Initial Feedback of AoZ from a WW Barb

PC General Discussion
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So I did around 10 runs or so on my maxed out WW Bleed Barb. Even got a Grandfather equipped. Besides my glyphs not being all level 21, there wasn’t much more improving that I could do on it.

That said I was still able to complete 3 of the 10ish AoZ runs on my WW Bleed Barb. Got my Glyph to level 2 and did some minor tweeking to my Paragon Board and Aspects.

My feedback is this. While I enjoy the heart pounding gameplay of AoZ, the rush of the win and the bitter sweet losses, I think the starting damage of AoZ is a bit unforgiving. I don’t think it should be a cake walk either.

I think that AoZ could start on par with a level 96 as its entry point. Low enough for more builds to enter and not get 1 shot, high enough that you can’t just sneeze and win.

Also the amount of experience required to level up the special glyph needs to be cut in half while keeping glyph experience gained from completing the current iteration of AoZ the same. Making the glyph take 300 some hours to level up to max is a bit much. Halfing that time is more reasonable. The reason I say this is because of issue WoW had with the “no skill point when leveling up” issue. Players want to feel like they are making tangible progress and feel good when they hit a level. Perhaps the AoZ glyph would feel better if it could be leveled up to level 100, but the damage bonus increases by half the amount. Same time, same final power, just more milestones.

These are just my initial thoughts on this though. I will probably make another post after I got my glyph to level 10 or so. By the way for those that don’t know, a WW Bleed Barb is Ranked B on Maxroll for AoZ. Its difficult yes, but not impossible.

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I think this is a fair feedback and won’t mind having those things you mentioned.

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Yes i like your deatailed opinions, this new content is definitely aimed for the 1% to 5% on players of that, and grouping isnt wise to do with it either since 1 death ends it… the 1% and fully speced out uber builds of 1000s of hours with all 100 lvl character per season players can keep the lvl 25 difficulty

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Might have to switch to cold version or something that can freeze mobs with Azure. WW has not been good since the new ring was released for barb that did 0 for it.

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i agree with this brother, the 1 death thing limit and timer really gets you engaged in the action. The glyph xp and leveling is unrealistic, they should improve that part to at least provide us a hope of progressing.

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Yeah the ring was a big let down. Could have given WW a boost, but Blizz decided to boost up the overperforming Barb builds instead.

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I gotta figure out how to work the new glyph into my build since every point adds dmg and bonus to rare nodes too… i wonder how big it expands when lvl 50… definitely wont get to that by time the season is over heh

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The power of the glyph is pretty substantial even at level 1 if you get every node in its radius. I felt the damage boost immediately after equipping it and getting those nodes.

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Yea im play full rapid fire so i need to probably do a full rebuild to maximize my defense and damage and figure which 1 of 5 glyphs im dropping

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Also blizzard needs to show love on range classes all the meta classes in this season are fighting in melee and mid range. A glass cannon range DPS build might be fun to play while you weave and dodge your way out of mobs.

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Defense is definitely a priority as the monster damage supposedly scales slower and primarily scales monster health. You definitely want to run a Disobediance in your amulet and have 70% resistances in Fire, Lightning, Cold, and Poison. Shadow isn’t as important to have capped as the others. You can always take a 30% Shadow potion to compensate if needed.

I don’t have a Shako but I would imagine that most builds would benefit from it as far as damage output and survivability.

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I evade to drop trap evade back and try to get enemies in a straight line… it works sometimes… i have max defenses and shako head and decent dr but still not easy and yes i run that in my amulet bringing my armor way up… i just hate the mentality of some people that say get gud. Because its not just skill its build, and gear that makes differences

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Appreciate the reasonable feedback vs what we’ve been seeing all day for the most part.

Edit: I tried one for haha’s, oof that hurt. No uber uniques on my rogue but 11k armor almost 19k life and I got deleted. We go again tomorrow gents!

