Mag'har Orc Scenario

I finally got exalted with the Honorbound on my Horde character, and unlocked the Mag'har Orc allied race.

The scenario itself was really neat. You go back to the alternate Draenor, this time twenty or thirty years after the events in Warlords of Draenor.

In this timeline, the Draenei became fanatical members of the Lightbound under High Exarch Yrel. They seek to convert everyone on Draenor to the Light. You have to rescue the last remnants of the Mag'har from them and bring them to Azeroth.

It's a really interesting set up. The real question is if Blizzard will do anything with this. I could see another expansion based around the Lightbound invading Azeroth. But perhaps a better method might be like how Star Trek used their Mirror Universe. Save it for occasional interaction, but don't focus on it intensely. A bit like how the Infinite Dragonflight was used.

This scenario was excellently done, and it's worth grinding rep with the Honorbound on a Horde character to see it.

Updates

Just a quick round up of what I'm playing lately.

World of Warcraft

Nothing really new. We're just coming out of the holiday lull and waiting for the new raid to open in a couple of weeks.

I guess we're going to end this tier with 3/8 Mythic. That's not bad, but for some reason we stopped putting in attempts on new bosses. Instead there was a push to do Mythic Keystone dungeons. I hope this trend was just because of the holidays, and we return to focusing on raiding.

Final Fantasy XIV

I haven't really played this much lately. I did the seasonal events. The Starlight Celebration this year was pretty neat. It featured an attempt to organize a seasonal choir, complete with a musical rhythm game. It was pretty funny if you failed. Here's a video I found on YouTube:

Lord of the Rings Online

I haven't played it since my dungeon runs. I rather think I'm going to drop it.

Soul Calibur VI

I'm still working my way through Libra mode. I stopped using the highest level weapon that dropped, and just started focusing on learning and mastering one weapon style. The style I chose was Knightmare, a heavy 2H sword. I'm about level 48, though I'm not sure how far I've gotten in the story. My guess, based on the map, is about 70-80%.

8.1 Horde War Campaign

Over the holidays I also finished the 8.1 Horde War Campaign. Like the Alliance version, there were three chapters, and the last chapter waits for the raid to open. There's also a second questline involving Saurfang.

The first chapter is a raid on the Norwington Estate to destroy stockpiled azerite weapons. It featured Rexxar. It was pretty straightforward as these things go.

The second chapter was a goblin escape with Gallywix and a mech. This was okay, if you're a fan of goblins you'd probably like it. I'm not, so I wasn't particularly enthused. There are some funny lines here and there.

The third chapter involved springing Lady Ashvane from Tol Dagor. Your compatriots are Rexxar and Arcanist Valtrois of the Nightbourne. I really like how Blizzard is reusing Allied Race NPCs in this expansion. I like Valtrois, and it's good to see her return. The actual quest is an enjoyable prison-break, featuring disguises and explosions.

The other major quest is the Saurfang quest. This is an excellent quest, as you try to discover what happened to Saurfang as he escaped Stormwind. It's really worth having a Horde character to go through it.

You even get to make a choice at the end to side with Saurfang or Sylvanas. Which is great, except it points up one of the downsides of this thing. I sided with Sylvanas on my blood elf, so to see the other side, I'd need yet another Horde character. I'm debating leveling an Allied Race, or simply using my BfA boost on a Horde character. I don't think the choice will make much difference in the long run, though.

In any case, the Horde War Campaign was a good counterpart to the Alliance one. The story is beginning to heat up, so we'll see what happens when the raid opens in a couple of weeks.

Ask Coriel: What's Changed Since 2015?

A reader asked:

I use to read your blog for many years and I have been away from WoW since 2015... How is the game nowadays and what major changes have been made ? I plan on returning next week.

Welcome back!

Since you say 2015, I'm guessing you missed Legion. The most noticeable changes Legion introduced are World Quests/Emissaries and Mythic Keystone dungeons.

World Quests/Emissaries replaced daily quests at max level. Instead of getting a bunch of dailies, when you open your map, there are a variety of quests scattered around the zones. Each day, there's an "Emissary" quest to do 4 World Quests from a specific area or faction.

