World of Warcraft

[MalaCloudy Black]

I just hit Renown 19 today.

So far I don't mind Torghast (it's basically "What if a roguelike, but IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT?") but I can see how it's going to get old doing it multiple times a week. 

[Draevyn]

8 minutes ago, CLDY said:

I just hit Renown 19 today.

So far I don't mind Torghast (it's basically "What if a roguelike, but IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT?") but I can see how it's going to get old doing it multiple times a week. 

I see they added new floors in the newest patch. I didn't check how many. The one good thing is that once you get to the max floor, you've only got to do that floor. The thing is that to be at the optimum level, you need to do

2 Wings of Torgast
The entire raid clear
10 Dungeons at Keystone + 15
3 Emmissary's and then 1 per day from there
PVP

That's each week. 

I don't mind grinding if it's a choice but it's not really a choice because you kind of need to do all of that if you want any chance of playing at an optimum level.

I know I've said it before but I wish that I could just happily accept that I'll never be able to push keys, but I can't. I hate settling for mediocrity even if that's probably all I'll ever achieve.

[Mick]

And that's the thing that turns me off from Warcraft as it exists right now. This isn't against you guys, but what the hell does that mean? Keystone? Emissary? Renown?!
 

The way they used to handle it was much smoother from BC through MoP. But I digress. 

[Draevyn]

9 hours ago, Mick said:

And that's the thing that turns me off from Warcraft as it exists right now. This isn't against you guys, but what the hell does that mean? Keystone? Emissary? Renown?!
 

The way they used to handle it was much smoother from BC through MoP. But I digress. 

Keystone is basically a level of a dungeon. They introduced it in Legion when they introduced Mythic+. Basically once you do the original Mythic, you then earn a +2 Keystone for a random dungeon. They scale in difficulty depending on the keystone level. Mythic+ Dungeons are timed dungeons and depending on how quick you do the dungeon determines the next key level you get. You have a chance to get a +3 above what you have, a +2 or a +1. If you don't beat the timer then you get a level lower than the key you have for a random dungeon, or you can choose to not finish the dungeon, leave and get that same dungeon at a keystone below the level you were doing. It's just basically a timed challenge mode for dungeons and it's hella fun if you put some time into it just because it's all about strategy and deciding what you're going to pull and how you're going to pull it.

Renown is a grind for power. It's something they get a lot of shit for because every expansion seems to introduce more and more borrowed power. So you basically have to do story quests, world quests, defeat elite bosses and such to get renown and the higher renown you get, the more power you have whether it unlocks new abilities or gives you passives. They do have it time gated and they do have a catch up mechanic in place if you fall behind but it's still an enormous bunch of bullshit to stay on top of.

Emissaries give you rewards based on doing 3 world quests in a certain zone. After you get to a certain point, they really aren't worth doing but if you're like me and you quit for a month at a time, they do help with getting renown so you have to do them at least until you catch up.

There is a lot to it, but in all honesty it depends on how much you care about doing well in the game. I'm someone who reads constantly. I look up strats, I plan my dungeon routes, I make sure that I'm as optimized as I can be which is still not enough to play at a top level.

But if you don't care about any of that shit then there is still tons to do. If you want to collect mounts and toys and whatever else in the game then most of the stuff I mentioned above won't mean a damn thing to you. It's really only people who want to Raid at a Heroic/Mythic difficulty or do Dungeons at higher keystone levels.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I know what you're talking about and I'm still like 

[Draevyn]

47 minutes ago, CLDY said:

I know what you're talking about and I'm still like 

The thing is, the game is not new player friendly at all.

That is a lot of information to take in and there is just so much nuance to some of the things. Like I hang out on twitch and shit in a lot of high key pushers streams and I learn a lot of stuff in there. It always amazes me when someone comes in and is like "How did you just do that"....and I roll my eyes and think "How do you not know that can be done" but in all honesty, not everyone reads and researches like I do. Most people just jump on, play the game and they don't care about the rest of the stuff.

