Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited November 2018
I'm level 31 and haven't done any grinding since week 1 of mythic. Daily emissary, weekly islands, that's pretty much it. The Azerite grind is drastically overstated and far, far easier than the artifact power trek from Legion. Does nobody remember that Legion artifact power was spec specific?
And you definitely, definitely do not have to regrind moving between raid difficulties. The level requirement increases are absolutely tiny.
To fully unlock all three trait circles (not the ilvl bonus, obviously)
Helm
Normal - 22
Heroic - 24
Mythic - 25
Chest
Normal - 23
Heroic - 25
Mythic - 26
Shoulders
Normal - 24
Heroic - 26
Mythic - 27
Asserting that those increases require any sort of grinding is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst.
EJ is still around? I thought they broke up several expansions ago.
They are. Ion is in fact a raider there(Enh Shaman, go fig). So the point of the joke is that they get stuck at 6/8M -> Mythrax gets nerfed to make it easier on melee.
+1
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Yeah but then that falls flat, because why wouldn't he have fixed shaman? Unless he is selfless and the good of the raid comes before his spec being boring to play.
I dunno wtf gear youre using but i have pieces of gear that need 29 or 30 to unlock traits. Granted its pvp gear, but the extra levels to get through pvp when pvp is waaaaay slower to get ap is kinda bullshit. Especially when azerite fortitude, is semi mandatory, i cant use a 370 piece on my shaman because i need 28 to unlock the trait, so i just have it sitting in my bag until i can use it because the outer traits dont matter in pvp and 30 ilvls dont matter if you cant survive a stun.
I think that some reasonable expectations can exists for pretty much any guild of any size and seriousness when you are talking about raiding (normal difficulty).
For example, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect anybody at all, no matter how seriously committed they are to have gems and enchants on all applicable pieces of gear. Getting gems and enchants is trivial. Many times guildies will offer those things for free or at a discounted rate. Worst case scenario, a person can buy those things on the AH, and even on release week, the prices are never bank breaking for those things. I would consider gems and enchants to be "standard equipment."
Consumables get a bit more grey. Normal difficulty is easy enough that guilds shouldn't really require their players to flask. You don't need it. Heroic is another story. For pushing new content and progression, you probably need it. Mythic for sure. So consumables is a bit more of a scale depending on difficulty of content.
On the subject of difficulty, Normal is also easy enough that guilds don't really have any need to run parses or analyze logs. The only reason a guild at normal difficulty would need to do this is if they wanted to see if somebody was dragging ass and not contributing. But Normal is entry level for organized groups. Yes, LFR exists and is super ez-mode, but LFR is basically sight-seer mode, and the mode for people who just want to see the content and don't care about accomplishment.
Mythic is not "entry level." It is not pedestrian, it is not casual, and I think Mythic guilds can reasonably expect things of their raiders that Normal/Heroic guilds cannot. Mythic takes difficulty and time commitment to a different level. And thus people who raid at the Mythic difficulty need to be more invested. This isn't unreasonable for Mythic guilds to require a lot more investment as far as consumables, vantus runes, augment stones, and even min/maxing classes for best results and following the flavor of the month class trends. When you're pushing the hardest content, you do the things you need to do to win. And that means a greater investment from players individually.
Yeah I'm not even sure why mythic raid was the target of the conversation at all to be honest. Of course bleeding edge content requires min-maxing, but that's not what I was talking about originally. Just like item level starting becoming a measure of someone's abilities, so to is this other number you can look at to see how serious you take the game. And it just diminishes my want to play because I don't have the energy to log in for several hours a day and max out what I can. I don't even want to log in once a week to do it because it's dumb and I hate all this stupid busy work to keep up with everything for bare minimum content that doesn't require it at all.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I dunno wtf gear youre using but i have pieces of gear that need 29 or 30 to unlock traits. Granted its pvp gear, but the extra levels to get through pvp when pvp is waaaaay slower to get ap is kinda bullshit. Especially when azerite fortitude, is semi mandatory, i cant use a 370 piece on my shaman because i need 28 to unlock the trait, so i just have it sitting in my bag until i can use it because the outer traits dont matter in pvp and 30 ilvls dont matter if you cant survive a stun.
That is all raid gear that I listed. Given that the discussion was around raid difficulty increases requiring regrinding, those trait levels are the more relevant ones.