Mythic Keystone dungeons (also called Mythic+) are extra-difficulty 5-man dungeons. They're timed runs which reward higher item level the more difficult the Keystone used to start them is.  They're basically an alternate to raiding, and higher Keystones award comparable gear to Heroic and Mythic raiding.

Battle for Azeroth introduced Island Expeditions and Warfronts. They're lower difficulty than dungeons, and more optional activities. Their reception has been mixed, but they're worth trying out.

Otherwise the game is pretty much the same as ever. BfA has separate stories for each faction, so it's worth having both an Alliance and a Horde character.

Any other changes in the last couple of years worth talking about?

Edit: I completely forgot, but Legion added Demon Hunters, which are a pretty neat class.

8.1 Island Expeditions, Part 2

Though Blizzard announced that they had changed the way rewards were determined for Island Expeditions in 8.1, they actually made many other changes.  Many of the changes I wanted in the previous post have been implemented, even if it is still something of a race:

• The location of monster packs has been tightened up. It's a lot easier to move between or around packs without accidentally pulling the entire island.

• The amount of Azerite elementals has been greatly reduced. I don't think I've seen a large elemental yet. This puts the focus back on the varied fauna of the island.

• Invasions of other creatures occur a lot earlier, and I think it's possible for two different types to land. Like you might get Vrykul early and then Mantid later on. 

• I think that the items you need for the various quests to rescue NPCs are now found much closer. So it's much more likely you'll actually be able to do those quests.

All in all, the changes to Island Expeditions have made them a lot smoother and a better experience. It feels like you have more control over your progress, with more focus on special monsters rather than zerging everything in sight.

Island Expeditions are still the same in many ways as in 8.0, just a more refined experience. I think they're more enjoyable, and I rather like doing the four or five Heroic ones you need for the Weekly Treasure map.

8.1 Faction Assaults and War Mode

8.1 introduces Faction Assaults. Like Legion Invasions, one zone comes under attack for a set period of time. New world quests appear, and after you complete four, you do a final quest to finish the assault.

There are some changes from Legion. The Assault World Quests don't replace existing World Quests. They are all clustered in a specific part of the zone. There are different (but similar) quests for each faction.

The assaults are well done. The zone changes, and it really feels like a major battle is taking place. For example, in Drustvar, the city has magic shields fending off Horde bombardments.

These Assaults are excellent in War Mode. I turned on War Mode to do the kill 25 Horde quests, and it was a lot of fun. There are Alliance groups running around clashing with Horde groups. The Assault structure funnels everyone into the same locations, encouraging lots of faction combat while doing the World Quests.

I even joined an Alliance raid group in Zuldazar that got hyped up and decided to sack the city of Dazalor. Not really sure why, but we invaded the bottom of the city, killed everyone at the inn, then charged all the way to the Great Seal and killed everyone there. It was pretty hilarious.

Even though I had a fair amount of fun in raids, I still don't think they're a good match for War Modes. It's just too uneven. I was in a raid of 25, and we encountered a raid of 10, and wiped them out. I strongly believe that War Mode would work better if they were somehow restricted to 5-man groups. Even multiple 5-man groups loosely coordinating would be better. It also might improve performance a bit, having several 5v5 fights scattered around, rather than a single 40v40.

I'm not sure how Blizzard would do that though. Perhaps War Mode is automatically disabled while in a raid. I have a feeling that there would be a huge outcry though.

In any case, Faction Assaults are quite fun. I strongly recommend turning on War Mode for them, and joining a small group.

8.1 Alliance War Campaign

I finished the available parts of the Alliance war campaign. There are three "chapters" available, out of four total. I'm somewhat surprised that Blizzard didn't time-gate each chapter. It would have fit well, and each chapter is a reasonable chunk of content.

The first chapter is working with Jaina to fend off an assault on Anglepoint. This was a pretty good use of a previous location and NPCs. Also, the final cutscene combined with the Achievement name ([Kul Tirans Don't Look At Explosions]) was very amusing.