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I couldn’t of said it better myself. Lot of people already tapping out. With the high cost of dust, one can only afford so many losses before they are forced to grind NMD/Tree again for sigils dust.(once again boring) This will get old fast and most will say the hell with this. I love the rush, hate to loose, but i agree this is a rough start. Need a smoother ramp up.

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Great round of feedback. Big fan of thought out and verbose responses.

I like the idea of shifting the reward phases to be more frequent, not just for the payoff feels but also the incremental improvements will help just a little bit more with progression. The only concern I would even be able to mention about it would be that perhaps smaller increases wouldn’t feel as significant, lessening the emotional impact of the upgrade.

One thing I noticed in my friend group was that they didn’t really get that they would need to change their paragon boards to see the substantial increases talked about before launch. They talked at length with each other about how their 5 and 6 glyph setups were so much better. One of them even went as far as providing math to demonstrate their least influential glyph was better. It wasn’t until I suggested to redo the math where all core nodes were bought that the lightbulb went on. I was surprised really, as this group generally talked about D4 almost every day and even linked a YouTube video where someone talked specifically about the boards for each class with the most core nodes in range.

Maybe this is just people set in their ways that are refusing to move on or could it be more indicative of a lack of clarity in the upgrade path with this event. There was certainly plenty of info by 3rd parties on AoZ but most of that was regurgitated from the relatively vague info releases. It makes me have to ask if AoZ was planned in the development phase or if it was added to S2 after release. You know, how much influence did the feedback about lack of content in S1 have on this late stage addition? I doubt we’ll ever know the truth behind the AoZ development but there are certain elements that make me curious.

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That will be more than 300 hours :slight_smile: u need to do 7 t1, 2 t10, 23 t100 nmd to level it up from 3 to 4, if the exp req will goin up that way reaching lv 50 seems almost impossible and lets not talk bout cap it out to lv 200

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Oh boy, I respecced into Infinimist on Sunday away from a half self baked Minion Build that hit the Wall on NM ~54…

Well, I jumped from 54 to 63 to 80 and for the lulz tried the 100 and did it. My first NM 100 since game launch, I was really happy it worked that great. The new glyph EXP in NM is awesome, I could level my last 2 glyphs from 15 to 21 now (leveled them to 19 during the bug phase and they are now also 21)

So, after they fixed the glyphs, I also gave AoZ a try with my Infinimist… First one kinda worked, but some random poison explosion executed me out of existence, haha :smiley:

2nd and 3rd run were though, really though, but I made it and have the Glyph at level 2 now.
And I guess that is more or less the end of that journey for me. Next level needs 4600 EXP. Sure it’s “only” 5 more runs, but the next one very well already need 10k EXP? No way I will do that.

Even tho I enjoyed the thrill for a short moment, it’s very exhausting and I really prefer to watch some stuff on second screen while shredding demons, so this is no content that is any fun to grind. So for my taste, it’s quite to hard from the beginning and not rewarding enough to actually have the feeling of a carrot on a stick. Especially since season will end in january, so I think I will level a second char instead :smiley:

Maybe, in between, I will do a few more AoZ runs, get the glyph to level 5 if I can, but I don’t intend to try any higher AoZ, due to sigil costs and 1 death sigil gone mechanic. I can craft like 40 level 1… They kinda sustain them self, but I will run out of powder pretty soon, because you can’t always dodge everything.

That said, I really really like the concept! The random dungeon and mobs; Shrines in it, that you can use to your advantage; No loot shower during the run; A lot of glyph EXP; Only 900+ items due to the high monster level… THAT is actually a Nightmare Dungeon for me! It’s pretty overtuned, but I desperately hope this will go to the main game after some more polishing, let’s go Blizzard :raised_hands:

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theres a bit of strategy involved in this dungeons as well, i tried saving the shrines for the last boss and it helped me clear tier 8, a bit RNG focused though. im sure a lot of people who invest more hours in this will find ways to scale the content

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My feedback for you. Don’t play a D-tier build in endgame content.

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You must not understand how WWs lucky hit chance works. Freeze WW is an epic troll idea. It’s not a thing.