Now for those of you chasing that legendary parse or top spot on the DPS metre this isn’t for you. But for those of us firmly in the regular gamer, dad gamer, casual gamer space we need to say something about the buff/consumable meta that classic has.
With more than half of a dps class’s potential damage tied to whether they’re fully buffed the game creates a very negative feeling for those of us not dedicated to chasing the numbers. It taxes our time in many ways and, as we’re generally the mid-skill level folks let’s be honest, punishes our possibly multiple deaths in a raid. We have to collect the world buffs and boon them, we have to buy multiple consumables or farm the materials. All so that we can raid to a half decent level. I don’t want to feel forced into trudging around the world for a buff that vanishes as soon as I die, I don’t want to have to pay 5-20g per death or hour played but because of how effective consumables are I and many like me feel required to do so.
Double so if you’re a tank because you cannot hold threat against a buffed dps if you’re not also sporting 2-3 lines of power increases.
Now, honestly, I don’t think there’s a reasonable solution for the pots/food/consumables problem that doesn’t just end up punishing alchemists except for what I believe is the retail solution of only allowing one buffing potion and having it persist through death.
For world buffs they either need to be a toggle that can just be applied to the whole dungeon like the old ICC catchup buff or at the very least persist through death.
Also the requirement to stand in a certain place until the buff is dropped or requiring a bunch of out of game co-ordination around buff times is a system everyone I play with hates. If we have to keep the current, highly frustrating system, then at the very least it should be a darkmoon style npc where we can just get the buff when is convenient.
The fact that these systems did not persist through WoW’s lifetime is a clear indication that the previous teams realised they were frustrating and punishing on the silent majority.
No one enjoys being taxed or nerfed for the crime of dying in a raid or not having the spare time to gather these things. SoD is about trying new things, can we please try for a simpler and more accessible classic raid experience?
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100% frustrating to be bad at dps because buffs are lost. The difference between being buffed and unbuffed should be max 10% and not 30-40%
World buffs should just be disabled. Especially when you step back and consider that the level of player power come even aq phase is going be be absolutely stupid. I’ve said this in other posts but in aq phase using dark mantle and off pieces (so miles off bis but really nicely geared) my rogue with wbs has over 50% crit chancr I think the highest I saw was like 55% with like 20% chance to hit.
Now apply sod gearing to world buffs by aq fully consumed with buffs you’ll have like 70% crit chance. It’s just you know…mmm ridiculous?
world buffs provide an incentive to focus and perform well… you mess up, you get punished.
this is a good thing, because it helps prevent people from messing up without the raid leader having to micro manage their every move.
every buff except DMF buff is easy to get, it literally takes like 5-10 minutes if you are smart with your hearthstone.
lets say you log in to the game and your character is in orgrimmar, take zep to grom’gol and fly to booty bay or fly to ratchet and take the boat there, this should be like 5-10 minutes total.
hearthstone back to org and fly to felwood which might be another 5 minutes.
now you just wait for the songflower timer (you dont have to stay logged in, log out and do something else and just check every now and then if its not up when you get there)
bam, you’re done assuming DMF is not in town.
if you don’t have the time to get your buffs, i dare say you might want to reconsider your time investment into this game because these casual dad complaints are getting out of hand.
btw next phase is world buff galore, so i hope you know what game you’re playing here.
lets say you log in to the game and your character is in orgrimmar, take zep to grom’gol and fly to booty bay or fly to ratchet and take the boat there, this should be like 5-10 minutes total.
hearthstone back to org and fly to felwood which might be another 5 minutes.
now you just wait for the songflower timer (you dont have to stay logged in, log out and do something else and just check every now and then if its not up when you get there)
At first I was going to break down these numbers and compare them to the alliance who have it worse but that’s not the point. We are still talking about a tax on your time for a power boost. You also didn’t include consumables which you either need to craft and farm yourself OR buy from the AH (In which case you need to farm the gold at some point, nothing is free.) And then there’s the ST flasks which mean you have to go to the troll island, not so bad for Horde but it’s in the middle of nowhere for alliance.
Why are we accepting a system that requires us to spend about as much time on prep as we do on the raid itself?
You also mention that it’s an incentive to not screw up, which is technically true I suppose. But it’s not proportional. I’m going to stress again my point that I’m talking about the silent majority of players, the ones that don’t quite hit their rotation, that sometimes fail mechanics. The casuals, part timers, dad gamers and those just wanting to socialise.
For them consumables can be as much as half their dps and when they lose it the whole raid suffers, fights take longer and the chance of others dying increases. They then get frustrated that they’re weaker now because their buffs got cleared, they now have to burn more consumables which means more farming, more time wasted.
It’s a vicious cycle that has genuinely led to people I used to raid with giving up because they didn’t want to play the consumables game and felt like a burden to the raid team.
This is a known, negative system. It was removed following classic and we see from future changes to things like alchemy that it was recognized having to buy multiple potions/flasks/food that were cleared on death was bad.
btw next phase is world buff galore, so i hope you know what game you’re playing here.
I’m playing Season of Discovery, which is based on classic but has promised sweeping and experimental changes. Removing world buffs at the very least would cure a pain point for a lot of the silent majority as well as make fight and encounter balance easier for the devs. This is the perfect time to make this change, in a season that’s meant to be about taking chances with the classic model.
We 100% need consumables to last through death esp if we have hardmode(?) Molten Core coming. People will be absolutely positive to go farm(for example 3 mongoose) to go wipe 3 hours. But if you have to reconsume every wipe that might end up being 30 mongoose. This is just so unenjoyable.
sorry MMORPGs make demands of your time i guess, but that’s how it is.
see the point above.
If world buffs are applicable to raids then I honestly think they should do what was suggested on the big bob podcast of. Last boss of instances gives a token. You can get infinite tokens.
At the start of each raid is a dude who gives world buffs in exchange for tokens 1/buff. You have to had gained the buff through normal means (give alliance rend buff FFS)
If the meta is like classic was and you have to run around the world with summon bots every week because “world buffs are meta or gtfo” then I dunno I just CBA.
I already CBA so I don’t know what I’m posting for.
I do 100% agree that consumes Inc food buffs should continue through death like flasks. But you know damn sure if that happens then people will be like.
“You have to make world buffs last through death!!”
By which point again. What’s the point. Just make world buffs naturally apply in a raid for you to have “fun”
All these have counter arguments
I hope one of the heat levels in Molten Core is one where World buffs don’t function.
The raids our guild runs are raids where we don’t require consumables or world buffs, but people bring them anyway so everyone else feels forced to bring them too or be at the bottom of the meters.