesn't listen.

I don't think that's fair. It's not infrequently that MMO-Champion or any other forum will speak well of a good and sustainable decision, and it is similarly not infrequently that the playerbase clearly articulates the need for something to change or not to change, and in the latter case it is certainly not their fault that Blizzard fails to account for this complaint. The playerbase is not always consistent, and they're not often very articulate, but there are many complaints regarding the current state of WoW which are entirely valid.

[Sondrelk]

I would love to think Blizzard has finally learned its lesson with borrowed power/systems, but the stone-hearted part of me fully expects them to put one in at some point during Dragonflight's lifespan.

So long as it's the final patch then I wouldn't really mind. There are only so many ways to make the player feel stronger without just pumping the stats, so adding something towards the end like a legendary ring might be alright.

So long as it's not something that compounds on itself like BfA with Azerote, essences, and the cloak, I think it's fair to the developers to give an easy power boost.

[8bithamster]

I don't think that's fair. It's not infrequently that MMO-Champion or any other forum will speak well of a good and sustainable decision, and it is similarly not infrequently that the playerbase clearly articulates the need for something to change or not to change, and in the latter case it is certainly not their fault that Blizzard fails to account for this complaint. The playerbase is not always consistent, and they're not often very articulate, but there are many complaints regarding the current state of WoW which are entirely valid.

Sure, please provide me any topic about class changes here where people articulated thoughtful, decent feedback instead of the drooling "Omg asmongold says it sucks therefor it sucks! See blizzard never listens." Let's just list the reasons why DF will suck according to this thread alone:

Shadow Priest "lead developer" quit and absolutely hated the class and made it their life goal to screw over the class as much as possible

DF is a self insert party for Danuser after he liked it so much in Shadowlands, that's why all the lore will suck, and has ever sucked ever in the warcraft universe

DF will be the worst expansion after Shadowlands, and MoP and Legion/BFA were amazing expansions.

<insert photoshop here> is clearly superior to whatever blizzard did, please hire this person, disregarding any animations, rigging etc required

<insert game here> is vastly superior to WoW nowadays, and blizzard should blatantly steal from that game

<insert lore topic here> completely sucks because Blizzard sucks at writing

What is the common factor here? A complete lack of productive feedback. It's all X sucks and omg blizzard sucks. There's barely any informed discussion, just inane rambling. So why would Blizzard read it? When people can't even articulate their opinion without shoving in "X sucks because I say so! And look, this random youtuber agrees. And whatever this youtuber says is absolute truth"?

[Auxis]

I honestly expected them to nerf Prot before Ret. The ST AS build was oppressive in PvP and could match most dps in PvE while building constant absorb shields.

What is this ST AS build, I'm guessing Avenger Shield. What made it so strong that it could compete with DPS in PvE?

There is nothing about that...



Given that the Titans are straight out trying to conceal the existence of the First Ones, it seems unlikely that they hold them in high enough regard, to follow unquestionably their rules.

Yeah. Automa are robots. The Pantheon of Death, although using advanced Automa bodies, seem to be Higher Souls possessing the bodies ("Bereft of the cosmic spirits of the Eternal Ones, these incomplete host bodies can only carry out their base directives without mercy or compassion." from the Prototype Pantheon adventure guide).

Unsure whether they are the "piece of Architect that a First One put into each Cosmology" ("They came together (or were brought together, depending on how one interprets the fractal) and gave form to their design. Forged? Scribed? Shaped? The exact word is elusive. Each architect gave a portion of themselves, and thus the pattern was drawn." from https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Exp..._A37J_-_Part_1 ) or something else though.

[UndedoKoleda]

Well you don't call a spec that is performing extremely well yet has a boring talent tree a joke. That much seems fairly objective. Ret was a joke in much of the beta indeed, a very bad joke for anyone trying to PvP against them getting destroyed in seconds.

The spec is not a joke.. wonky talent trees =/= spec is a joke. Nice try though!

Either me, or you two, is complete misunderstanding his post.

You confuse what DF is; it's shadowlands with most of the borrowed-power baked in. The rest? Same systems, same design philosophy, same everything. I have been following beta closely this time, if you haven't, let me enlighten you; they ignored pretty much all the feedback. In SL, the ignored the problems with covenants. In DF, they are ignoring problems with talents. Retri is a fucking joke. DH is ok number wise, but the design philosophy there is a fucking joke. Evoker is not ready to ship. And from what I read, Shadow Priests, Guardian Druids are fucked too. They are now preparing the addict masses to the new idea that each expansion is going to have 8 and only 8 new dungeons. Half of it at the start and other half after months, and the rest is rehashed shit. That's effectively 4 new dungeons. It is beyond me why there is not a community outrage about the amount of content we are getting...Dragonflight will go live with broken classes and extremely poor content to bump 4th quarterly results.

This expansion is bound to fail.

