This is the first patch since 7.2 that I haven’t played. I’m sure many of you have no clue who I am, but I was decently active on these forums from 8.0-9.0, often one of the handful discussing Arcane. Anyways, I’m sure not many of you care haha.
Pre-Warning: this post is going to be a long one. I pretty much discuss why I left in 9.0 and pick apart a lot of issues I wound up having.
My long-winded gripe fest, I mean, ‘critique’ . . . does serve a purpose other than being a long complaint . . . So I am thinking about returning and I have a few questions. First I’m going to kind of outline where I was at with the game though, because my questions will be related to my complaints. However, if you’re finding my post too long, you can probably skip the part about CN—although certain encounters heavily played a role in my frustrations.
I- Overall Frustrated
Overall, I left pretty frustrated with the entirety of the game. I got very burnt out during CN mythic progression—abysmal performance on Council and had a ‘mutual’ benching at Sludgefist—as in my GM and I both knew that I was just not feeling the raid anymore. So let me kind of shed light on how I ended up at that point.
- The Class, the Specs, the Balance, the Lack of Acknowledgement, and Everything in Between:
Fire:
I will start with Fire. Fire did well, there is no denying that. However, what irked me to no end was the same song and dance—Fire was (is?) lacking. It has a nice base, but heavily relied on Shadowlands Systems, as it did BFA Systems, in order to secure its spot in 9.0.
Moreover, coming off of the heels of 8.3, it felt very clunky. The addition of PF into the Combustion Window felt horrible to me with its travel time. Mandatory “Kindling” was not something I enjoyed this patch either, whereas I was a fan of it in 8.3. The lack of stats in the beginning only added to the comedown from where the spec was at the end of BFA (naturally, but still it did add to the Spec feeling different). Mandatory Night Fae wasn’t a huge deal—more on this in a second.
When I realized that I was really unhappy was when they buffed Disciplinary Command midway through. I know it’s a stupid reason for my realization moment, but it will make a little more sense in a moment. The switch over had me legitimately forgetting to use it at times since I was so used to FI at that point. On one of our Mythic Council attempts it dawned on me—the buff to DC was almost as a microcosm that was symbolic to the entire expansion at that point, and also to the mage class as a whole.
Frost:
I’ll be perfectly clear. I hate Frost. I would have played it if I had to, but it is by far my least favorite of the three. However, the way this spec was treated was senseless. It was over-tuned in beta. Went through abhorrent nerf after nerf, right up until the expansion released. Live hits and the spec is leagues behind every spec in the game. Then to pour salt in the wound, Blizzard buffs the spec cautiously and does it weeks and even months into the patch. The ineptness in the Nerfs and Buffs when it came to this spec truly showed the worst aspects of Blizzard’s approach to handling power differentials.
Arcane:
I could write a novel about this spec. I genuinely could. My favorite of the three, and always in a constant state of ‘just tell us not to play this spec’. The initial changes during Beta actually made it seem like Blizzard remembered that mage has three specs. However, there were glaring flaws and those flaws were not being addressed at all.
One of my absolute favorite things Blizzard did was have ‘Mirrors of Torment’ refund Mana for Arcane, and then come in months too late and change it to a version the community had begged for since Beta. Arcane’s new playstyle was also ghastly, the fishing for CC procs in the opener made the entire rotation just feel beyond janky. The specs “Legendaries” are niche, jank, or recycled garbage take your pick.
The class, its three Specs, and Blizzard’s blatant disregard to mage in general are kind of my the foundation behind my burnout, but not my sole reason . . . just a reason that is built upon by other issues . . .
Balance, Literally
Say what you want about the level of difficulty when it comes to Fire; however, something I believe is indisputable is that it required a lot more effort than hitting “Convoke Spirits”. Oh God the Druid has to move to get full Convoke on the boss and not have it hit an add—riveting and challenging gameplay.
The amount of time that Convoke and Balance of All Things ruled and lasted without hardly any adjustment was sickening . . . Wild Spirits crept up there as well. Especially when you compare how Frost was treated in comparison. Again, Blizzard’s changes came far too late and these broken abilities and legendaries should not have went as unaddressed (I know there were ‘changes’ here and there, but it was nothing significant in the slightest until far later on) for as long as they did.
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One Common Denominator
All of these issues have something in common. The terrible Systems of Shadowlands:
-Legendary Imbalance
(within specs, between specs, within classes, and between classes)
-Recycled, Uninspired, and just Bad Legendaries
(almost every Mage Leggo is recycled and watered down from Tier Sets, Legion Legendaries or part of the Artifact Weapon, Trinkets, or Azerite Pieces).
-Soul Binds
(add pointless layering on top of already bad systems . . .)
Hell, Arcane’s ‘Arcane Prodigy’ wasn’t even working when I left, and I am not sure if it ever started either.