The second chapter was this very odd blend of comedy and tragedy, where you use a gnomish device to "embiggen" an intelligent gorilla at the cost of his intelligence. The gorilla volunteers for this operation, seeking to strike back at the Horde (goblins, naturally) for hunting his people. So the entire quest line is a bunch of things that are normally funny, but kind of aren't anymore. I'm not certain if this was a good idea or not, but it was an interesting way of presenting the usual light and mindless gnomish shenanigans.

The third chapter was a treasury heist scenario featuring our favourite Alliance rogues, Mathias Shaw and Flynn Fairwind. Even though they're both rogues, they're both very different characters. Lots of fun banter. The scenario itself was pretty interesting, with several traps that you have to navigate.

I believe the second and third chapters are setting up potential bosses in the Dazalor raid.

There's still one more chapter, which I'm guessing unlocks tomorrow.

All in all, the Alliance War Campaign is pretty good. One interesting thing Blizzard is doing this expansion is taking their time with the story. 8.0 was all about setting initial outposts, and trying to avoid the enemy's attention. In 8.1 things are heating up, and there is more direct confrontation. This long view of the story is interesting, especially as we see many complaints that the factions aren't clashing as much as people think they should be.

Edit: One thing I forgot that I wanted to point out was that Blizzard was very good with cutscenes featuring your character in this patch. The aforementioned first chapter cutscene with both your character and Jaina walking away from the explosion was particularly stylish.

Battle for Darkshore

Patch 8.1 was released yesterday. I did the Night Elf quest chain leading to the Battle of Darkshore.

I really enjoyed the quest line. It was good to see the Night Elves go feral and strike back.

The new warfront is interesting. The initial phase before getting a base is longer, which makes it feel more like an invasion or amphibious assault.

The primary resource seems to be wood, where Arathi emphasized iron. In Darkshore it feels like you use iron for recruiting troops or special abilities, and use wood for building. I liked the Night Elf style of the buildings, and the abilities you get.

It did seem to go a bit faster than Arathi, with a shorter building phase, but that might be just because we're learning the new zone.

I'm not really sure about the undead/goblin opposition. Though that's mostly because I don't like goblins and the "tech" that they bring in. They seem out of place in a night elf/worgen/undead fight. It's all shadows and knives in the dark, then the goblins burst in with flashy neon lights.

All in all, the new warfront is pretty good. Warfronts aren't really an activity I focus on, but it's nice to do them once or twice whenever they become active in each cycle.

Island Expeditions in 8.1

Blizzard is changing up how rewards work for Island Expeditions in 8.1:

Currently in Battle for Azeroth, Island Expeditions have a chance to reward cosmetic items based on which type of creatures you and your team defeated. For example, if the island theme of the week was Hozen, there’s a chance to receive one of the Banana toys. If the invaders were Nerubian, you could have a chance to receive the Voru’kar Leecher companion pet (among other things). They way this has worked is by means of a hidden scorecard that counted your group’s efforts against anything on the island that was part of the invaders’ ecology. So if anyone in the group earned some Azerite from killing invaders or mining Azerite near the invaders, everyone in the group had a chance at the cosmetic rewards. That chance grew based on how much invaders’ Azerite was obtained, and was also a higher chance in Heroic and even higher in Mythic difficulty Islands. We set the maximum chance you could earn at a reasonable threshold, in the hopes that players wouldn’t feel that they needed to only kill invaders and not complete the islands in a natural way. 

Of course, that’s not how it worked out. Confusion around the best way to get cosmetics led to a divergence in playstyles, with some players wishing to focus exclusively on hunting specific creatures, while others wished to win the island efficiently to get Azerite. This caused a significant amount of tension between players who had differing goals. 

In Tides of Vengeance, all players on an Expedition will have a chance to receive cosmetic rewards based on the island’s inhabitants, rather than which enemies were specifically defeated. That chance will again be higher on higher difficulties, but there will be no need to strategize around invaders. The most efficient way to receive cosmetic rewards will be whatever tactics cause you to complete the Island quickly, on the highest difficulty that you’re comfortable.