Now take notice, I'm not talking about the requirement of grinding to unlock gear, I'm talking about player perception about the number.
If it's not at their level they consider it slacking. Someone made a big hubub about someone's weapon skill in wrath because they couldn't use the item that would've been a side grade for them yet we gave it to that person, that kind of shit annoys the piss out of me.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
0
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
Yeah but then that falls flat, because why wouldn't he have fixed shaman? Unless he is selfless and the good of the raid comes before his spec being boring to play.
I'm level 31 and haven't done any grinding since week 1 of mythic. Daily emissary, weekly islands, that's pretty much it. The Azerite grind is drastically overstated and far, far easier than the artifact power trek from Legion. Does nobody remember that Legion artifact power was spec specific?
And you definitely, definitely do not have to regrind moving between raid difficulties. The level requirement increases are absolutely tiny.
To fully unlock all three trait circles (not the ilvl bonus, obviously)
Helm
Normal - 22
Heroic - 24
Mythic - 25
Chest
Normal - 23
Heroic - 25
Mythic - 26
Shoulders
Normal - 24
Heroic - 26
Mythic - 27
Asserting that those increases require any sort of grinding is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst.
Honestly I was more worried about the upcoming raid. Information we have at the moment says the following
"On the chest shown as example, the new ring unlocks at Azerite level 23. The normal rings will unlock after, at Azerite levels 27, 31, 35 and 39."
im currently 30, I dont really grind azerite (hell I havent done an emissary in over a week). Im just hoping that by the time the raid releases I wont be at a stage where an azerite upgrade makes me lose traits I already had. Cuz that's the worst. But im also pretty sure i'll be 35 before I get anything, so hopefully itll be fine.
0
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
We're at least 6-8 weeks away from the 8.1 raid release. I've been pretty easily gaining one Azerite level per week, without even routinely going into islands. I'm level 30, so if I gain at the same rate from here until the new raid, taking a week or two off for the holiday, I'll be pretty much right where I need to be.
Yeah but then that falls flat, because why wouldn't he have fixed shaman? Unless he is selfless and the good of the raid comes before his spec being boring to play.
They did fix Shaman, you didn't see those % adjustments on PTR? /s
We don't know if he considers Shaman boring to play - he may in fact not, but he like much of the dev team won't communicate in either direction so it's anyone's guess.
I'm level 31 and haven't done any grinding since week 1 of mythic. Daily emissary, weekly islands, that's pretty much it. The Azerite grind is drastically overstated and far, far easier than the artifact power trek from Legion. Does nobody remember that Legion artifact power was spec specific?
And you definitely, definitely do not have to regrind moving between raid difficulties. The level requirement increases are absolutely tiny.
Asserting that those increases require any sort of grinding is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst.
... Doing weekly islands for AP is grinding? Like... what?
I'm level 31 and haven't done any grinding since week 1 of mythic. Daily emissary, weekly islands, that's pretty much it. The Azerite grind is drastically overstated and far, far easier than the artifact power trek from Legion. Does nobody remember that Legion artifact power was spec specific?
And you definitely, definitely do not have to regrind moving between raid difficulties. The level requirement increases are absolutely tiny.
Asserting that those increases require any sort of grinding is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst.
... Doing weekly islands for AP is grinding? Like... what?
im sure hes doing the weekly islands on mythic difficulty so he would need to do like 3 of them over a week to finish the quest. that isnt really grinding in my book for what takes probably 10 minutes each expedition.
I kinda see it as a bad system for reasons that flip as you go from one end to the other that only really even out somewhere in the middle. It feels like it's a system that's designed to more than anything inordinately punish cutting edge raiding, but also does not impact very casual players enough to justify its existence. Which as a result ends up having two different problems on each end of the pole - by having no pressure on the population of people who do closer to nothing("if it's so irrelevant then why does this exist to begin with?") but having exceptional pressure on cutting edge raiding("if you want a raid spot, get your neck into the high 40s by December"). So much more power is locked behind the levels of the neck relative to say a negligible stack of Concordance that they can't afford not to have those traits available when pushing the mythic race.
I believe the reason Blizz is keeping "AP" as a thing after legion is because it's a way of offering a consolation prize in a personal loot world without flooding the economy with even more gold.
I believe the reason Blizz is keeping "AP" as a thing after legion is because it's a way of offering a consolation prize in a personal loot world without flooding the economy with even more gold.
