Personal (minor) annoyances that don't fit their own category

There are a lot of things that I could make a topic about, though I think it would be easier to collect them in a single post. This is not meant as a “nagging” post, I just feel like these things could improve the quality of the game.

Why do we have so many different “talent” mechanics and is ways to deal with it?

  • Do I have the right Legendaries on?
  • Do I have the right Covenant?
  • Do I have the right Soulbind?
  • Do I have the right Soulbind Path?
  • Do I have the right conduits in the Soulbind slots?
  • Do I have the right talents selected?

Legendaries require gear swaps, not a tome. Covenants require you to go to Oribos first. Soulbinds and paths can be done with a Tome, but if you need to change a conduit, you first have to go back to your Sanctum or Zereth Mortis. Soulbinds can’t be changed through the talent window either, unless you use an addon.

I hope the 10.0 talent tree incorporates all of these borrowed powers in the future.

Why can’t I see the Zereth Mortis crafting unless I go to the caves where the crafting “table” is?

Really annoying to have to fly all the way there.

Why do chests disappear from the minimap when someone loots them, but the chests are still lootable?

They should remain visible while you can still loot them. While at it, they should also remain visible with height differences. Especially in Zereth Mortis I often “lose” chests because they just disappear from my minimap when I fly a little higher or lower.

Why do rare icons often disappear from your map?

I can never be sure if a rare has been killed or not, because the icons sometimes just randomly disappear. I can’t tell the progress on the rares either, meaning that sometimes I fly half the map just to end up missing the boss.

Why are buffs, trinkets, and consumables so different?

Just to name a bunch of different combinations:

  • Food: 1h, doesn’t persist through death, 10s channel time, can be used by accident wasting it if you missclick
  • Augment rune: 1h, doesn’t persist through death, instant, easy to miss-click and waste an application
  • Flask: 1h or 2h, persists through death, instant cast, easy to miss-click and waste an application, but at least stacks upon the old duration to a certain upper limit (3h I believe?)
  • Armor kit: 2h duration, persists through death, cast time so no incidental applications and comes with a popup you have to accept when overwriting, but there’s no buff you can see/track. You have to open your inventory and hover over the item
  • Weapon oils, 1h duration, cast time so no accidental use, persists through death, have to rely on the system to refresh it on the right weapon
  • Sharpening stone, cast time so no accidental use, persists through death, but you have to select a weapon to apply it on. Can’t be applied to all weapons, some need:
  • Weighted stones, same as sharpening stone but for the other set of melee weapons
  • So’Leah’s trinket lasts only 30m and requires you to apply to someone that doesn’t already have it, while also having to check the buff to see if you got the right thing. I don’t remember if this persist through death, I think it did?
  • Flayed wing toxin lasts 1h, does not persist through death
  • Did I forget anything?

It’s not only hard to keep track of everything, but also requires macros to be convenient to use. There’s an inconsistent buff duration, inconsistent persistence through death, inconsistent ways of tracking it, using it etc. I often find myself halfway through the raid realizing that I forgot to apply to apply weapon buffs, or that I didn’t click the feast properly, or stood up at 9.5s by accident. Doing 2 Mythic+ in a row usually means I have to waste 20~30 minutes of weapon buffs by re-applying early as they do not expand the duration. When doing 3x Mythic+ I can easily benefit of the extended duration of a flask, but I will always lose about 30 minutes of an armor kit, meaning the 2h buffs are no longer synced etc.

While I personally loathe this many buffs and consumables to keep track of, I would have like for them to at least be consistent in use, duration, etc.

Why do I never get an item for slot X?

For me it’s weapons and off-hands. On my Demon Hunter this season I did 65 Mythic+ runs before I finally got a weapon drop. Yes, 65 runs that can actually drop a 1h weapon. I went most of 9.0 Season 1 on my shaman without getting a shield/off-hand combination. It took me like 6 weeks before I finally got a weapon in my vault on my warrior in 9.1, which is the first weapon I saw since the first week of hitting 60.

Currently playing Survival hunter, it’s been like 4 weeks now and I’m running around with a 249 R1 conquest weapon doing +22 keys, because for some reason I’m not allowed to get a weapon drop. Granted I’ve not been doing raid on this character (0 weapon drops in raid on my dh anyway).

Similar story with tier pieces. I was doing every single LFR and Normal kill I could, and it still took me till week 2 of the creation catalyst to get a 4pc as I simply wasn’t getting the drops.

I’m hoping for this to be less of an issue with Season 4, and possibly with crafting in 10.0, though it’s really frustrating that this is happening, and I’m not the only one who has this issue.

Why is the upgrade cost for Valor flat?

