I love the idea of fresh, where all the population is starting from scratch, leveling together…
But these changes makes only endgame possible for the super sweaty… Imagine going into a stronger Naxx with half BWL gear and no world buffs… Imagine needing to raid 4-5 times a week to a) get gear or b) help guildies get gear, so that your team is able to handle the buffed content with no world buffs. Now you raid 4-5 times a week, but you also have to farm your consums… Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat!
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Phases being released 15 days faster on average compared to classic will not be that noticable. And I believe “most” people experienced content drought in classic, so win win really.
The only reference to raid encounters being changed is the “earlier” ones, meaning the mostly trivial Ony, MC and BWL due to the 1.12 setting.
Patchwerk, Sapph and KT might be a pain with no world buffs and slightly worse gear, but with unlimited debuff slots, guilds will probably perform similar as in classic.
Pretty much as it was in original Vanilla. Raid guilds should have time to collect nearly full mix of T2/T2.5 before Naxx which is plenty to start raiding there. One could skip AQ40 entirely and still do well in Naxx.
Let’s think about those release timings…
Assuming you’re in a top 5 guild (if you’re not you haven’t got a chance)
You get 16 BWL attempts before AQ40 release. No WBs + harder bosses + lower ilvl means that we won’t clear BWL for maybe 3 weeks so Nef loot might be 13 weeks of drops
You get 8 weeks of ZG before AQ40 which is probably enough time to get the rep required for the epic ZG gear. If you cleared it on every reset and bought the coins.
So as a HPriest I’m going into AQ40 with 13 weeks of BWL gear, split between 4 other HPriests (for T2) and all 10 healers for rejuv/PEB etc, and the ZG gear for the set bonus if I’m going clear ZG every reset
So the absolute best you could hope for would be something like the below. That’s if the exact x3 pieces of T2 dropped (and you got it) that wasn’t the ZG slot pieces. and we’ve not even got in to rotation/new guildies/people leaving guild etc
Benediction
x3 T2
x3 ZG Epic
MC or BWL healing ring (won’t have both)
Fordrings seal or similar
The rest would be blue ZG items
I can’t see how a 40 people raid with the above or worse could even think about clearing a harder AQ40 instance but don’t worry, the AQ gates won’t open for a few weeks, then you’ll not clear past the bug trio and then you’ll be in Strat 24 hrs a day grinding Naxx rep and mats and IF you do all that, you’ll be trying to kill a ‘higher health’ Patchwerk in ZG blues with no buffs…
Then it’s all over and the season ends and it was all just a waste of everyones time
Blizzard… you’ve done it again
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I think you assume too much. I’m not a huge fan of the timeframe either. But you exaggerate the issue of loot. For healers, the gear meta will be more regen-focused with the now longer fights. So I am certain that some pieces will take the place of others this time. For example, 2x DM west trinket could be BIS for most before Shard of the Scale/Rejuv gem.
Maybe we’ll see different items to replace harder to get items but they won’t become BiS
Loot is a huge motivator for players. I’d wager the No1 reason for people leaving guilds is disagreement over loot. This timeframe only makes it harder to get loot and therefore the server is gonna be a battle royale.
Smaller guilds not clearing raids will lose players to better guilds and they’ll take the loot with them which will increase the skill gap and set that guild back weeks/months unless they can recruit a player with similar gear. Any new player joining guild and taking loot will piss off the long standing guild members and it goes round and round
So let’s theorycraft the SoM meta as it stands with the information we have available right now: No world buffs but infinite debuff slots, so instead of raids consisting of 10 healers and 30 warriors a raid will consist of 10 healers, 10 warriors and 20 warlocks.
Battlegrounds is available from the beginning of the game, so you will need to rank in order to join one of those guilds that goes to Naxx instead of only going to MC and BWL for the entire year.
Before you enter a raid you will still be required to flask up, but this time only titans and spell power will matter, expect every single UBRS raid to suddenly have loot master by the time Drakkisath comes around.
