Hope The Maw Gets Better

Lore Story Forum
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My biggest sense of disconnect is every in-game character comments how horrible and wretched the Maw is. Like, apparently, its very sight is appalling and fear-inspiring. And I just don’t see it.

Sure, the River of Souls is moderately unsettling, as are the “rock prisons” and like… Souls half-crafted into armor. But even then, they aren’t actual characters, they’re just the simple, micro-torso silhouette.

Otherwise, like… What’s scary about it? It’s just some rocks, and a few cages. Like, I get we gotta keep a T Rating, but Naxxaramas is hella scarier than the Maw, as are the Forsaken. I’m told the souls are tortured, but I see no implements for this? Like, I sound a lot edgier than I am (“i need more graphically-depicted torture in my game, pls”), but if it’s a realm of torment, at least show me the torment. Hell, Googling “SCP” gives some pretty good inspiration for horrifying monsters that could probably fit in the T Rating, and could easily have been warped/manipulated souls.

And, the mechanics are so slow. Like… “immediate extermination” takes like 10 minutes to kill you. Ocean fatigue kills you faster. The Mawsworn Abductors are a cool concept, but they only strike like once every 15 minutes, and you have 20 seconds to kill them. The assassins are my favorite: they hit decently-hard, have killed me a few times, and come in different varieties. The mount limitations don’t make it “scarier”, they make it like trudging through mud.

That said, as a druid main…

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/351768429230817280/780908655154561104/SPOILER_z1wklycOt4zwn-BMAVeVm89s7yr_63V_uxa-AwZ-000.png

6 Likes
23

IDK how much has been revealed or changed, but there was a theory going around where the Maw used to be called something else- and the Maw looks like it used to be more… vibrant, but it was blown away somehow.
I’m kind of interested in what the Maw used to look like if that is still a thing. We’ll probably never see it though. They probably just want the Maw to be this really hostile area that sucks to go into.

I think it would be cool if we were not able to defeat the Jailer, or something like that, and we had to come back to the Maw in a later expansion, and it looked totally different, and more developed- or rebuilt into it’s “former glory” or whatever.

As far as the mount topic goes, I think it’s silly that a some mounts would “ignore your call”. How is a Death Knights mount going to disobey?
Or a mount with a sinister name like “Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher” gonna be to scared to go anywhere?

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The Maw is designed to provide the Jailer with Anima(the Manifestations/Echoes of Death) and Stygia(Soul Essence) so any Torments are built around that purpose.

Souls that have Anima are tied down and hacked apart until the Anima is left to become Shades that become Mawsworn. Souls that lack Anima are either put into Soul Cages to crystalize into Stygia or are fed to beasts!

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I heard when you reach the next rank with the suss Ana-tron she sends you to the next island so it’s possible there is more to it than what we get now.

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This is kind of my problem with it. I understand they wanted the Maw to be dangerous, and the mobs do pose a threat, but it also feels extremely damage spongy and everything takes forever to die (or so it feels at least). Couple that with the high mob density in key areas and the long, boring stretches between objectives because you can’t mount… I have to say I’m not really a fan.

Then again, I also do kind of think that the zone’s design is going to kind of open the fissures between classes that are good in the open world and those that aren’t, so if you play a Rogue (stealth, control, able to pick your fights) it’ll feel better than playing a Priest (none of the above).

2 Likes
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I’d noticed this. It looks like there are ruins. That also made me wonder why are the souls going to the Maw? It almost sounded like, “Without the Arbiter, the souls defaulted to the Maw.” Like, the Arbiter was a force diverting them away from it. I could be wrong, and there could be an active siphon directing souls there, but… If the Maw is the “default realm”, and it has all these ruins, then what was it at one point?

Or like, a mount that can’t even feel emotion, like a machine.

I believe it. I just haven’t seen it!

28

Even the little fartlings the fire elementals poop out when you kill them take an annoyingly long time to kill with a builder spender spec like Shadow.

It’s not challenging. At no point do I feel threatened. It just takes forever.

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Additional fun lulz with the “no mount” thing: as a Paladin, I routinely call upon my mount for 3 seconds every 45 seconds. However, it is apparently too scared to answer my call when I am not actually fighting anything.

