My general feedback about Shadowlands as a Mythic Raider
The story really shines in the Revendreth leveling experience. You get to form short-term relationships with characters that end up becoming dungeon and raid bosses that you come to hate (and love to kill), like Echelon and General Kaal
Visual storytelling has massively improved, and the Revendreth cutscenes / Venthyr campaign cutscenes can highlight that, even down to camera angles
The covenant campaigns are quite an enjoyable experience but I dread having to do them all over again on alts
In mythic fights, the mechanic overlaps are too frustrating. While I personally don’t have a preference for “dance” fights, I largely enjoy way more fights where boss abilities come off cooldown on a timer and you don’t know which mechanic is going to happen, but they don’t have murderous overlaps. One overlap that can happen on mythic, for instance, is one of the adds always marks a player down and stuns them. That same player is also suscetible to be marked for another mechanic, and if they are a class that don’t have any means of breaking free from stuns, that may be cause a wipe.
A wipe, just because one player was unlucky to be marked by two mechanics that overlapped. That’s just frustrating, and it isn’t the kind of challenge that’s exciting to beat.
Another aspect of fight design that is extremely frustrating is the one where, if you push the boss too soon, you end up having too much on your plate to handle. Meeting DPS checks is fine, but having to slow down on killing a boss is counterintuitive.
As a melee DPS, some fights are within the worst experiences of all time in WoW, the worst offender being Sludgefist (up there with BFA’s Mythic Queen’s Court).
I’m happy about the covenant abilities and neutral about them being covenant locked. The covenant abilities (Convoke, Wild Spirits, Abomination Limb, Ashen Hallow, Death’s Due, etc) also shouldn’t be borrowed power, and should be a permanent addition to the game.
Class and spec design seems to be in a very good state right now. I’m especially happy and satisfied with Frost Death Knight, and I’m glad to see Shadow Priest and Shaman players are having fun.
The Great Vault is a good addition that should be permanent.
In terms of enjoyment, I’ve had most fun:
- doing Torghast (but it shouldn’t be tied to soul ash, I should be able to do it as much as I want and be rewarded with transmogs/valor/gold)
- the anima powers are fun and it would be amazing to see them being further developed
- makes me wish Torghast becomes a permanent feature to the game, with subsequent aditions every expansion (but only tied to cosmetic rewards, not player-power(
- clearing Castle Nathria on Normal and Heroic
- getting KSM (I largely enjoyed tyrannical keys way more, fortified felt like every trash pack were damage sponges)
- Prideful is VERY, VERY, VERY fun. It’s sad to see it go
- some bosses on +15 tyrannical were incredibly fun and some of the best fights I got to play in WoW, like Mordretha from theater of pain. In fortified they just die too fast
- De Other Side and Plaguefall, however, are only enjoyable in Fortified
- Plaguefall is one of the worst M+ dungeons ever in terms of enjoyment
I’ve had most frustration:
- on Mythic Castle Nathria
- in melee unfriendly fights, which are the majority. And on top of that I’ll include
- the frustration melee players are reporting is part of the main reason why I’ll probably won’t raid mythic in the next tier
- in M+ with melee-unfriendly affixes (spiteful and storming being the worst)
- having to temporarily faction change so I can play with my friends and help then on M SLG until the end of the tier. I liked my DK as a human, and having to play the character on other races detracts from my enjoyment
Farming old raids for transmog and appearances makes me feel like the game doesn’t respect my time. Many times I only get one shot at an item per week, and it’s quite often gold or rings/trinkets, which are useless. I fully believe you should be guaranteed one new appearance you don’t know yet, with higher chances for appearances you can use on your current character and lower chance for cross-unlocking (e.g. unlocking cloth appearances on a leather-wearing class)
A feature I miss from previous expansions is the Legion appearance unlock system. To those unaware, once you unlocked the base appearance of an artifact weapon, you could complete activities that guaranteed you the different color tint unlocks, e.g. completing 100 world quests, participating in X rated battlegrounds, killing a boss on heroic raid. Those didn’t rely on RNG, but rather the player’s time (and will) to do the activities.
That sort of thing not only respected the player’s time but also gave us a clear-cut way of seeing how many appearances/tints we were missing and what we could do in-game to obtain them, instead of farming X boss an infinite amount of times.