I agree with Blizzard that the two playstyles interacted badly with each other. However, I wish they had chosen the other path to be the default.  Hunting rares and specific enemies is much more fun than speeding to the goal.

What I would have preferred:

• Expeditions are a fixed time, say 20 minutes.
• Most Azerite at the end wins the match.
• Normal creatures do not give Azerite, only named creatures.
• Many normal creatures become non-hostile.
• The "invasion" occurs at the half-way mark.
• No Azerite elementals.

So you can't speed up the expedition, and all you have to do to win is stay ahead of the enemy. Your focus becomes finding named enemies, and doing the mini-events around the island. Then when the invasion occurs, you hunt them down and clear them out.

Updates

Here's what I'm up to in the various games I am playing.

World of Warcraft

We're still working on Mythic. Last week was Thanksgiving in the USA, so we basically lost all our raid days and ended up just doing the first two Mythic bosses and several Heroic bosses on one day.

We also probably need to recruit some more. We pulled in a casual for the Mythics, and he hadn't even done them on LFR!  He did manage to stay alive for both fights, so I think we should recruit him.

Other than Mythic Uldir, I'm pretty much waiting on the next patch. I am levelling a warlock alt, currently in Dustwallow Marsh. But I'm not putting a lot of effort into it. Maybe I should try to get into PvP or Mythic Keystone dungeons.

Lord of the Rings Online

I started the Captain, got to the point where you get a Herald, and decided to shelve the Captain. The Herald is just a bit too janky for me.

I ended up rolling a Ministrel. However, on the weekend, I ran into a bug where a quest item in the main prologue quest would not spawn, and that pretty much blocked me from continuing. So I created an Elf Guardian. It's somewhat ironic that I went with the base tank/healer classes after saying I would play what was fun.

The other part I'm deciding about are deeds. I really like how LotRO has deeds which reward you traits like Valor, Compassion, Charity, etc. and you can "equip" those traits to give your character bonuses. I think that's an excellent mechanic, and really emphasises the "goodness" of your character, which is very appropriate for the game.

But deeds are also a little like achievements in that you have to go out of your way, or grind a bit, to finish them. So they're somewhat optional.

Final Fantasy XIV

I haven't really played this much. I got to elemental level 20 in Eureka Anemos, and went to check out Eureka Pagos. But because you can still level in Anemos, most people are levelling there, and there are no challenge log groups in Pagos.

Destiny 2

I haven't played this in a while. There was a 13 GB patch yesterday. It's probably on the way out for me, but maybe I'll give it another whirl.

Alt-based Design and Battle for Azeroth

Shintar has a post reminiscing about SWTOR's Golden Launch Days. In it, she cites the premise of eight different class stories being a attractive factor:

The promise of being able to level at least eight different alts, have it be a totally different experience, and then receive continued updates for all of those unique class stories sounded absolutely amazing. That those plans ultimately weren't sustainable is another matter, but the amount of content to play through at launch was huge. And yet the game ended up with loads of players who just speed-levelled one class to cap and then complained that there weren't enough raids. I don't even know. Though speaking as someone who did raid once I hit the level cap, the first few months were good times for me too. While there was only one operation at launch, Bioware had added three more by the end of the year. It was a golden age of constant content additions.

To me, the SWTOR's experience leads me to believe that alt-based design--design which expects players to play multiple characters--is a losing strategy. I've mentioned this before in the context of SWTOR:

It really looks like alt-based design is not a good strategy. The Old Republic greatly rewards playing alts, with eight different (excellent, in my opinion) class storylines and the entire Legacy system. And yet, judging by the timeline, I would wager that the largest group of people who quit only had one max level character, and the second largest only had two. 

To me, this strongly looks like encouraging alts is a losing strategy. The better strategy for MMO design might be to assume that most people play a single character all of the time. I mean, don't go out of your way to stop people from playing alts, but just design the game assuming that everyone focuses on one character.

With that in mind, let's look at Battle for Azeroth. BfA is an example of alt-based design, with a lot of changes aimed at encouraging people to play alts. The biggest example, of course, is the separate Horde and Alliance stories, with a full three zones for each side.

