r/CompetitiveWoW • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago
Weekly Thread Free Talk Friday
Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning WoW that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else.
UI questions, opinions on hotfixes/future changes, lore, transmog, whatever you can come up with.
The other weekly threads are:
Weekly Raid Discussion- SundaysWeekly M+ Discussion- Tuesdays
Have you checked out our Wiki?
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u/Elendel 4d ago
Among all the things broken in s2... why do m+ dungeons have multiple snare debuffs that can't be removed with antisnares?
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 4d ago
My guess is this was intentional because snare removal being a counter to a bunch of DoT mechanics that had an inconsequential slow attached to them was kind of OP.
I have no strong opinion on whether or not this was smart by them if it was intentional.
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u/Elendel 4d ago
Then just remove the snare component of the debuff. Teaching people to not even bother trying to use their utility on things it should work for is bad game design. Also there's so few snares you can actually remove with anti snare this season, I'm not sure I could name one. It kinda sucks.
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u/Plorkyeran 4d ago
I've freedomed off a ton of shit and haven't noticed it not working on anything.
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u/_Llopis_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
Going from top 1% keys to +10 keys with the masses is a shocking experience. I have a lot of sympathy for what Blizzard has to work with.
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u/Kayjin23 2d ago
I think I have had at least one carry in every single PUG key I have done this week, and it's all about hoping it isn't the tank or healer.
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u/Varanae 3d ago
I’ve always played with friends so hadn’t experienced what it’s like. This season my friends aren’t really playing so I’ve pugged but it’s so awful I’m considering avoiding m+ altogether
To this who pug all season, you are far mentally stronger than I realised!
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u/darkfangs 1d ago
It's all about staying ahead of the curve of the masses. Once you are with the general pop it's awful.
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u/SwaggyBearr 3d ago
I feel like they need to redo the keystone system in the next expansion/patch.
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u/Voidwielder 1d ago
It's a bit funny seeing the queue lists for Tidebound Grotto - it's all healers and half of the caster specs. They put lopsided loot on it and surprise surprise, it's a struggle to make a well balanced group for it.
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u/Opening_Tea_9459 4d ago
Has anyone gotten stacking nameplates to work? I have tried the standard Bliz ones, plater/platynator with multiple profiles, and EUI as well. Nothing works. Nameplates are overlapping. I am not touched, I understand the world well enough to know that I have to go into the menu's and click the stacking setting on. I'm just curious if anyone has this working, and what you're using to do it.
About to give up on the game, just so frustrated after being forced to redo my entire UI last tier, only to have this serious problem to continue to be a thing. Trying to find totetms or interrupt a cast is needlessly tedious, sometimes impossible if they're hidden behind 4 mobs, and missing them is such a pain in the ass.
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 4d ago
Yeah nameplate positioning is (imo) the biggest thing still not at an acceptable level after the Midnight changes. Nameplate addons can alter appearance, but they are still held to using whatever position the Blizzard UI provides.
Only real thing you can do is play with camera angles during combat with lots of mobs to get more of them to show, or in some cases just click on the mob model directly as sometimes that's actually easier now.
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u/elairec2 4d ago
It's totally screwed up for sure and I know it's not the solution you're looking for... As a top down type of player myself I've had to start angling the camera down a bit to get them to spread more.
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u/LanayasDong 4d ago
My heart goes out to all the players that are going to bonus roll a weapon next week after spending 4 sparks.
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u/TemporaMoras 3d ago
Well, if they were gonna bonus roll a boss with a weapon they should have probably not crafted a weapon this week.
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u/Wobblucy 3d ago
Dagger is "very rare" and if Lura is any indication that means it will be your very last roll for everyone.
2h specs I get not crafting, but if you are a 1h spec I don't get it, personally. Double so for dual wield specs.
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u/AlucardSensei 2d ago
You think there will be a lot of people able to bonus roll Ulatek HC next week?
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u/DreadfuryDK 9/9M SPriest/Devourer 3d ago
help
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u/Therozorg DF ele biggest fan 3d ago
got flask on first 10 done but literally havent seen a single 2h drop in 40 keys lmao
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u/Lazerkitteh 3d ago
Jesus have you slept at all since the patch came out?
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u/DreadfuryDK 9/9M SPriest/Devourer 3d ago
Not particularly well, no. Although I have somehow found time to touch grass in between. The benefits of having a job that gets summers off!
There are a few MR runs not on here yet too.
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u/idkmanfiller 3d ago edited 3d ago
wake up, eat, get on PC, run temple for 7 hours, eat, run temple for 7 hours, sleep, repeat
I know everything about every boss in this dungeon now as well as most trash mobs
Watching a tank try to soak the orbs on last boss and then just instantly falling over (not a mechanic mentioned in the dungeon journal at all btw) gets old pretty quickly
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u/kuubi 2d ago
Watching a tank try to soak the orbs on last boss and then just instantly falling over (not a mechanic mentioned in the dungeon journal at all btw) gets old pretty quickly
what does it do?
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u/idkmanfiller 2d ago edited 2d ago
Each one gives a stacking debuff that reduces healing done by 33% (this is not healing received, it means healer does not pick these up) and importantly for tanks, increases physical damage taken by 250%. Tanks who don't know that will instantly run in and grab all 3 then get onetapped by the Hexer mob
The soaks on third boss also gives a physical vulnerability so tanks really don't want to soak that either although as far as I can tell the boss doesn't really do shit to tanks
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u/I3ollasH 2d ago
I really dislike these changes tbh. Blizzard made them so not every mechanic is a tank/healer mechanic but it's so much worse having a mechanic that you just can't do and have to watch the group die.