My theory is different. From WoD, a big complaint was "there's nothing to do besides raid logging and we are bored" and since in WoD subs tanked, Blizz created a system where you almost always have something to do when you log in. Hell, I'm sure that Ion himself said something along those lines in a Q&A.
+2
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
but having exceptional pressure on cutting edge raiding("if you want a raid spot, get your neck into the high 40s by December").
What? there is no pressure at all for Azerite for cutting edge raiding. I just got done telling you that with maybe thirty minutes a week to do islands and ten minutes a day to do an emissary, I'm at lvl 31, and the majority of my raid team is 30 or 31, as a hall of fame guild.
Also not really sure what you mean by high 40s in December.
There has been literally no conversations in our guild around required azerite level since the second week of mythic when they hotfixed level requirements down.
Edit: the above comes across more aggressive than I intended. The only point I'm trying to make is I think you guys are ascribing higher grinding requirements to Azerite than really exist. It's a flawed system but the amount of time investment that it actually requires is not one of those flaws.
I believe the reason Blizz is keeping "AP" as a thing after legion is because it's a way of offering a consolation prize in a personal loot world without flooding the economy with even more gold.
My theory is different. From WoD, a big complaint was "there's nothing to do besides raid logging and we are bored" and since in WoD subs tanked, Blizz created a system where you almost always have something to do when you log in. Hell, I'm sure that Ion himself said something along those lines in a Q&A.
I believe the reason Blizz is keeping "AP" as a thing after legion is because it's a way of offering a consolation prize in a personal loot world without flooding the economy with even more gold.
I believe the reason Blizz is keeping "AP" as a thing after legion is because it's a way of offering a consolation prize in a personal loot world without flooding the economy with even more gold.
My theory is different. From WoD, a big complaint was "there's nothing to do besides raid logging and we are bored" and since in WoD subs tanked, Blizz created a system where you almost always have something to do when you log in. Hell, I'm sure that Ion himself said something along those lines in a Q&A.
I also felt like one of their rationales behind artifact power was to have some sort of reward that they could append to all content everywhere. The intent to be "Go do whatever content you want and you will get some reward for it, no matter what."
Really, more than anything else we're talking about, it simply comes down to an individual's time commitment to WoW. I like to play other games. I would consider WoW my "main game" but that's only because I adhere to scheduled playtimes and I've been playing it for 15 years now. But WoW is not the only game I play or even the only game I want to play.
I keep my WoW time at an absolute minimum. By choice. I log in twice a week for raids and that's it.
In expansions past, I was able to play this way without any problem. No, I don't do all the emissaries. No I don't even run one Island Expedition per week, let alone enough to fill the weekly bar. Islands are the worst fucking thing and I haven't done them since the 2nd week of the expansion.
I say all that to say this -- In the past, I was able to maintain a twice per week WoW play schedule, and that was more than sufficient for raid progress. I show up, I put in my 3 hours per raid, and I'm done.
Now days, if I want to keep up, I have to do all this extra side crap that frankly I just do not want to do. And for someone who is trying very hard to maintain a very casual approach to WoW, they are basically putting me in a situation where I have to choose to play more than that, or else fall behind. Neither option is a good option for me.
And here's the worst part: Blizzard gets their $15 a month from me whether I'm logging in twice a week, or 7 times a week. Why do they care how much I play? But they're essentially forcing me to play more than I want to by giving me the choice of "Play more than you want to play" or "Sorry you cannot use these heroic items because you didn't grind enough AP this week."
supposedly they hotfixed mythrax's achievement today to actually fucking work, if you, like our guild, were only missing that one for the uldir achievement meta.
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Not even remotely the correct change that needed to be made, though. The problem with Explosive has nothing to do with their health and everything to do with the unpredictability of the spawns.
Not even remotely the correct change that needed to be made, though. The problem with Explosive has nothing to do with their health and everything to do with the unpredictability of the spawns.
I was annoyed when we sapped and monk-cc a couple of mobs, pulled the rest 20 feet away, then 2 balls spawned by the cc mobs (in our all melee dps group).
I know I have complained before about the mission math being wrong and completely scaled incorrectly but here is a good example today. These are my currently available missions.
