no its not. lol
#20Characters:))))
13 Likes
Firstly no, there were only 6 tiers of pvp talents and the medallion was included in it, so yes you went from 4 class specific traits to 3 where you can choose any and use it in the overworld. I still consider that a net gain.
The main reason BfA class balance was off at the start was literally because of the legion systems. Being of their power overwhelming design they were balanced around rather than balanced themselves and when ripped out of the classes for BfA blizzard ended up having to rework nearly all of them despite the intention of the initial Legion reworks to create less of a need of constant expansion to expansion changes. Any problems BfA class design and balance faced were caused by unchecked Legion systems, therefore Azerite Gear had to be both soft and hard capped and have its impact on the class lessened.
I mean it is a 1:1 for Azerite and Artifact Power if you only mention the number display changes and not my other points. There is no question that acquisition on both alts and multiple specs is far more forgiving.
As for constant power ups from the artifact weapon, for one there was no real choice besides what you want now and what later, and it generally ended with rushing the biggest increase gold trait. Also as I said consistent more power with 2 patches worth of traits from the get go was an atrocious design. Yes I understand that getting one more trait tickles one’s brain in the right spots, but it is far more important to not push these people into more and more grinding while those who didn’t are at a huge disadvantage regardless of content, those few extra traits were not a minor upgrade. And yes, one can’t help but compare azerite gear to all the legion power that is now gone, but the system should really be judged on its own merits(without opening the can of worms that is people complaining about having to reunlock stronger versions of traits on better gear, who’d have guessed that something stronger takes more azerite)
Now on those kind of PvP WQs I agree and frankly why they didn’t make it so that in Warmode every player kill counts towards the WQ completion, one player is 3 boar kills for an example.
As for PvP rewards from WQs, unless it is a pure PvP only one it shouldn’t give PvP rewards, and Blizzard will always include a PvE alternate objective for these so that the content is available to both playerbases.
You still passively get AP from all sources, be it bosses, wqs, emissaries, dungeons, m+, missions, battlegrounds, arenas. The system didn’t change, and I do not get how the Legion one felt better when this one gives you overall more due to the way AK works AND you only have to put it in one single artifact, your neck. As for IEs, as I said they are only the best bang for your buck beyond the weekly if you cleared every WQ that gives azerite, people really aren’t azerite starved. That being said the only upping of Azerite earned was the emissary, nothing else.
If IEs are all the same then so is every dungeons, most species have different abilities to keep in mind, with rares and elites bringing even more variation. Islands also have specific layouts and special spawn locations you have to keep in mind while also looking for the rotten chest. Games can have varying starts based on spawn positions because it is important to kill any rares near the alliance spawn before they can engage it. The biggest sameness problem IE really has is the Unbound Azerite event which is getting multiple alternate events in 8.1(I hope, ptr hasn’t seen any of the new IE stuff but they promised the overhaul would be dropping on it soon). IE is only samey and boring if you go in to pull anything and kill it, which is what the majority are doing. Still I’d say using 3 man scenarios with randomised spawns is still a great idea to replace the spam that shortest m+ over and over. As for when that was a thing, well when people were pushing for their second golden trait before EN even dropped, as well as to push even further for ToV. The power advantage it gave you over all forms of content was silly.
You seem to misunderstand how the new Azerite Emissary rewards work. If before you got a 400 base, and now you get an. 1000 base and on extra azerite reward days you get 1400 and before you got 1000, how could the base have increased by 600? Answer is, it didn’t the base has remained 400(initiall announcement had it increased to 600 but that never happened) the bonus went up to 1000 from 600, giving 1400 on those weeks. Again the less lucrative gold and azerite Emissaries were boosted to make them more desirable and lower the disappointment when not getting a 370 azerite piece.