Fire’s fragile state had it relying heavily on Infernal Cascade to make it viable (and to a lesser extent DotG)—along with its Legendary, Kindling, and NF Ability. In 9.0 the spec couldn’t stand alone without all of those systems and specific “choices” house in them—the synergy between each being the only thing that made Fire actually competitive.
-”Our Meaningful Choice” taken away too far . . . Covenants
(the actual worst System out of all the Systems in Systemlands. The completely oppressive and asinine differentiation between each Covenant, its ability, and how that ability plays into each individual spec is disheartening and by far one of the most terrible designs I have seen within the game).
I never thought we could go below Azerite, but I’ve actually found myself saying that it was a good system (and it wasn’t—it’s just that Systemlands is just a monstrosity of awful in comparison).
Frost NF? No benefit. Frost Venthyr, oh you mean Frost’s only covenant. Fire Kyrian? Drugs are bad Mmmkay. Fire NF, oh you mean 99% of Fire Mages. Arcane Kyrian? Sure. Arcane Venthyr? “CaN I GeT an inNervate. I plaY ArCAne.” No but here’s some Mana from ‘Mirrors’ don’t pay attention to the FB Recharges and crucial procs Fire and Frost get! (I know this was finally changed, just can’t get over how long it took when the Arcane community begged from the moment it was changed in Beta).
Ultimately, the stark gaps in the Covenants amongst the three specs is one of the most problematic areas in SL, it’s terrible design, and serves no purpose other than alienating players from switching specs or covenants. There are numerous fixes that could have been implemented to lessen this issue, but nope, Ion and the rest of the team wanted to ensure this was an ‘Important Choice’ for the player . . .
This next portion is extremely long. I’m including it though because Raiding is my favorite aspect of WoW, and I have much to say about CN. I think it has positive and negative aspects throughout each encounter. It is the first time in a long time that Raids have not been able to keep me playing the expansion. I wanted to pre-warn anyone reading this about the length though, but I really am trying to decide if I want to come back—if you want to help answer that then it might be worth reading the section so you can provide insight into the new raid and if any of my complaints with CN have shifted into a different direction in Chains.
II- Nathria Raid Design:
This is a mixed bag for me. In order to actually describe my feelings on the encounters I’d have to break each down and score aspects of them: Design Creativity, Frustrating Aspects, Tuning, Bugs, Ridiculousness. I’m not going to actually score them, but I’ll breeze over a few ingrained into my memory.
-Council was my favorite Heroic fight by far. Mythic was a mixed bag. By far the worst part of the encounter was the very end. The sheer amount of waiter adds made it a ridiculous task to locate Dutiful Attendants that had potentially snuck in—and if you messed up and didn’t notice an attendant up—and blew your CDs . . . well . . . let’s just say I was not happy.
The other aspect I really didn’t like about the Mythic portion was that some players were incapable of optimal parsing because of an in capability of fighting the Veteran Stoneguard based on the random assigned dance location, while others were completely capable of pounding on it throughout the dance.
-Another giant twist was how much I hated Sun King in Heroic, but absolutely loved it on Mythic. The importance placed on impeccable timing of CD’s to meet damage and healing checks, along with the importance of choice for CD usage during the intermission phases made the fight feel very synchronized, and the intermediate amount of pressure from the checks and add waves wasn’t too much or too little.
Now for the fights that I loathed . . .
-While I believe that Lady Inerva Darkvein had interesting mechanical challenges on the Mythic Level, the fight reached a point of asininity for me. The ending, the last 30 or so % had to be one of the most frustrating fights I’ve been a part of.
I hated Mythic Carapace in 8.3 during progression and I genuinely wondered if the fight would ever end. So many wipes. Then it did end, and that fight felt so good to get down. Upon reflection, it was one of my absolute favorite fights of M Nyalotha . . .
. . . M Darkvein did not leave me feeling anywhere near good when she went down. Between the RNG, the extremely punishing mechanics, and—in my opinion—the fight being perhaps slightly y (I genuinely mean slightly too) . . . it just was not a pleasant encounter.
-Perhaps on the same level as Darkvein but in a completely different way was Hungering Destroyer. What I will say about this is my experience with this fight is 100% on me. I struggled with this fight.
I’m the type of player who will focus on super important tasks at the expense of my DPS—the issue with this was that I overemphasized the task. I would constantly be helping soak. I’d royally mess up my combustion timings before incoming movement.
I just overall struggled with the timing of this encounter and this was exacerbated by at times unneeded movement and attention to the soaking mechanic.
-Artificer might be the one I am most conflicted about in terms of its Mythic design. The fight was a challenge in my opinion. The one aspect I dreaded, despised, and struggled with at times was Seed Runner—>Ghost into Extinction + numerous traps around the seed/between your seed area and the portal.
