We’re now one month into the 9.1.5 patch, and while we expect that Council members may wish to start focused threads on single topics related to the live game, we wanted to start a thread here for your general thoughts.
How is 9.1.5 going for you? What have been your highs and lows? Have your interests or play style changed in this patch vs. previous versions of the game? What have you been hearing from other WoW players that you play with or correspond with?
Thanks!
The biggest complaint I hear right now from my guild members is the availability of some loot.
Specifically rogue daggers, Old Warrior Soul and IQD trinkets.
We have a rogue in the guild with over 10 weeks of sylvanas kills and 2-3 vault chances for heroic raid (only two if we cleared enough mythic in that week to eliminate a heroic chance) and he only just got his first dagger yesterday.
A similar story with OWS and IQD
Many chances, no loot.
It would be great, if at this point in the patch we were able to buy, either with valor, or some other currency (stygian embers?) certain raid gear from bosses we had already killed X number of times. I know a similar “bad luck protection” is coming in 9.2, but it would be great to have something now to know there is an achievable goal other than relying on RNG drop chances.
I will echo Letholas’s trinket concerns. I also have concerns about excess stygian embers not being useful - wish I could send them to alts. I am so incredibly tired of not having any real shot at Mythic Veinrippers, 252 dungeon trinkets (IQD) for two seasons now basically, etc. I’ve done the content (many times), I’ve filled my GV with mythic raid loot and m+ options, most weeks 2-3 options full on both rows, and still no luck. Season start I’ve had 2-3 options in every m+ GV, no IQD. Since my Painsmith kill I’ve had probably 10 GVs each with 2-3 options, no veinripper, and I’ve killed Painsmith himself at least 5 times (though we’ve skipped him in recent weeks). Just sucks.
My main problem has actually been anima. 9.1 flooded us with anima, but I am finding this flood of anima was enough to buy out everything on one covenant (Kyrian in my case - I have quite literally everything for a monk from Kyrian), but it wasn’t enough to do something similar in the other 3 covenants. I want to take part in the full Ember Court, Abom Stitching, Queen’s Conservatory, but anima is just not that plentiful after having spent my flood in 9.1 on Kyrian stuff. I probably wouldn’t have bought all that had I known about the ripcord being pulled in 9.1.5.
Swapping is a little slow and I try to make rounds to Korthia and various SL rares to get the exclusive drops for that covenant for covenants I don’t have everything I want yet (think Hopecrusher in Revendreth). The swap being so slow can really increase my travel time unfortunately.
But I am quite enjoying learning about the rest of the covenants and exploring what they have to offer, as someone who really only plays a single character.
I am enjoying Legion TW in general, it’s been a lot of fun and I plan to finish my Mistweaver and Brewmaster mage towers.
9.1.5 has brought more people back because we can finally play alts again. Also playing the other 3 covenants can change a lot of game play along with giving people cosmetics to chase.
Mage tower is hard and its sweet. Probably the highlight of 9.1.5 for sure but its weird that its not available all the time.
As long as they KEEP these QoL and make more in 9.2 its great. If not, its really a short list in what would be considered low energy as far as other patches have been concerned at least for me
Speaking from a casual PvP perspective, I think that while the 9.1.5 changes to add upgrade tiers to rating as low as 1000 did help improve and smooth out the item lvl gap a bit, it still is entirely too much.
There have been a lot of feedback posts on this topic, so I’ll just sort of echo those and say that the item lvl gap between unrated or low rated PvPers and higher rated PvPers is far too big compared to previous iterations of PvP and needs to be fixed. The honor requirements for upgrading rating gear are also far too high. The most common thing I’ve seen people asking for is a reversion to the Cata-WoD system of two sets, one honor set that is a bit weaker than the second conquest set. Neither set would have upgrade ranks or be gated by rating.
That has been a big complaint on basically every PvP forum I’ve read. Between rating gates frustrating lower rated PvPers and massive honor requirements for upgrading frustrating higher rated PvPers, it seems everyone is unhappy with the current system. Reverting to the two set system seems like the best option to me, and I hope to discuss it in more depth as the program continues.
