BFA vs. SL

Community General Discussion
30

For me BFA is the expansion I could not stand to play and here are my reasons

I only like 2 zones
Obnoxious cities
The dungeons looked and felt terrible to run
Azerite armor, and that you needed azerite level to get the perks
Spells for the necklace, took way to long and felt terrible to get, you had to do things you did not enjoy
On my warr I tried to farm the wep in kings rest that never dropped which was a 10% damage increase in PvP
It removed all the fun/good spells I got in legion, and some specs felt terrible to play without them
Warfronts where terrible
Island expedition was boring, I would rather get scenarios from mop back (was kinda the same but different)
Corruptions where terrible, but at least they got rid of titan/warforging

The only positive things from BFA from my point of view is raids and worldquest. Callings are better than the BFA chests though

31

Bfa was better because it had more content.

Some content was awful, some system such as azerite gear awful as well but it had plenty of things to do to keep people occupied. People complained they had to grind too many things but noone forced them to.

Shadowlands is an empty game in which they designed the raid a little bit harder and made the loot very scarce to force people to stay subbed. Otherwise people would have finished the “content” in little time

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32

That’s exactly not the same as BfA. It sounds right that if you want to pve you do pve, and if you want to pvp you do pvp. In BfA if you wanted to pvp, you did m+ and raids for gear, AND it was RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG. Never again.

33

BFA was better in every points for a PVE player

Lot of ppl did not like BFA because of the cloak grind ( that was so baaaaadd yes ) , Corruption vendor weekly reset , Azerite RNG when you had to buy 1 piece , Azerite grind .

And pvp players did not like corruption rng , and had to do dailes , but the corruption was so fun in PVE when you had every corruption you wanted , you felt so good and strong

Shadowlands is design for PVP players only , best gear in the game , no dailies to do , can do the maw while queuing for arena

34

pretty much this, pvp player kind of have an easier time to gear up than pve player, even still whit the valor points, it is harder to gear up through pve than pvp.

35

M+ in both expansions is bad, because M+ is simply bad.

Both expansions focused too much on having tiny zones. In the Ion interview we finally could figure out why - Blizz wants to cut down on travel time, so they shove everything together. This is a developer problem, not a player one. The Barrens is still an iconic zone simply because it was huge. Huge zones need to be brought back. Just look at RDR2’s success.

SL feels like less pressure to play, and while borrowed power is in full force, the power itself is tied to much less RNG. You don’t have to worry about looting your bis talent trees like you had to in BFA. Unlike BFA, you can’t just pay gold to change your talents any time you want, which is bad.

Overall, SL is much more engaging than BFA. I unsubbed 2 months after BFA came out and subbed back in for 8.2. The expansion has great content - Zul’dazar is great, Kul Tiras is great, the dungeons are great but the expansion itself felt bland once you were done with these… and to me, SL doesn’t feel bland. It has issues, but it is at the very least engaging to me.

36

On my case BFA was what made me quit purchasing SL entirely.

The story was for me a massive turnover, to the point I wasn’t even playing the expansion entirely.
I was sick of Sylvanas to the bone and when SL comes with another Sylvanas cinematic, that was the end for me.

Been chilling in BFA with Magni and Wrathion quests and honestly it feels amazing, being finally able to dictate what I do in game.

BFA - Terrible expansion. Never had this feeling in any other expansion.
SL - “Foul me once shame on you, foul me twice, shame on me.”

Cheers.

3 Likes
37

I wonder when people are going to try gearing an new alt in PvP since they say it is so easy, it is incredibly slow. Yes you can pick which item, yes you can upgrade them to 226 if you achieve 2.4kcr, but the amount of honor required to upgrade and conquest farm is really slow.

The best way of gearing is in pve, if you are fully heroic geared then it will be easier to gear in PvP aslong as you grab the “free” 226 from m+ every week, if you don’t want to enter mythic raiding

If you are considering time spent to reward, pve is the best way of gearing if you struggle to achieve 1.8kcr

38

2.1K, not 2.4k. 2.4 only gives you access to 233 weapons.