I realize that this scenario could be mitigated by location of group members (for better trap placement) and that my class also has several ways of handing this scenario. I don’t think that scenario was unnecessarily difficult, but it could be frustrating at times.
I do believe the DoT was a tad over-tuned, especially if it was on you and you were running a seed. It does pressure healers, but it’s not really a pressure to them if you’re having to run a seed beyond their range. It was just a very chunky DoT that people would at times die from while running seeds.
The random transitioning, timing, having to hold DPS and such on this fight was unnecessary and just overall strange design. It wasn’t problematic, it just detracted from the fight overall in my opinion.
-I can’t really speak on Mythic Sludge—I think I had two pulls before I just couldn’t go on in 9.0 any longer. I didn’t find the Heroic version terrible. I did find the challenge for Fire Mages to be extremely punishing if you didn’t quite get the Combustion CD down enough and you had used it First Pillar—but that was definitely a risk v. reward choice . . . well, kind of, and has an aspect that goes into one of my more final points later on (‘reliance on others’).
-Stone Legion Heroic was stupid. From everything I heard, Mythic was a bugged out Nightmare.
-And then we have Daddy Denny . . . I have never felt so useless in a fight. Again, I can only really speak from Heroic on this one. The first phase was odd like Artificer. Having to hold DPS for transitioning just feels awkward. The P1 Adds were fodder and only certain classes and specs really benefitted from them in terms of overall damage. It was just a strange first phase—not necessarily bad design—just weird.
Lol P2. Combust the very right Platform Add. It dies. That was my P2. My guild had a lot of melee and just a handful of ranged, but the ranged were quite strong. 2 of us would take one platform add, and 2 the other. Often I didn’t actually need another person. I hated this because I was combusting on one singular add, granted it got it down and quick, but when your spec lives and dies by that singular CD it just really feels so underwhelming.
I enjoyed P3, but I didn’t enjoy the transition right before it. Particularly the game of whether to use CD’s (including lust) to transition him into P3 at a certain time or to hold off and save for P3. Sketchy and on the fly timing is an aspect I don’t enjoy (but that’s very subjective and group dependent as well in some cases).
Summing up CN
a)I enjoyed the fights where there was a known synchronization of events, mechanic execution, and set timings; some of my favorites for the known timings and precise execution were:
Council H&M, Huntsman H&M, Shriek H&M, Sludgefist H, Artificer H, and Sunking M
b)I think fights with intense execution phases or heavy mechanics at the end were all over the place:
Good- Sunking M, Sludgefist H
Bad- Council M, Darkvein M, Artificer M (I’m conflicted on this one even aside from its last seed phases).
c)Fights with random mechanics that are crucial were problematic, two specifically come to mind here:
Darkvein M and Artificer M, whereas, Sire H Huntsman H&M and even SLG H all handled this aspect relatively well.
d)In terms of fresh or at least good design:
Council H&M, Shriek H&M, Artificer H (maybe M), Sunking M, Sludge H
I find Hungering H&M and Darkvein H&M to be terrible. Daddy Denny H almost made it to terrible with SLG H probably reaching that status.
e) “Hold DPS” Encounters . . . 90% of the time I hate fights with this aspect. It is just really off putting and flawed or weak design. The top contenders for this category are:
Artificer M, Denny H, SLG H
Two encounters that also have this aspect, and while I still think it’s a terrible part of a fights design but it’s not as horrible as the ones above are:
Sunking M and Huntsman H&M
Overall, I wasn’t impressed with CN as a raid.
-It was buggy (did not attempt SLG Mythic but I heard tells; SLG heroic was buggy, Darkvein had issues at times, and Sludge’s rubble was unbearable graphically).
-It had too many fights where you’d have to “Power Downgrade” which is often completely senseless design.
-Some fights that had Random Elements were far too punishing when it came to those mechanics.
-While this wasn’t a huge critique but it was still something that I didn’t enjoy: certain fights were heavily skewed to specific specs (which is not abnormal, but I’m talking more of during certain portions if you were not playing one of those specs you almost felt useless).
I will credit Blizzard on a few notable things though:
-It seems like they actively tried to shake up and create Fresh encounter designs for both Tanks and Healers.
-There were some more risky design choices that I believe paid off (Shriekwing H&M—Intermission and Urn, Council H&M—Dance Intermission, Sunking H&M—switch up of Healing Phase and DPS Phase, Healable Dropped Items, and Utilization of Pedastols, Artificer H&M—Seed Carries)
-While the majority of the encounters could be movement heavy, it wasn’t to a ridiculous level for the most part or detrimentally burdensome like some past encounters (Conclave of the Chosen, Rastakhan, Stormwall Blockade, Sivara, Radiance of Azshara, Ashvane to an extent, Shad’har, Drestagath, Hivemind, Vexiona) . . .
