Legion Pre-Expansion Patch Hits - everything changes

[lesion]

Mythic/Mythic+ dungeons are amazing and may be the only thing keeping me playing. The timer makes everything hectic and awesome. Reminds me of the weird crap we did in vanilla to keep things interesting (like 3-manning dungeons or kite-tanking bosses).

[Khaldun]

There was more endgame accessible to more people in Lich King--which was why the hardcore types hated it so much.

[Paelos]

This expansion seems to be very accessible at several areas. I've enjoyed Mythic dungeons, they are hard enough to make me slow down and actually think about stuff, but not so hard that they wipe us constantly.

I think the World Quest idea is fantastic, and I love the idea of upgrading gear based on dailies. That lets people fill in gaps they need to get where they have to go for dungeons and raids.

Professions are horrific. They completely missed out on the idea of making these interesting. Each profession needs a guaranteed high end epic or there's no point to leveling it fast. They also should be available for the after max level experience to fill out gear. These quests make that impossible unless you're doing them the whole way.

I do like that they level corrected the zones so you're not forced into one area and you can do things with friends of different levels. That's incredibly smart.

The AH seems mostly pointless. I'm making massive money on people trading mats for crafting, but other than that there's no gear drops I've seen that you can really trade.

The worst thing they did was Artifact power not going across all your stuff and toons. It's locking people into one thing, and you feel like you're wasting time if you switch. They should have applied a percentage across everyone, and that's how artifact knowledge should have worked where it increases your percentage while also increasing the percentage to your total alt pool.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The worst thing about professions is that all the armor ones are absolutely pointless now.  By the time you've done the quests to get the patterns you've already outlevelled any gear you'd get from them and levelling is so fast, no one wants to buy the stuff either.

[Xanthippe]

The engineering-only lootarang works fine, it's the other lootarang that got the stupid WOD restriction... I don't like this decision either, since penalizing nonengies is not going to make the profession any more fun.

Thank you for this. I didn't realize there was a different one for engineers. (I didn't play Cata for long - I think that's the expansion the eng one came from).

[Xanthippe]

I'm enjoying it. There is so much they got right this time (professions not being one of them - although JC has some good rings and necks, but I have no idea how hard it is to craft them).

Re: alts. It dawned on me finally that in order to level alts, the best thing to do is get to a level where you can research your Artifact, then you can let your alt sit until you have your artifact research up high enough that it will be much quicker to get AP. If I play any of my alts with the same intensity I have played my disc priest (first character to 110), I know I will just hate it. So I level an alts when I feel like doing something different.

I think this is the most accessible WoW expansion for different things to do at max_level since Wrath, and the most fun since Wrath.

[Rokal]

The annoying part about parking alts at 110 to boost their artifact knowledge is that you'll run out of Order Hall resources pretty quickly, and the best method to get those is by doing World Quests. Since the World Quests have all the rep requirements, it means you have to essentially finish all the zones expect Suramar on every alt in order for them to research AK past the first 2-3 weeks.

[luckton]

Being addressed in next patch. You only need do to the "friendly with everyone for WQ" thing once, and every alt after that will get WQ access right at 110.

Also, the Suramar dungeons will only need one attunement for account wide access.

[Setanta]

Artifacts are starting to get me down. I'm now just logging in to do them as I did with garrisons in WoD. But with my fury artifact at 20 and my prot weapons at 17 the rewards are drying up. I'm on AK 4 and no longer enjoying the game as my time is spent chasing specific WQs to get to the third gold talent in each weapon. I stopped my prot run in favour of fury but it's killing the game for me. God help me if I want to go arms for PvP :(

[Paelos]

We're back to the grind, and it's World Quests to level your weapon. It didn't take long, but the downside of their reward structure currently is that WQs are the most effective way to do everything.

[Merusk]

Thus my earlier comment about shitty endgame.

Even worse if you have alts, because the "catch-up mechanism" of AK still requires you to have been playing since day one. There are no catch up levels and it's not per account.  Grind resources for ak research on the alts and on your main.  Nope.

It's just no fun after the first month at max level.  Grind grind grind.

[Setanta]

I've hit the point where my minions are all ilvl 835. But the game is now only giving me 845-850 missions to run. So I can't even send them out to get ilvl boosts and am dependent on the forge making them for me.

