Suggestions for Horrific Visions

Community General Discussion
142

Yup. I couldn’t agree more.

These are just really bad daily zones. Sorry for digressing from the main topic, but I think it’s worth a mention since the visions are fueled by dailies and weeklies.

Why are they bad?

  1. The questgivers are not interesting or sympathetic characters. I always liked dailies, and one reason was because I felt a faint echo of helping people. Yes, it’s pixels, I know, but it activates the same neurons. I can still get it if I do a run in Molten Front or Halfhill. I don’t get it here.

  2. The zones are heavy and threatening, and already I don’t want to go there. They make me weary just thinking about them.

Jeff Kaplan gave a great explanation of the effect of this in a presentation at end of TBC. I posted it on the old forums, but can’t find it now. His experience was that threatening environments look appealing when you first enter them, but that over time, day-in and day-out, that initial stimulation and sense of danger wears off and they just become tiring.

And so heavy, threatening environments should not be used for areas where you expect players to spend a lot of time.

This is a lesson the team seems to have forgotten.

Uldum and Vale were and are interesting zones in their natural state, but under the blue light and darkened sky and indistinct sound effects and depressing music, they’re not places anyone wants to be.

  1. The quest ranges are too big, and too much of the job is waiting.

OK, so I found two banners to burn in Tol’vir … and that’s all the banners there are in Tol’vir. Now what? Try to look somewhere else on the far end of the zone, in the hope there will be unburned banners there, or just afk until they respawn, and hope no-one else gets to them while I’m tabbed out?

Traditional dailies sent us to small areas for each daily, not have bits scattered all over the zone.

I need another rare. Tab out and hope to hear an addon alert me, and then pray I get there before it’s dead.

There don’t seem to be any named-mob quests? Or maybe I just haven’t noticed one. Named mobs are the backbone of questing.

And, of course, The Return Of The Fill-The-Bar. There doesn’t even seem to be a gradient in credit. Rares count … 10%? 15%? … whatever - and everything else counts 1%. Where are the 2%, 5% objectives? (Someone will now correct me, and point out some that I just didn’t notice. I do love forums. :slight_smile: )

I can’t have any truly substantive complaints about these zones. They’re not fun, and not attractive, but they are easy and rewarding, and they do their job of feeding the Visions. Still, it would be nice if they were fun and at least tolerably pleasant as well.

4 Likes
143

if they added proper companions at this stage rather than just quest ones.

might as well change the expansion to “shadowbringers” . if you get it, you get it.

i still think the new expansion is edging to close to that to become a coincidence. copy what works i guess

still no clue why blizzard haven’t done that in dungeons, i find FF14’s more complex and strategic than blizzards latest attempts. (even before shadowbringers i could bring in my grand company guys for dungeon levelling)

144

I went to all the hassle to unlock this… and they were braindead.

The Shadowbringers AI however is amazing.

145

Agree with this totally, been having a blast when I took this decision and started deviating from the meta.

I made so many fun builds as a warrior and I’ve managed to clear +15s in all of them, atm I’m working on my next build which is going to be insane! unfortunately I need some specific corruptions alongside an item from N’zoth heroic/mythic but I don’t have that much time to raid :frowning:

I’ve actually been enjoying them, they’re the only dailies I’ve bothered doing, however I do skip the tedious ones like find 3 rares or " rescue " the mob that barely ever appears.

As for the old god aesthetic thing then I guess it’s a matter of taste, I’m an old god’s fan so I’m loving it a lot! especially the structures and spires.

Also did you try to do the questlines? they’re super fun and have a cool story, especially the bandit guys at uldum.

146

I did do that, yes. And that was nice; having different little stories tied to the various invasions. But well… that was a one off.

I definitely prefer WQs though. If dailies are well done and tie in with a story in a good way then sure, but I just don’t feel like that in these 2 zones. It all feels very much like: we made up a new system and now we need stuff that you need to do to support/fuel that system. Let’s just plop down some dailies and call it a day.

147

Well you’re right, I don’t feel the dailies tie in together much but their structure is more fun to me than regular WQ / dailies.

Especially because there are multiple effects you can trigger while doing them, be it getting the lightning rod buff, amber sharpening, turning into a scorpion and getting the windscroll buff, those also make pvp much more interesting.

Part of me wishes we could get those buffs from the dailies inside visions, it’d make exploring visions cool and rewarding.

148

What is the point of the daily visions anyway? Not the Horrific Visions, the other ones… Like, it’s a tiny, pocket-sized piece of the zone filled with mobs, and you get ONE quest, but there’s also a sanity bar. So are you supposed to grind mobs here until sanity runs out? Doesn’t seem to be much point to that, they barely drop anything. And it’s the same zone every day too; the quest changes, but that doesn’t really make much difference. So why set this whole thing up?

