Shadowlands - Flying Update, Target Cap AoE Spells, New DK Runeforges, DLC #723

[Hirix891]

Wait Shamans have Meteor now?

[Mordred]

While I appreciate the info about when flying will become available, I didn't see any mention of whether or not Pathfinder will still be required for each individual expansion.

It seems to be a conflicting situation.

Will a person be able to gain some sort of accelerated reputation gains, so that flying becomes available by level 30 if WoD, Legion, or BfA is chosen?
Will they change or remove the pathfinder achievements required, so they're available to complete by level 30?
Will pathfinder be removed entirely in leveling expansions in lieu of a simple level restriction?

You don't need to fly at any point while leveling in WoD, Legion, or BfA, so why would they?

What happens if a person chooses to level in Cata? Mt Hyjal has a number of quests that require flying to reach, such as the quests out of the Shrine of Aviana for Thisalee Crow. Will temporary mounts be given? Will breadcrumb quests and portals be removed or relocated so that players are forced to begin Cata in Vash'jr?

They could very easily add in another NPC like "Honest" Max that can grant you a temporary mount in the incredibly few places where flying would actually be required.

[TheLucky1]

So we are doing a 180 turn on 16years of mage gameplay and tell mages to play diablo (why would anyone in 2020 play diablo when path of exile is infinetly better?).

Its sad that my classic mage has more tools to deal with large packs of mobs than my retail mage, and by the looks of this nerf its gonna get even worse.

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Difficulty is not the issue. Fun factor is.

Losing the ability to control large packs of mobs, something ive been able to do since vanilla, is just sad.

This just just like the gcd on cds change... It makes the game less enjoyable to play.

The slow is a thing you could argue about sure, however there will now only be 8 mobs you ideally pull in group content so you still slow all of them in group content (sucks if you accidentally pull more ofc.)

About fun factor: having mass aoe be the answer to everything right now cheesing everything as much as possible is not fun in my opinion, it's usually also very chaotic.

[dzd]

i don't get it... blizzard gave you WoW classic.

why do you need to come to retail and shit on peoples fun here too.

Not everyone likes boring ass slow game play, you have a game dedicated to you with love from blizzard.

It's the exact opposite. You should go play classic if you want to do uncapped AoE grind. Retail needs AoE changes because of m+.

[Doffen]

Wait Shamans have Meteor now?

Wait, WoW has Shamans now?

[xblubbx]

No. Gathering everything up and just aoe'ing it down is what's bad. [...] There's no skill or strategy involved. The change to AoE is absolutely needed.

No offense but to say there's no skill or strategy involved in AoE pulls.. what is the m+ content you participated in? 15 weekly key?

The issue that non aoe classes are in disadvantage is true but removing everyone's aoe isn't the only possible solution to this problem. Just give everyone enough talent options to choose and build a solid aoe kit.

[TheLucky1]

No offense but to say there's no skill or strategy involved in AoE pulls.. what is the m+ content you participated in? 15 weekly key?

The issue that non aoe classes are in disadvantage is true but removing everyone's aoe isn't the only possible solution to this problem. Just give everyone enough talent options to choose and build a solid aoe kit.

It is not removed though? 8 is still a decent number and if they do design dungeons with that in mind (no mass low hp adds since that would be annoying) it will still be pretty much the same.

What you won't be able to do now is "cheese" and mass pull more mobs than intended and then just aoe silence/aoe stun everything and hope they die before your cc cd's run out while tank and healer cheese the survival somehow, that was also very limiting in what classes you could bring for that.

Also as a note to the competitive side: sure it needs skill and practice but the error margin being this low is also kinda not healthy.

[dzd]

No offense but to say there's no skill or strategy involved in AoE pulls.. what is the m+ content you participated in? 15 weekly key?

The issue that non aoe classes are in disadvantage is true but removing everyone's aoe isn't the only possible solution to this problem. Just give everyone enough talent options to choose and build a solid aoe kit.

So your solutions is to make every class do insane AoE? That's exactly the problem they are trying to fix with this. Core of the problem is that m+ is time limited and without AoE caps pulling extra mobs is just free damage for some classes.

Another problem with uncapped AoE is that it limits the design they can do, because they can't add lowhp mobs in m+ instances, because people will just pull all of them together and kill in one leg sweep or w/e AoE stun they have.

[Cæli]

so classes have still many spells that have no target limit?
there's no difference...