8 Hr - RARE! - Stealth - 147 AP reward
4 Hr - 144 AP reward
4 Hr - 135 AP Reward
1 day 12 Hr - 255 AP Reward
8 Hr - 312 AP Reward
So respectively when looking at AP/hour
18.4
36
33.75
7.1
39
The stealth mission which has a lower success rate due to being a stealth mission, is worth less than two regular 4 hour missions. The other 8 hour mission is a 100% increase in AP yield compared to the 8 hour steal mission. The 1 day 12 hour mission is an 80% decrease in AP yield compared to the 4 hour missions. It just makes no sense to me!
I think that it's been weeks since I even looked at the mission table for anything other than the first plot point mission guy on a new-to-BFA content alt.
Missions require War Resources, and I generally prefer to use War Resources for getting coins for bonus rolls. I could do more World Quests to get more War Resources, but without flying I generally hate travelling around to get to World Quests. If I had flying, I'd be doing more World Quests, getting more resources, and doing more missions. But I'd also be spending less time leveling alts - since I can't fly, I feel like I might as well just be on an alt, so at least there's a point to slogging around everywhere on the ground. Which means even less time doing World Quests; I think that I'm averaging about 1.5 emissary quests a day across seven characters. Unless it's a 2000 gold quest, I don't generally bother. Which leads to even fewer War Resources, which makes missions even less likely.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I do a fairly casual 6 hours a week of heroic raiding and we're working on Heroic Ghuun that's good enough for me since my main focus in Warcraft is collecting mounts and pets and toys. My neck is level 30 now but i don't do every Azerite world quest i just do Normal islands and my emissary.
Still working on collecting the Transmogs out of LFR though lucky for me i'm almost done with wing 2 which is great because Zul is a headache. On that note i will never stop being amused at how monocle popping angry people get when you tell them no even if you're polite about it.
Person - Hey do you need that?
Zunde - Yes sorry i'm collecting the LFR coloration transmogs.
Person - General response on the same level as if i had just kicked his dog and then urinate upon his doorstep.
Take heart on the Azerite necklace though that the weekly 30% reduction per level has been ongoing and will probably continue to go on.
I haven't really done any LFR in the last couple years, but all the loot begging that goes on now sounds awful.
Back when I did do LFR sometimes, I just ignored all the other people completely. They were NPCs in my solo raid for all I cared. Ignore and isolate. That's how to enjoy public raiding. (In my opinion).
I'm level 31 and haven't done any grinding since week 1 of mythic. Daily emissary, weekly islands, that's pretty much it. The Azerite grind is drastically overstated and far, far easier than the artifact power trek from Legion. Does nobody remember that Legion artifact power was spec specific?
And you definitely, definitely do not have to regrind moving between raid difficulties. The level requirement increases are absolutely tiny.
To fully unlock all three trait circles (not the ilvl bonus, obviously)
Helm
Normal - 22
Heroic - 24
Mythic - 25
Chest
Normal - 23
Heroic - 25
Mythic - 26
Shoulders
Normal - 24
Heroic - 26
Mythic - 27
Asserting that those increases require any sort of grinding is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst.
Honestly I was more worried about the upcoming raid. Information we have at the moment says the following
"On the chest shown as example, the new ring unlocks at Azerite level 23. The normal rings will unlock after, at Azerite levels 27, 31, 35 and 39."
im currently 30, I dont really grind azerite (hell I havent done an emissary in over a week). Im just hoping that by the time the raid releases I wont be at a stage where an azerite upgrade makes me lose traits I already had. Cuz that's the worst. But im also pretty sure i'll be 35 before I get anything, so hopefully itll be fine.
Note we still have basically four AP catchup boost between now and when the 8.1 launches and probably another couple months after it launches before the new gear that needs those AP levels will be available. I am up to ap 28 on my second character through the expansion doing nothing more than my weekly LFR, weekly islands and whatever random pvp hijinks I can find. By the time you can get the gear that needs those AP levels they should be very reasonable.
Some of you need better guilds. Like my guild has dragged me around for years. I'm not always the best, not always the worst, usually in the middle, and yeah I use the logs to find out how I can do better and I think the fact that I'm trying is a big factor into why they drag me along, but they won't get mad if my neck item isn't level 30 or whatever.
Some of you need better guilds. Like my guild has dragged me around for years. I'm not always the best, not always the worst, usually in the middle, and yeah I use the logs to find out how I can do better and I think the fact that I'm trying is a big factor into why they drag me along, but they won't get mad if my neck item isn't level 30 or whatever.
Yeah I've been in some guilds where it wasn't a big deal. Then in others where anyone not on the level of the sock-shitter would get a talking down how we all have to contribute equally.