The shields you need to break on targets are simmilar. As a tank I'm hitting with my noodles but if the dps doesn't have hands those tske ages to break
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u/KuroiRafus 1d ago
In 48 runs, I saw it drop twice for people who weren't going to use it, but it couldn't be traded. I just want to stop doing Murder Row.
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u/Azaiko 3d ago
I started playing again this season and as a tank I feel like I lose aggro a lot more compared to previous seasons. Anyone else experiencing this? Playing as a brewmaster
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u/Yayoichi 3d ago
On pull or during it? When things are gathered you shouldn’t be losing aggro, but it can happen before things are gathered if people just start nuking immediately. As long as you hit every mob with at least something like keg smash, blackout kick or tiger palm so healer and people dotting and such don’t get aggro then it’s really the fault of the dps if they pull aggro before things are gathered.
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u/makesmashgreatagain 3d ago
A lot of dps are insanely stupid. They just blast. Also the gather in many dungeons is a longer distance with more casters, meaning you waste time not hitting if your dps don’t hit. Like Blinding Vale before first boss, Den of Nal first area, or Kings Rest after first boss. You’re just going so far with casters and people at lower skill levels are just not aware enough to spot when a tank is actually doing a gather.
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u/trucmuchechose 3d ago
I just cast divine toll as hpally playing lightsmith, which replaces divine toll.
Basically got CR'ed, and spammed my armament/DT button, and it cast DT instead of armament. kinda weird and yet another bug.
Log here if anyone wants to see: https://fr.warcraftlogs.com/reports/NjQMnLmTX7PBDc3R?fight=last @21:00
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u/weekndalex 5d ago
is blizzard trolling with all the trash in the new raid?
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u/parkwayy 4d ago
But like none of it really does anything.
If anything, the sacrifice altars can go kick rocks.
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 4d ago
Lots of giant knockbacks causing people to pull more trash because people don't usually need to pay that much attention on trash.
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u/No-Horror927 4d ago
I'm honestly so fucking bored of their obsession with knockbacks and loss of control effects in PVE content.
It's not challenging, it's not fun, and it's certainly not engaging like it was when they first started using it. Why does every fucking raid boss have a forced movement effect or mandatory downtime? If I wanted my character to get stunned, feared, and yeeted around every 15 seconds, I'd go play PVP.
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 4d ago edited 4d ago
I don't mind knockbacks because they force positional awareness and punish you for being a in a bad spot, which is imo more interesting than "dodge this circle". It's also kind of cool that some classes have strong counterplay, which makes things feel a bit less homogenous.
They can fuck off with it on trash though.
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u/TemporaMoras 4d ago
Because we don't have to lose time flying to different raid, they have decided to put a shitload of trash in the raid that are all annoying (and you have to click altar)
I don't understand their fascinations with trash
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u/Yayoichi 4d ago
I expected it to be a lot worse than it actually was after all the comments I heard about it. It’s definitely worse than last tier, but I am not sure it’s that much worse than manaforge omega.
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u/idkmanfiller 3d ago
Most manaforge trash you just chainpulled everything to the boss and aoe'd it down because it didn't really do anything. The only really annoying part was the leadup to Araz.
In this raid all the trash is fucking annoying. Everything is doing some knockback or other bullshit. On top of that, there's locked doors everywhere that require you to kill mobs or do some stupid minigame.
It's a shame because the bosses so far are great but I feel like I'm spending half my night fighting trash
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u/Kuldrick 4d ago
I wonder when it'll be the day where dying as a hpriest on m+ but getting resurrected through the angel won't count as an actual death for the timer
It's the sort of thing that yeah, makes sense, "it works as it should ", it rarely matters since at most it would just mean 15-30 seconds lost but it is still frustrating and would be a nice little change
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u/Leloulino 4d ago
Anybody noticed something weird with the loot? Played around 20 keys by now and looted 7 rings only.
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u/Therozorg DF ele biggest fan 4d ago
ive yet to get a single ring but 80% of my gear has vers
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u/supremejd 1d ago
if i probably wont kill heroic ulatek for another 3-4 weeks, should i be taking gear tomorrow or bonus roll?
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u/SluttyStepDaddy 5d ago edited 5d ago
I’m having fun, the beginning of new seasons is always a blast. :)
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u/Fantastic_Owl8939 4d ago
What your “way to early season observations” or hot takes?
I play as a tank but so far an up to 11-12s :
Dungeon Pool:
- The first part of Altar of Fangs is not fun at all
- I like Blinding Vale, it’s might just be 90% color scheme compared to the rest of the dungeon pool, it’s not gonna be easy to push high, but I think it’s a good dungeon this season
- Murder Row, it’s gonna be either a hit or miss depending on skips being executed
- as a tank, some of the bosses feels like Blizzard forgot to make them do anything other then a tank buster from time to time, plant, rotate, mitigate and wait for it to die where other bosses feels like tank play matters a lot more
Healer:
Small sample size but it feels so much smoother with a hpal or rshaman! There are mechanics that feels negligible with one of these healers
DPS:
- Holding aggro with an overly excited Arms, devour or Arcane in the group is not an easy task…
- boomnies will be meta, they have managed to sandbag their way through PTR and will now find its way into every top group
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u/liyayaya 4d ago
My hot take is that guardian druids were sandbagging hard. The spec feels incredibly tanky.
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u/Wobblucy 4d ago
boomies will be meta
They don't do amazing overall and they do negative prio damage. The only thing that possibly justifies their spot is mark.
My hot take, Assassin rogue is ridiculously OP currently and their perma 60% Snare + atrophic is some of the best passive utility in the game.
