BFA vs. SL

Community General Discussion
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.

1 Like
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

3 Likes
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”.

2 Likes
53

I’m not sure what you think you disagree upon, because at the end of the day what I’m saying is that I think an expansion which tries to force me at every step into content I don’t enjoy to progress in content I enjoy is trash. I don’t exactly see how that’s a controversial thing, but if you say so whatever, I’ll stick to my guns on that.

54

bfa dungeons felt much more fun imho. bosses at the least. they all had somewhat unique mechanic that u had to accomplish.
sl dungeon bosses feel just like huge mobs with hps check to go through.
and raid bosses feel more like i play world of weakauras, rather than world of warcraft

55

Genuine answer.

Now I’m never going to claim that SL is perfect or a GREAT expansion. I’m just stating that I have enjoyed it so far. also, of course the novelty is going to wear off over time. Do I enjoy it now as much as I enjoyed it over Xmas? No, but doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable.

First up the Dungeons and the difficulty of the dungeon. My favourite part of every new expansion is working my way through the Dungeons for the first few times. These dungeons were designed to be incredibly challenging from the start, and needing to think about how you are going to down each pack as you go through them. For a player looking for that challenge it was fantastic! Yes, I did play a Meta class. But the Dungeons have now been Nerfed alot, and will continue to be nerfed as time goes on.

I like that the expansion has been in depth enough to keep me occupied during the winter months, locked up during the pandemic. Its got so much depth, that I still haven’t explored every nook and cranny. But I’ve done alot!

The raid was fun! Although I only did it on normal (because what’s the point in running it over and over again) and Sire Denathrius is a fun and entertaining baddie to have.

56

You cant compare SL to BFA, you can compare the state of SL 9.0 to BFA 8.0.

Dungeons:
BFA definitely had better dungeons and lets be honest here, 8 dungeons in SL is kinda cheap. We went from 12 release dungeons in Legion, to 10 in BFA to only 8 in SL. - BFA wins.

Raid:
CN as a starting raid, is obviously lightyears better than Uldir. - SL wins.

World content:
World quests and daily caches had meaning in BFA, in SL they are pointless and Anima is an irrelevant currency. - BFA wins.

Zones and story:
This is pretty subjective, but BFA wins big here imo. This jailor and SL story seems like something pulled out of someones ‘behind’. Terrible stuff really and the zones and cast of characters are pretty dull and there is barely any real relation between them from zone to zone. BFA was far more coherent in this regard and there was a real conflict. Lets also not forget the abomination of a zone that is the MAW, awful stuff.- BFA wins.

Borrowed powers:
Covenant system and Legendaries vs 8.0 HoA and Azerite gear. Azerite gear didnt really become meaningful until the 3rd ring was added and titanresidue added in 8.1 (i believe the 3rd ring came in a hotfix before 8.1 though).- SL is comfortably better, although we have big issues with changing covenants and the fact that the conduit system is a joke. BFA borrowed powers didnt really become decent until the essences were introduced. - SL is currently better.

Silly PvE vs Comp content:
Torghast vs Islands and warfront. Well its all terrible content, just amazingly horrible. - I’d say its a tie.

PvP:
I have no clue really as ive never done any even remotely competitive PvP. so no comment here.

57

Shadowlands is an continuation of BFA. Names change but the system stays roughly the same.

58

SL is the same except without stupid fun corruption powers that gave me ability to shred through everything and sometimes i enjoyed stacking corruption to the point that i knew it would kill me faster than oneshot.

SL is just boring its powers are boring its zones are boring the story is boring there is no new classes no new races. Again this annoying gatekeeping of flying for half the expansion.
Nothing about shadowlands is really interesting even the main villain is boring as hell even low tier old school Scarlet monastery bosses had more soul in them.
Also they really should gtfo with the garrison table already and take collect infinite crap with it.

And just because MAW and torghast SL loses lot of points in my book.

59

Well to me corruptions are the worst gear system ever implemented, yes worse than titanforging, so SL is different in a good way on that. I also like SL classes way more than BfA classes, I think the unpruning did a reasonably good job in improving gameplay.
Agree about flying, but BfA was no different in that. Agree on the infinite currency, but SL wins here as well because anima is not mandatory like azerite. As for maw and torghast, they suck but to me island expeditions and warfronts sucked more.

60

Classes unplayable without the right azerite gear and at this point epics only had one outer ring instead of 2.

Extreme RNG progression gearing without any deterministic path.

Warfront and islands were boring content as much as Torghast is - uninspired mob bashing.

Slow and clunky gameplay with few interaction between spells and some of them being on the global cooldown.

SL isn’t perfect but the core of the game (progression systems) are better designed and a lot of crap is optional and/or isn’t the only path. In SL the only mandatory stuff is Torghast, even Venari can be skipped if you’re not really pushing cutting edge content.

61

for many people world content have never been interesting. WQs were an upgrade to dailies, but I still disliked them.
They are brain dead afk “content” and when you have to do it, especially because of the caches that have a timer, it becomes even worse.
So yeah I like that I don’t have to do it.
I would generally only play M+ and pvp and would love if I could ignore all the other (in my opinion) trash content that is just designed as a grind or chore.
Who likes to do chores? I mean therefore I have real life already

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62

I couldn’t get enough of Legion from start to finish. BFA was pretty good still and I enjoyed it mostly except for the corruptions crap. And now Shadowlands is making me unsub every other month. I want to enjoy it but it’s not going well

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64

thank you for insulting me, wont sink that low my self not worht it, actualy I feel sorry for you for having to insult others to feel good about your self, hope you are ok now.

anyways, I didnt say everything needed to be handed to me in anyway or form, just how it was in bfa vs SL, but offcourse not everyone can grasp that.