. . . and in some encounters that heavy or very disruptive movement was present, it happened either during portions of the encounter or in encounters where DPS was not the top priority (Shriekwing, Artificer, Huntsman). However, there still were issues in certain fights in my opinion (Hungering, Council, Darkvein, and Fire Mages on Sludge).
Final Things that I have disliked about SLands:
-PVP Gear being BIS for Specs in PVE
-Spec/Class boosts to individuals (PI/NF Fae’s)
-Renown Grind
-Lack of Acknowledgement, Feedback, Discussion, etc . . . from Blizzard (I know it’s their go-to and MO, but the game is laden with so many issues and contentions that I figured they would be a bit more active in trying to save the ship before it completely sinks.
-Overall I generally don’t like any of the Dungeons—just aesthetically, design, mechanics, etc . . . I don’t think any are that appealing. Halls is about the only one I enjoyed.
III. Insight to Help Me Decide if I want to Come Back
Here is where I need your all’s help. I would like to hear your opinions, so if you have any insight into these questions/topics, please share:
The State of Mage:
(1)Could someone briefly (or as in-depth as you’d like) give me the run-down of the pretty viable Spec/Leggo/Covenant builds currently for Arcane and Fire, primarily asking about Mythic and Heroic Raid. (I know I can look at logs, but I would rather here some feedback about the build in the raid.)
(2)How does Fire feel to play with the Nerfs and the subsequent Buffs? Is the spec even competitive in the slightest or is it only Arcane and Frost now? What is the Covenant situation looking like for Fire with the changes?
(3)Does the overall community have any sort of heightened bias against any of the three specs (similar to how the majority saw Frost at through most of the first half of the start) . . . I am asking this primarily about mid-level M+ pug groups/Heroic and Normal pug raid groups.
The Raid:
(4)Overall thoughts on the Raid?
Thoughts on Specific Encounters?
Any particular Encounter that Fire/Arcane really struggle on or shine on? (Primarily want to know about Mythic and Heroic, but if you only have experience with Normal and want to add please do).
(5)If you read my portion about CN then you know that:
-I tend to favor Encounters that don’t have much emphasis on Random Mechanics.
-I cannot stand Random Mechanics that are unduly punishing.
-I don’t really like very hectic execute phases (M Darkvein and M Council); however, I don’t mind very predictable and tight Execute Phases at all (H Denny, H Sludge, M Carapace, M N’zoth, M Vexiona).
-I enjoy fights that are very set, almost like clockwork, in terms of transition, execution, CD Usage, etc . . . (Sunking, Shriekwing, Huntsman, Council, Sludge).
Are there any fights that you believe I’ll enjoy or despise? (I’ve legitimately not looked into this raid at all).
Aspects Holding Me Back:
(6) Semi-Late Start is one thing kind of keeping me from jumping back in. Some things about this:
-I was at max renown in 9.0.
-I was at like 224 Ilvl.
-I had the majority of important Leggos maxed for each Spec (and the vast majority weren’t on pieces conflicting with Domination Slots).
-I actually like Tor’ghast (or what it was in 9.0).
-I know nothing about Domination Slots.
-I know nothing about new ‘chores’ like Korthia and it’s dailies (and what is pretty much required).
On this topic I am kind of wanting to know:
A) What is kind of the minimum/average stuff a Heroic Pug group would accept (still in my guild, but will have to work my way back onto the Mythic Team if a spot even opens). So like minimum ilvl, domination slots?, etc . . .
B) What is required from Korthia outside of the Campaign Progression (are aspects that are required/needed gated by Rep)?
C) Anything about Domination Slots that you’d like to add (I will probably need to watch a video or read an article—legit only heard the name not anything about them aside from conflict with the piece being slotted where some people had crafted their leggos).
(7) The Renown Grind from 0 is one of the biggest reasons for my hesitation to come back to the game. I was max NF as a Fire Mage. If Fire isn’t competitive or if Fire is doing noticeably better with a different Covenant is, then I will likely have to switch to a new one . . . meaning Renown 0 . . . which just already creates a feeling of dread in having to regrind.
(8) Has anything changed in the way of PvP Gearing being BIS in some slots for specs? Like is there any PvP Gear that is BIS for Fire or Arcane? I really don’t want to PVP for PVE BIS Gear.
Alright everyone sorry for such a lengthy post. I just kind of wanted to get my thoughts and feelings out there on my Shadowlands Experience so far. I also want to hear from other Mages about certain topics to see what all has changed—(because I’m sure there are some Mages here who can relate to many aspects of my frustrations). I know the post is long, you don’t have to comment about it.
If you have any answers for my questions, thoughts, insight, experience, or comments please feel free to add to the discussion! I know nothing about this patch, raid, new systems, new area Korthia, or about the state of mage/its specs—including any changes to Best Covs/Leggos for the specs.