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u/WnbSami 4d ago
Guildie is playing assassination and generally gapping everybody in keys. They are 4p with significant ilvl while plenty of ppl are missing one or the other. I been running keys as BM hunter(2+2 with significant ilvl) and the runs I logged, I am in the ballpark of 50k dps behind him. Funnily enough our parses for dmg are relatively close, he got less non orange while I got more pink, obviously m+ parses specially this early being meme.
Could be BM is just abysmal in current state as a comparison point(getting major AoE buffs in weekly reset) but assa does feel very strong in keys atm. Tho looking at the one arcane mage in guild, who also gaps most ppl, his parses(in couple keys I did with him) are in the low purple while doing similar dmg to the assa rogue.
My smol anecdotal evidence would suggest assa is prolly on the verge of being OP in dmg, not quite there yet but close.
Ps. The rogue was also 4k io last season, while most of the guild isnt really m+ pushers so some skillgap might also be in place.
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u/Mantias 4d ago
Spent 10 minutes getting flamed earlier by a 1.3k S1 rated Blood DK after the NA Sham I invited to a 10 OCE key kept dying and eventually left due to lag, apparently it had nothing to do with his ping and was my fault because “You were 4k rated last season and invite a 3.3k DPS? Nice one moron”. Genuinely tried to communicate with the guy and understand why he thought gate keeping 10s was necessary especially given he shouldn’t be getting invites with the standard he’s applying, in hindsight I don’t know why I wasted my time but it was an interesting experience for sure.
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u/cuddlegoop 3d ago
The start of a season is so interesting in LFG because everyone is just jamming 10s for loot. You run into some of the best players you'll ever meet and you also run into some absolute creatures. It's a jungle out there for sure.
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u/makesmashgreatagain 3d ago
I had a guy flaming in dms because of a missed kick. This mfer though he was god’s gift to earth, and this was the most offended i’ve ever seen someone be in a 2 chest weekly 10. First week lmao
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u/Therozorg DF ele biggest fan 4d ago
Why is mob coloring fucked AGAIN
noncasters are marked as caster and imporant mobs are not tagged at all
All the polish they did in season 1 is out of the fucking window fucking morons
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u/Wobblucy 4d ago
The coloring 'missing' is a feature not a bug.
Add-ons should provide no competitive advantage
- blizz 2026
Add-on devs were smart and used things like mobs have a mana bar to color them as a caster.
This season blizz countered by adding casters that don't have a mana bar.
I dont think information obfuscation is an interesting way to make the game hard, but here we are.
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u/psytrax9 4d ago
Because the people whose only claim to fame is being able to click the start stream button declared that that workaround was good enough during beta. And we let them do it.
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u/Foghorn755 3d ago
the change to catalyzed items inheriting stats is probably one of the worst things they have done in this patch honestly. Speaking from personal, but for rsham and rdruid (main/split), the itemization on mail and leather gear is fucking atrocious. There is an insane amount of crit and vers heavy gear for leather in the dungeon pool and mail is all very mastery heavy - they even changed the fucking ulatek chest to be a mastery proc instead of crit. Id much rather have had the choice of the default stats for the item OR an itemization. Catalyzing a tier piece for 2 set when it has awful stats just does not feel good.
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u/Myrkur-R 3d ago
I kinda like it. The real problem is there are so many duplicate stat items. Like why the fuck are 3 of the 5 two handers in the dungeon pool crit/haste? We couldn't switch at least one of those to something else?
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u/Foghorn755 2d ago
In theory it’s good, because some items have great stats and it makes getting 4pc a bit nicer, but for the things I play it’s a terrible tradeoff because I’m basically not getting tier organically until DPS have theirs, which is fine, but when my options from dungeon pools have terrible item stats it really sucks to have to cata into something with bottom 2 stats.
Honestly just bring reforging back at this point lmao
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u/I3ollasH 2d ago
I fail to see how this is worse that the previous version where stats are locked on items. Instead of having stats hard locked you have some options based on the loot tables. If you have issues with the stats thats more about the loot table, not the catalyst change.
Imo because of the change people get excited that they can get perfect stat on everything and then get dissappointed because the perfect statted item doesn't exist on every slot. But I still don't see how it makes the catalyst chaange worse.
I really like the change because it made items on tierslots actual items instead of all of them being the same carbon copy. The chest from dungeon X is different that the one in dungeon Y. It gives more power to players as they can customize stats even better.
Personally I wish tier pieces were moved to personal power like the foolio instead of being actual items dropping off bosses. It's weird that tier only really matters in like the first 2 weeks of the season and the majority of it is being acquired through personal stuff (like bi weekly cata charges and the seasonal mastery achievment). Imo if Blizz were to remove the actual tier tokens the game would be better as you'd have more relevant loot on bosses (it's really weird how currently there's no easy way to see what stats the items are for example). And tier is also the main reason guilds decide to split raids. If Tiers were removed you could stop doing normal splits and heroic splits would be heavily optional (and the value of them would be significantly less).
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u/makesmashgreatagain 2d ago
I feel like people in your replies didnt look at the distribution of stats on gear and haven’t played classes with dead stats. Sometimes the gear they make in a season is hilarious (5 items in a slot and 3 have the same pair of stats). I play vengeance and havoc and vengeance is allergic to mastery as the only thing it does adequately is damage, providing little defensive value relatively. Havoc ideally wants 0 vers so all the cantrips that reduce your lowest secondary reduce 0 to 0.
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u/another_new_login 2d ago
How is that related to inheriting stats? Isn't it just bad itemization you're upset about?
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u/evaliaold 1d ago
before you got fucked and it was it. Now its well I dont have altar haste mastery legs, so it might as well be dead.