The grind for AQ can be replaced with farming AD rep, as Blizz just admitted they will literally open the doors for you even if you do nothing.
Oh, and for 90% of players raids are going to be MC and BWL gold dkp runs where the loot master reserves everything that’s an upgrade for him/herself specifically and auctions off anything they can’t personally use. And those 10% of people that do plan on raiding must have really good luck when it comes to random loot drops if they ever wish to see the inside of later instances.
Simply put, Season of Mastery is brilliant if you are an ant and recieve dopamine hits from letting the leader of your hive progress while you outfit yourself with scraps and farm endlessly in the knowledge that in 12 months time you’ll be the ant queen (spoiler warning, you won’t.)
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They haven’t announced any changes to AQ or Naxx specifically though. The only reference we’ve received is “earlier encounters to pack more of a punch” and “more challenging content”. This is pretty clearly in reference to 1.12 MC & BWL being trivial for the average guild and the lack of world buffs that will affect all raids.
Not sure why you think raiding will be on heroic or mythic levels when the reasoning for this change is merely to not have harmless loot pinatas as endgame content.
Dotting is DPS loss for warlocks. The only benefit is you can do meme curse of doom.
Current sweatlords theorycrafting is to stop leveling around level 30 and farm everything in STV for honor for like a week. Also more players are into PvE realms this time around.
If you are some speedrunning sweatlord guild maybe. There isn’t enough flask nor intend to use them. At best guild will buy a stamina flask for tanks.
The original mechanic was lowering turn in amounts after a month. As most realms never get even close to a month in Classic I doubt it will happen on SoM.
And the raid group will just GTFO from the guild. People aren’t dumb nor naive children. You will have a weekly YouTube ninja clip collection but people will just leave the guild if gearing isn’t done properly.
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You forgot the raid schedule pre AQ (doesn’t include rep grinds, gold farming, professions, Naxx attune or god forbid, you want to play an alt)
Mon: ZG
Tues: MC
Wed: BWL
Thur: ZG and Ony
Fri: free
Sat: ZG
Sun: free
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This would have packed much more of a punch if World Buffs weren’t just removed because most of the playerbase wanted to be on a PVP server, but didn’t want to deal with the possibility of losing those WB’s on the way to a raid.
And what that has to do now? P2 was P2 mostly because Horde dominance that then lead to monofaction realms and other nonsense. Dispelling WB was a much later “meta” .
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One of reasons after AQ the activity starts to drop a lot. Not to mention people will stop going to MC as soon as they don’t have gear there - which for some will be way quicker than for others…
The way I remember it the crying about WB’s started in P1 as soon as people got mindcontrolled into the lava in BRM. But memory isn’t my strong suit.
Unless you want your MTs to get a TF
Disagreement over loot comes from unfair loot systems though. I’d stay far away from loot-council guilds and probably any system that does not reward fixed per-raid attendance DKP.
All loot systems are flawed in some way
DKP = never miss a raid or you won’t get loot
Not casual friendly
If that’s not an IRL or similar guild then people won’t care much - or care less and less the longer a MC clear takes. In my K3 guild there were only 2 raid nights. One for current, one for old stuff. If we didn’t finished before the explicit end hour the raid lead would stop the raid and no “extra minutes”. By the clock. It was short, reliable and people didn’t get burned with this.
Raids will generally absord the class census on the realm, as they’ve always done. Simple math really. You can stack 20 locks though if that’s the meta, enjoy.
There haven’t been any statement regarding tuning of AQ and Naxx except possible hp increase, yet you assume they will be altered to become severe gearchecks only hoarders can reach. All we know is that content will be harder due to no wb, extended encounters and earlier bosses will pack more of a punch, per their statements. Personally, I suspect they have some sort of awareness and don’t slap 20% more hp on Patchwerk for example.
Phases will be 15 days shorter on average. I don’t think that warrants 90% of players succumbing to a gdkp overlord lol, but fun theory.
They never said they were removing war effort.
All in all, I score your post 4/10.
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