It's like they really don't want me to give them money anymore.

[Rokal]

As much as the class storyline and artifact weapon retrieval quests were fun for alts, nothing else at 110 is. I finally unlocked WQs on my 110 alt and it was apparent immediately that neither waiting x weeks/months for your Artifact Knowledge to catch up, or farming small fractions of Artifact Power, were fun activities.

The AP chase on my main is kind of fun, because it does feel like some progress each day and I look forward to each gold tier unlock changing my gameplay a little bit. That activity dovetails into WQ Daily Reward Caches, which are fun for the same reason that slot machines were in Diablo 3 Adventure Mode.

That said, each week the grind does become much more visible. I've given up trying to keep my off-spec weapon up to par and even without that drain I'm still lucky to get 1-2 new artifact levels a week even after playing daily and doing the majority of content sources for AP. You start to notice very quickly that the rate of AP costs for each level dramatically outpace the rates for Artifact Knowledge. I've completed 24/34 artifact weapon levels, but only 8/25 artifact knowledge levels. In only 1-2 more artifact weapon levels it'll require more than a weeks worth of daily quest/dungeon content just for the next level and a measly % bonus to one ability.

[Azuredream]

Yeah, I stopped a week or so ago doing all the AP WQs. I do enough to finish the Caches and no more. Mythic+ / Emerald Nightmare is the only thing I'm doing on my main. Looking at how crazy high the % modifier gets at AK levels 20+ I feel like I'd rather just wait until then to start chasing AP.

[SurfD]

Well,  part of that is due to the lack of any kind of "hard" gate on AP / Weapon Progression.  AP is part of the way your weapon "upgrades" over the course of this expansion (along with Relics), however, unlike previous expansions, there is no "Hard" cap you can hit between tiers that makes you say "whelp, i have the best weapon i can currently get, i'm done for now, time to slow down / do other things".  It's basically a never ending cycle of perpetually accumulating incremental upgrades, and if there is anything that MMO games have taught us, it is that the vast majority of us are just not wired properly to be able to ignore that pavlovian button pushing need as long as there is some kind of upgrade lurking in the background somewhere.

If blizzard had designed the Artifacts so that after hitting a certain amount of AP on a given weapon, you couldn't add any more until the next major update / raid tier released, people would be more then happy to probably just swap over to alts and do other things and let the AK ranks build up until they could start progressing again.  Without that tho, you always feel like you are missing out if you aren't perpetually farming AP for your  weapon.

[Setanta]

I have 1 of 2 options, grind out more AP or go play WoWs and grind out the latest ARP ship by playing the game and getting challenged to top the damage dealt and hit T10.

This is the sad bit... right now the grind in a Wargaming game looks like more fun than grinding AP in WoW :(

[Zetor]

Not only that, but there are plenty of drivers to log in daily and grind out WQs even if you aren't pursuing AP -- specifically, super-rare drops, the potential for a WQ item to upgrade to i870+ (it happened to me!) and legendary items. Emissary chests are especially insidious due to being one of the 'most reliable' sources for legendaries and those mystic coin things. Cue the architect meme about Blizzard getting really good at this entire skinner box thing. Heck, just making AK a slow progression that requires a subscription (I think you need what, 4 sub months to max it out?) is a minor stroke of genius.

The annoying part about parking alts at 110 to boost their artifact knowledge is that you'll run out of Order Hall resources pretty quickly, and the best method to get those is by doing World Quests. Since the World Quests have all the rep requirements, it means you have to essentially finish all the zones expect Suramar on every alt in order for them to research AK past the first 2-3 weeks.

Well, after WQs are auto-unlocked at 100, just doing the 20 WQ weekly event whenever it pops up should be enough. 5k resources = 10 AK work orders = 40 days (I think), and according to wowhead the next WQ event is coming at the end of Nov, so that's just about the right distribution, especially if some of the WQs you do during the week give resources...

[Paelos]

I'm basically in it for 2 mythics a week, some hardcore full day WQ 2 days a week, and the rest of it who gives a fuck.

I may do a normal raid in November with a buddy for some people's alts. I'm not worried about maxxing out. It's just that I can see how the WQ thing can become obsessive for no real gain.