Conquest is not a pseudo choice, because there is only 2 sets of shoulders, chest and helm that come from PvP, the other PvP ones come from 7th Legion and Honourbound rewards, Warfront rewards and a drop from the Arathi Boss, ergo even if they did add that PvP system for the Conquest and chest reward, you’d have 2 pieces for each slot. You’d also still need 1600 rating to purchase a RANDOM heroic piece(specific pieces are mythic only)
That being said with current conquest can next season please start with the actual most important items, ie weapons and azerite instead of taking two multiple week breaks between every azerite piece, they did promise to make it reflect the optimal buy order…
BfA didn’t messed up anything compared to Legion, it just continued Legions idiotic designs in slightly different forms, starting from first big patch in Cata WoW has slowly bled out, I won’t make a 10 forum page long list of what bad directions were taken in terms of game design from expansion to expansion, large patch to large patch, the extremely shortened summarization is this with some main aspects:
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players can’t create their own character, too many thing has become predetermied in terms of character development and there are no actual choices to make to differentiate between 2 same spec characters, not even talent combinations help, because they’re fked up, you can only chose between 1 ‘ok’ or ‘fkin crazy’ talent and 2 ‘rock bottom’ type talents.
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gear development and effort became nonexistent and insignificant, while options to get ‘free loot’ has been dramatically increased, there is a difference between reasonable grinding for ‘high end’ stuff and mindless grinding for ‘meh’ things, there are barely any reasonable grinding in the game now, but it is full of mindless forced grinding for practically nothing.
There’s no possibility for ‘finishing’ the gear progression for a character at all and gear availability for almost top tier is extremely easy, while a realy small jump to top tier gear requires no effort, but a single aspect, that is extreeme reflexes, that has nothing to do in an RPG game, at least not in this lvl -
in between characters (classes, specs, roles) there are too high power differences and the countering factor for certain class/spec vs other class/spec has taken an extremely wrong direction; if you play a certain class, then you might end up in a situation, where you’re not able to play ‘high end’ content at all, because you class/spec is practically useless compared to others, it is a serious problem in both PvP and PvE situations, but extremely bad for the PvP, because while PvE high end people will just reroll, becase they mostly look at WoW like a job and low end - medium content can be done with any setup, the differences between classes are extremely relevant in any lvl of PvP… ‘op’ classes can faceroll over weaker ones any time and the player’s skill lvl mostly doesn’t even matter, there can be made a little difference sometimes with extreme effort, like an ultra casual, who doesn’t even know half of his spells can be outplayed by a 2,7k arena master, but the countering factor between certain classes/specs are so high, that a difference just can’t be made in any other situation, where players skill lvl is any closer
There were realy people, that thought Legion was a good expansion? Holy sh*t, that explains, why Acti-Blizz went into this development direction…
5 Likes
I just looked it up and you’re right on the talents part, but we still disagree on 5 down to 3 but without tier restriction being a net gain.
I don’t agree with the legion system being the direct cause of BFA’s terrible starter class design. Blizzard decided to do nothing with BETA feedback which heavily implied that infact, removing the artifact weapons and traits broke balance rather then improved it as Blizzard time and time again implied and suggested. BFA class balance was a hot topic during beta but nothing was done with this, Blizzard has even admitted to this themselves.
To be fair that’s the only thing I saw Azerite and Artifact power as, just a numbers bar to fill. It is more alt friendly, I will admit to that, even more spec friendly because thank god even Blizz saw that as a problem (then in the same breath made azerite traits 1 spec specific trait per whole piece of gear without any respec option while only 1 ability was spec specific but eh sorry this is me ranting) but all in all I would still be happier if this system didn’t exist. I stand corrected on it being 1:1, there was a slight improvement.
As for the artifact weapon traits, disclaimer, I’m a fan of the level squish, in my opinion if you’re trying to level an alt at this point you have to wait way to long before you get a tangible touchable upgrade. With that in mind, having 1 new thing to spend per 1 new level gained just felt right and proper and in all honesty it was a lot more then 1 or 2 extra traits, I however don’t understand wether or not the ‘tickles one’s brain in the right spot’ is meant as dismissive or complimentary, I’d like to think complementary because brain tickling is good.
I knew it wasn’t a choice and I admit I may have worded it poorly, reading back it’s as if I say that all options of choice of 1 expansion being replaced with 1 option of choice in the next while falsely stating artifact weapon traits as a choice, another disclaimer; my actual outlook is grimmer then that. What I meant was that Azerite Traits replaced the Artifact Relics and legendaries which were limited to a max of 2 equipped, while also replacing the expanding role of existing abilities that the artifact weapon traits had. This means that I believe that, intentional or not, Azerite Traits are a player option that is basically left to fill the spots of multiple functions which are not only choice but also expansion of abilities, not inherently because people automatically compare it (because I think that’s also a sympton of the following) but because nothing was placed to replace the other functions that were lost. If (smaller less impactful) revivals of those functions were placed in the comparison wouldnt’have happened. Would that have been desirable? I don’t know, the comparison of Azerite traits to other functions it could never live up too didn’t do a lot of good either. It cannot be judged on it’s own merits without pure obectivity and asking that from an entire audiance is not doable.
