On Long Speed and Cooperative Play

Community General Discussion
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I returned to the game about a year ago after a long time away and started fresh. As I leveled, I noticed right away that many of my instances, both while leveling and later at max level on normal, heroic, and mythic 0 difficulty, did not involve much cooperative play. I was mostly just running far behind a tank, usually a demon hunter, who had much greater long-distance speed and could solo the entire instance. I wasn’t really playing the game, and I wasn’t learning my class in a meaningful way. It did not prepare me well for even low-level Mythic+ runs, and I essentially had to relearn the game from the start. It wasn’t a very good experience. Eighty levels of just running behind someone else, hardly doing anything, only to get a rude awakening once I started doing +2 keys and people were upset because I was terrible.

In the spirit of making the game more accessible for new and returning players, and giving people a fair chance to learn their class, I would suggest equalizing long-distance movement speeds between classes. I’m not saying Demon Hunters should lose their in-combat mobility that defines their flavor, but their ability to maintain such high speed over an entire instance without effort could be toned down a bit, or the baseline long-distance speed for everyone else could be increased.

In my current experience, leveling as a DPS or healer feels like being an NPC in someone else’s solo adventure. Like the NPCs in old escort quests, we move slowly while the main character runs far ahead.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of Demon Hunters or any other class. Players are simply using the tools their class provides, and the game naturally incentivizes optimization. I’m only suggesting some rebalancing to make the game more conducive to cooperative play and learning.

Also, yes, I do use the tools I have as well. Some classes keep up okay, like druids or shaman, but a mage with 2 blinks, or a warlock, many others, nope! Even worse, if you die and as is common, people don’t even rez you, you may not even make it back up to the group before the last boss is killed. (Happened to me this morning).

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Hi there! You’ve posted this in the classic general discussion forum, which mostly covers Anniversary and Era servers for Vanilla. You can edit using the little pencil icon on your post to move it to the General Discussion of the main game, or simply repost it in that forum. You’ll get a better reception and discussion there.

Last time I played the main game I had a similar experience to you, I find myself going back to arcane mage as it never really changes. Unfortunately the main game very much focuses on end game and I’m not sure it will change.

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Oh thanks @Duckling. Sorry brand new here. Thank you for the head’s up.

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this is one reason why i came back (late to party in tww) for the “solo” options

i will always reroll characters when i resub and it always ends up reaching a point where to continue in the higher group content i would need to invest some serious time with setting up ui, getting keybinds really set up well, getting some addons updated and set up well and after that…

setting up play time slots where i would need to be available for the group

that said

i have always felt like the game goes from very easy mode to brick wall for the uninitiated and new and returning players are forced to “learn” the game at the entry level of the most sweaty and “competitive” game environments and this can lead to all kinds of friction

it seems like you are in that weird “no mans land” where to get to the other side and engage in the content you want to do will involve biting the bullet and doing whatever it takes to get to a level “acceptable” for groups in the higher content and only you can decide if it is worth the effort

on the part about leveling from scratch- i leveled this character from level 1 last week and only did dungeons from level 10 (eventually went to dragon isles as the torture of “normal” leveling in dragonflight group finder dungeons became unbearable)

and they are too easy to learn a class in or the group is so bad that it is unplayable

and at max level heroic dungeons really only seem to be relevant at the beginning of an expansion and only then for a couple or weeks

because at the end of expansion (like we are now) entry level gear outlevels heroics and it is just as easy as leveling normals

i dont know what the solution is- if there even is one

maybe mythic 0 group finder? (i dont know and experienced mythic+ players will have better suggestions than me)

but one thing i do know is to make that “next step” one needs to be proactive

when you encounter players who you mesh with you need to friend them and push for grouping in that harder content

one cant be passive and wait for it to happen

good luck on your playtime

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Thank you for the kind reply. I eventually got over the hump, though nearly bounced off the game a number of times along the way, but the problem persists anytime I level something else, it’s that there isn’t ample opportunity to learn the game through the multiplayer systems until you smash into that brick wall. The delves and world quests provide me with enough gear to where I can get into a low key on a new character with some effort as a dps, but by the time I am doing that, I have rarely ever done content where I needed to do a rotation on a mob or group for more than a few seconds, if at all because it’s all been pre-killed by speedrunner tanks. That’s just me playing a dps or healer, but imagine how unprepared (pardon the pun) a tank would be going into their first +2 and just having speedrun the entire game to that point. There’s such a strong disconnect between leveling and playing the game that leveling isn’t teaching how to play anymore, that’s why it feels so laborious, at least to me.

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Greetings Autune,

I’ll start by prefacing - please don’t take my suggestion in a wrong way but I may be in a similar position.

I will start by saying that I don’t think levelling gives a generally ‘great’ preparation of how to do Mythic + runs, there is some distance in between being a fresh 80 and being good at keys.

I have played tanks most of all the roles I’ve tried in the world of warcraft. I’ve played Guardian Druid, Brewmaster Monk, Protection Paladin and very often Blood DK. I have seen the range of fast to slow.

This goes away in keys that matter, tank needs to wait for the group so they don’t have to wait for as many defensive cooldowns as the group blasts on them.

Only a problem in levelling dungeons.

I think this part could be practiced more. Remember that you have access to a lot of tools that can increase your movement speed. My Blood DK has a speed gear, speed enchants and you can get a speed boost from Northrend Engineering that only has a 2 minute cooldown.

I use Nitro Boosts on https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/character/us/thaurissan/Hent

In my opinion there isn’t a single class that can’t get accessibility tools.

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That’s a good short term fix, thank you for the suggestion. Still, should you really need to build a speed gear set and get engineering from a 16 year old expansion just to keep up with the tank in content that gets steamrolled mindlessly? Imagine a brand new player or someone like me who had been gone since like 2014 learning the game and you can’t even do anything without building a speed set first. That’s a very bad experience that players will bounce from I think.

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I am not too far into the game myself, i have only regularly played WoW from last year because I found time between my milops stuff. This means I am used to taking a 6 month back to see some stuff has changed (and i have to relearn). I only started in 2021.

Game has evolved to allow you to practice and become better solo and/or with some friends - you can optimise your characters gameplay and rotation skill in Delves too.

I am not very good at Discipline priest (or healing in general, except MW), but I am soon rerolling Elk to be a priest and see how I do. I will practice in Legion Remix and once it’s over I will do a bit in Delves healing brann maybe before I go with friends in a key.