[Xanthippe]

From http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/6040-Legion-Developer-Q-A-Ion-Hazzikostas-October-13-Hotfixes

Artifact Power and Knowledge
There are no plans to allow you to move Artifact Power from one weapon to another.
Artifact Knowledge makes it easy to keep another weapon with progression close to your current weapon.
Artifact Knowledge and progression are working out well.
The team didn't want to have a hard weekly cap, where it felt like your job every week was to hit a cap. After you hit the cap there was no motivation to play.
People that play a lot more get something extra, but not a huge amount.
Research rates for alts or players that are catching up are a little shorter to help them to get caught up.
A few months from now more drastic catch up measures might be necessary to get you caught up quickly.

[Father mike]

From http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/6040-Legion-Developer-Q-A-Ion-Hazzikostas-October-13-Hotfixes

Research rates for alts or players that are catching up are a little shorter to help them to get caught up.
A few months from now more drastic catch up measures might be necessary to get you caught up quickly.

That's cool.  With their trend of 18 months between the final raid and a new expansion, I can easily unsub for 'a few months' and not really miss anything.

[Xanthippe]

Although the MasterPlan addon has not yet been updated for Class Halls, Garrison Mission Manager has. It seems to be working very well, so I would recommend getting it.

With regard to leveling alts to 110, and then parking them - I've played a lot, and have leveled a few alts to 110. The first, I did all wrong - I stayed in one zone and did all of the quests before moving on.

The next alt, I followed the main questline in each zone, starting in the shorter zones and moving to the longer ones. (Aszuna, Val'sharah, Highmountain, Stormheim). Ending up with a piece of 800 gear is terrific for leveling (the reward from the main questline).

I also only did the dungeons as I got the quest for them, as they don't seem to provide much xp otherwise.  Also, I mostly ignored the crafting profession but did the gathering one as I quested.

Once at 110, I haven't kept up with the daily missions, because I don't want to run out of resources before getting Artifact Research done (500 resources each). I've ignored the class hall upgrades past the first one (those are very expensive).

Benefits to doing it this way - I'm friendly with all factions except Nightfallen and Wardens by 110. I can pick up extra resources by doing the quests I didn't do before, and killing the silverframed mobs. I can also become friendly with Nightfallen by doing their questline, and open up WQs. That's if I feel like playing the alt. Otherwise it can be parked for many levels of artifact knowledge before I have to gather more resources.

I enjoy questing, dailies, WQs. I particularly enjoy that I got to 845 ilvl mostly by WQs. I do the daily heroic for the AP or satchel (if it's available),  but my raiding is pretty much confined to LFR. My healer is disc, and it's not enjoyable for me to try to heal with, past 5mans. I do mythics if I have a quest. Disc isn't great with bad groups who like to gogogo, overpull and stand in shit.

YMMV, but for a hardcore casual like me, I enjoy this expansion much more than any other, since Wrath of the Lich King.

[Merusk]

On the other hand, my credit card expired and I haven't felt the need to change my billing and reup.

Everything I had to do felt like busywork, and since LFR is garbage I didn't even want to bother with that. The leveling experience was good enough, but I think I'm done until I want to bother checking-out Kara.

The implosion of my guild nearly two years ago really has underscored that it's the people that keep you comping back. My guild only had 4-8 players on at any time and the two women who took over play even less than I did, only showing up for 2-4 hours on Tuesday and Saturday. No desire to hunt for another group of not-hardcore but not-20-somethings, so I'm out.

[Xanthippe]

Return to Karazhan arrives a week from tomorrow - Patch 7.1


Wowhead notes on 7.1 ptr build

[Xanthippe]

As an addendum to my above post regarding alts - I played my lock and hunter last weekend for resources, both being freshly minted 110s. I noticed that almost all of the WQs offered now give either resources or AP as rewards, with many fewer gear rewards. At least, that's how it seems, so I'm not sure that one can hit ilvl 145 as easily on WQs with the hotfixes/patches since launch.

[Paelos]

There are much fewer gear rewards that I see now too, and much better rewards from the chests on the emissary. I have a feeling they evened that out on purpose.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I was seeing a lot of 835-840 purples on the map last week, I only see one right now. Can't say whether the emissary chests are better though.

Ran a couple of Mythics on Sunday. Harder but not quite as hard as I feel the Draenor ones could be, which is fine by me. The main issue is just guys who want to go through them at top speed and are assholes if anyone says, "Ok, can we get a quick run-down on this fight?" I just don't feel like studying for an hour before signing up for one--it's hard to understand a fight before doing it. I have Azshara and Darkheart down pretty well, at any rate.