As for the wq pvp rewards, let’s hope they do that and I agree here being pvp rewards only from purely pvp wquests makes a lot of sense and it’d probably be better to still have some non pure wpvp quests around, the question is will you replace the availability of some non pure wpvp quests with pure wpvp quests or do you just add the pure ones on top of the nonpure ones and create more generic wq’s for non-warmode to even things out?
And it’s true, we still get AP passively from all sources, or atleast sources that are meta enough to feel as if it is from multiple sources (emissery’s) but Island Expeditions was still sold as the best way to farm AP, you have to farm AP to unlock your abilities, IE are 3-man scenario’s, with those three factors in mind, IE’s were mandatory to some point or felt like that to a lot of people and the problem with that is that it’s a 3 man scenario. 3-man in pvp works nicely, good balance, not too many targets, not too few, enough viable comps to find to feign balance, just right. IE’s really feel like a farmfest and it’s definately not my thing. Granted, this issue has been resolved for me in new emmisery’s however now that I’m exalted with everything my azerite power income has dropped to 2000 per warfront again, I took 3 weeks over my last neck ding and it was just 6000 AP. All in all IE just isn’t my thing, I wanted to leave 5 minutes in my first one and the feeling persisted for the whole expedition, havn’t tried my second one. Having the designated AP farm behind it just feels terrible as a result to me
You are correct, the M+ dungeon system is nothing more then a different expression of the randomly generated islands which is the following;
IE:
Technically unlimited cosmetic variables
Limited difficulty modes
M+
Technically unlimited difficulty modes
Limited cosmetic variables
It would also explain to me why I’m tending to go after those less, but for now I’d say because I’ve had a bad luck streak in getting gear from m+ because atleast I’m still doing dungeons. However, I would say that technically unlimited difficulty modes beats technically unlimited cosmetic variables for the sake of replayability
8.1 IE’s are going to be interesting, I’ll gladly try my 2nd after it’s out, but wether or not I’ll be happy doing a 3rd I honestly can’t dare to guess at this point, as you say it can be seen as an improvement from it having moved to M+ to IE (but because I don’t do IE’s and do M+ every now and then) I’d say for me it’d be better from M+. However as I’ve said before if the system was removed in it’s entirety (azerite power/artifacy power) I’d be all good. Keep IE if you want, I’m not the ‘delete it because I don’t like it’, but content that’s sold as core functionality in a game mode I’ve always seen either as something experimental or something to tell the story in sold with difficulty mechanics like Dungeons? Eh…
In that case I did misconceive it, I hit exalted before the change so I have to be honest I havn’t done wq’s since exalted, I probably did misread it and because I never experienced it I never did it again. If that’s how it works then yeah I was wrong and basically IE is still the to go way for azerite and I still have a bone to pick in that case
It is a psuedo choice, there are only two shoulders and after that only two chests and after that only two x and after that only two y
The thing is I don’t need shoulders, chest, x or y, I need something completely different and I don’t like the idea of having to fill the conquest bar for multiple times until I can get it, that I have to get 4 ‘rewards’ which aren’t rewards but annoyances at not being able to just pick the gear I need and want as I’ve always been able too until this expansion. I don’t care about needing rating to get higher ilvl gear either, that’s the way it should be, as for warfront gear, don’t get me started on that, the fact that that PvE system drops PvP traited gear is beyond me, it could have been great had they just copy pasted Island Expedition’s difficulty modes onto warmode or basically but it doesn’t even feature a pvp mode.
