Alright, I’ve been playing horrific visions on two characters for now,
As an outlaw/assassin rogue and as a fury warrior and I’ve been really liking them, Blizzard did well with these and I feel like they could be the next big thing like M+ so I’ll try and give some feedback and suggestions on them.
The first thing I’ll want to address is time
Time is important in horrific visions, but it’s not the timer that I want to address, rather the time allotted for the vision itself.
They feel too short, way too short and in such this makes their design limited and for them to not be absurd blizzard will have to create over simplified mobs and bosses with low health, I usually blast most bosses before they do anything threatening with their abilities with one mask on.
I think blizzard should make it so that the sanity is at 2500 and designs the visions accordingly, with increased mob / boss health and more complex mobs to allow player skill to shine rather than which class has the most burst and mobility and also makes tackling the things feel more thought out and fun.
The second thing I want to address is companions and spec representation
Atm, tanks and healers have a huge disadvantage in horrific visions, and it’s super bad if you’re a solo player or want to do it solo.
I think the introduction of companions in solo play would make the visions a lot more fun, especially if the companions were customizable, and upgradable. using corrupted mementos to buy upgrades like health, damage, talents ( kinda like the classic talent tree? ) would be a cool thing.
Can introduce followers with class / spec and levels and the higher the level they get the more abilities the get ( like Nazjatar companions )
Can even go more crazy and let there be special items for followers with rarity from uncommon to legendary that drop from horrific visions that give followers cool stuff.
I think 2 followers would be amazing, so tanks can take a healer and a dps, a healer can take a tank and a dps, etc so that these can make up for the things they lack, maybe a healer wants two dps or a tank wants two dps, maybe a dps player wants 2 healers? a dps wants 2 other dps, would make for interesting choices and dynamics.
I also think the followers could make use of the island expedition AI and the quest npc AI we see in many quests where they dodge mechanics and behave accordingly, it would be really cool.
The third thing I’ll want to address is effort vs difficulty vs rewards
Horrific visions atm feel like they reward too little for their efforts at the early stages and just about right at the maximum difficulty ( 470 for 5 masks full clear ), and so I feel like the earlier stages should be bumped abit item level wise.
As for the difficulty, I feel like the difficulty is abit too low and stems from the randomness rather than complexity, most mobs have one or two abilities and most of these abilities are bland.
I think the difficulty should be shifted abit more towards player control, as in it’s less from RNG and more from how good the player reacts to it, to give an example :-
More swirlies, more dodge this, interrupt important spell, LoS etc and less dodge x ability but too bad you’re forced to run straight forward, or if you get a bad timing for void circle you’re dead unless you pop an immunity.
I feel more complex mechanics like do X task or do that should be in place, it would be cool if the bosses felt more like raid bosses, ofc this would make it take more time to defeat them which is why I suggested that blizzard makes the horrific visions longer
I also feel like there is not enough difficulty levels, I mean I know that 5 masks full clear is super hard, but right now I’m almost doing full clear with one mask on, in a severely unoptimized character with no good Azerite traits and corruptions… I expecting one or two months before I start doing 5 masks full clears, and then visions would end up easy and uninteresting.
I think there should be much more with rewards that scale accordingly with the maximum horrific vision difficulty rewarding a 485 item piece a weak, and this difficulty should be much harder than a mythic raid and only those truly insanely dedicated should be able to do it.
This would give people something to strive for, and the feeling of always being able to progress!
The fourth thing I would like to talk about is the vision design itself
Atm I feel like the visions are bare bones, they’re basically clear 4 areas then go for boss, and you can apply affixes to make doing so harder.
I think there should be much more than that, just like the potions, hidden buffs and other things that exist in the vision I think there should be more stuff like that.
Trap areas, rare mobs, risk-reward, secondary objectives, secret objectives, riddles, and many other things that can be added to make visions more flavorful.
I can think of many cool things that would make the visions more interesting to me.
For example, what if there was a mob with the same idea of the fel reaver, huge aggro radius, has true vision and you WANT to stay the hell away from them.
There can be secret steps players can do to defeat that mob and get a handsome reward, ( what if you could ride the mob and use it for 2 minutes? ) ( gain a stack of the sanity restoration orb ? ) etc.
What if you could free trapped/prisoned/locked in a fight mobs and they’ll become your followers for the rest of the horrific vision?
What if there was various lootable usables? throw a rock to distract? wear this cape of powerful stealth ( ignores true sight ? ) shoot a rocket that can damage both you and the enemy? setup a healing station? a one time use aviana’s wings
What if there was optional steps to each objective in the areas? for example, instead of killing misha, you could kite her to a doctor, this doctor will heal misha and this will cause misha to become a follower for the rest of the vision.
That’s all, I’ve been loving visions, and I want more of it… I honestly feel like it could be the next big thing for wow, a new progression mode!