[Xanthippe]

Mythics become harder with keystones, which drop when you complete a Mythic within the time allotted.

So there is Mythic, Mythic+1, on up to Mythic+9. Health and damage increase by 8% or 9% each level, and bosses get more affixes.

I really enjoy doing them on my dps but not on my disc healer. Disc is too hectic to be enjoyable, and I haven't leveled my holy artifact yet.

The balance is really wonky still. The difference in playing different classes is just huge. My hunter is relatively effortless compared to shadow priest (which I still don't understand, admittedly, nor have the rhythm down for). Affliction warlock is also relatively effortless. Balance druid is somewhere in between priest and hunter/warlock.

Played disc priest in RBGs yesterday for the weekly quest. I now know why healers are so few in BGs. Stun Stun Sap Fear Stun etc. Didn't we do this already? Melee is ridiculous. Casters are practically nonexistent. World of Stuncraft is back.

[Azuredream]

I don't know about that. I literally just finished a BG where the enemy Mistweaver had 3 of us beating on him for 30 seconds straight and we didn't even come close to killing him, then all his allies killed us.

I fucking despise the fact that you have to win BGs for it to count for the weekly. I've done about 15 BGs and won 2.

[Merusk]

Alliance then?

Mistweavers and Resto druids are always hard to kill in PVP.   With Kalgan gone that may change but not soon.

[Azuredream]

Yeah, Alliance. To be fair, I have had stretches where we win a lot, but usually it's not because we got any better but because we were up against complete lemmings. I think the better Horde are queueing with the bonus event being underway.

[Polysorbate80]

LFRaid member to me as tank in Emerald dream : are you a casual?

Me: I am the filthiest of casuals.  There are none filthier than I.

Raid member: I LOVE YOU

....

Ran through all parts of Emerald Dream in LFR without reading anything.  Crushed it all.  After drinking 5 old fashioneds (an awesome drink, if you haven't tried one.  Go get blotto today!)

It's a nice change from the screaming assholes who want me to go faster in dungeons.  Fuck them.  Why do I do heroics, again?  I dunno.

Off to get the party killed in Mythics.

[Xanthippe]

So on Tuesday, I played my alliance disc priest in rBGs in the evening. Awful. Played 10 or 11 games to get my 4 wins. In the losses, my team ignored the 4 horde focusing me. In the wins, there was more than one healer and the team looked out for the healers.

Yesterday, I played alliance balance druid in the morning. Was great fun, no stress, no getting stunned repeatedly. 4 for 4 wins.

So if you're alliance, play morning bgs if you can.

MW monks are godly this time around. Resto druids a little less so but still excellent. Priests are not, and not much fun either, I'm finding. Huge disappointment after dominating for so long. In fact, I'm not particularly enjoying disc all that much at all. It's adequate but not a whole lot of fun. I'll finish my artifact eventually but will likely focus on another character more, although I haven't landed on one yet that is a great fit for great fun, although leaning more toward druid than priest. Warlock has problems, hunter too. I suspect it will take a year for Blizzard to iron things out with these classes. I don't know why they were changed so radically (warlock in WoD and hunter in Legion).

[Father mike]

So, the Blizzard Launcher updated to include an always on voice-chat function.  No, it doesn't have a "Disable" checkbox.  And moving the microphone slider to zero to effectively mute isn't a fix, because that's just a hook to the Windows system microphone volume slider. 

One step forward, two steps back.

[Paelos]

So, the Blizzard Launcher updated to include an always on voice-chat function.  No, it doesn't have a "Disable" checkbox.  And moving the microphone slider to zero to effectively mute isn't a fix, because that's just a hook to the Windows system microphone volume slider. 

One step forward, two steps back.

Uhhhhhh what? Really?

[Kail]

To be fair, it's a voice chat for the battle.net (or whatever they're changing the name to now) launcher, not a specific game, so it's not like suddenly everyone in Orgrimmar can hear whenever you fart.  You just invite people from your friends list to a channel and you can chat with them.  And there is a push to talk option, as far as I can see (haven't used it yet, maybe it doesn't work or something?)

Seems fine to me.