149

Join a group, stand in the middle and pull everything.

The respawn rate is soo high you’d be loot very good numbers

You could net yourself a hefty amount of CV / CM during it.

But yeah I do wish blizz would do more about the mini visions.

I suggested once that they make it scale with time, as in every x sec mobs gain 1% dmg / hp and drop 1% more loot.

So farming in there for 15 minutes becomes hard but actually rewarding.

150

That sounds incredibly underwhelming, especially considering the one daily quest already gives 1500 CV.

It would maybe be more interesting if there was some kind of sliding difficulty scale… either by time, as you said; or I would prefer a mask system or other difficulty switches similar to Horrific Visions. Then add mechanics to control sanity (already some in there, but kinda wasted right now), and make it a ramping difficulty… see how long you can go. I’d even add a gauge or reward meter similar to Horrific Visions; maybe some timed objectives that pop up every 5 minutes (on a global timer) to keep things more varied, sort of mini boss milestones.

Even with all this, just CV as reward is kinda boring, but at least the vision itself would be a fun challenge.

1 Like
151

I’ve finally managed to 5 masks full clear and I have to say, this is indeed one of the most fun and thrilling experiences blizzard implemented, Thank you guys.

Now I have a few notes that I wanna report on and would love to see them addressed!

1- Corruptions and Horrific visions

I think it’s unfair to have some abilities increase damage taken from corruptions, especially when there are classes who don’t have as much CC as others, and it’s really not fun to get splatted by a 400k thing from beyond when you’re at 45 corruption.

I’m talking specifically about the big buff void walker.

2- Horrific visions and mob types.

Most of the mobs in horrific visions are cool in my opinion, however I have a few problems with some of them and I feel like these need to be improved.

The tentacle

The tentacle most of the time serves its purpose, it’s a niche mob, simple and disruptive, if it catches you off-guard, you’re going to pay a hefty price.

However, I feel like they borrow way too much, and that they can be easily cheesed, by ignoring them and leaving a dot on them, they’d mostly be harmless.

I suggest to decrease the frequency of the burrow and rather increase the damage output of them and the amount of disruption.

The mindcarver:

The mindcarver is a mob with a simple idea, if it lives too long it will use a deadly CC on you, I find this to be unfair to non-burst classes, and I feel like it would be cooler if this mob rather gives you the chance to dodge this CC, further emphasizing on your skill.

Misha

Misha makes me sad, she’s literally a free kill, rather she’s a 150 sanity gain, it doesn’t make sense.

Misha really needs a rework and a big buff, her abilities aren’t threatening at all.

The giant non elite aqir that casts headbutt

Ok first of all screw this mob, a single mob shouldn’t be way harder than the entirety of all the horrific vision, and it’s not harder mechanically, rather just numberwise.

This mob needs a damage nerf, the headbutt needs to be casted way slower, and should be dodgable.

The infestations

The infestations are… just an annoyance, they’re a 0 threat mob that is there just to keep you in combat, they make no sense, and I feel they need to bereworked, imo they should get a teleport and a stacking debuff that starts hurting after a while.

The stormwind footman

This mob has a niche ability, however it can be easily countered by CC, it’s a cool mob but tbh I feel like it is unfair to some classes, why not make it that their shield only works from the front?

The stealthed mobs in mathias shaw’s area

These mobs are cool, their idea is cool and interacting with them is cool, however sometimes they just won’t pop, I suggest these mobs be given a shadowstep ability that once they’re incombat with you they shadowstep you.

Other than that I have no complaint about the mobs, they’re cool and nice, wish they were more mechanically demanding though.

As for bosses

Magister Umbric

I find it really insulting that I can afk kill this guy on my 460 rogue and actually gain sanity rather than lose it against him, while my warrior clad in 470 ilvl gear and insane corruptions needs a full sanity bar to have a chance against him.

I feel like he needs a rework, and a heavy one.

Howabout rather than teleporting around the room, he teleports you to one of the sides and you’re supposed to get to him?

I like the interesting dynamic between choosing which ability you want to interrupt, but sadly that was the ideal scenario, right now it’s either interrupt sheep and soak missiles or die, it makes no sense, why not change his abilities to be mechanically heavy and you have to choose which one you don’t wanna deal with?

Tornados, chilled ground, void ground patches that drain sanity and many others come to mind.

Rexxar

Rexxar, more like burst or diexxar.

Yep, that’s literally what this boss feels like :(, why not make huffer quils dodgable? introduce the Leok that disrupts the area, make him more mechanically challenging!

Final Bosses.