But there are more examples. For example, there is no Paragon reputation, which would keep people doing World Quests on their mains. There are no Legendaries, which again encouraged play on mains in order to increase the chances of getting one. Allied Races are a big thing, and are implicitly alt-centric. Professions are much simplified, and it's a lot easier to have a stable of alts with fully-maxed professions compared with Legion.

Now personally, I don't mind a lot of these changes. I quite liked seeing both the Horde story and the Alliance story. But I do notice that I am playing my Paladin, less and less. I pretty much raid with her now. And I am less enthused when on an alt.

I think a lot of problems with BfA can be traced back to the decision encouraging alts instead of expecting people to focus on a single main character. BfA has a ton of content. But maybe it would have been better with six common zones that all characters level through.

The pro-alt crowd is very vocal, and constantly complaining about thing like reputation, and locked content, and difficulty of gearing up. But catering to them seems to make the game less satisfying for the majority of the population.

Zandalar

This post contains spoilers for the Horde stories in Battle For Azeroth.

I finally finished the Zandalar and Horde war stories last week on my Blood Elf Warrior.

The Horde stories are decent. I'm not as attached to the Horde as the Alliance, so I didn't think it was quite as good. Also, I think straight-back trolls look weird. They look more like misshapen humans than trolls. I much prefer the traditional Darkspear look.

I did Nazmir first, followed by Vol'dun, and then Zuldazar. In hindsight, the better order would be in reverse, Zuldazar, Vol'dun, and finally Nazmir. Zuldazar in particular really introduces you to the Zandalari.

I did like the Loa, and all the different interactions with them. The star NPC Horde-side, and probably the most memorable overall, was Bwonsamdi. A very interesting personality for a death god, more reminiscent of trickster gods (Coyote, Loki, etc.) than gods of the underworld. Superb voice acting, as well.

Though, this would be the downside of starting in Zuldazar, as Bwonsamdi is introduced properly in Nazmir.

One odd thing is that there is no story connection to the King's Rest dungeon, even though that dungeon seems like it is an important part of main story.

The war story is also interesting, perhaps more so than the Alliance one. Having Derek Proudmoore become Forsaken seems like a vastly important plot point, and it will be interesting to see where Blizzard goes with this.

Zandalar was a very good country, and between it and Kul Tiras, this expansion had an enormous amount of story content.

Mythic Zek'voz

My guild killed Mythic Zek'voz last night! This puts us at 3/8 Mythic.

Been a while since I've posted a killshot

We actually killed the boss with every single person in the raid dead. Zek'voz keeled over just as the last person died. Though this is mostly because Zek'voz has a soft enrage where people are mind-controlled and need to be killed.

Mythic Zek'voz took us about three weeks or so. I think more than anything else, we just needed to put time into the fight, practice the mechanics and slowly get used to the timers.

We did this using a normal strategy, moving from one voidweaver to the next. I had an idea where half the raid attacks the left voidweaver, and the other half takes the right voidweaver. Minimize target-switching and keep people spread out and use most of the room. Sadly, we never tried it out, so I have no idea if it would work or not.

Now to see if we can repeat the kill next week. On to Vectis!

Overhauling Mounts

In theory, WoW has a very large number of mounts which players can ride. In practice, though, everyone seems to use the same three or four mounts: water striders, sky golems, yaks, or mammoths.

This is because these mounts have unique special abilities. Water striders can walk on water, golems can gather materials without dismounting, and yaks and mammoths have vendors so you can sell and repair.

WoW should spread out these special abilities to other mounts. Ideally, every mount should have one, and only one, special ability. That way you would have a variety of mounts to use in different situations.

Potential properties:

• Flying - can fly
• Fast - can move faster than normal
• Gathering - can gather without dismounting
• Vendors - has vendors
• Two-Seats - can carry a passenger
• Swimming - provides water-breathing and faster swim speed
• Steady - cannot be dazed or dismounted

Of course, this is a nerf to Sky Golems and some Two-Seats mounts as they effectively have two special abilities. Personally, I think the Sky Golem is a little too good, and could stand a nerf.