Another thing that I really hate to gripe about is that we have almost no reason to currently play outside of sitting in rank1 ranges to PvP beside the fun of it which can at most be kind of boring given how stale the season has been with major late changes to certain specs being literal months after it was relevant and a problem for people who where just starting.
I know for a fact that at least 8 more of my friends would be playing right now if those prot pally changes had gone through 3rd week of the patch.
I guess what im trying to say is almost always these patches are PvE related with nothing for PvPers to do.
Overall I think that 9.1.5 has been a great .5 patch that’s breathed new life into the current patch cycle, and I think its introduction was done at an appropriate time.
For example the ability to swap covenants has allowed me to feel more free to explore different options that I wouldn’t have had otherwise done or felt comfortable with at the beginning of a major patch like 9.1. The same thing applies to some of the new customization options added to characters.
The same thing applies for Legion Timewalking, and solo island expeditions.
Overall the patch felt like a great way for us to try out new things, and enjoy some new content, and have a bit of refresh in what would be generally considered a down period in the game.
One thing that stands out to me in my experience with new players is the accessibility of legendaries. Recently my guild has recruited either new players, returning players, or people who are looking to switch over their mains to a new class. There is a consistent frustration when it comes to having to unlock the legendary creation quest line, getting the legendary, and subsequently crafting it.
Unlocking the questline seems arbitrary especially if the player has already completed it on another character. It’s not that the quest chain takes a particularly long time to complete, it’s just a small hurdle that doesn’t “feel good”.
Getting the legendary presents its own set of problems, especially if that legendary came from the last raid tier. This past Saturday my guild re-ran Castle Nathria for the sake of getting several players their legendary for their class. While they were able to receive the benefit of this, I would imagine many other players cannot.
Torghast, while enjoyable for me, does feel like a drawn out process at this point. I can theoretically grind it out in a day if need be, but that seems boring. I don’t think players are simply looking to be handed a legendary item, I think they definitely want to have to put in some sort of effort to get a reward. But the issue becomes “I’m just grinding to receive something that’s required”.
The last thing I believe I’ve personally experienced frustration with is loot. I consistently run 15+ keys on my main, and as a result I predominately get most of my gear from the vault. My guild is heroic only, meaning that any rewards from the raid are entirely worthless to me. I don’t mind that so much, but when I only have one source to acquire gear, pulling from over a hundred different items, and I can only select one item, there are days where I feel a little let down. Poxstorm is an excellent example of this - I’ve never seen one in the vault, but I’ve gotten two from low level plaguefall dungeons.
Valor was a great way to supplement this, but I’m still required to grind out the necessary valor to upgrade the items to not their highest potential, but a close third. It would be nice if there was a way we could set a goal, and work towards that over time when it came to gear. People seem to dislike random chance, but at the same time they don’t want to just be handed things. If there was a system in place where I could say “I want to work towards a maximum level Poxstorm”, it would give me more incentive to work towards it.
I feel like the questions posed in the original post are better discussed and/or dissected almost as individual questions in separate threads which I’m sure we can inevitably build upon.
To me (and I know I’m not alone) 9.1.5 seemed like a small bandage on a large wound. There we many fixes I enjoyed, but I feel like the overwhelming theme was just implementing the QoL improvements which an overwhelming majority of the player base had asked for since beta testing. It felt like a bit of a slap in the face for many of the friends I’ve talked to who came back initially in 9.1.5 and then left again with a not-so-pleasant taste in their mouth.
There are still a lot of things in the game I still don’t care much for (Torghast grind, having to complete the Covenant storylines despite having completed them on other characters, overall layers upon layers upon LAYERS of RNG to name a few) but those are all certainly deserving of separate discussions.
I don’t want to dwell too heavily on the negative–it’s too easy to fall into that trap and have a negative mindset. I would love these forum discussions to bring about positive changes to the game, in particular, I would love the changes to come into play before the the bitterness sets in with some people and they’re at the point of no return when it comes to game/expansion.
So far it’s been fun, but it feels like nothing’s being done to keep the flame alive until 9.2 lands.