Thrall

Is a disappointment, with 5 masks I killed this dude while losing ~200 sanity, he makes no sense, he’s so easy and weak, I like that his room is clustered and such but besides the 2 boars beside him he’s basically harmless, I feel like his fight would benefit from an additional mechanically demanding ability.

Why not fill one side of the room with fire everynow and then?

Alleria

Is more of an annoyance than difficult, the one thing that keeps being on my mind while fighting her is LET ME HIT YOU PLEASE!

She casts her abilities way too frequently, and tbh they’re way too negligible and easy, why not make the abilities deadlier but less frequent?

Also it would be cool if the M+ range mob ai was introduced to her, as in as long as she’s in melee range she would still move with you.

That’s it for now, thanks for introducing this awesome feature blizzard and 10 masks when? also gib new cities and horrific visions!

2 Likes
152

Rexxar spawns his boars at health percentages, if you burst him you get all 4 at once and probably die. The play is to dps him down slowly at first, deal with the first two boars one at a time, then when he spawns two at once you pop your cds and quickly dispatch them before killing rexxar. He’s pretty much harmless without the boars.

153

It’s impossible to die on him all you gotta do is burst him with lust and pot and full cds, if you know how to bait the titan proc too ur golden.

My complaint is that he’s too mundane, it’s either burst him or waste alooooooooot of time and possibly die.

It has to do with the fact that he’s basically a pure numbers boss, which is not fun at all.

I wish he was more mechanically demanding rather than this type of encounter.

Is also my main complaint here on my rogue.

The encounter went like this.

Burst > Full kidney on one, kick the other, blind > cloak of shadows > R.I.P rexxar.

This feels unfair because other classes will struggle super hard ( I notice this a lot on my warrior )

It’s either spend an amount of time trying to get a titan proc, or play the long game.

I love playing the long game but in the end it still will always end up being a dps check, because I only have a pummel and a fear on my warrior, and a stormbolt if I specced into it.

154

Tell that to a class without cooldowns.

1 Like
155

Exactly :P, which is why I feel like the focus should shift on more mechanical challenges rather than the current way it is designed.

If you could dodge the boars and instead of having boars swarms there was other abilities that you can interact to then it would be much more fun.

156

I mean you can deal with the boars, that’s kind of the point, just because you’re capable of skipping them with brute force doesn’t mean the method of dealing with them isn’t already there.

Not everything needs to be dodgable / a bullet hell to be difficult. The fight is about add control.

1 Like
157

Excuse me for that I can be a little dense when I’m tired, yeah you’re right I should look at the PoV of more than just rogue and warrior.

Looking at your posts above now I understand what you meant at the start!

1 Like
158

I still haven’t figure out how I should control them. Too many of them and they not available at start of fight. So I am better off start from that side of orgrimmar and use some major Cds and burn trough the inevitable sanity drain.

159

I spend a whole day doing that labyrinth, i’ve taken like 10 paper pages to draw it and try to track my progression.

When I finally got the mount I was so happy! It was really amazing!

1 Like
162

No thx, its still really challanging with 5 masks. I would understand if everyone and their mother easy ezmode 5 masks run, but alot of people still didnt complete it at all…

163

I have 3 major issues with Horrific Visions and a couple of minor annoyances.

  1. Their limited availability. For me they’re the only fun feature to come out of BFA and I want to do more but I can’t. Limited to 4-5 a week, that’s an hour of content. Because they’re so limited failing one feels really bad and discourages experimentation, exploration and taking risks. Which leads me to point 2.

  2. You need too much outside info to do them well/efficiently. We’ve had several people in our guild who had no idea what they were supposed to do in there, what was happening and why they were even in there. Because they, of course, got their behind handed to them they just stopped doing them. The game tells you almost nothing and a guide/youtube vid is almost required.

  3. They’re wildly unbalanced. For example DH’s, rogues and even prot warriors were doing full clears weeks before most of the other classes/specs. Being a caster with 1 or 0 interrupts on Rexxar sucks while he’s a non-issue for bursty melee with plenty of interrupt/stun options.

Minor issues:

  • The 25k cap on the currency makes no sense anymore. It’s just an annoyance now. Game doesn’t warn you you’ve hit the cap either.
  • If you do any kind of raiding or M+ Visions are very unrewarding gear-wise.
  • It’s very easy to get stuck in/under the scenery; especially in Orgrimmar, especially during the Scorched Feet madness.
  • If you’re a raider it’s mandatory content because you want the resistance for the N’Zoth fights and the corruption resistance for your dps. If you have limited time farming for and doing the Visions become an unwelcome chore quickly. The changes to the weekly cloak upgrade quest help a bit there.
  • Bugs. It sucks to lose a run because Valeera gets stuck in combat somewhere, because a tentacle gets stuck underground keeping you in combat or because there’s an evading Figment stuck in the haywagon after the Org teleport.