If we bring warfronts into this basically the discussion will go completely awry with me here because while I love it, I feel like it could have been so so so much more
As for the optimal buy order, that’s ruined as soon as you get a 370 warfront item, you can’t have this way of gearing for one type of content and expect it to be balanced, people will find other sources of gear which they might deem rightfully or wrongfully as quicker or simply as more enjoyable or maybe they simply don’t do just pvp so they just have other gear from other sources and that’s where the conquest gearing order falls apart
Maybe give me a token for every conquest complete without rating that I can at the very least spend on a 355 pvp slot
Nice argueing you tho, don’t often see a clash of opinions without doodiepoo (language filter) being thrown at either direction
2 Likes
The story of the Legion xpac was better told than BoA. WoD’s story was even better than Legion. This is my opnion. I have loremaster of both.
I feel no need to kill anything in BoA. I feel like i am being torn in every direction in BoA with no clear path as far as what to do and what i need to do next to advance the story. Part of this problem i have found out is that the quests to advance are now rep gated. This is a cheap way to prduce monthly subs and nothing else whcih really pisses me off. I Thought i was done with Kul Tiras. Heck no. There is 7th to grind now so i can advance in order to unlock quests.
BoA is just not fun for me. I like doing dungeons even if i dont need the gear. I like to heal. Guess what? 20 min or more wait to do a dungeon. In past xpacs this was unheard of.
1 Like
Yea I agree, BfA is actually a good expansion, maybe even the best ever, we just have to ignore:
the absolute horrible and boring class design
the garbage PvP system with all the scaling and randomized gear
all of the rng elements this game has now
any scaling @ max level
titanforging
and some other things I can’t think of right now but are also really bad for the game.
but yea if you ignore these BfA is really good.
8 Likes
I agree but is still below Legion in terms of fun, there are no skins to collect, no demons to battle, warfronts are just boring, -should be PVP-but all in all is good fun yes, will get a lot better once 8.2 hits.
I realy can’t understand why are people so damn shortsighted… and want to compare a sh*t product with an even worse one.
There were good expansions, yes but you have to look much much more further down the list, before Acti-Bizz were not in their work.
Ion Hazzikostas, is that you?
2 Likes
It could be a solid expansion, but it has some major flaws: class design sucks major league, titanforging is horrible, azerite + neck is a horrible system with moving goalposts - these as a top 3, and on top of them, a few things of lesser impact that I find totally annoying. Oh yea, and scaling… scaling everywhere, so dull.
6 Likes
That’s not how forums work, it’s not necessarily about having your say, it’s about being Right.
And clearly you don’t meet the requirements to be Right.
I’ve been playing this game consistently for 10 years and this is by far the worst expansion.
Solid, as in pretty hard… to get through.
The (worst) best expansion EVER
I agree with you sir. This actually feels like a legion 2.0 =), which was fine ofc! But BfA still lacks something for outdoor content… like Suramar, it was great! It was a new interesting and beautiful zone with secrets and gating which was fine during that point. They could also re open Tol Barad; kul tiras taking back?, i think that would be great for pvpers!.
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Hows this a bad expansion when you had WoD ;’)
There are good things.
The story is great, and you are encouraged to play both horde and alliance to see it all.
The zones are wonderful.
The dungeons are really interesting - eg SotS, literally every pull is dangerous, you are always learning new things every time you go in there. I was worried when I heard they increased the trash, but the trash is great (assuming m+ appropriate to your ilevel and experience).
The worst is Wednesday morning when everyone opens their cache of disappointment.
Also, I have got exalted with everyone on Horde side - there is hardly any reason to go outside anymore. This has definitely contributed to a sense of boredom and pointlessness.
Other than that, I have enjoyed it so far. I’m very ready for 8.1 and some new content!
It’s better than some and worse than other.
I’m looking forward to 8.1 as it seems like it will iron out a lot of BfA rough edges (like the lack of deterministic reward systems). My game time will run out during the next week and I’ll prolly take a little break until 8.1 releases. Just can’t be bothered to be overly dramatic about that.
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I had more fun in WoD.
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Says the unenchanted non raiding non essential 345 ilvl players with max 1 day played at max level. you should shut your damn mouth and stop being a part of the cancer that is whiteknights… the fact is you have NO experience in the current endgame which wow once had tons of. Just to be clear trying to be cute about their diablo shtfest is also your fault by extension of being a pleb with less than 1 day played, claiming to “fix” the game.
Also if you think oh another toxic tryhard posting when reading this, all I say to you is, you’re an idiot.