PvP is an absolute blast, but the honor grind is atrocious. A week or so ago I dug up my alt paladin to see how far I can go totally fresh in 2s (basic gear acquired from the new conquest boxes). At 2k cr, 2.2mmr, it’s a total nightmare to progress further, because the honor gains are so weak I’d have to grind through thousands of 2s games to get rival gear, let alone duelist. For those who are curious, I was playing a Prot Pala at 229ilvl with a friend of mine playing WW in full Rival1 gear.
Due to the insane gear gaps, the barrier of entry for any kind of PvP at lvl60 is ludicrously high. New or lower skilled players feel discouraged to even attempt pushing their personal rating, because not only do they not have the required skills, reaction speeds and foresight to win PvP battles, but they don’t have gear as well. Generally, I recommend these players to attempt pushing rated BGs, as it’s more about learning the flow of the map first (which is super easy to grasp even if you are not an MMO player) than the intricacies of how classes play, or how positioning works, etc. However, participation is so low that even getting to rival range is nigh-on impossible because you are already facing Hero of the Faction players at 2k MMR. Hero titles start at high 2.2 (not even in Elite range!) as of right now, and before this for the longest time, it was much, much lower. Luduslabs showed that the 90th percentile was 1.7cr last season for RBGs, meaning that very few players can actually get Rival gear (let alone Duelist).
These issues are further compounded by rampant boosting, where you can essentially hire a top player to carry you to a point where you can (potentionally) carry yourself, and that these players missed out on weeks of weekly boxes. If you get lucky on a duelist weekly box, you have a chance to loot tens of thousands of honor (talking about 2handed weapons here). Even worse is the conduits, gem sockets and legendary grinds. Some conduits are fine at 145 (Royal Decree for example), but others you need to push them as far as you can (Ringing Clarity or Righteous Might for example) because the gains are too big to ignore. As for legendaries, they are quite costly and you want the free gem sockets and main stats from having a 262. There’s just simply too much to grind, especially for people with alts. And not having sockets means you’re missing out on hundreds of 2ndary stats.
The other day, a nerf landed for Prot Paladins, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad at a simple numerical change since BfA corruptions. An 80% reduction to the healing of WoG on others is massive, and it’s also not a nerf that was needed. If the goal was to get rid of Prot as a healer spec, that should have been done before the expansion launched. More healers for the game is a boon, as it means there are more healers in LFG, more healers to play with, and the ladder gets a mix-up. The issue with Prot right now is not it’s toolkit or numerical tuning – that has been fixed in 9.0.5 when you removed the CC immunity on Horse. The issue is Night Fae. The rampant oneshot comps running around is the problem. You can nerf Prot as much as you want, they’ll just go back to Holy and still use the Summer Legendary to oneshot cheese people.
A nerf that happened too late, and isn’t targeted at an actual issue. Here’s another reminder that a devblog is a must. We’re lucky if we get developer notes nowadays.
Here’s why nerfing the healing of prot does nothing good for the game: https://clips.twitch.tv/FurryAntediluvianFiddleheadsResidentSleeper-OPolEixsftS46k9W (keep in mind this clip is AFTER you nerfed Prot healing – and yes there are a plethora of buffs going on, but that’s the point. All this senseless dmg stacking needs to go – there should be some, but not THIS MUCH. A team well versed in game knowledge can counter this by stacking Disc dome and DK dome along with multiple personal defensives, but… really???).
I’ve also done a lot of leveler BGs. While they’re quite fun once you build your characters with basic enchants and heirlooms, the EXP and honor gains are super low and thus most people avoid it completely, with some classes such as MM and Arcane completely dominating early ladders. It’s also quite sad that XPoff people are not allowed to participate, as they’re an excellent way to play alts in WoW. Especially in modern WoW, the gap between an XPoff player and a leveler isn’t that big at all if the leveler fishes up some cheap enchants and consumables. Of course it’s not a welcoming environment for a new player, but I always believed in the community’s ability to help others out (which is something I’ve been trying to do for the longest time), and also, new players will still lose massively to a player that has 13+years of experience.
Haven’t dabbled in M+ or raids yet, got discouraged at the start when the AoE cap was introduced, and now I’m simply not excited to gear up from scratch (including Shards of Dom) knowing that 9.2 is on the horizon.