My issue has always been execution. I have so much knowledge about the game. Even from a high key perspective, I know things that the average player wouldn't know. I just can't actually put that knowledge to good use in the game. It's that old adage of "those who can't do, teach." Haha

[MalaCloudy Black]

I feel that. I pushed keys once in a while back in early BFA when I was playing Alliance and ... it didn't go smoothly

[MalaCloudy Black]

This game feels so ridiculously buggy since I started playing again. For almost 6 days I had a bug - a widespread bug, it seems - where I couldn't view my guild, and the game acted as if I wasn't in a guild. I couldn't type in /g, but other guild members could see me online/on the guild roster. They were going to fix it Saturday, but the "fix" caused increased load on their databases, so they had to roll it back. It seems like it might actually be fixed now, but I could be speaking too soon.

And then just now, I had a bug where I couldn't sell anything to vendors. Reloaded. Still couldn't. Disabled all my addons, reloaded, still couldn't. I eventually had to close the game entirely and then when I got back in it let me sell stuff again. I haven't ran into any bugged quests (yet) thankfully, but it seems like that's a big problem as well from looking at the bug report forum. 

[Draevyn]

9 minutes ago, CLDY said:

This game feels so ridiculously buggy since I started playing again. For almost 6 days I had a bug - a widespread bug, it seems - where I couldn't view my guild, and the game acted as if I wasn't in a guild. I couldn't type in /g, but other guild members could see me online/on the guild roster. They were going to fix it Saturday, but the "fix" caused increased load on their databases, so they had to roll it back. It seems like it might actually be fixed now, but I could be speaking too soon.

And then just now, I had a bug where I couldn't sell anything to vendors. Reloaded. Still couldn't. Disabled all my addons, reloaded, still couldn't. I eventually had to close the game entirely and then when I got back in it let me sell stuff again. I haven't ran into any bugged quests (yet) thankfully, but it seems like that's a big problem as well from looking at the bug report forum. 

I mean to be honest the game has been one big bug for as long as I can remember. I mean Battle For Azeroth was (not so)fondly referred to as "Beta For Azeroth" and we've had the long running joke of Blizzard - That small indy company despite it being owned by Activision. 

It doesn't help that despite record profits over the last two years, they fired basically all of their QA testers. Add Covid into the mix and it's been a hell of a time. Their repeated cries of "We're listening" have amounted to absolutely nothing from a player perspective.

.....and yet we still continue to play this damn game and for the life of me, I can't even tell you why. Especially for me. I know a lot of people still play because they have friends in the game that they play with. I don't have that, so why the hell do I still play this game?

[MalaCloudy Black]

Habit, I reckon. There's still some enjoyable stuff to do. I come back every once in a while to PVP, do transmog runs, collect battle pets and toys (and mounts), stuff like that. I'm pretty far removed from pushing keys or heroic raiding because there's so much time and investment required and while I do have the time, I'd rather spend it elsewhere. There's still plenty for casual players like me though.

[Draevyn]

1 minute ago, CLDY said:

Habit, I reckon. There's still some enjoyable stuff to do. I come back every once in a while to PVP, do transmog runs, collect battle pets and toys (and mounts), stuff like that. I'm pretty far removed from pushing keys or heroic raiding because there's so much time and investment required and while I do have the time, I'd rather spend it elsewhere. There's still plenty for casual players like me though.

That's kind of why I've gotten into Final Fantasy more than WoW. It has all those things but it also doesn't force you to grind 50 things just to make your character more powerful. Most of their power gains is through doing content you would have done anyway like dungeons/raids. They don't force you to grind out anything other than gear. Plus the story is actually enjoyable whereas WoW's story is fun to read outside of the game more than it is in the game.

WoW would be a lot better if they focused more on the classes/content than on the borrowed power BS. I would have no problem playing the game if I could get gear from the content that I liked. If I didn't have to Raid, do dungeons AND PVP to get the most out of my gear then I'd be okay with that but the game forces you to do multiple things. Like Mythic Gear is better than M+ gear....but then right now the highest ilevel weapons that you can get are from PVP. If all I want to do is M+ then I should be able to do it without doing the other content. Leave that for people who enjoy that content.

I always see the argument that if they gave you the ability to gear in Mythic+ the same way you do in Mythic Raids then there'd be no reason to Raid which I think is so stupid because you've have so many people who enjoy Raiding over Mythic+, and vice versa. Make all gearing equal and I can almost guarantee that you'll still have the same amount of people raiding who raided before because they enjoy it.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Also, sunk cost fallacy - I've been playing WoW for almost 17 years now (holy fuck). 

