Delves are a great idea that are being soured in part by Brann Bronzebeard. In short, Brann is annoying at best and intrusive at worst, but he can be tweaked to be less so on both fronts. Here are a few of my complaints and suggestions to improve:
For starters, do we need Brann?
Yes and no. Brann, especially with his upcoming tank role, can be a valuable or even necessary addition for some players. However, some might wish he hung back in Dornogal. The solution here is to make Brann optional, with a toggle at the beginning on the delve at his loadout crate.
Brann should be seen, not heard.
This is a small complaint, but Brann is too chatty. Text chat is fine, but his incessant dialogue is obnoxious and the humor of it wears off quickly, if it ever existed. Just reduce his voice lines.
Brann is seen too much.
Brann’s ability effects are extremely invasive and occupy too much of the game screen. Oftentimes, I can’t see a mechanic clearly because there is too much clutter from Brann. The most offensive of these abilities are: the tantrum monkey who spits out bananas, the extremely large AOE of arrows, the titan orb, and the massive dinosaur. Brann is not the star of the show, so stop having his abilities overpower everything on screen.
All of these should be reduced to avoid cluttering the screen and distracting players. Use a trash raptor from BFA instead of the massive devilsaur. Reduce the titan orb size by 75%. Eliminate the monkey all together, or significantly reduce its visuals/animations. Increase the opacity of the AOE of arrows and reduce the density of arrows depicted.
Brann is too autonomous.
Brann is out of control. For starters, he needs to go through the Exile’s Reach tutorial and learn to STAND AND FIGHT, never run away. Whenever he gets aggro, he backs away like a bad DPS and forces you to chase mobs, often into other packs. No.
In addition, Brann needs controls like those given to pets or at least adjacent to those given for follower dungeon NPCs. Defend, Passive, Assist should be the minimum toggles. Brann should not attack anything you are not engaged with. He should never seek out a fight, only assist you. I personally believe all his individual abilities should also be on a toggle like pets, so you can customize how involved his support is. You only want him to auto attack, rapid fire, and drop healing potions? Done. This would also provide a sort of difficulty slider to delves that stretched beyond the tier system, allowing players to more incrementally adjust their challenge.
With these changes, I think the meme-ification of Brann (and the Bronzebeard family at large) would decline and the delve experience be framed as more serious content. As it stands, Brann is an unfunny joke that injects an unwanted flavor into a new content type that has serious potential. I am all for having fun, but Brann is not fun, he’s a cringe liability and an annoying distraction.