True, too much honor needed, which isn’t that fun to farm anyway.

39

Addressing the topics you mentioned in your post

  • I prefer the classes in SL. It feels a lot better when the majority of your damage and healing are from your base toolkit with a little added from legendaries and covenant ability which is fine. Some azerite traits were interesting but as you piled essences and corruption by the end your character was secondary to the systems and I didn’t find that to be very enjoyable

  • Because of the above, M+ feels a bit better for me, however I heavily prefer the dungeon design in BFA, they were just more interesting personally.

  • Raid is very good and had a blast progressing it. Some bosses are a snooze fest but others are very interesting to heal (I’m going to completely ignore SLG for this comment since it doesn’t deserve to be thought about) BFA had good raids, but Wow generally always does a good job with the raids.

  • PVP is much better this expansion no doubt.

Mostly what I enjoy is doing competitive content and enjoying the gameplay of different specs, particularly healers and so far this expansion has been doing a good job at allowing me to play my main a few alts competitively, this might change in the future with more systems but for now it’s been good. The amount of work you had to do to have a good alt in BFA was insane and that restricted me to only really playing my main, a bit of an alt.

Other than that I preferred visions to torghast and world content was more enjoyable in BFA.

Overall SL has been a lot better than BFA so far, there’s a lot less restrictions for you to start up and get playing with a proper character, I just mostly miss the BFA dungeons for M+.

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40

I hate to say it, but bfa was better

I was one of the few who liked azerite armor so ofc i miss that + healing well added a more healing-style gameplay instead of ‘‘but muh deeps’’ as healer

+ Better dungeons
+ world quests werent a world questline so the rewards made sense
+ You could gear an alt in about 2 weeks sometimes even less time cuz gear drops werent more rare than a freaking unicorn

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41

I liked the idea of corruptions, essences and az armour but the form they came in was too much. Much of the time they were behind horrendous grinds until the game was on the “goodbye patch” which meant alting was an absolute no, and their impact on a class was too big as you said, which felt odd.

I liked the idea of choice-based armour customisation, and in the neck, and on my gear with corruption. That degree of choice was fabulous and really nice. The issues were a) lack of balance between the choices (some traits were hot crap on a stick) and b) with the choices that were balanced better, they were usually too impactful and made such a huge difference to your performance that you felt hard pressed to play anything above world-content without them.

I mean, not this priest, but my priest at the time. Healing mythic+ as a holy priest without 3 of the permeating light trait was basically a non-starter. Your flash heal was simply too weak without 3 of these traits stacked which meant that it was really not a choice at all, and you’ve feel bad if you got a higher az piece without this trait.
Same deal for Sub and The Last Dance, it wasn’t just a small buff to your play, it was a HUGE performance so much so that the spec’s fluency largely revolved around having this trait in place (as well as the Lucid Dreams energy regen) which is bonkers.

They should have been perks, small enhancements (like conduits are now) not this stuff which completely dominates how a spec plays.

Many classes felt amazing when you have “all the right bits” in place, but pretty poor without them. Other offenders: SPriests with Chorus of Insanity, MM Hunter with the huge trueshot crit buff as well as the haste buff from rapid fire. Havoc with their crazy haste buff on eye beam etc.

42

Shadowlands improved on so many things BFA did wrong, at least with my class.
Arcane mage got so butchered in BFA, and in SL it made it at least more playable…

BFA had a much better theme, and better story. (imo)

I think Shadowlands could’ve been amazing if the content draught didn’t happen… I didn’t really like Legion zones and theme (except Suramar) and other world content, but the patches were coming really frequent which made it enjoyable for me.

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44

Different people like different things, however this is quite a long first tier so people are bound to run out of things they want to do. I rarely struggle to find things I want to do in WoW but if you’re struggling then it might be time to wait until 9.1.

I didn’t like various systems in BfA including Azerite and constant AP grinding. I really didn’t enjoy the corruption system either but they are all in the past now.