[Qnubi]

i don't get it... blizzard gave you WoW classic.

why do you need to come to retail and shit on peoples fun here too.

Not everyone likes boring ass slow game play, you have a game dedicated to you with love from blizzard.

I don't get it, Blizzard gave you BFA.

Why do you need to come to Shadowlands and shit on peoples fun there too.

Not everyone likes Diablo gameplay in their MMO, you have an expansion dedicated to you with love from Blizzard.

Seriously: Your argument is so flawed. Blizzard constantly iterates their game and we moved from Classic to BFA and had major changes. You can't go any more AoE-Friendly and can't make it more action oriented as BFA is the pinnacle of that gameplay. So when they have to think of changes there is just one way.. going back. What would you have changed in terms of combat flow? If your answer is "nothing" then you know why you are no MMO game designer. And WoW is NOT a MMO where nothing changes, it thrives on constantly re-imagining the wheel. Proof: Literally every expansion in history.

[xblubbx]

and hope they die before your cc cd's run out while tank and healer cheese the survival somehow, that was also very limiting in what classes you could bring for that.

And yet live high keys AND MDI, both of them, had more class variety in Legion than BfA had. Claiming they designed BfA dungeons with m+ in mind. Sad.

[erifwodahs]

About fun factor: having mass aoe be the answer to everything right now cheesing everything as much as possible is not fun in my opinion, it's usually also very chaotic.

Doing something insane and coming out on top of it is crazy fun. Like pulling 6 packs of mobs and try to nuke them down before CD's are over or we are out of ways to interrupt casts. Also they will have to make sure to get the balance right. If mobs are too weak the classes which are uncapped at AoE will be top pick anyway or if classes with capped aoe also have weaker ST dmg... Well then. or If they are making mobs stronger, dot classes will have to be looked at too.

[SirCowdog]

You don't need to fly at any point while leveling in WoD, Legion, or BfA, so why would they?

Because what will happen is that people will avoid leveling in those expansions due to it being faster to fly in other expansions.

Granted, there's something to be said for that odd player who just wants to enjoy the atmosphere of a particular expansion. But most players are going to outright avoid expansions that they don't have flying available ASAP. WoD, Legion, and BfA are particularly painful to level in from the ground, even if you already have pathfinder, so that's a double negative.

Pathfinder in outdated expansions is kind of a bad design to begin with. And given that Blizzard appears to be giving players faster leveling(supposedly 60-70% faster), it seems pointless to lock players out of flying in expansions that are no longer current, especially when flying is straight up available for gold at level 30 in other expansions before WoD.

They could very easily add in another NPC like "Honest" Max that can grant you a temporary mount in the incredibly few places where flying would actually be required.

Possibly. I'm mostly just curious to see how they handle it.

[Eapoe]

Weird levels... I don't think you can feasibly hit 30 (halfway between 10 and 50) without flying in Cata, they would need to change something.

You don’t need flight at all for Vashjir, and pretty sure you can skip some of the quests to stick to the ground for the most part in Hyjal until you get high enough for later Cata zones.

[Pakheth]

People who complain about the AoE cap forgets that the cap was originally removed in Legion and before that we did have a cap. So a cap is nothing new.

[Kuja]

I hope all pathfinder requirements will be removed. Those older ones especially seem obsolete to have. But I kinda understand having it in Shadowlands until you are max level, so you can't just fly over to places you're not supposed to be in yet. But no way I'm waiting a year to be able to fly again.

[Pakheth]

Well, that Dark Legacy Comic was weird

Gigz has a thing for cooking and every living being of Azeroth is her prey. I love her and we haven't seen her cook in a while :P

[SirCowdog]

You don’t need flight at all for Vashjir, and pretty sure you can skip some of the quests to stick to the ground for the most part in Hyjal until you get high enough for later Cata zones.

The quests out of Aviana's Shrine are key to progressing the zone, and they require flight to reach several areas. You'd get about half of the zone done and be stuck without flying.

Same thing in Deepholme. You'd need flight to reach the alliance airship, or you wouldn't be able to progress the main story of the zone.

[Sellest]

I hope they also fix classes with dots to affect only certain amount of targets so moonkins and spriest won't have unfair advantage

[Great Destiny Man]

I hope they also fix classes with dots to affect only certain amount of targets so moonkins and spriest won't have unfair advantage

Putting an actual cap on targets that can be affected by DoTs would be weird and jarring. If it did need balancing you'd probably see damage drop offs based on number of targets affected,