Like sure if we can't finish the raid and it's my fault because I'm missing stats or whatever, I guess you can blame me.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Some of you need better guilds. Like my guild has dragged me around for years. I'm not always the best, not always the worst, usually in the middle, and yeah I use the logs to find out how I can do better and I think the fact that I'm trying is a big factor into why they drag me along, but they won't get mad if my neck item isn't level 30 or whatever.
Yeah I've been in some guilds where it wasn't a big deal. Then in others where anyone not on the level of the sock-shitter would get a talking down how we all have to contribute equally.
Like sure if we can't finish the raid and it's my fault because I'm missing stats or whatever, I guess you can blame me.
I don't mythic raid, but PUGing H Antorus and doing N/H Uldir with my guild, it's been a long time since I really felt stats were the problem in a raid, especially the stats on a specific slot. It's almost always been mechanics/people being bad. Almost every raid group I've been in has had people of such high ilvl that things should probably balance out.
Like last week, my guild did an N Uldir alt run. Our tanks were like ilvl 310-320. One was literally freshly dinged 120 earlier that day. Still rolled to N Vectis, where we stalled due to mechanical performance from new players/unfamiliarity with roles. (We also had a couple issues on MOTHER because of the larger raid size.)
I guess maybe for mythic racers, since everybody's orange-parsing anyways, then ilvl does make a difference, but I'd say for most people it's way more important to get, you know, from grey-parsing to green-parsing.
Mythic+ Hotfixes
Some additional hotfixes have been made to Mythic+ dungeons. Keep in mind these haven't been officially announced yet.
Underrot
Feral Bloodswarmers' Sonic Screech damage was halved.
Temple of Sethraliss
Faithless Tenders' Embryonic Vigor cooldown reduction effect decreased from 50% to 10%.
Shrine of the Storms
Deepsea Ritualists' Unending Darkness cast time was increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.
Tidesage Enforcer's Deep Smash damage was decreased by 25%.
Tidesage Spiritualists' Anchor of Binding cast had its damage halved.
King's Rest
King A'akul's Hidden Blade damage was halved.
King Timalji's Bladestorm had its self-slowing effect increased from 25% to 60%, giving players more chance to run.
Queen Wasi's Seduction debuff now has a maximum duration of 8 seconds, down from 30 seconds.
Shadow-Borne Champions' Ancestral Fury self-enrage buff was decreased from 100% additional damage to 50% additional damage.
In addition to today's explosive nerf, Blizzard has also added 3 minutes to the Underrot and Tol Dagor timers. In addition, before the MDI, some stealth hotfixes were applied to Shrine of the Storm which makes the dungeon slightly easier.
Dungeon Timers
Blizzard has extended the timers of Underrot and Tol Dagor by 3 minutes. This makes the Underrot timer 33 minutes and the Tol Dagor Timer 36 minutes.
Shrine of the Storm Changes
Before the MDI at BlizzCon, Blizzard applied 3 known changes to Shrine of the Storm -- One change on the Tidesage Council boss, and two changes on the Vol'zith the Whisperer encounter.
Vol'zith the Whisperer Changes
Abyssal Eruption Explodes upon death, inflicting 19,717 3,697 Shadow damage to all players. This effect grants Vol'zith the Whisperer energy if the manifestation reaches it.
Whispers of Power Whispers a promise of power to a target, increasing their damage and healing done by 20%. The darkness strains the body, causing the target to be unable to be healed above 90% reducing maximum health by 10%. This effect increases over time.
How do these changes affect the fight? Here's our opinion:
The Whispers of Power change is massive on certain weeks, as certain affixes deal % health damage. When doing the fight, you want to never dispel the Whispers of Power to benefit from the increased DPS. This is possible as any damage to the party is preventable -- the adds should never die or hit the boss / no kicks should be missed. However:
On Grievous weeks, at max stacks Grievous ticks for 6.5% of max health per tick. At capped Whispers of Power, this would put the players within 2 ticks of death at all times with the old version of the debuff.
On Quaking weeks, a Quake does 20% of max health. Without a massive damage reduction, a single quake would kill any player with a capped Whispers of Power with the old version of the debuff.
On Explosive weeks, each of the small adds has a chance to summon an Explosive Orb. With an orb dealing 50% of max health, a single detonation would kill any player with a half stacked Whispers of Power with the old version of the debuff.
