So, after almost a year of Dragonflight, here’s where I stand: Dragonflgiht is a 7/10 expansion.
The good:
Many removed abilities have been brought back thanks to the new talent tree, which increased the depth, utility and versatility of most specializations, as well as giving more room for customization in your build.
PvP gearing has never been better.
All the chores from the past 3 expansions have been removed: players can decide to 100% focus on their favourite game mode.
Lots of new cosmetics, which is neat for us, fashion enjoyers.
The bad:
Mediocre writing, lore, themes and atmosphere - which is sadly nothing new
The new race looks incredibly lame, and the new class being race specific means you can’t play Evoker unless you pick that ugly lizard
Brackenhide Hollow is one of the worst dungeons I’ve ever seen - so much so that I haven’t actually done it in regular Mythic difficulty yet. If I stumble upon it while queuing for normal dungeons on a low level alt, I instantly quit and I take the deserter debuff instead.
For me it has been gradually deteriorating from a 8/10 and now we’re down to a 6/10. If I had no connection to this game I would at this point have skipped it. The primary problems come down to class design which is alienating people from PvP (though for whatever reason not you, but the numbers don’t lie) combined with extremely bad art direction with the notable exception of the Azure Span, which I absolutely adore.
I think we can pick up too many spells at once and I think the way resources are built and spent are not in line with how World of Warcraft plays at its best. I love the talent system, but the talents are too cheap and too numerous, and in many cases too powerful, with some talents increasing damage by a triple digit number (which of course means the baseline is useless). In general, the amount of stuff you get from the modern talents is around 2-3x what you would get from the tBC talents despite the fact that the number of talent points is the same.
Overall the game has a tendency to be stressful, both mentally and physically - and it can sustain this stress in M+ due to the sheer length of encounters.
I do agree that many of the abilities have been returned are good abilities and the game is better off for having them, but simultaneously I also think there are many abilities and passives that I just don’t want to see.
Mages (as frost) should not have Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath, both invis and greater invis at the same time, Ice Nova, Mass Barrier, Shifting Power, Flurry, Glacial Spike (combo point spells belong to rogues and monks, Displacement, not mages), Lonely Winter, Diverted Energy, and many, many more.
Build diversity is often hurt and destroyed - for example the new frost mage set bonus literally forces you to spec for Glacial Spike, killing the frostbolt builds and the ice lance builds, because playing them literally just removes your set bonus. Maybe it’ll turn out to be best regardless (though I doubt it) but that’s boring, too.
Yeah it works. A little boring, but it works.
This is indeed nice.
Eh. I like the class sets though.
It’s really bad. Allegedly there’s some struggle within Blizzard with a bunch of people who want to make more of this and less of what Metzen likes. I hope Metzen wins. He is infinitely more talented. This all looks grey, soft, boring. The whole epic feel is just gone.
Agreed.
I don’t mind it, and fortunately you never have to go there anymore.
I can agree with that. For example, the Monk tree has a 2 points talent that increases the damage of Rising Sun Kick by 35% per point invested.
The only class that truly feels “bloated” to me is Shaman. The tree offers you to pick a “poison cleansing totem” of all things…I do like niche utility, but this is ridiculous.
I think it’s a problem with an easy fix to please everyone.
Create more choice nods, with options for either an active spell (a new button on your bar) or a passive mechanic (less management/“stress”).
Dedicated players can enjoy the new spell, whereas more casual players can pick the passive option.
Both are useful in PvP, so I disagree. There is a purpose to these abilities.
This I can agree with. They do overlap a lot, it’s a bit ridiculous.
Yes, set bonuses being built around talents is an odd choice. I don’t understand their reasoning here.
Although I’m used to this as Mistweaver - in Shadowlands and DF S1, my set bonus was tied to Essence Font - a PvE spell I don’t even have on my bars.
Too many “peacemongers”: Thrall, Jaina, Anduin, and now Ebyssian…
If they were going to use Sylvanas 24/7, then we should have had a proper conclusion to the Genn vs. Sylvanas storyline.
Honestly, after all the genocides and war crimes, I do want more faction conflict. It’s unrealistic how Jaina forgave the Horde once again mid-BFA.
Choice nodes isn’t gonna fix anything. I’ll end up with the same number of active abilities and passives.
They have to increase the costs of talents.
They are useful and serve a purpose, but they do not enhance the feel of playing the class. They’re just filler.
Well, we did. He got to watch as she was cast into the deepest recesses of hell. I’m sure he’s satisfied.
But I’m not. The emotional weight of this wasn’t really that obvious because we’d been there and it didn’t have the horror impact it had to have to be one of the darkest places in the Warcraft universe, and therefore it didn’t fill like sufficient punishment. It’s all a result of the “NOONE ESCAPES THE MAW” meme.
This is all because the writing and art direction is catastrophic.
I think it is a reasonable rating since I’m still on and off, whereas in Shadowlands I just left completely. that one was boring as hell or was that bfa… maybe both.
Except people would be able to pick an “all passive” build if they wanted to.
I disagree. I stopped playing my Fire Mage in Legion when they removed all the Frost spells. It just wasn’t fun anymore - those spells served a purpose and felt good to use because they achieved something and helped me progress in my fight.
Without them, I found I had much fewer options, and fewer ways to have a meaningful impact on the outcome of a fight.
Yaaaye…That’s satisfying, he watched.
He had no involvement in this. He should have been an active part of his vengeance - him, and the people of Gilneas.
There are too many passives, too. It’s filling up the buff and debuff frames and making the game hard to read. It’s not just the amount of buttons that’s the problem here. The classes just have too much filler and BS going on.
I didn’t argue for removing all fire spells from frost - but I just don’t think frost should have a knockback nor do I think we should have so many blinks. I did not argue for removing Fireblast, for example. In fact I’d like that spell buffed.
Ehhh… okay? Which ones exactly? The fire spells were pretty plain back then.
I agree the writing and presentation is bad. But he still did get to see her being dropped into the deepest pits of hell forever.
They look gray and washed out, they are often cramped - elements of the zone don’t have the space they need to breathe to become interesting. Caverns are not dark, the dream is not colourful. Things just generally tend to not look right or look interesting, and they more often than not look nothing like the lore would tell you they should.
I agree about the dream looking rather bland, but I don’t see any issues with the Waking Shores and Thaldrazsus. As in, classic WoW style to me, but it’s ofc a subjective opinion and I appreciate your efforts in trying to explain it to me.
I do agree the caverns could have a little more dark to them, but at the same time it has glowing crystals, habitants snd lots of burning lava!
I am glad the evoker visuals are deterring people who want to play elves. These are not elves, they are dragonborn for WoW
Also really happy with this raid tier and alt catch up. If anything it is now too easy to gear solo because it’s faster than doing low m+… But that’s subjective.
Do not like the Cavern. Not for aesthetic reasons, just there’s nothing to do there solo and that is the point of the open world.
Also do not like the state of healing in m+ or some of the new affixes. Bad design choices here really turned me off.
Crafting on fresh characters is also dead, no point bothering.
This is a problem for me. I cannot seem to catch up and man is it costly to buy mats if your character is new and does not have the gold. I was hoping there would a better catch up mechanic that what is in game right now. Those dragon eggs should be raining in game for new fresh alts.