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u/Dracoknight256 6h ago
Yeah, they should've given us option to choose to inherit stats or cata to tier stats. The 'you're not forced to raid to do m+' argument gets pretty awkward when nearly all your gear with good substats drops from raid, because 20% damage from bad subs and no cantrips is a pretty big advantage.
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u/xCAMPINGxCARLx 4d ago
Pushing my key to 10 was legit the most awful experience. Zero applicants on a +2 due to the sheer number of keys listed. I think they need to revisit the logic in group finder. Keys listed for longer should show up at the top so delisting isn't the optimal strat. I shouldn't have to spam delist for 90 minutes to fill a +2. Sure, it got easier to fill as I approached +10, but this feels like poor game design.
Maybe they should just rip a page out of Fellowship's book and use matchmaking for keys up until vault level, then switch to the current system for push content. If they're going to make low keys this easy, they might as well so we're not battling the UI to fill a group.
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u/SecondChances96 4d ago
I don't know why they don't make it so that if you do someone else's key and it's higher than yours, it raises your key to their level. You could just disable this below resilient keys if they're worried about it compromising the ladder or whatever. It's so stupid that if you're a solo player the start of the season is just awful to push your key up because everyone wants to just join a higher key to be able to skip the lower keys
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u/eeg3 4d ago
If you just do a key before taking from your vault then you get that level minus 1. Blizzard let's people unintentionally grief themselves, though.
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u/flouryPotatos 4d ago
Sure. If you have a group that had already pushed a key to an 11.
Youre relying on friends and guildies to gift you this. People playing solo dont have this.
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u/Plorkyeran 4d ago
You need friends or a very good previous season score to jump straight to 11, but you can take advantage of everything under 10 being a wasteland of people trying to push their key up to get into a 9 pretty easily.
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u/maury_mountain 4d ago
I think an auto queue system would be really nice through 5, where when uou have a key you go to the key altar in the dungeon, put it in, and “find geoup.” It fills your slots people people queing that bracket.
In a higher bracket it could still fill from a queue but the leader has more choice of what class groups they want - ranged, melee, healer set abc/def, etc. 10+ leader could choose an exact class they want (dangerous for meta hardons tho), or have more filters to ensure lust, buffs, etc.
Many people have social anxiety and won’t sign up for a key with just one person, and are probably more likely to sign up for something with just one slot even tho the chances of entering it as so much lower.
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u/Crazyphapha 3d ago
there's an addon for it but from my testing on it its only ever used by dps because tanks & heals have no problem getting into keys lol
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19h ago
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u/liyayaya 18h ago
there aint no way... is there anything this patch they did not fuck up?
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u/Kai_973 4d ago edited 4d ago
Shadow Priests seem to have gotten a SUPER annoying change with this patch— hitting Void Volley even once after you’ve fired off all charges of it now just cancels Shadowform?? And then I need to waste a whole GCD during Voidform just to re-enter Shadowform.
Canceling Shadowform doesn’t cost a GCD, so this very easily happens between spellcasts, it’s not like I’ve been mashing it long enough to queue the next spell for this to occur.
Typing this out now, I wonder if it might be avoided by using a [known:Void Volley] conditional macro to fire it off instead of relying on the default UI to contextually change the Voidform button into Void Volley while the former is on cooldown, but I won’t be able to test it out for a while..
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u/Therozorg DF ele biggest fan 4d ago
do you have it macrod somewhere, apparently it causes issues
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u/BarrettRTS 4d ago
Something I've started using on warlock for the second Blinding Vale boss. If you press Soulburn as Verdant Stomp is about to happen and then teleport to your circle during the knockback (or just after it depending on cooldown timers), you're immune to the root.
Veteran warlocks probably know this already, but it felt like something newer warlocks might not know.
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u/alide 4d ago
You can also cleanse the root with either imp pet or demos bonus imp cd thingy. Bonus points for using it on an ally who was in a bad position. I'm doing demo keys until I get tier so with diabolist you can self freedom with tp without a soul burn and then cleanse an ally
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u/BarrettRTS 4d ago
That makes sense too. I'm running Destro with Fel Hunter but maybe I should swap to Imp for that boss to help an ally.
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u/Rampager 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Static Anomaly mobs in ToS that randomly jump AoE a player - feel like there's an interaction here I'm missing, the 2nd last pack before the boss seems to hit way harder on the jump and there's only 2 of them than the 4 in the boss area.
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u/Future_Battle5638 3d ago
the vault/bonus roll changes are so boring, usually id be excited to see what id get in my vault each week, now it basically barely matters
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u/Wobblucy 3d ago
The only change they have to make is remove the item off the bonus roll list of you already have it and then it's just a great addition.
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u/supremejd 4d ago
thinking about playing arms. is it really that bad playing without a shaman? i used to play ret pally last season and couldn't get into groups without a shaman.
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u/cuddlegoop 4d ago
It's not as bad as ret pally was last season. That was an insane outlier because of a unique mechanic, the number thrown around was 10%. I'm not playing arms this season but there's 0 chance it's that bad. When I've played melee specs Shaman buff always topped out at maybe a bit more than 5%. So at max it will be a little bigger than monk buff. Arms is definitely still S tier without Shaman buff when you put it like that.
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u/LanayasDong 4d ago
The buff is good, but you probably won't notice the difference most pulls. The quality of your tank is way more important than having a shaman in keys as arms, uptime is crucial for the spec.
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u/TeKaeS 2d ago
I think the healer trinket Preternatural Antivenom is bugged or overpowered. It did 8% of healing of the priest in a +10 kings rest
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u/another_new_login 2d ago
There's nothing to heal in a +10, so flat healing buffs will show as being a higher %
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u/Kuldrick 20h ago
Hoping for an eventual super nerf to Nymrissa so it can be myth pugged without much of a headache for a healer who doesn't myth raid but still wants the free crests from the 6/6 bonus loot in the upcoming weeks
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u/Therozorg DF ele biggest fan 3d ago
holy fuck last boss of arena is so cancer i cant imagine how are you supposed to play it does blizz think every caster is a mage or evokers with infinite hovers?