Another possibility is to come up with a few more properties, and then let each mount have two special properties. That would lead to a bunch of combinations.

I think making sure all mounts have access to special abilities would make it more likely that a wide variety of mounts are used, and reduce the importance of getting specific chase mounts. Personally, I'm a little tired of seeing everyone on water striders, and would like to use a different mount every so often.

Blizzcon: What's Next for WoW

At Blizzcon, Blizzard laid out a road map for the next year or so of WoW. Here's what's coming up:

Patch 8.1

• Releases Dec 11th
• Raid comes out after the holidays
• Raid - The Battle for Dazar’alor. 9-boss raid, Alliance attacks Horde capital. Includes Alliance bosses and Horde bosses. When you attack your same faction, it's like a point-of-view switch, and your raid appears as the other faction.
• Warfront - Battle for Darkshore. Night Elves are angry. Malfurion actually does something useful.
• Incursions - Basically Legion invasions, only this time the opposite faction attacks one of your zones.
• Azerite armor changes - new traits, a new (fifth) ring of traits, mythic dungeons have a currency and a vendor
• Some reputation changes - Paragon rewards, some reps will apply account-wide.

I like that the raid comes out in January. That seems like a good spacing to me. The two faction perspective is an interesting experiment, and I'm excited to see how it pans out.

I also like the pacing of the faction war. 8.0 was establishing bases and outposts. 8.1 heats things up with Incursions and the raid. Raising the stakes at an appropriate point in the story.

Patch 8.1.5

• Allied Races - Kul Tirans and Zandalari
• Warlords of Draenor Timewalking
• More updates to holidays
• PvE variant of Arathi Basin
• Visual revamp for Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin
• Portal rooms for Storwind and Orgrimmar, consolidating expansion transport

I approve of breaking up the patch into smaller pieces. Hopefully this makes things easier and smoother for the development team.

Of these, I think the PvE version of Arathi Basin will be the most interesting. Key question: Will the AI fight on the road or not? And which answer is actually the correct behavior for a realistic AI?

Patch 8.2

• Nazjatar - new zone, focus on naga and Queen Azshara
• Azshara's Palace - 8 boss raid
• Mechagon - megadungeon (like Karazhan)
• Horde/Alliance story continues
• Heroic warfronts
• Flying is unlocked

As I really disliked Vash'jir, it's good to see that Nazjatar is on land. Karazhan was pretty popular, so Mechagon should be good. Otherwise, this patch is fairly far out, so there's not a lot of detail yet.

I believe there's also a small 2-boss raid raid coming between patch 8.1 and 8.2. And there are profession improvements, including a questline for every profession, but I'm not sure which patch it is in.

All in all, the next year of WoW looks good. Steady content and progress. I do hope Blizzard throws a curveball in somewhere, maybe in the story. I would like Saurfang to challenge Sylvanas, but then have Sylvanas defeat or kill him fairly in the Mak'gora. That would put an interesting gloss on the Horde story, making Sylvanas the "rightful" leader by all traditions.

Blizzcon: Classic Wow

Classic WoW was demo'd at Blizzcon this year, both for attendees and virtual ticket subscribers. As I am neither, I had to rely on reports from other people on the internet. Blizzard also announced that it would launch in Summer 2019, which is a little sooner than most people expected.

From all I've heard, Classic seems to on the right path, and hitting all the notes that people want. There are still minor inconsistencies, but they seem to be around things like tauren melee range, or the exact timing of warlock summons. Which are are relatively small issues.

The two bigger areas of controversy are sharding (multiple copies of a zone) and trading loot. There was some dismay that Blizzard was sharding the demo server, and will be sharding at launch.

In my opinion, Blizzard has to shard at launch. There's going to be a ton of tourists, followed by a steep drop in population. If a healthy server has 5000 people, it will probably need 15,000 at launch. If they open too many servers, three months from now there will be many dead servers. Just like SWTOR's launch. So sharding is the best solution.

The other change is that Blizzard will allow loot trading to other people in the raid. This is primarily so that people can fix mistakes with loot distribution, like master loot misclicks, rather than filing tickets with Customer Service. I think this is reasonable, and probably a good idea.