We don’t have a date yet for 9.1 but the TBCC prepatch hits Classic realms on the 18th of this month if that tickles your fancy and TBCC will launch at the start of June (1st/2nd). Many are expecting 9.1 to hit in July.

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46

BFA was the peak of world of Diablo with slow and non engaging gameplay riddled with corruption and passives, I’d rather take systemlands than the steaming pile of crap that BFA was, the only thing that BFA got was the art as usual, everything else was garbage, BFA made me play D3 again. Welp, I’d rather play the real Diablo instead of the watered down clone that was BFA

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47

I just cannot relate to this post at all, you are ofcourse welcome to your opinion (as am I) but I just cannot fathom how someone could come to that conclusion. BfA is light years better than Shadowlands in pretty much every metric I can think off (at the same point - we cannot compare 8.3 to 9.0.5 - the first raid is better but that is the only thing I can think off) . However 7.0-.7.1 destroys both and some.

49

I can, pretty much all he said is spot on. If I actually wanted to play Diablo 3, I’d play Diablo 3.

50

I’ve got 1000s of hours in D3 (literally in the true sense of the word, not omg literally ) and I have never once thought oh, this reminds me of D3 when playing WoW (and I have over 500 days played in WoW as well)

But we are all different, you are a PvPer are you not? Pretty much everything you post I disagree with (not saying that is bad, just that we look at things via a different lens)

51

Good analogy.
BFA had a better world (terrain - landscapes, variety and navigation).
BFA had better music.

Storywise both are similar.
Both are poor on having to repeat the same content on alts, Threads of Fate could have been much better if they’d included covenant campaigns and Torghast whilst leveling.
Neither has particularly good end game engagment outwith raiding and M+, Warfronts, Islands and Torghast all have potential but are ruined by being forced for AP or Legendaries, require grouping in a toxic grouping environment or don’t offer much reward.

BFA had the benefit of the promise that a new expansion would probably fix things. Shadowlands does have this. I don’t have faith that a new expansion will be any better. Since MOP only Legion has come close to being reasonably good and that seems to have been a fluke.

52

I can’t take anyone that says that BfA was better than Shadowlands because it had “better” zones or that they were connected.

What is the metric being used here? Your personal taste? Your opinions?

Most classes were completely gutted and played terribly, only getting better in future patches. While Shadowlands doesn’t have the best Class Design, it’s safe to say that many classes did improved, with both unprunning and removal of certain GCD’s. Mentions to Shadow Priest, Holy Priest, Brewmaster Monk, Affliction Warlock etc.

Mythic + in BfA was not great in the perspective of a healer, a lot of the damage was random spikes of damage from mobs casting into random players and sometimes that would overlap and one shot someone, you couldn’t do anything about it. Too one much shot mechanics on high M+ (some being unavoidable like Freehold First boss) and not a lot of meaningful group healing, meaning that most of time time i was an off-dps with a scuffed 4 button (at best) rotation. Terrible Dungeon Mechanics awards goes to Tol’Dagor, Waycrest Manor, King’s Rest, Atal’dazar, Workshop.

PvP, i’m not a PvPer, but gearing wise Shadowlands is obviously better, but gameplay wise, i kinda preferred BfA, i give you that, i hate this burst, “fast paced” mongoloid meta.

Raiding is arguably better in Shadowlands, Castle Narthia is better than Uldir in many ways.

Analyze expansions over the quality of it’s content, not it’s quantity, BfA may had a lot of content, but it was of poor quality, nobody liked doing Warfronts, nobody liked grinding Islands, nobody liked that was 6 “giant” zones of World Quests to do and i can’t remember a single soul being excited about doing tours of World Quests on the “giant”, “immersive” and “connected” BfA zones, it’s so funny people say these things are amazing nowadays, there’s too much rose tint in these goggles.

Shadowlands World Content is a better version of BfA emissaries at 8.0 simply because it’s not mandatory, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want it, anima is a cosmetic currency, azerite was not.

Not even going to start mentioning how terrible playing alts was in BfA with all the mountains of chores you had to do, or as people in this forum are whitewashing it now as “fun content”.

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