I cannot believe Im saying this but Im actually enjoying Beguiling over reaping. Reaping was a lot of fun but it just became annoying having a million name plates on my screen and just trying to wack as many as possible.
My initial assessment was that it was a complete failure and had they not hot fixed the void emissary I still might have thought the same today. Ive noticed that most groups have adjusted their strats for each emissary rather quickly and have come to terms the diversity of this new affix.
Only thing Id change now is to have the Tides emissary drop its aura once it gets to 1hp and starts to teleport. Other than that its been a good time breaking up the usual strats.
I have enjoyed it so far, enjoy it more on tyrannical weeks I would guess though, granted pretty limited xp in 10’s so far this season. Not sure I enjoy it more then reaping, but it is a welcome change.
Demon Hunter main here, I do prefer Reaping over Beguiling for the sheer fact of seeing those big numbers on the charts. However Beguiling is definitely a nice change of pace and it does change up the routes in some of the dungeons. My only complaint is that you are at a minor disadvantage if you don’t have at least 1 DH who can safely scout ahead and see what emissaries are up ahead. Because I know last week I’ve turned a corner and run face first into a Void Emissary.
Honestly, it isn’t terrible like everyone made it out to be. But, I will say that some of the pulls are questionable at best. I was doing King’s Rest +11 earlier today, and one of the packs before the bridge to the third boss had an Emissary of the Tides (CC immune one) in the group. Which isn’t so bad, but for some reason blizzard decided it is okay to combine that pull with the large patrol that knocks you in the air and the blade one that gives you the hard hitting bleed. There as I believe another melee mob in the pull too.
Pulls like those are not fun and would have been incredibly difficult if we didn’t figure out that you can use Monk’s Ring of Peace to bounce her out of the pack and then Monk taunt her to me (Guardian Druid) so I can tank her without pulling the pack. There really isn’t a substitute that I can think of for when we get that dungeon again and our mistweaver isn’t with us for that pull. I guess we are just out of luck then.
There have been other questionable, but at least doable through brute force pulls with them in it. But combining multiple pulls together for an emissary is just ridiculous. I like to pull big when I can, but King’s Rest is honestly one of those dungeons that the later trash is significantly dangerous enough to do single groups in certain sections for me.
I like the affix, as other dungeons seemed fine to me, so far at least. But it does need tweeking in certain sections.
Humorously, I also run with a mist weaver regularly. We discovered that he can literally just taunt the emissary out and face tank it away from everything else. It only does like 70k every 3s on a 14.
This also works with a pally or Druid healer, but then you need a knock to replace the movement speed buff. A boomie also does it well, and it’s infinitely better than having to hard cast root or poly.
I’m really enjoying beguiling so far, especially as a tank. It’s much like solving a puzzle. I loved reaping, and seeing big boy numbers was insane, but Beguiling is very doable if you take the time to understand each pull.
Yes, there are a few different strategies in working on currently. Such as specifically for King’s Rest running Mass Entangle talent for the 30 second AoE root. I still like Typhoon, but with a DPS peeling the emissary away I can pop a cd and tank the mobs away for a second before rooting and going to clean up the unrootable mob(s) and the emissary.
It is an interesting affix, and I enjoy the planning, but they do need to look at just a couple pulls. The other pull I dislike a lot is forcing people to do the dinosaur pack with an emissary that camps in front of the bridge to the last boss in Atal’Dazar. While this is skippable if you bring invisibility pots or a rogue for stealth, I dislike forcing consumables on people to skip what was already possible before. Now maybe that is blizzards intention to get people to have to use consumables more.
I do believe they are on the right path though and a little tweaking can go a long way to get more people into the new affix.
I don’t mind Beguiling, I just hate it when blizzard puts the void mobs in packs that have no clear LoS opportunities, or punish melee because the LoS places are far away from the mob. (looking at you shrine!)
In guild group with voice it’s alright. Easy to coordinate how to handle stuff as you go. In a voiceless PuG it’s frustrating. Voids that could be skipped get pulled and then it’s basically every man for himself as far where you plan to LoS. Tanks dying cause they decide to LoS me to LoS the void in a spot I wasn’t prepared for. Sometimes those buffing emissaries need to be split to keep a tank from being obliterated and PuGs usually try to zerg them all.
So for guilds it’s mostly no problem. But PuGs had a far easier time with reaping in my experience.