All in all, Classic WoW looks like it is on track. Then we'll see if people really want all those inconveniences, or if it is just nostalgia.

Game Details and Fight Difficulty

Syncaine suggests that increased difficulty forces players to learn fights in greater detail:

In short, difficulty is what forces you to actually learn a game, and the absence of it is the absence of that motivation. 

For example, if you are playing an MMO and a boss puts down red circles of fire, with the mechanic being to step out of them, that mechanic only really works if you must step out. If you can beat the boss while still standing in the fire, or getting out slowly, because the difficulty is that low, you aren’t motivated to learn the mechanic. In a vacuum that might not be a huge issue, but if the overall design of the game hinges on players learning and appreciating the mechanics, the difficulty being too low ruins that entire design, regardless of how good the actual mechanic is. Responsive controls so getting out of the fire feels skillful, interesting abilities to assist in moving out, gearing up correctly so you buy yourself more response time, etc, none of that will matter or feel important if the game doesn’t punish you enough for ignore said fire.

I think this is partially correct, and partially incorrect. It's certainly true that a lot of mechanics at LFR level are totally ignored, and thus the level of play is very low. But a similar phenomenon also happens at the very highest level of difficulty.

For example, in the Mythic M.O.T.H.E.R fight this tier, there are three types of adds, each with a special mechanic. I have no idea what those mechanics are, because we send the entire group through the field at once, survive with major defensive cooldowns, and blow up all the adds instantly with a full raid's AoE.

Similarly, on Mythic Taloc, there's some sort of "stack on the tank" mechanic. We have a paladin cheese it with bubble and Spellwarding. On Heroic Zul, we have a tank suicide off the edge in Phase 2 (and then battle-res) instead of dealing with the blood on the floor. Heroic G'huun is one long exercise in using movement abilities to avoid having to throw the orb and clear paths.

This happens in other games too. There's a host of high end fights in FFXIV where you can ignore specific phases if your DPS is high enough ("skip soar"), and the community goes to great lengths to increase DPS so that they don't have to learn those phases. (This may be the NA/EU community only. My understanding is that the Japanese community actually creates and learns strategies for those phases.)

In some respects, high end gameplay is all about figuring out which fight details can be safely ignored. If you really want to learn all the small details in a fight, the sweet spot is probably around late Normal or early Heroic mode, when your players aren't good enough to brute force mechanics.

"All-left" Talents in Battle For Azeroth

I've been playing a few alts and secondary specs recently. One interesting thing is all specializations appear to have a baseline build where you just take the left-hand side talents. These talents are all passives, and the resulting builds are actually really fun.

They are all focused on the core elements of the specialization. This type of build may not be the highest performing build, but they're simple and easy to use.  They're probably a little too simple for someone's main spec, but I think they're perfect for alts or specs that you rarely play. Or even for weaker players.

For example, I was in a group for timewalking, and we needed a tank. Tanking is my least-played specialization. I hadn't actually tanked anything yet this expansion, though I had been picking up Azerite pieces and weapons. But I grabbed all the left talents and gave tanking timewalking dungeons a whirl. And it worked very well. That build was easy to play, and did a good enough job.

I did a similar experiment with my tank-spec demon hunter that I've started to level in BfA. The "all-left" build is quite fun. Fast leaps with flame crashes automatically adding Sigils is quite good while levelling.

Once again, though, these builds generally have one or two main buttons less than a regular build. This is good for weaker players, or less played classes/specs, because you don't have to remember how everything works. However, they're only "good enough", and are probably not strong enough for heroic raiding or mythic+.

Ahead of the Curve: G'huun

My guild is still steadily progressing. We actually killed Heroic Mythrax a couple of weeks ago. This week we took out Heroic G'huun for our Ahead of the Curve achievement, and then killed Mythic M.O.T.H.E.R for good measure.

Heroic Mythrax

Not a lot to say about this fight, it's very much like Normal Mythrax, just more difficult.