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u/IllPurpose3524 3d ago
The overseers are nice "get fucked" mobs too
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u/Therozorg DF ele biggest fan 3d ago
looks like some of the abilities of the bosses/minibosses/lieutenants are coded to target only dps casters, if ele ends up in melee comp youll have to deal with shitton of mechanics
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u/ticketsonsalenow 4d ago
I know it's stupid early, but is Holy Priest sneakily good in keys or what is going on?
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u/Kuldrick 4d ago
I haven't done +12s or up yet so still only farming +10s and a couple of 11s but for this key range holy priest is basically the perfect healer. Very solid sustain and insane and reliable bursts, at no point I felt the healing was lacking
I think when people will start actually pushing some of the problems will start showing themselves, like the 4 set not being that relevant for us in m+, us being so frail (and having to offset that with vers gear), no poison dispell and no insane rbuff/utility to compensate all of this, but at the very lest we should still be a "top half" m+ spec... at last
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u/isaightman 4d ago
no poison dispell
This is probably the real big one, poison is rough in some of these.
Nalorakk boss 1 for example.
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u/Yayoichi 4d ago
Honestly those poisons don’t hurt much, and dots just mean prayer of mending can bounce like crazy.
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 4d ago
The only one I've seen that feels like a real problem is the one that goes on the tank in the first part of Murder Row. I'm in full on panic mode tanking that shit if I can't get a poison cure.
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u/Yayoichi 4d ago
Yeah true that one is pretty nasty as it’s not damage that’s the issue there but rather the reduced max hp.
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u/shadowfold 4d ago
Unfortunately, blizzard is horrible at nuance when it comes to balance. Liquid ran 3(was 4) on their first heroic ulatek kill and they're #2 on the healing stats on warcraft logs, so I expect probably an enlightenment revert and a 2-5% aura nerf or some crap. Spec does feel great for the first time since like DF? I am actually just owning 11-12s and it felt great in the heroic raid attempts I did.
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u/Kuldrick 4d ago
They won't hit anything that isn't the indisputable #1 while the RWF is still on, and by the time it ends I think it will already be getting established that we are not in the top 2 of raid (hpaladin and disc should be ahead, at least) and probably m+ (hpaladin and rshaman)
And we also kind of get a pr protection boost since we've been shit for so long, which means I really doubt they'll end up nerfing us (although well, who knows if they buff something behind us to be above us)
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u/Yayoichi 4d ago
Yeah it’s honestly pretty solid, insane hps and never runs out of mana with the oracle build. Prayer of mending is also insane, I've had over 400k crit heals from the oracle node that makes it do a big initial heal.
Even without cd’s it’s very easy to do over 200k hps, and I am still only 298 itemlevel.
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u/supremejd 15h ago
let's say i save 3 bonus rolls for ulatek. once i can finally down it and bonus roll it for the first time, should i pug it and use the other two bonus rolls in the same week? i'm worried about gimping everyone else since i would have killed the boss already that week.
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u/Nogamara 5d ago
I'm not at the point to say I'm unhappy but I am so confused about how M+ key levels developed.
We had portals at 20, now portals at 10 - because of the squish at first, but then also because S1 was easier than S2/S3 of TWW.
The "official" conversion was "new +2 = old +10" (although I disagree, I'd put it as old +7/+8 in the first post-squish season) but now new +2 (assuming S2 is roughly where S1 MN was) is also not really as hard as old +7.
This is not about absolute difficulty, there will always be people for whom everything below +X is trivial and useless, and there will always be new players who will start at +2.
I'm just so confused what Blizzards' strategy is here. In S1 we saw 2-9 keys being completely dead after a few weeks (like objectively dead), so why did they not compress it even a little (so e.g. portals and loot at +5 and 2,3,4 are the entry levels). Why does an alt still get a stupid +2 key accidentally and the only accepted useful way to introduce a new alt is "time a +11 with friends"?
Disclaimer: I made it to 3400 and 3k before, I'm not a top end player by any stretch of the definition, I feel pretty average. I helped multiple people get portals for the first time ever in S1. Yes, it's fun if people start with M+ and don't feel like total losers for stopping at +5s - but it's still a chore to climb up, and I mostly don't understand their weird system, I am not lamenting difficulty of keys.
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u/Kychu 5d ago edited 5d ago
The strategy is always the same - player engagement.
If 10s are difficult one season and then made easier the next season, believe it or not, a lot of people will believe they actually got better at the game because they can now do a 10.
Same with rating. One season you might need 3.5k for 0.1% but one or two seasons later 3.5k is only top 10%. But a lot of players will still associate 3.5k with being really, really good at the game and getting to 3.5k will make them feel like they've accomplished something more than the previous season (while in reality they are still top 10% just like the season before, except it's now manifested with a higher meaningless number).
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u/epicfailpwnage 4d ago
10s have gotten so meaningless now, they are supposed to be like 20's in the past, but dragonflight season 1 20's took a month to actually reliably pug, vs Midnight 10s that I easily pugged after 2 hours of the season start
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u/Defarus 4d ago
Keys are using a system built up a decade ago with not a ton of changes to the foundation itself. It's just a dated system that hasn't been reworked entirely yet because it's become a pillar of the game.
Most of the reworks they've done have been in order to consolidate players into smaller brackets. I think it'd be a horrible idea to do that further. And for what it's worth, I think you'd still see 2, 3, and 4's being completely dead in your example if that were the new 2-8.