I read that as I complaint about the core system(s)- in this case the new talents. He is not talking about numbers balance(which could change at literally any point), he is talking about the overall idea behind the new talents compared to old and how some specs, in his opinion, have it underwhelming(which if go live like this, are unlikely to get changes till some big 10.x patch). He is even giving as example how they (mis)handled the Beta feedback about the Covenants... It certainly wasn't about numbers back then, but about the way the entire system was functioning.

The very same thing was said by the retri paladin guide author, that I linked earlier today.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/retribu...nt-tree-329400

To put it bluntly, Retribution's talent trees are not in a good spot - we've had mostly the same issues for essentially the entirety of Alpha/Beta, there's been few changes made, and even less communication about them. With the "design" phase over and the "tuning" phase underway, it's unfortunately extremely unlikely that many of these glaring issues are addressed before prepatch or launch, so this may serve more as a post about what should be changed in 10.1 rather than before launch.

So lets wait for the poster in question to clarify what did he mean(if he feels like it).

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't think that's fair. It's not infrequently that MMO-Champion or any other forum will speak well of a good and sustainable decision, and it is similarly not infrequently that the playerbase clearly articulates the need for something to change or not to change, and in the latter case it is certainly not their fault that Blizzard fails to account for this complaint. The playerbase is not always consistent, and they're not often very articulate, but there are many complaints regarding the current state of WoW which are entirely valid.

You put too much faith in MMO-Champion posters...

[Nymrohd]

What is this ST AS build, I'm guessing Avenger Shield. What made it so strong that it could compete with DPS in PvE?

ST for single target. You could change AS to be completely ST and triple its damage with Focused Enmity. The talent was nerfed to only double its damage. A second talent increased AS' damage by +50% on primary target (was nerfed to +30%). Combined you had AS hit like a truck, convert half that damage into shields, deal splash damage, reduce damage done by the target by 6% and increase block by 10%. Add Divine Toll with Divine Resonance and alternate it with Moment of Glory and it was extremely effective.
It is still just as effective in AoE btw; when you switch to the AoE talent instead of Enmity to add two more targets to AS and probably switch to the talent that gives you 2% parry per target hit by AS (+10% parry in AoE packs increasing your Grand Crusader procs for even more AS spam). Anyway Prot definitely gets to live their Captain America fantasy.

[UndedoKoleda]

Yeah. Automa are robots. The Pantheon of Death, although using advanced Automa bodies, seem to be Higher Souls possessing the bodies ("Bereft of the cosmic spirits of the Eternal Ones, these incomplete host bodies can only carry out their base directives without mercy or compassion." from the Prototype Pantheon adventure guide).

Unsure whether they are the "piece of Architect that a First One put into each Cosmology" ("They came together (or were brought together, depending on how one interprets the fractal) and gave form to their design. Forged? Scribed? Shaped? The exact word is elusive. Each architect gave a portion of themselves, and thus the pattern was drawn." from https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Exp..._A37J_-_Part_1 ) or something else though.

Unless Blizzard retcon it, the Titans are born out of World Souls, they are not made on an assembly line, like the Eternal Ones.

[huth]

I don't think that's fair. It's not infrequently that MMO-Champion or any other forum will speak well of a good and sustainable decision, and it is similarly not infrequently that the playerbase clearly articulates the need for something to change or not to change, and in the latter case it is certainly not their fault that Blizzard fails to account for this complaint. The playerbase is not always consistent, and they're not often very articulate, but there are many complaints regarding the current state of WoW which are entirely valid.

Individuals on the forum, maybe. The average opinion of the forum as a whole? At most, it's an understatement.

There are many valid complaints, but compared to all the baseless whining, they're a small minority.

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Unless Blizzard retcon it, the Titans are born out of World Souls, they are not made on an assembly line, like the Eternal Ones.

It's not clear how they get their physical bodies, so we can't rule it out. For that matter, we only see the gestation process of one world soul. We don't actually know how they were made. And technically, they aren't born from world souls. They are one and the same.

[Catastrophy349]

https://www.wowhead.com/news/world-o...er-25th-329413

[Sondrelk]

https://www.wowhead.com/news/world-o...er-25th-329413

Guess they are sticking to the 2 weeks of events they mentioned before. Bit of a shame having to wait three weeks until we can make Dracthyr.

[Dracullus]

Yeah, I get they don't want to drag these events, but Dracthyr alone should be week 2.

There could be one positive from this. During XP buff start they said: "Don’t delay. The winds will shift once more when the new dracthyr Evoker becomes playable during the Dragonflight pre-expansion patch, and the experience buff will no longer be available."

And have XP normalization to linear for 50-60 aka massive XP nerf in pre-patch. So it could be best window to level all 50-60 chars.

[Nymrohd]

Talents are going live next week. So many classes still have significant bugs in their talents though. They probably need the time before they have the events live to make sure everything actually works.

[Sondrelk]

Talents are going live next week. So many classes still have significant bugs in their talents though. They probably need the time before they have the events live to make sure everything actually works.

If this testing is like all others then the bugs are likely already fixed on their internal build, and are just not pushed to the playable version yet.