EDIT: And yeah, the borrowed power stuff from the last... what? 3? 4? expansions is pretty garbage. Welcome to Ion's WoW, I guess. Makes you long for the days of Ghostcrawler.

[TKz]

20 hours ago, CLDY said:

Habit, I reckon. There's still some enjoyable stuff to do. I come back every once in a while to PVP, do transmog runs, collect battle pets and toys (and mounts), stuff like that. I'm pretty far removed from pushing keys or heroic raiding because there's so much time and investment required and while I do have the time, I'd rather spend it elsewhere. There's still plenty for casual players like me though.

I don't think that's necessarily true, I got Keystone Conquerer this expansion and pugged all of Normal (didn't bother with heroic because the ilvl rewards aren't much more than I was getting for M+) and I only really have an hour or two to play a night.

All that's "required" to be relevant is to build your BiS Legendary (you don't even have to upgrade it really, it's only like a 3-6% damage increase from 190 to 235), which you can do by clearing Torghast twice at layer 8. And then gear up. You don't even really have to run the raid, as most classes best gear comes from Mythics. You don't have to do 10 M+ a week, you're still only getting one item a week, it just gives you a bit more choice. I tended to clear 4 a week (so like, 2-3 hours of dungeons a week) for two options and managed to get 220 ilvl by the time I'd finished my goals for this patch.

There's no reputation grind that's relevant to player power, so the only thing you're doing similar to that is renown - week to week that could be knocked out in no time at all, one quest to collect souls that takes about 10 minutes and one quest to collect Anima, which can be done in an about an hour whilst doing other things. And if you're behind, you get renown for killing bosses/doing dungeons and can just casually build it up as you play. And even then, you don't really need to do your entire renown tree - once you've gotten your soulbind fully unlocked from it, everything else is mostly cosmetic.

The last thing you might need to do for player power is getting the right conduits for your soulbind, but the ilvl increase are such tiny damage increases you can just pick up the base level version, slot that in and it'll be good enough.

I don't think they're doing a good job of advertising it, but Shadowlands is easily the best WoW has been in a long time for just playing as and when you feel like it and not being behind. You can pretty much just login and do what you fancy for the first time in a few expansions.

[Draevyn]

1 hour ago, TKz said:

I don't think that's necessarily true, I got Keystone Conquerer this expansion and pugged all of Normal (didn't bother with heroic because the ilvl rewards aren't much more than I was getting for M+) and I only really have an hour or two to play a night.

All that's "required" to be relevant is to build your BiS Legendary (you don't even have to upgrade it really, it's only like a 3-6% damage increase from 190 to 235), which you can do by clearing Torghast twice at layer 8. And then gear up. You don't even really have to run the raid, as most classes best gear comes from Mythics. You don't have to do 10 M+ a week, you're still only getting one item a week, it just gives you a bit more choice. I tended to clear 4 a week (so like, 2-3 hours of dungeons a week) for two options and managed to get 220 ilvl by the time I'd finished my goals for this patch.

There's no reputation grind that's relevant to player power, so the only thing you're doing similar to that is renown - week to week that could be knocked out in no time at all, one quest to collect souls that takes about 10 minutes and one quest to collect Anima, which can be done in an about an hour whilst doing other things. And if you're behind, you get renown for killing bosses/doing dungeons and can just casually build it up as you play. And even then, you don't really need to do your entire renown tree - once you've gotten your soulbind fully unlocked from it, everything else is mostly cosmetic.

The last thing you might need to do for player power is getting the right conduits for your soulbind, but the ilvl increase are such tiny damage increases you can just pick up the base level version, slot that in and it'll be good enough.

I don't think they're doing a good job of advertising it, but Shadowlands is easily the best WoW has been in a long time for just playing as and when you feel like it and not being behind. You can pretty much just login and do what you fancy for the first time in a few expansions.

You're forgetting about stygia and rep from the Maw to get in with Venari who is the only way to upgrade your soulbinds past ilvl 200. I also think you're under valuing the amount of difference between ilvls on conduits as well. Saying that all you need is a base item is very misleading. I'd like to have seen some of your dungeon runs to get your keystone conqueror. 