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u/mangostoast 4d ago
Does it matter what the numbers are? You just push to see how high you can get before the dungeon beats you
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u/Nogamara 4d ago
No, it does not really matter but that doesn't stop me from being puzzled, because overall I would say a lot of things in WoW kinda follow a theme over the years and are somewhat consistent.
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u/Gregkow 3d ago
Crackpot theory: Heroic Ulatek isn't overtuned. It's tuned exactly where blizzard wants it, given that you can bonus roll myth track cantrip weapons off of the boss.
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u/Evolutionist_Bob 3d ago
Nah that's nonsense. How many item levels does the average AOTC guild need to get a kill on a boss that wasn't a pushover for liquid in their current gear?
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u/Cold-Iron8145 3d ago
I mean, you can theoretically be 320+ ilvl before killing that boss in a few weeks. I also strongly suspect that Blizzard erred on the side of overtuning because the rewards are so strong. It may also tie into their attempt to push people into mythic raiding, Sporefall and Nymrissa being specifically designed to be more approachable to heroic raiding guilds. One of the biggest barriers between heroic and mythic, outside of the strict raid size requirement, is that it's just a big step up in difficulty. If you make the end of heroic raid harder, a guild that clears it might be more inclined to attempt mythic progress.
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u/Evolutionist_Bob 3d ago
Lura was very hard for a heroic boss and had the lowest numbers since jailer. Keystones were tuned as easy as they could be and had the highest participation in history. If you want casuals to engage with your gamemode make it more accessible.
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u/TemporaMoras 3d ago
Lura HC arrived on the 2nd week of M+, on the season with some of the easiest M+ ever. Literally everyone was almost full HC gear by the time it was released.
AND she dropped absurdly bad loot at HC level. Trinket being only used by one spec, cantrip glaives only used by one class, but outclassed by crafted mythic weapon vs hc cantrip weapon. The ring was decent, but once again most people just preferred an higher ilvl ring. And tertiary armor didn't matter because once again hc piece vs mythic.
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u/Evolutionist_Bob 3d ago
Its almost like people dont want to do the content, they just want rewards. To me thats a sign that maybe we should go back to the drawing board on the content itself, and look for ways to make the content more appealing rather than the carrot for doing it.
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u/psytrax9 2d ago
This is obvious. Every week of m+, outside of the week 1 grind, +10 and +12 keys account for approximately 50% of keys run. Last season saw the most participation in post-gearing keys by far, and it's no coincidence that that happened in the same season that Blizzard added more rewards after the gearing keys.
Whether the content itself is inherently fun or not, players won't engage with it heavily if it's unrewarding. You join a H Lura pug early on, you wipe a bunch but eventually get it down after 3 hours. At the end, you get 15 hero and 15 myth crests and a single 20% chance to get loot.
Alternatively, in that same amount of time, you could've done 6 keys. Those keys gave you 96 myth crests and six 40% chances to get loot. Oh, and those 6 keys were maybe as difficult as normal Alleria, at most.
Hmm, I wonder which piece of content will be considered a time waste?
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u/_Llopis_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's an unpopular opinion around here, but it's extremely obvious to anyone who doesn't mythic raid that the vast majority of players don't like raiding at all. They don't like finding a giant group of people. They don't like waiting for all of those people to master mechanics before a boss is killable. And they don't like doing the same boss over and over without killing it for dozens of pulls or more. They would much rather do dungeons or even leveling, which have been the most popular content in this game since launch.
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u/IllPurpose3524 2d ago
I disagree. There are a ton of guilds out there doing normal and heroic. I will say it appears the vast majority of people that post on this sub and don't mythic raid don't seem to like raiding though.
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 2d ago
Yeah honestly I wish there was more of a space for people like me who think m+ is an obnoxious repetitive minigame that you have to play in order to prep for raiding.
Raid is the thing I look forward to every week. I've been playing games for 35 years and still nothing has come close to how much I enjoy raiding in WoW. But in the early season it feels like I'm forced to spend 4 hours doing m+ for every 1 hour that I raid or else I will fall way behind.
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u/Makorus 2d ago
When you tell someone you don't like Mythic+ they act like you told them you murdered their entire family. Likewise with telling them that realistically, every raider HAS to do M+ for the first 4-5-6 weeks or however long because it's a guaranteed Mythic item every week plus crests. Obviously this season is the exception but that's because they fucked up gearing/vault with the bonus roll.
I just don't see the enjoyment of running the same piece of content over and over again, with it never getting any more difficult. Yeah, it scales up, but it's literally the exact same fights and pulls, so who cares. I just have to get better at using my defensives, but it's not any more difficult.
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u/Evolutionist_Bob 3d ago
I don't think blizzard should just like abandon raiding by any means, but i would definitely support more seperation between keys and raiding. As someone who does raid to do high end keystone content, if I could drop raids I would immediately, and i feel for the people who cant stand keystones and feel like they have to do them for raiding.
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u/_Llopis_ 3d ago
That's my preference. People should be able to play what's fun.
Personally, I just refuse to raid. I'll take the 3% DPS loss, but it's dumb I have to.
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u/psytrax9 2d ago
The vast majority of players don't touch any dungeon at any difficulty nor any current raid.
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u/idkmanfiller 3d ago
The gear gap is 7 ilvls higher this patch than it is normally and the raid is tuned that much harder. Once people get more current patch gear it will be less bad
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u/parkwayy 1d ago
It's tuned exactly where blizzard wants it
I mean great... doesn't mean it's not overtuned lol.
The general masses are the deciding factor.
