Eh, personally, I like mechanic differences in the mounts. I just hope it’s not an isolated case.
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If you fly in formation, can you continually trade-off building charges?
No I think the objects have to have collision.
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Yep, definately here as well. It felt weird, but I wasn’t sure if it was a bug or not. I compensated by using the extra speed with straight wheels - just as I’d do in a car.
Really don’t like saying this, but it is honestly a learn to play issue. Go do the storm riding courses and hit gold in them, and realize the mount’s true potential!
It is incredibly fun. Best mount in the game.
This is such a COOL IDEA.
The obvious course is this: Instead of Lightning Rush (LR) replacing Whirling Surge (WS) when you use the Algarian Stormrider (AS), it should be an additional spell that shares a CD with WS, so that you can have both on your bar at the same time.
(This is a similar situation to the years-long problem of water walking only being available with Water Striders; players wanted to use any of their hundreds of other mounts, but felt compelled to use a specific mount because its special ability was so overwhelmingly useful. However, here the problem is inverted: instead of wanting to use a different mount but retain access to a special ability, users want to use a specific mount but not use its special ability.)
Some people say it’s not a problem because WS is inferior in all cases (either to using LR itself, or to using other dragonriding abilities like Skyward Ascent (SA)). Alas, this is false. There are common use cases where WS is the fastest way to get where you’re going, such as when you want to fly a relatively short distance very quickly.
E.g. Consider being in Valdrakken, at the entrance to the auction house. You want to get to the Sapphire Enclave as fast as possible. By far the fastest way to get there is to mount onto a non-AS dragonriding mount, jump into the air, and hit WS. WS is less efficient than Skyward Ascent (SA), but over short distances, WS gets you there faster.
For longer distances, WS is less optimal than just using the typical “dolphining” SA technique. I did test flights from the Valdrakken FM to the Teerakai FM, starting with full (6) vigor; just using SA took 64 seconds, while using WS twice (once at the start, once when halfway there, and using SA otherwise) took 67 seconds. (It’s possible that better flying skills could have reduced or even inverted that gap, but it seems unlikely that WS would in any case be significantly faster over such a route.) (Also, as a point of comparison, a regular taxi flight between the two flight masters took 107 seconds.)
So we’ve established that WS has valid use cases. This means that when using the AS, you lose out for those cases, because it’s not feasible to use Lightning Rush then, given that you have to spend a bunch of time building up Static Charge (SC) stacks. Doing so may be difficult given the terrain, and you run the risk of landing by accident and losing the stacks.
Are there cases where LR is better than alternatives? So far, that I’ve seen, the answer is no. For long-distance travel, even with an optimal terrain route that provides plenty of opportunities to build up SC, you still end up spending so much time maneuvering (and thus traversing a longer total physical flight distance) that the extra speed from LR ends up not really mattering. And that’s if you have an optimal route available; for many long-distance flights, there aren’t enough walls to build up SC, at least not without going substantially out of your way, again increasing the total flight distance such that you spend more time building up SC than you gain from using LR.
I did more tests like the above; the fastest I was able to fly that route using LR was 68 seconds. You could probably go faster, but it requires a lot more focus and concentration, and has a higher risk of failure.
One could, of course, argue “too bad,” and that if you want to use the Algarian Stormrider, you simply don’t get to use Whirling Surge, but that’s an unsatisfying and player-hostile option.
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People have paid good chunk of money for warthin pre order, I feel that Blizz owe to them some alt choice for the bought mount, esp those who wanted to dragonride on a griffin as a dorf.
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that takes away from the whole point of having the mount
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At the end of the day the ability of the mount shouldn’t matter to anyone else but the person who has to use it. The people who spend extra money because they want the mount shouldn’t have to compensate by having an ability replaced that they don’t want. Make it optional to choose whirling surge or lightening rush.
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Yeah, i just got the mount yesterday. While the new ability was fun for the special races to earn the mog, i’d really just like the normal ability back please. If the mount keeps this alternate ability, i just won’t use it (and that’s a shame).
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My expectation is that the ability isn’t actually unique to the algarian stormrider. Its just the ability all gryphons will have once dynamic flying is enabled.
All mounts with dynamic flying will belong to a mount type or family based on their physiology and each one will have a unique ability. Whirling surge for dragons, storm charge for gryphons. It just sticks out a bit right now because it’s the only gryphon.
I don’t think so, the special mog races are specifically designed and tuned with that ability in mind.
Yes, they’ve been designed specifically to show off the preview mount before we leave the dragon isles never to return. That doesn’t stop the preview mount ability not being as unique as it may currently appear, it’s not like every single other mount in the game is going to have whirling surge besides that one.
It makes no sense to assume that all gryphons are going to have that new ability, it’s objectively worse in normal day to day commuting. If it happens, feel free to necro this thread and i’ll gladly eat my hat lol
Or, hear us out…
Admit that this feature isn’t working, and go back to the one that does.
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Go watch the Tindral fight during RTWF and see every single player use Whirling Surge. Algarian Stormrider is literally a DPS loss. Its objectively worse. IMO its absolutely ridiculous to add utility to something that should be solely cosmetic.
Blizzard made this nice looking mount, people spent $$$ on it and 90% of players don’t use it because it doesn’t have Whirling Surge. Its laughable.
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Imagine if DF started with Algarian Stormriding instead of Dragonflying - it would have been close to DOA and we’d have normie flying forever.
This new mount blows
Only because the fight also gives you vigor back multiple times throughout the traversal.
And again, I suspect the only mounts that will have whirling surge in 11.0 will be dragons, and all the other mount model families will have their own abilities, of which storm ride will be one of them for all gryphons.
Nothing the storm rider has will be unique, it just looks like it because we have access early.
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Yea personally I love my stormrider. I used it to gold all the new races in emerald dream, and its ability made it even easier since you are mostly flying next to stuff.
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I highly doubt Blizzard would be dumb enough to make different mount families have different abilities. They don’t want there to be a “BIS” mount and no way they’re going to worry about balancing them.
This was a special ‘electric’ ability to match the special mog you get. Nothing about electricity is a gryphon thing.