All that you've listed is great if you want to only do 15's...and even then I feel like you're inting your teammates by doing those with the information you've described above.

[TKz]

9 hours ago, Forky said:

You're forgetting about stygia and rep from the Maw to get in with Venari who is the only way to upgrade your soulbinds past ilvl 200. I also think you're under valuing the amount of difference between ilvls on conduits as well. Saying that all you need is a base item is very misleading. I'd like to have seen some of your dungeon runs to get your keystone conqueror. 

All that you've listed is great if you want to only do 15's...and even then I feel like you're inting your teammates by doing those with the information you've described above.

I haven't done the Maw since like a week after it launched and I'm basically Mythic Raid geared, it's definitely not needed.

My IO's here if you're that interested - https://raider.io/characters/eu/nagrand/Hornyjane

What do you mean only do 15s? How much higher content do you want to do? Yeah you'll need all that if you're trying to push +20s, but at that point you're being a bit unrealistic to think you can play casually and do the hardest content in the games hardest levels? Everything I've described is more than enough to clear +15s and heroic raids. And I did it all pugging it without a guild with only a few hours a week.

Conduit Item Level barely makes a difference, we're talking only a few % between a regular mythic level like 184 and a 200 item level. I got mine to 200 by just playing the game and never felt the need to upgrade them further.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I'm still only like on like week 3 of being back (after doing 50-60 during SL's launch then taking a break), and I'm undergeared and overwhelmed. 😎

[Draevyn]

59 minutes ago, TKz said:

I haven't done the Maw since like a week after it launched and I'm basically Mythic Raid geared, it's definitely not needed.

My IO's here if you're that interested - https://raider.io/characters/eu/nagrand/Hornyjane

What do you mean only do 15s? How much higher content do you want to do? Yeah you'll need all that if you're trying to push +20s, but at that point you're being a bit unrealistic to think you can play casually and do the hardest content in the games hardest levels? Everything I've described is more than enough to clear +15s and heroic raids. And I did it all pugging it without a guild with only a few hours a week.

Conduit Item Level barely makes a difference, we're talking only a few % between a regular mythic level like 184 and a 200 item level. I got mine to 200 by just playing the game and never felt the need to upgrade them further.

I'm not really asking to push higher into Mythic+ by playing casually. What I am asking for is that my progress within Mythic+ allow me to go higher in my preferred mode of the game. I'm asking for it to not force me to do other content simply to be able to push higher into the content that I enjoy.

If all I want to do is do Mythic+ and push higher in that, then what I need to do so should be contained within that mode of the game. PVPers who want to excel in PVP don't really need to do anything else if they don't want to, and most do not. That's all I'm asking for. Give me what I need to succeed and allow me to do it within the confines of the content that I enjoy. Even something as simple as Mythic+ giving bonuses only in Mythic+

[TKz]

I guess I don't really understand the problem, outside of renown weekly which is like an hours work a week, I basically only do M+ and that was enough for me to succeed in that. I have friends that only raid and they're not far off geared what I am with Ahead of the Curve. And I've got friends who just PVP that're well geared from just PVP... You can definitely play just the content you want and be adequately geared.

Sure, if you're capable of getting 2100 in PVP then yeah, it's the best way to get to 226, but it's kind of splitting hairs to begrudge that you could be slightly more geared for other content when you can be just as easily geared doing just the content you want to do.

I cleared Normal raids just to see the content but never felt like I had to do it for gear, it's why I never bothered with Heroic Raiding this tier.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Speaking of Raider.io, did y'all see that Blizzard is implementing their own sort of version of it in Patch 9.1?

[Draevyn]

20 minutes ago, CLDY said:

Speaking of Raider.io, did y'all see that Blizzard is implementing their own sort of version of it in Patch 9.1?

Yes! People have been calling for this for so long. Especially those who push high keys. Now if they would implement some cool rewards around it, it'd be even better.

Did you read about The Great Push they're doing in a few weeks as well? I enjoy watching the MDI though this years hasn't been all that great but I enjoy watching high key pushing so much more so I'm glad they're doing something like this.