Just some SOD feedback for the devs. No need for anyone to reply.
I was very happy with Phase 1; a lot of cool experimental ideas came out. Alts were fast to level, it was nice spending time out in the old familiar world, etc. A lot of the runes were boring to acquire, but I had hope that the positive feedback SoD gained would enable to devs to get more creative and experimental with the future phases.
Two weeks in I’m debating unsubbing, so that work out.
The STV event is a mess where ranged classes are grossly overpowered and melee are food. The AB rep is incredibly slow to farm this way. I liked Ashenvale rep, one week to Revered. It was perfect. Two weeks of STV, I’m -so- done with the event and I’m not even Honoured. And this is with some actual ABs thrown in. It’s very slow, very punishing, very tedious and very repetitive. Respawn, try to steal a kill, get 1-shot by a caster. Respawn- for half an hour.
Warriors are currently in need of a lot of help. The class is thoroughly depressing to play. AFK on bosses because we have no rage, lowest PvP damage in the game, virtually no group utility, plate itemization is awful so there’s no light at the end of the tunnel either.
Hunters having a 1k damage gcd without a cooldown, Stormstrike proccing for 1500+, Rogues doing comparable damage attached to 8 seconds of stun, and every caster having 2k+ damage nukes from range. Meanwhile MS is critting for 600 on clothies. A hunter’s cat’s Claw crit me for a 700 earlier.
I’d like to see some serious rebalancing of player burst, counterplay options, and anti-misery mechanics such as 30 second CCs, instakills, infinite kiting etc.
Prot wars have the lowest threat in the game atm, and tank gear is badly itemized so this won’t improve. Right now it feels like I’m sabotaging my guild by playing prot. We swapped to a freshly-dinged pala and beat Thermaplugg unbooned three attempts later. It just feels bad. I’d like to see some large changes to the warrior class this phase, because right now it’s so genuinely unpleasant to play I’d rather not play at all, and will unsub soon.
The lack of things to do at level 40 means that the number of gankers in levelling zones is higher than ever. For someone who’s stuck on a pvp realm because it’s where my friends are, finding any joy in questing is impossible because it’s constantly interrupted by gankers. I’d like see some anti-gank/griefing measures (war mode, Booty Bay Bruiser companion, Dishonourable Kills for killing lower levels, etc), or more things for max level players to do so that they’re not ganking out of boredom.
The only rune I could naturally discover was the Priest SM rune. This rune was great- cross-referencing new items with new lore books. It was well made. But I am not a priest. As a warrior I found the Ancestral Sword whose tooltip states that it’s wielded by Warriors, referenced old maps to find the location of a body in Swamp of Sorrows, and… nothing. These weapons should state they are for Priests. The only way I found out that I wasn’t supposed to be in Swamp of Sorrows was by reading every rune guide online to discover that none of them use the Ancestral Sword. I’d like to see more runes of this design, with clues you piece together that give you locations- instead of the runes just being hidden in obscure places. Piecing together multiple parts of a puzzle is so so much more interesting and involved than wondering where in the haystack of the world the needle is.
The new warrior runes are very boring. There’s nothing that makes prot work, the only dps ones are ‘pick your flavour of slam’, both of which invalidate Improved Slam as a talent. This built-in counter synergy feels very bad. Taste for Blood would’ve been a much more appropriate rune, along with Wrecking Crew. Making Rend more than a waste of 3 talent points- enabling Overpower for reliable Deep Wounds and Wrecking Crew triggers- prompting Enrage for active Raging Blow uptime. This would’ve been very fun and synergistic gameplay design, but instead we get two very pale and boring runes for the same spell, both of which remove the one unique part of said spell.
I won’t claim to have answers to any of these things, but it’s the honest feedback of someone who was very excited and subsequently thoroughly disappointed with Phase 2, and I hope that either this phase will be drastically reconfigured, or Phase 3 will be redesigned in a way to address these problems so that I can re-sub. Thanks for reading.
Have a good one my man.