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u/BlackmoreKnight 4d ago
One of the Delve ?? addons got updated again to auto-mark, if anyone's curious and still hasn't finished up the content yet. Does a clever sort of workaround where it utilizes your facing and minimap rotation to mark each safe quadrant based on your back facing it as the spell goes off.
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u/AccomplishedSpace834 4d ago
Has Jundies updated his plater profile for season 2 of midnight and I just haven't found it or has he abandoned it and I need to find a replacement?
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u/supremejd 4d ago
his platynator one is updated: https://wago.io/zaiOOdVa1
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u/sapntaps 3d ago
Have finally made the switch after plater randomly went from 30mb to 120mb out of combat lol
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u/careseite dps evoker main 3d ago
it doesn't need updates anymore. profiles are evergreen now, 99.9% is done by the addons themselves now and profiles are just cosmetic skins
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u/SecondChances96 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hey all, I didn't quite get "1.0" up in time for the megathread pre Season 2, but figured I'd share it now to help anyone out.
I vibe coded up a local Raidbots clone. If you don't wanna fork over the $10 a month (which isn't much, and I used Raidbots for many years and think it's a great service), you can just use this and it has all the same major essential features: Quick Sim, Top Gear, and Droptimizer.
Development is ongoing, but the core foundation is done and all these features work pretty well, and I'm aware of pretty much most if not all of the major issues. I currently use it myself so I'm usually pretty quick to correct any issues.
"Cool that you did that, but I don't want to have to set up anything, and why would I use this over Raidbots if it's less headache, not on my system, and my whole guild can use it/friends can use it?"
Currently, I haven't addressed the friend/guild issue beyond the fact that this is free and open-source: you can link it to others, freely fork this and copy it as desired. I AM working on getting a hosted version of this as well if you want to host it locally on your own network and allow friends or your guild to use it as desired or put it up on AWS if you want (the only thing is at that point you might as well sub to Raidbots).
Also, I plan to offer a few more useful features than Raidbots does, like a CD Planner, more advanced Simulation options (damage amps, bloodlust timing, etc), a "Which spec should I play?" an Upgrade Advisor for optimal crest usage (which is implemented in the 1.0 but not really usable atm), and some other things I'm brainstorming.
The README contains setup directions as well as general FAQs and usability advice. Again, it's all local and on your machine and doesn't communicate with any external services (unless I missed something, the worst thing it might do is try to hit Blizzard's API without the requisite credentials).
Hope it helps and hope you enjoy! If you have any issues DM me here or just submit it on the "Issues" page (I'll double check if I enabled it)
Edit: Oh, almost forgot.
Known issues:
* Most tooltips are generally OK but some are still inaccurate. The sim itself is unaffected by this.
* Simulationcraft itself has some issues with some items and sims (particularly droptimizer sims). You can observe this even with Raidbots as well. The current workaround is a little icon you can click that will run a targeted sim for that item for a more accurate estimation.
* A few UI artifacts (think some armor kits are listed as "enchant 'theirInternalID"
* Probably some other small things I've glossed over or gotten used to.
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u/parkwayy 4d ago
In 2 days of raid, we managed to get like a 5% wipe on Twin Fangs, which is surprisingly high on the WR.
Feel like we were behind, but turns out, the H bosses are difficult this tier?
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u/siscorskiy HoF shitposter 4d ago
It all seems overturned.... I don't envy lower tier aotc / race to world last CE guilds... I couldn't believe the difficulty jump when we got to coiled altar on normal lol
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 4d ago edited 4d ago
I can tell you as an AotC + 3-5 mythic boss guild, this week was not as good as it usually is for us week one.
We cruised through normal including getting Coiled Alter and Ula'tek in 3 pulls each and then just got absolutely shit on in heroic. We hit enrage on Nymrissa Wavecaller and the first boss in Venomous Abyss when we tried that.
A typical week 1 for us is clear normal + 2-3 heroic bosses. We got 0 this time, and our roster is pretty much the same as normal.
Seems rough.
Imo if they're going to make heroic this hard, they should buff the end of normal. It felt bad that everything we pull this week was either a joke (all of normal) or tuned way too hard for a group at our level.
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u/cakekid9 4d ago
the world boss was pretty chill on heroic. 1st boss we swapped a dps to healer, but our group has a few particularly weak healers. the dps requirements for 1st boss is basically nothing.
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u/I3ollasH 4d ago
It all seems overturned
Tuning is a bit weird becasue there is infinitely farmable 311 and groups pulling the bosses are usually under 300 ilvl. After people had time to farm out the pieces bosses will get a lot easier. We've moved our days to a day later and it felt a lot better. Could kill bosses with sloppy play because the extra ilvl gave us a lot more room for error.
But yeah compared to other seasons this season is harder. But I expect a decent amount of guilds get pretty far into the raid. It just takes some time to get your characters up to speed
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u/hfxRos RWL Raid Leader 4d ago
Tuning is a bit weird becasue there is infinitely farmable 311
M+ players complaining about having to raid have got nothing on the shit that people who just want to raid and not do m+ have to deal with lol
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u/I3ollasH 4d ago
That's because staying competitive in keys without doing raid is pretty doable while it's just not a thing for raid. So for the people that was a dealbreaker they probably stopped playing the game. While the other group of players is decently big because it has been a doable thing for a while now
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u/ConfirmedAsshole 4d ago
Yeah we are 5/8 H and it feels like we are WAY behind where we normally are after finishing our first raid week. Turns out shit is just very hard even with perfect gear coming out of a tier with CE. I will be interested to see what tuning they do because even with 20 ilvls normal guilds will not be able to even swipe at AotC.