2h weapons: I have to pay 1k Valor for R1 → R2, and I have to pay 1k Valor for R11 → R12. This makes no sense to me and I much rather see that the price increases the higher the rank. This means that if I get a weapon drop in a +8 helping a guildy, doesn’t mean I finally got a weapon and then can’t upgrade it because it takes 7k valor to get to R12, while if it dropped at a +15 it would’ve been 2k.

Why is Mythic+ gear still locked to 272 instead of 278?

The only way to get 278 gear from Mythic+ is the vault, meaning you better fill up that vault and pray to RNGesus. There’s literally no reason that you shouldn’t be able to upgrade Mythic+ gear to 278. This would go well removing the flat cost of Valor upgrades, meaning that 272->278 can be costly, but at least you can work towards it.

Why is it that we can’t use friendly nameplates in dungeons/raids for addons?

Yes, I heard about the “abuse” and I disagree that it is an issue. In fact, it’s major accessibility issue that it’s not possible. Any player targeted mechanics now rely on chat bubbles, meaning you cannot control which chat bubbles you can or cannot see, and you rely on other players to have a boss mods installed. This also means that I constantly get “blabla interrupted [spell name]” in my screen while I already have an interrupt tracker. I want to turn off bubbles in dungeons, but I cannot because I rely on positional/targeted mechanics to turn this off.

You allow the nameplates in PvP, so why not PvE?

Why do we not have fine-grain control over nameplate positioning?

I can either pick: no stacking, which means I can’t select anything because everything overlaps, or I can pick stacking nameplates, which stacks everything on top of my screen on 1 spot because there’s no space. Not sure if this is primarily a melee problem, but even with addons that increase the zoom this is an issue, especially with bigger pulls, having 3 extra nameplates for relics, and made worse by weeks with explosives.

Why are mobs/mechanics with 1 shot frontals often tiny, indistinguishable and hard to see what direction they are facing?

A few examples:

  • first boss in Spires of Ascension, the wriggly snake… I can never tell what direction it’s facing until it starts shooting. When the other boss or any of the relics is standing on top of it, you can’t even see the boss, meaning you have to guess which direction it’s randomly going to 1shot people
  • stacked forsworn mobs in Spires of Ascension just end up being a massive “flickering” mess of flying wings that I can’t make heads or tails of. With everything being stacked upon the tank it’s also really hard to see where the tank is standing and thus to avoid frontals
  • The frontals in Halls… These I can barely even see when they are alone. The mobs are relatively small, so any stacking is obviously PITA, but even then the animation makes it really hard to see the direction this mob is facing, and the animation itself doesn’t stand out either.
  • The spears in Spires of Ascension on the last 3 adds… When I look at them, I basically see a static image teleporting. I can’t ever properly predict where they are going as it’s not a fluent animation. Considering this is a 1 shot mechanic on higher keys, this should be way more visible and easier to predict. I know you should be able to tell by the spear direction that you can see it, but after hundreds of runs, I still can’t. I just can’t see it.
  • Puddles and contrast… Anduin got fixed, Denathrius got fix, I haven’t done skolex recently but I don’t recall it getting fixed… Basically these mechanics are not a 1shot, but you’re not supposed to hit them, so please make them stand out more for people like me, who don’t see them if they don’t have a distinguished color.
  • Blue swirlies over holes in the Jailer fight… The blue is almost the same as the highlighted parts of the center platform. It’s nearly impossible for me to see those holes when relying on peripheral vision.

I’m fairly annoyed that sanguine puddles are still incredibly hard to see in the maze in Mists of Tirna Scithe. Especially in packs of mobs, spawning locations of storming is nearly impossible to see as well. Shadowlands has the tendency to use light colors in light environments (Tazavesh/Sepulcher), blue colors in blue environments (AW dungeons), red colors in red environments (RD), green on green, etc. Back in 9.0 I already contacted the accessibility email with a load of these issues, and I have yet to see even a single point fixed. We’re nearing the end of the expansion and after killing Devos we still get the flickering terrain near the end if you look away from the platform…

I heavily rely on shapes and colors. I don’t have terrible eye-sight, but my brain simply doesn’t process the information properly in the speed/pace Mythic+ or raid is going with the information overload we have to deal with. This means that I’m practically blind to any of these mechanics that do not have enough visual distinction.

Why do we constantly have walls and objects blocking our camera?

Again, going to go back to Spires of Ascension, where the first boss isn’t the real challenge, but the trees around it are. Devos is probably one of the easier bosses, but the wings constantly flapping in your face is probably one of the hardest challenges. Sanguine Depths constantly has walls clipping your camera to 1st person, especially in the corridor before the gauntlet.

Why do we have such inconsistent respawn points in dungeons?