Overall, I’m having fun playing the game (although the fact that certain features such as being able to swap Covenants not being in the game from day1 onwards still boggles me), but there are still many obvious and easy ways to improve the experience. Of course, I will elaborate more in future threads, but for now, these are my experiences with 9.1.5.
I think the patch was a much needed quality of life patch. Sadly there wasn’t much content at release until the Legion timewalking, which i am pleseantly surprised by and it’s a success with most people I talked with! If Blizzard can bring that balance and effort in other timewalking aspect, and giving that content a good difficulty, it can lead to great things.
I think the patch exposed other problems with covenants. It’s a different situation for all classes and spec, but for Holy paladin in example, there is just about no situation in raids where I would change from Venthyr. Would’ve loved if Blizzard tuned other covenants so that there is a place for them. There were some number tuning in the patch for Necrolords and Night fae, but still not enough. Would there really be a consequence into hotfixing a bit more frequently number tuning for covenants that are very obviously far behind. A small and quick 5% increase damage for example, instead of waiting for a major patch. - The same arguement works for unused talents.
The conduit energy removal was a godsend. Although for Venthyr specifically, i think i speak for many Theothar soulbind users, please change the Tea ( Party favors ) cooldown. I sometimes have to spec Prot for a quick boss in the raid, and you lose the buff + a waiting period of one hour to grab it again !
While letting people change covenants at will was obviously the play, some players are still limited by not having the income to create every covenant legendary. A gold and ember cost comes with it, and having multiple to craft is a very limiting factor that can be incredibly frustrating… I personally have no problem with gold, but many players have echoed that fustration. The current plan right now in 9.2 is that players will wear a covenant legendary + class legendary. Crafting 2 or 3 covenant legendary, on every single character, will be another ‘energy conduit’ type-like limiting factor that can easily be avoided.
Do not restrict players this way, give them a much easier access to legendaries, covenant specifically, at least.
Done since before. Didnt cause interest in my alts to rise. However it did became less of a hassle given the increase of research inside there. Shards from sanctum are still a potential annoyance for a lot of people tho.
Highs? Clearing the content i play as per usual.
Lows? Korthia. I am still trying to avoid the place.
No. My alts havent been really touched and my Main was ye, as stated, already done. I cant mentally prepare to go through Korthia once more. Even if the most interesting stuff in Korthia is account wide nowadays.
Mhh, you wont like that.
“Gief 9.2”
“This tier addprofanityofyourchoice”
Etc.
Sure some were enjoying the buff to Korthia and stuff but pretty much also everyone shared the same PoV of it comming way too late and feels just like a bandage to keep some players in the game during an already consumed patch that wasnt well received to begin with. If this stuff would have come earlier maybe the patch would have been received differently because of alts when the content was relatively fresh.
For the design of Sanctum however its an entirely different cup of tea. ALAS you asked for 9.1.5 relevant stuff so i wont be commenting on it unless you say you want me to.
Also from what i could gather the PvP scene still feels as neglected as it always does and the difference between gear levels still being a major concern for them.
9.1.5 has been to me, and to most of the people I know and play with, been a mixed bag of positives and ambivalence. All of the changes to systems were pretty welcome, but should have probably come a lot sooner - as in, being baked in from the beginning. It shows that we’re moving in the right direction at least! I hope the lessons learned here will stick.
Personally, the highest point of 9.1.5 was getting covenant rewards unlocked account-wide when renown was filled up. One thing Shadowlands has been lacking so far has been rewards, in two different ways; formerly in the literal sense (1 transmog set with 4 recolours per armour class + the cosmetics of 9.1 for each covenant isn’t a lot), and the second one being the really long grinds to actually collect all of these things. 9.1.5 helped a lot with some of these grinds, but I’d really like to see more rewards for less work, when a lot of the work isn’t particularly fun to a lot of people - the 9.1.5 pacing is good, let’s make that the baseline?
So all in all, good stuff, but should’ve come sooner, so let’s hope lessons are learned!
