For the last two hours I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to play. All of the classes I’m playing now are receiving heavy changes that in my opinion will make them feel worse off then BFA (something I never thought would happen) and I’ve come to realize that I’m entirely apathetic to the new expansion.
I have no idea what the Shadow Lands are nor do I know what we are trying to achieve by going there. There doesn’t seem to be a big bad villain, unless its Sylvanas and to be honest I’m a bit tired of her at the moment.
AOE
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/aoe-changes-in-shadowlands/490978
The way I measure progress both in skill and in gear is through the ability to pull more and survive. In the start of BFA pulling more then a couple of mobs at a time was death for most classes. As we geared we were able to pull more. I think that people forget that this was not much of a problem for the early to mid BFA life span.
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As we gained more gear it became possible to survive long enough to start pulling more. The fact that we have seen the huge amount of item level inflation as we have in BFA has been one of the largest contributors to this.
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The amount of trash in dungeons is excessive and many of us just want to get through it as fast as possible. This is compounded by the fact that you are racing to beat a timer. If you want to three chest a M+ that gives you upgraded gear you are required to pull more then one pack at a time. Increasing the timers or providing an alternative to M+ without a timer but higher difficulty would remove these issues.
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People who complain about this seem to be under the impression that it is easier to aoe then it is to pull smaller groups. It is not. It requires more coordination in interupts, mitigation/healing on the tank so you don’t overlap cooldowns, in combat cc like stuns, the use of
M+ are designed to discourage pulling more then a pack at a time, but players have risen above the challenge and are now being punished for playing well. And this punishment isn’t just for M+ players but extends to WQ, time walking, raid designs, farming old content, and battle grounds.
GCD
Still no changes…
Covenants
Another hot topic at the moment.
Aesthetic and rp rewards being tied mechanical decisions is designed to fail. Others have pointed out the flaws so I won’t go on forever here.
Here are other problems I see
- Problem talents being returned like Kindred Spirits.
- Warriors ability to provide a buff to others in the raid may end up with them being required to go necrolord if they want a raid spot.
granting an increased amount of maximum health and additional attack speed to you and your allies within range of the banner.
- The balance problems we are going to encounter. With the aoe changes above and the removal of PI and rapid reload hunter are going to have troubles with aoe. Yet druids will get “Call upon the Night Fae for an eruption of energy, channeling a rapid flurry of 16 Druid spells and abilities over 4 seconds.” And what is a possibility for hunters receive? “Fire a resonating arrow to the target location and fill the area with echoing anima. The effect causes your attacks to ignore line of sight to enemies in the area, and you have an increased critical strike chance against them.” Something that is already a meme about barrage.
M+
There doesn’t seem to be any changes adn they have gone forward as saying they are happy with them.
- It seems they completely ignore the feedback that there is far to much trash.
- That many people want an ebb and flow of challenging with breaks of relaxation. Being on edge for 20+ min the entire dungeon is starting to wear on me and its the reason I now stick to low level keys instead of pushing.
- No word yet if they are going to remove the most annoying affix pairing or if we might see some of the seasonal affixes added permanently to the rotation.
Unpruning
The unpruning for the classes that I play make very little sense. We have a tight rotation were casting one thing impacts the damage or way that other spells work. It feels like blizz threw a bunch of new/old spells that don’t feel like they should intuitively be included in my rotation. Yet many things that would have been great to see again such as permanent infernal or destro locks being on fire at max embers were completely ignored.
There is a ton more but to be honest just saying this much has left me feeling depressed. I’m left looking at shadow lands and thinking this might no longer be the game for me and that is a first.