I’ve done a lot of Mythic+, and I still get confused on spawn points. Either consistently let us spawn at the previous boss, or the start with or without shortcuts, but please please please be consistent about it. Some bosses change it, some covenant mechanics change it, some bosses create a shortcut, some don’t, some mechanics in dungeons create a shortcut. You have to remember every single one of them, which is really annoying. It adds another unnecessary barrier of difficulty to new players, people with memory issues, people who don’t run the dungeons enough to know every single spawn point change, and it just ruins keys for no good reason.

Why is socketing gear so annoying?

Just let me drag a gem on the item and socket it. I can never remember the shortcut to open the socket window. When I do socket an item, I then wonder why my enchant doesn’t work, only to remember that I have to close the socket window first.

Why do we need addons to see diminishing returns on stats?

I think this question answers it all. If I hit the first diminishing return on versatility or haste, I still see +100 haste, but in fact gives me less due to the diminishing return.

Why are there so many hidden details in spells?

  • Some spells have a different Global Cooldown
  • Some spells don’t trigger the Global Cooldown
  • Some classes have a locked Global Cooldown meaning haste works different, but you don’t know this unless you hear this from other players or read detailed guides
  • Some spell cooldowns are affected by Haste, while others aren’t

Why do I often get disconnected from the game when

  • Landing
  • Entering a Vehicle

I’ve reported this issue a dozen times, and I’m 100% sure I’m not the only one. Sure I get that this is probably a hard issue to fix, but it hasn’t even been acknowledged. Entering vehicles in epic battlegrounds has a decent risk of just getting an instant DC. I get several DCs a week just from my character landing on the ground. Switching seats in the siege tank in Isle of Conquest, mainly from driver to or from cannon seat is an almost guaranteed disconnect. This is also not an addon issue as it happens without any addons.

Why is Fel Rush still giving an inconsistent range?

Sometimes I don’t move at all, sometimes I move 2x the original distance. Sometimes it completely removes all forward momentum mid-air and you start falling in a straight line… Probably also a hard bug to fix, otherwise it would’ve been already, but again we get not even a confirmation that this is something being looked into. I believe Monk rolls have a similar issue.

Why does the Jailer Mind Control soak shield not have a soak animation?

I’m sure there are a few other mechanics that have this issue as well. The game usually has a very recognizable “soak me” animation, except for this one, so naturally your instinct is to move away from it. This is just annoying and causes you more wipes than necessary.


Might have more to add later.

9 Likes

I definitely agree with you about confusing visuals in raids and dungeons and have been meaning to write a post about that myself. BTW, you can use the corgi goggles to get rid of the wings on the top platform of Spires, but it’s silly that we should need to do so in order to get a clear view of the arena. And there is no such fix for the trees on the first Spires boss.

Another one that is hugely problematic for me is the Death Speaker’s frontal in DOS. It’s a sort of purple confetti graphic, and with everything else going on in melee I can not reliably tell which direction it’s facing. Some of my guildies are better at figuring it out and will call it for me, which helps. But I’m reluctant to pug this dungeon because of that one stupid frontal that I can’t make out visually (and which tends to be a one-shot). I love challenging content, but the challenge shouldn’t be “I can’t make out this confusing visual.”

Sepulcher has lots of swirlies that are nearly the same color as the floor. When world first raiders are using Inky Black Potions to be able to clearly see boss mechanics, you know there’s a problem.

4 Likes

Another minor annoyance

Why do I get to see items in someone else’s client language?

If a player with a German client links an item, I get the German text in my chat box, while the tooltip will be in English. This is even more annoying with a Cyrillic client. Why can’t it just be shown in my client language?

7 Likes

The inconsistency of and presence of personal loot with legacy raid/dungeon trash mobs.
In some legacy raids/dungeons every trash mob is lootable, in others 90% of the mobs drop absolutely nothing, not even a couple copper.

It makes trying to acquire certain Bind on Pickup items an absolute nightmare in terms of just how grossly inefficient they are to work towards.
Killing 100 mobs should give me 100 chances at their loot tables, not 5.

5 Likes

My personally biggest minor-annoyance in retail is that the cursor doesn’t disappear any more when clicking either left or right click, only when you click and slightly move it.

I think that’s been happening ever since Shadowlands came out, but it isn’t exactly something major that deserves its own post. The old behaviour still works fine in the Classic clients, where it instantly disappears upon clicking left or right click.

The new behaviour just doesn’t feel right, where you’re not “holding down the camera” anymore.

2 Likes

Why is there a massive delay on interacting with UI elements for the Zereth Mortis puzzles?

I don’t know why, but sometimes there’s a massive delay trying to click on something, especially the one below if you just had a faulty or correct combination and it deselects.

Why can Zereth Mortis puzzles soft-lock?

I’ve tried every combination in this puzzle and it wouldn’t let me continue. If anything it should reset automatically.

2 Likes