P.S. Haven’t gotten around to the mage tower myself yet, but my friends think it’s great :>
The new customizations for certain of the allied races were great, but still, the community sits wanting more, me being one of them. Frequently adding new customization options and so on would be great, it would also make for a much diverse way of making your character feel like your own, even more so than it already is.
The alt friendly leveling in Shadowlands was a major improvement and positive to me and other people I know, its now no longer a hassle spending 10 minutes on one world objective, instead, it functions like a normal world quest. Covenants is something I have yet to really dwell myself deeply into, but doing Torghast and such definitely seems easier as well.
Legion Timewalking is a fun throwback, though I do know that people have complained about the Mage Tower being way too big of a challenge and others saying it is not, it is a mixed bunch and it should definitely be looked at. Back in Legion I did manage to get my sparkly glowy cat form from Agatha after 50+ tries, and I can only remember it as challenging.
Updating new animal models is always a treat, the new boars are really cute and the design is something i really appreciate, but I do wish we got some other model updates, and not just a few every other patch. And perhaps more updates than just animals (trees and so on)
Rain and change of weather in the main cities; I have yet to experience rain. Adding a sewer/drainage system detail is pretty fun though, but it would be cool to see all over the city.
Oh i can top that. I have currently 11 Mythic, 18 Heroic, 10 normal and 1 LFR kills on sylvanas and i got the Mythic daggers through loot+vault very recently. The content was cleared while using a normal dagger. I have killed Sylvanas 2 (or max 3) times since the clear of the tier on heroic. So ye, i can sing a song about the daggers.
The same applies to Ner’zhuls dagger as well actually. 35 Kills in total. I havent seen it drop for me once. And overall once since our other rogue got it this lockout and gave it to me for transmog. The Vault also never had it pop up.
The drop rate for some items (especially as desired as the daggers, IQD, OWS etc) is just wow. Im not saying the drop rate in general is worse than others but the entire loot system and how it works is just making it a living nightmare. I’ve stopped counting the amount of Rings sylvanas dropped for instance.
I can only imagine the horror for people that dont even farm such items across multiple difficulties and as such have their loot chances per week diminished.
The problem here is the same problem as all the other rings/necklaces. It’s just the math of it. The majority, if not all specs are able to loot the sylvanas ring, the nine ring, tarragrue and KT necks etc. They may have the same drop chance as everything else in the loot table but we see so many of them that we’re disenchanting/vendoring mythic raid loot while people still need stuff from the same bosses that won’t drop.
This is where the “bring back master loot” conversation always starts.
Honestly, I’m on board; but with 2 conditions.
#1) The raid must be a guild group, and the raid leader must be in that guild. Many groups just roll off tradeable gear anyway.
#2) If you’re worried about the RWF people abusing it, just unlock it when the Hall of Fame closes and cross-realm-mythic opens. That usually takes a month or two after the patch, and then you are reliant on a group wide chance instead of an individual chance. Our rogue was at a severe disadvantage for getting the heroic sylvanas dagger every time we killed her because he’s the only rogue in the group.
So while I am on board the “bring back master loot” train, there is a heavy asterisk beside it. I am firm on #1. #2 doesn’t impact me where I’m not a RWF raider.
That was my point correct.
I would rather say the entire run has to be composed of guildies. Not the qualification we have right now that means a run is a guild run.
RWF plays of no importance for the general playerbase. They play the game with an entirely different mindset to begin with.
The system deserves to be abandoned. Especially with the cross realm system tied to it. Horde fills up in a reasonable amount of time (although that is debatable for people that want to pug but cant) and Alliance is taking an eternity to do so given the extinction of the faction.
Thats already way too long imo.
I won’t go too much into it since some things deserve their own posts but here it goes:
The patch is kind of ok but it feels like a lot of the nice changes could had easily been hotfixed months ago when they got announced and added to the pbe such as all the korthia stuff. For me by the time the patch came out I had long stopped bothering with the zone and now I cannot be bothered to even continue doing it.
Covenant swap and the aoe hardcap being removed are nice changes but it’s again things that I think could had been changed sooner because 1 was requested before the expansion released all the way up until now and the other is a feature that was taken away from us that nobody really asked for.