The change to this debuff makes it so that your max health is decreased, rather than capping your health at a lower percentage. This means that for any of the above affixes, the affix is much easier to manage on the encounter. You'll still have the same amount of health at each tick, but at max stacks a quake going off will only deal 4,000 damage of your 20,000 life rather than dealing 40,000 damage and killing you.
For the other nerf, while the Abyssal Eruption damage reduction is nice, killing the adds is inefficient and on high keys, the damage will still likely still kill players with the Whispers of Power debuff. Minimal change.
Tidesage Council Change
The other change to Shrine of the Storm is Brother Ironhull's Hindering Cleave. The change makes it so that Brother Ironhull locks his direction when casting the spell, instead of following the tank.
Before the change, Brother Ironhull would follow the tank's direction, making it so the tank would have to outrange the mechanic to not get hit. Now, all a tank needs to do is sidestep when Brother Ironhull is casting Hindering Cleave to dodge the attack. Hindering Cleave deals very high physical damage and allowing the tank to more easily dodge this mechanic will reduce the amount of damage this boss encounter deals to the party.
They're super punishing to alts at the high level too.
Way too much progression is tied to rep and AP. Rep is the worst. Having levels of the Azerite necklace gated behind Champions rep is super hostile towards alts.
I just don't get it.
Alts are an arguably huge part of this game but it's like they want to go "yeah fuck off people who aren't always playing their mains".
These "have to sign on every day to make sure you keep up with the jonses" type things just end up punishing people more than helping. We really need to drop these legendary items you have to also level after you get max level. The never ending treadmill just means there's no way to accomplish goals because the carrot on the stick is still there.
It's even more odd when you consider how much they've been putting so much emphasis on allied races.
It's like they want me to play alts but are also somehow judging me for doing so.
Well, subraces like Maghar and Dark Iron have been long-requested features. The Allied Race implementation is honestly more effort than most people requested as far as getting to play those characters.
Well, I imagine buying race changes is part of it. But one character can't be all things. I just like playing as different race/class combinations. it's why I'm delighted they are decreasing leveling time soon. I don't raid and I still wish they added island expeditions or somesuch as alternate leveling mechanisms, but really the xp change solves most of my immediate altitis concerns. Leveling a character to get the heritage armor and then through legion to get the class mount is not fast, but it's a goal I can work steadily at pretty happily.
So the 14th Anniversary stuff has probably killed any incentive that I have for playing the game. It's pretty apparent that the people running this game have no respect for their playerbase. Having characters get one shot by incidental AoE, characters that are actually overgeared for their level since I haven't done much leveling with many of my alts. Also BC time walking is pretty fucking awful. As far as I can tell they didn't bother to see if any of the damage out put from any of the NPCs was properly tuned.
I think one of my biggest complaints is that Blizz has forgotten that games are supposed to be fun. I try doing some of the content that is supposed to be accessible outside of M+, raids and mythics and I find it incredibly frustrating at times and I'm noticing man of those times has less to do with idiots, trolls or shitty players and more to do with the design just being fucking awful to begin with (I'm looking at you Island Expeditions). I'm also cringing at the whole "we want to guilds to matter," they tried that in Cataclysm and that pretty much fucked over tons of small guilds and any cross guild groups. I have a feeling the next attempt is going to shit over people for not devoting themselves to a single guild, which really doesn't play well with social aspect.
So i dont even know what happened tonight. was just gonna bite the bullet and heal in 3s to finish out a couple conquest caps since i havent played my priest in a few weeks. join some rando group with a rogue and an ele shaman and we proceed to destroy everyone. it made no damned sense. we climbed like 200 rating and about 400 mmr in about an hour. Wasnt really planning on hitting 1800 because i often play with friends to help them gear alts which ends up tanking rating but ill take randomly hitting 1850 on a friday. i didnt even bother swapping azerite traits from my shadow stuff.
Posts
And you definitely, definitely do not have to regrind moving between raid difficulties. The level requirement increases are absolutely tiny.
To fully unlock all three trait circles (not the ilvl bonus, obviously)
Helm
Normal - 22
Heroic - 24
Mythic - 25
Chest
Normal - 23
Heroic - 25
Mythic - 26
Shoulders
Normal - 24
Heroic - 26
Mythic - 27
Asserting that those increases require any sort of grinding is disingenuous at best, and outright misleading at worst.