8 Likes
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My felsteed is over here acting like it hasn’t seen some crazy stuff in the demon world

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31

The Maw is the best zone ever put in this game and I feel my adrenaline almost constantly while I’m there. I love, absolutely love, that there are no sacrifices to variety to avoid boring people. I feel oppressed and hunted by a faceless legion of the damned. I feel like I need a plan to get through the day there effectively and then I need to get tf out. I adore it. Only Icecrown and Storm Peaks has ever come close to this.

Give the slow people their mounts though.

32

I don’t feel threatened by any of the alleged threats, though. Some of the later stage things the Jailor throws at you are annoying, to be sure. But with a good grip on my class and no shortage of potions up my sleeve I only feel tense when I’ve warmode on.

And when we’re outsourcing the tension to griefers I feel somethings gone awry.

1 Like
33

Hell really is other people.

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34

I will say that if I had chosen to main a priest for yet another expansion in a row I would probably be feeling very differently. No mobility other than the still-nerfed-after-MoP feathers, no interrupts, basically no control, reasonable but not great survivability, boring ST damage, or high ST damage with range. That they looked at all that and said “yes things like Torghast will be fun like that” is why I finally abandoned my priest.

Having 3D movement skills, consistent fast or brief ultra fast movement, stealth, cleave with durability, CC are all things that make the Maw and Torghast more fun and they’re things half the classes in this game have zero of.

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35

Honestly Torghast is pretty fun. SPriest’s redesign was great. Voidform is a CD now and Devouring Plague is your main and, unless you spec otherwise, only spender.

Also the ghosts trigger on certain moves now. So with some planning you can recreate the finale of Return of the King and throw a ghost army at people.

Plus the buffs are just laughably OP. You can get 28 Shadow Word: Kills with no cooldown. And another causes Power Infusion to make Mind Blast instant cast with no cool down. Poor boss never stood a chance. I only popped Vampiric Embrace and it was more just to be sure than out of desperation. Feels like an apology for Horrific Visions, where it was very trial and error to figure out which purple particle effect was going to kill you and which was you.

Loving Torghast. The Maw though? Bleh.

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36

I’ll have to look into it maybe, but I only play Holy or Disc. Maybe just Holy now, they keep shoving Shadow down Disc’s throat since Legion.

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I actually fell in love with Discipline in Legion lol. I hadn’t played since Wrath and had never healed and Disc is just the GOAT healer for me. You get to save the day without sacrificing the thrill of the kill.

Personally I love those changes too. They gave us Mind Blast so we actually have a meaty damage spell again. Which is a godsend as while we were absurdly OP at the start of BFA, when they took away our unlimited shields, they didn’t give us back say a Light’s Wrath to do really solid atonement healing.

Holy I don’t believe I’ve touched in SL yet but, the HPriests I know seem to like it.

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I was Disc going back to Wrath so I loved it as the disciplined, durable Priest and played them as Monks or Bards.

The Disc changes seemed good mechanically, flavor bothers me, but neither looked like they would make a rewarding solo experience in an expansion that was clearly moving more towards solo content. Might have misjudged the last though.

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39

Dull’s not how would I describe it. At least not yet. Trying to navigate around Perdition Hold recently to try and get dailies or even trying to do some of the regular previous ones is often an exercise in anxiety management and patience. The other day I made the mistake of participating in four different rare mob fights before even doing the dailies. I was at tier 5 before I finished the last one.

Happy fun times indeed.

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40

They figured that with the success of Classic servers, the retail playerbase was really thirsty for those old school Desolace assets.

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Desolace was interesting for how unique it was. And at least there you had the vibrant Darkspear beach party to return to. And getting involved in Centaur politics.

Tbh Disc just hasn’t been viable to solo for since about 8.2. I actually only used to play that spec but by the time I hit Nazjatar, while it was technically possible to solo on Disc, it would just take forever. I still think the class could use a damage boost.

And I still really miss Light’s Wrath. Finding out it overcharged is still one of my best moments in gaming, as it coincided with a Feral Druid jumping me. Then I promptly punched a whole through him and I’m not sure who was more shocked.

1 Like