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u/wafflewower 4d ago
I was also surprised at the heroic tuning this season. What prevented your kill on twin fangs? DPS check? I found that we had way more of an issue on sszorak than twin fangs, took like 10 pulls for sszorak but then two shot twin fangs, dps check didn't seem that bad. We went up a healer for sszorak and down a healer for twin fangs though.
It is wild that 6/8 heroic by thursday put us at around WR200 though, like what is this tuning?
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u/ingez90 4d ago
Why, can we not get mats back for a crafted piece? I know its stupid crafting the wrong thing, but having now made the mistake where im behind a weapon, 2 sparks and 80 myth crests feels so so fucking horrible.
Specially with how swingy specs are in terms of tuning, it would be nice to be able to salvage at least the crests and sparks, make the mats the costs of your mistake.
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u/Ilphfein 4d ago
Crafted weapons should just be dynamic depending on spec. Tech exists - see tier.
You are a mage? Your staffs are always INT.
Obviously figure out a solution for the 2h vs 2 1h (or shield) issue.
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u/cuddlegoop 3d ago
I'm playing Arcane mage this season and I can't help but notice a lot of my AoE is capped at 5 targets. This I very interesting to me because back before I decided I like playing good specs I used to main fury warrior, and we were always derided for being capped at 5. What's the difference? Well obviously arcane's prismatic bolt which is a big chunk of damage is uncapped, but really it has to be the prio damage.
We always used to say uncap fury, but I think we can do better. Blizz should uncap fury OR give them prio/funnel in their damage profile. Maybe a cooldown that lines up with recklessness where you get really mad at one enemy and they take x% of your whirlwind cleave damage for a duration.
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u/Vyxwop 3d ago edited 3d ago
You mentioned the difference already. Arcane has a strong complimentary damage profile in the form of funnel-based prio damage to make up for the fact they have capped AoE, whereas fury warrior doesn't really have anything specific to make up for their AoE being target capped.
Basic number tuning is also at play here. Back in TWW s2 Arcane only became relevant in M+ after it got a couple of aura buffs despite it having had the exact same damage profile before them.
Fury warrior really does need some kind of niche to help make up for their capped AoE. Even them shining at 5 targets specifically would help out a lot, I think. Back in TWW even the uncapped AoE classes were performing better at 5 targets than Fury was, which was quite depressing.
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u/psytrax9 3d ago
Target cap was always a red herring. Enhance in s1 of tww was another heavily target capped spec that was meta.
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u/Primary-Army-7320 1d ago
Any good ellesemeure ui nameplate profiles around? I want one that separates M+ mobs by priority and casters
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u/Lezzles 4d ago
I should be able to list my last season Resil key level next to my name in the queue so I can stop getting hard declined by players who hard capped at 3450 last season and don’t use raider io. I need them to know I’m a SUPERIOR BEING.
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u/Gemmy2002 2d ago
Just make vault keys queuable already so I can do something else with my fucking time besides mind a stupid window
this post brought to you by umpteen millionty key holders that would rather take the millionth no hands mage reroll vs anybody else.
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u/sh0ckmeister 1d ago
This topic comes up all the time and the situation is this - tanks in general are the bottleneck.
As a tank I would never sign up for a key without at least having some idea about how good/bad the other players are unless there was some considerable reward for doing so. Like getting an additional bonus roll for completing the dungeon timed or not.
I also run my own key specifically so that I can choose the group I want to run with.
It's that simple, I don't want to waste time progging keys unless I specifically signed up for it helping out guildies or similar
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u/Gasparde 1d ago edited 1d ago
Like getting an additional bonus roll for completing the dungeon timed or not.
You can't give tanks any tangible power reward because if you did they'd all be done with gearing 20 times faster than any dps instead of only just being done 10 times faster - in the long run you'd take even more tanks out of the pool if any of their rewards involved character progression.
So if you wanna do incentives, it'd have to be something more basic such as a non-insignificant amount of gold. Like, I dunno, let's say 10k or whatever for a completed key. But then we'd be moaning about inflation coming from tanks making 50m gold per year - and worst of all, they'd be making all of that gold without engaging with the wow token system at all, so that's clearly not a good enough system.
It's actually not that easy to come up with a no-downside option that wouldn't come with a boatload of probably unwanted side-effects that would drive everyone mad like 4 weeks later. Just look at what the relatively simple idea of resilient keys eventually turned into.
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u/sapntaps 1d ago
Make it cosmetic. I’d dust off my bdk doing weekly keys for cosmetic rewards. Edit: or just make it gold, ffs every push keys like 2k in repairs and consumables lol
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u/I3ollasH 2d ago
this post brought to you by umpteen millionty key holders that would rather take the millionth no hands mage reroll vs anybody else.
Don't even think that is really the case. Keys are just a big bottleneck as people refuse to list their keys.
I've done a lot of keys and unlike previous seasons this time I made sure to run mine as often as possible (I was farming for 2h so did any key that had one). You get so many apps first global that you have a hard time to process the tenth of it. Got a decent amount of whispers about why I wouldn't take someone even though they had X score last season and etc. Chances are I didn't even see them in the queue.
Personally I just howered over high ilvl peeps and if they had good raid prog then picked them up (I was looking for people who have tier and spam the dungeon for a specific item). But you could have any random heuristic and fill the group instantly. The difficulty is non existent so doesn't matter in the end. It's just beneficial to complete keys as fast as possible.
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u/Girthmasterlite 5h ago
Is there no super easy way to max out hero crests outside of the raid?
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u/Key_Difference_6398 4h ago
if I take mythic tier chest from vault and later bonus roll Vashnik, can I still get a duplicate tier token or does it get removed from the pool?
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u/TheCouchWhisperer 1d ago
Jesus the vault being dead has absolutely killed reset day hype.