They are. Ion is in fact a raider there(Enh Shaman, go fig). So the point of the joke is that they get stuck at 6/8M -> Mythrax gets nerfed to make it easier on melee.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
Yeah I'm not even sure why mythic raid was the target of the conversation at all to be honest. Of course bleeding edge content requires min-maxing, but that's not what I was talking about originally. Just like item level starting becoming a measure of someone's abilities, so to is this other number you can look at to see how serious you take the game. And it just diminishes my want to play because I don't have the energy to log in for several hours a day and max out what I can. I don't even want to log in once a week to do it because it's dumb and I hate all this stupid busy work to keep up with everything for bare minimum content that doesn't require it at all.
That is all raid gear that I listed. Given that the discussion was around raid difficulty increases requiring regrinding, those trait levels are the more relevant ones.
If it's not at their level they consider it slacking. Someone made a big hubub about someone's weapon skill in wrath because they couldn't use the item that would've been a side grade for them yet we gave it to that person, that kind of shit annoys the piss out of me.
Pretty sure it was just some tongue in cheek fun
Honestly I was more worried about the upcoming raid. Information we have at the moment says the following
"On the chest shown as example, the new ring unlocks at Azerite level 23. The normal rings will unlock after, at Azerite levels 27, 31, 35 and 39."
im currently 30, I dont really grind azerite (hell I havent done an emissary in over a week). Im just hoping that by the time the raid releases I wont be at a stage where an azerite upgrade makes me lose traits I already had. Cuz that's the worst. But im also pretty sure i'll be 35 before I get anything, so hopefully itll be fine.
They did fix Shaman, you didn't see those % adjustments on PTR? /s
We don't know if he considers Shaman boring to play - he may in fact not, but he like much of the dev team won't communicate in either direction so it's anyone's guess.
... Doing weekly islands for AP is grinding? Like... what?
im sure hes doing the weekly islands on mythic difficulty so he would need to do like 3 of them over a week to finish the quest. that isnt really grinding in my book for what takes probably 10 minutes each expedition.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
My theory is different. From WoD, a big complaint was "there's nothing to do besides raid logging and we are bored" and since in WoD subs tanked, Blizz created a system where you almost always have something to do when you log in. Hell, I'm sure that Ion himself said something along those lines in a Q&A.
What? there is no pressure at all for Azerite for cutting edge raiding. I just got done telling you that with maybe thirty minutes a week to do islands and ten minutes a day to do an emissary, I'm at lvl 31, and the majority of my raid team is 30 or 31, as a hall of fame guild.
Also not really sure what you mean by high 40s in December.
There has been literally no conversations in our guild around required azerite level since the second week of mythic when they hotfixed level requirements down.
Edit: the above comes across more aggressive than I intended. The only point I'm trying to make is I think you guys are ascribing higher grinding requirements to Azerite than really exist. It's a flawed system but the amount of time investment that it actually requires is not one of those flaws.
Its likely both
I also felt like one of their rationales behind artifact power was to have some sort of reward that they could append to all content everywhere. The intent to be "Go do whatever content you want and you will get some reward for it, no matter what."
I keep my WoW time at an absolute minimum. By choice. I log in twice a week for raids and that's it.
In expansions past, I was able to play this way without any problem. No, I don't do all the emissaries. No I don't even run one Island Expedition per week, let alone enough to fill the weekly bar. Islands are the worst fucking thing and I haven't done them since the 2nd week of the expansion.
I say all that to say this -- In the past, I was able to maintain a twice per week WoW play schedule, and that was more than sufficient for raid progress. I show up, I put in my 3 hours per raid, and I'm done.
Now days, if I want to keep up, I have to do all this extra side crap that frankly I just do not want to do. And for someone who is trying very hard to maintain a very casual approach to WoW, they are basically putting me in a situation where I have to choose to play more than that, or else fall behind. Neither option is a good option for me.
And here's the worst part: Blizzard gets their $15 a month from me whether I'm logging in twice a week, or 7 times a week. Why do they care how much I play? But they're essentially forcing me to play more than I want to by giving me the choice of "Play more than you want to play" or "Sorry you cannot use these heroic items because you didn't grind enough AP this week."
One day later:
So, that's pretty cool.
I was annoyed when we sapped and monk-cc a couple of mobs, pulled the rest 20 feet away, then 2 balls spawned by the cc mobs (in our all melee dps group).