Legion timewalking is again nice so far but it feels weird that it was not released when the patch came considering the big gap from the last content update. Also the fact that when it’s gone we’re not seeing it for basically half a year.
I would had liked to see the m+ score being shared across alts like 9.0.5 had it because I’m absolutely not doing korthia more than once.
Some thoughts:
Mythic+
I’m continuing to enjoy the new M+ seasonal affix, Tormented, but still have the same 8 dungeons from 9.0. With the same (in some cases retuned) affixes reshuffled across Tyrannical/Fortified weeks. I feel like more could be done here to keep M+ content fresh from one season to the next, especially when no new dungeons are being made available. Tazavesh was fun but once I saw it and got the mount there was little reason for me to return. Megadungeons would be a lot more impactful for me if they were made available for M+ sooner after release.
Legion M+ Timewalking
I didn’t play M+ in Legion so it has been fun exploring and learning the “new” dungeons but I’m finding that the group finder has already slimmed out considerably when compared to day 1, perhaps in part because people are focused on the Mage Tower challenges. I feel like offsetting these two events could have alleviated this problem to an extent. Additionally, due to how the timeworn system works (246 ilvl loot cap via valor, not available in the great vault, dungeons don’t impact M+ rating) besides a couple of neat sounding trinkets, the only characters I really have interest in running through these dungeons are lower ilvl alts that still need gear. Those same alts still need Rating so that I can spend my valor. It’s more efficient for me to continue running Shadowlands dungeons and not engage with timeworn keys at all. If anything, I think it should be the opposite during a limited time event like this.
Mage Tower
It gets released with unannounced and untested changes which sends a part of the community into an uproar. Then the next day it’s announced that tuning is underway to address some of the encounters that are “more difficult than intended”, sending another part of the community into an uproar. From my perspective those unannounced changes should have been another PTR build. Test the content, get it right, then ship it to live. This isn’t a new problem but it is certainly one I hope to see some progress on. The 9.2 PTR is up. Feedback is pouring in. It’s time to get this ship back on track because I want the finished product, not an early access beta.
Account wide progress
Climbing up roots and opening mawshrooms in Korthia isn’t very entertaining for me but I got a character to Tier 6. Yet the 9.1.5 changes didn’t do much to help my alts. They all have to climb the same roots… collect the same mawshrooms… so that I can upgrade conduits and get sockets. There is a lot to do in this game without requiring grinds like this on every character I want to play. Embracing account wide progress so that I have the freedom to spend a lot of time doing what I want is always going to be a better experience than feeling forced to spend a lot of time doing something that I don’t.
Yeah… couldn’t agree with you more. I think what ticks people off across the board is releasing content that didn’t have quality time to be tested or just overhauling it right before release (also without testing).
I think account-wide at this point is 100% needed. The tome to gain rep w/ archivist faster on alts was not needed. I don’t need to grind out that rep on 7 toons to rank 6. Doing it once should be sufficient and then unlock the upgrades for the account.
It’s an artificial time sink; a hollow, empty grind. There is no reward in it the 2nd, 3rd, 4th time around. It’s a chore and feels punishing for someone who wants to keep up with multiple characters. There’s plenty of content to do in 9.1.5 and hanging out in Korthia 3 hours a day on my characters is something I’d rather NOT do.
Plenty of account-wide tracking implemented (mounts, achievements, pets), no need to gatekeep content for alts in a “catch up” patch.
I want to bring this up again, because while it is a running joke in my guild that I can’t get an IQD to save my life (still using 226 from 9.0 which I only saw the one of), it makes the game less fun to play when I feel unable to obtain a significant upgrade for my class.
Yesterday in our guild discord I had 2 different people ping me that an IQD dropped in their group and no one needed it.
Other members have told me they’ve gotten 2, 3, 5, even 6 IQD’s this patch; and here I am stuck with my 226 version, which still sims better than my other 246 / 252 trinkets that I’ve acquired.
There should be a way, at this point in the tier, to simply buy the specific item for valor. I know we have a box that costs 500 and thats cool, but statistically I would have to spend about 50k valor to get my item given how massive the M+ loot table is.