8 Hr - RARE! - Stealth - 147 AP reward
4 Hr - 144 AP reward
4 Hr - 135 AP Reward
1 day 12 Hr - 255 AP Reward
8 Hr - 312 AP Reward
So respectively when looking at AP/hour
18.4
36
33.75
7.1
39
The stealth mission which has a lower success rate due to being a stealth mission, is worth less than two regular 4 hour missions. The other 8 hour mission is a 100% increase in AP yield compared to the 8 hour steal mission. The 1 day 12 hour mission is an 80% decrease in AP yield compared to the 4 hour missions. It just makes no sense to me!
Missions require War Resources, and I generally prefer to use War Resources for getting coins for bonus rolls. I could do more World Quests to get more War Resources, but without flying I generally hate travelling around to get to World Quests. If I had flying, I'd be doing more World Quests, getting more resources, and doing more missions. But I'd also be spending less time leveling alts - since I can't fly, I feel like I might as well just be on an alt, so at least there's a point to slogging around everywhere on the ground. Which means even less time doing World Quests; I think that I'm averaging about 1.5 emissary quests a day across seven characters. Unless it's a 2000 gold quest, I don't generally bother. Which leads to even fewer War Resources, which makes missions even less likely.
Still working on collecting the Transmogs out of LFR though lucky for me i'm almost done with wing 2 which is great because Zul is a headache. On that note i will never stop being amused at how monocle popping angry people get when you tell them no even if you're polite about it.
Person - Hey do you need that?
Zunde - Yes sorry i'm collecting the LFR coloration transmogs.
Person - General response on the same level as if i had just kicked his dog and then urinate upon his doorstep.
Take heart on the Azerite necklace though that the weekly 30% reduction per level has been ongoing and will probably continue to go on.
Back when I did do LFR sometimes, I just ignored all the other people completely. They were NPCs in my solo raid for all I cared. Ignore and isolate. That's how to enjoy public raiding. (In my opinion).
Note we still have basically four AP catchup boost between now and when the 8.1 launches and probably another couple months after it launches before the new gear that needs those AP levels will be available. I am up to ap 28 on my second character through the expansion doing nothing more than my weekly LFR, weekly islands and whatever random pvp hijinks I can find. By the time you can get the gear that needs those AP levels they should be very reasonable.
Yeah I've been in some guilds where it wasn't a big deal. Then in others where anyone not on the level of the sock-shitter would get a talking down how we all have to contribute equally.
Like sure if we can't finish the raid and it's my fault because I'm missing stats or whatever, I guess you can blame me.
I don't mythic raid, but PUGing H Antorus and doing N/H Uldir with my guild, it's been a long time since I really felt stats were the problem in a raid, especially the stats on a specific slot. It's almost always been mechanics/people being bad. Almost every raid group I've been in has had people of such high ilvl that things should probably balance out.
Like last week, my guild did an N Uldir alt run. Our tanks were like ilvl 310-320. One was literally freshly dinged 120 earlier that day. Still rolled to N Vectis, where we stalled due to mechanical performance from new players/unfamiliarity with roles. (We also had a couple issues on MOTHER because of the larger raid size.)
I guess maybe for mythic racers, since everybody's orange-parsing anyways, then ilvl does make a difference, but I'd say for most people it's way more important to get, you know, from grey-parsing to green-parsing.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/8169-Celebrate-14-Years-of-World-of-Warcraft-Explosive-Affix-and-Mythrax-Nerfed-Poll
https://www.wowhead.com/news=288694/mythic-hotfixes-underrot-and-tol-dagor-timers-shrine-of-the-storm-abilities
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It's even more odd when you consider how much they've been putting so much emphasis on allied races.
It's like they want me to play alts but are also somehow judging me for doing so.
I think one of my biggest complaints is that Blizz has forgotten that games are supposed to be fun. I try doing some of the content that is supposed to be accessible outside of M+, raids and mythics and I find it incredibly frustrating at times and I'm noticing man of those times has less to do with idiots, trolls or shitty players and more to do with the design just being fucking awful to begin with (I'm looking at you Island Expeditions). I'm also cringing at the whole "we want to guilds to matter," they tried that in Cataclysm and that pretty much fucked over tons of small guilds and any cross guild groups. I have a feeling the next attempt is going to shit over people for not devoting themselves to a single guild, which really doesn't play well with social aspect.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595