I had an idea for technique for the add phases, but we didn't try it, so I have no idea if it will actually work in practice.  Basically, whenever Mythrax starts casting the beam, both tanks pull their add about 10 yards counter-clockwise. The groups, which are usually stacked on the adds, move with them.

The idea here is to pretend a beam is coming towards both groups, and both groups move to avoid it. That way, you don't have to check and see if a beam is coming, which is sometimes hard to tell, and then move. You just always move.

Heroic G'huun

We wiped a lot on this boss last week, learning the different phases. We ended up getting to phase 3 a fair bit, but kept dying to spacing and malignant growth. This week we sorted that out, and got our kill.

It's been a while since we've seen a fight with specialised teams, and orb-running is kind of fun.

I'm not really a fan of the way the second malignant growths start spawning before the first ones have popped. It does make it hard to see the "edges" of the danger zones. But I guess that's part of the challenge.

It was also amusing that we emphasized that healers should heal with their backs to the boss. Kind of like Yogg-Saron, way back in Ulduar. On the next attempt, I followed that plan, then tried to cast Judgement of Light and Light of Dawn, and went, "wait a second...". I never realized that Holy paladins cannot really use that technique anymore.

Mythic M.O.T.H.E.R

We use this cheesy strategy where we send 15 people through the barrier at once, and then pretty much everyone through the second barrier 3 minutes later. We pop a lot of defensives like Spirit Link, Devo Aura, Disc Priest barriers, Darkness, etc, as well as personal defensive cooldowns.  As long as you stay in the Spirit Link, you're likely to survive.

It took a few attempts to get that settled, and then a few more to get the hang of the "wall beam, ceiling beam, fire" pattern. One tip is to avoid running diagonally to the safe spot. Run to the gap for the wall beam, then turn 90 degrees, run to the safe spot. Like the sides of a right-angled triangle.

Mythic+ Shrine of Storms +10

On Tuesday after raid, I was asked to heal a Shrine +10. How bad could it be, I naively thought.

Three hours and 179 deaths later, we finally killed the last boss. I hate the Grievous affix. It's especially annoying on the last boss. Grievous stacks on you when your health is below 90%. The healer power buff won't allow you to heal higher than 90%. So that buff must be dispelled immediately and is a non-factor in the fight.

You can cheese the last boss a little. His Sunken City cast is very long, so you can heal up and wait for cooldowns to come back up before interrupting it. Of course, you'll kill the timer doing that, but we had already blown past that.

Most of our deaths were on the second boss, though. The aoe damage from wind slices combined with Grevious were not fun, and it took us a while to figure it out.

Is Gearing a Solved Problem?

In reading all the discussion about Azerite gear, a thought occurred to me: is gearing in WoW a solved problem?

It feels like in Legion and BfA, Blizzard thought gearing up was a little too bland, and sought to "spice" it up a little. And then the playerbase gets upset with the mechanisms like Legendaries and Azerite gear which add the spice.

So is the following gear situation ideal:

• Has Str, Int, and Agi, so they're useful for multiple specializations
• Armor has plate, mail, leather, cloth types
• About four secondary stats
• One or two secondaries are clearly best for a given specialization, but the others aren't far behind
• 15 ilvls per raid tier
• 5 ilvls per mythic dungeon level
• Warforging and titanforging
• Sockets and tertiary stats are randomly gained
• Neck and trinkets don't have a primary stat, just secondaries
• Weapons and trinkets are role-specific

That's pretty much the baseline Legion and BfA gear system. 

It's a pretty solid core. You can use most of your armour for alternate specializations. You just need a weapon and trinkets. But if you're truly hardcore, you have to have correct secondaries, so you'll maintain a second full or partial set.

There are different axes of competition. For example, a Holy Paladin competes with other plate-wearers for armor; with other critical strike users for jewellery; and with other healers for trinkets and weapons.

Warforging adds some randomness and doesn't make weaker content a total waste of time. Determining if an item is better is not strictly ilvl, but mostly ilvl + correct secondaries. This gives you some gear to chase, but doesn't make replacing gear a trivial decision. A simple heuristic like "go with higher ilvl if the increase is 15 or more ilvls, otherwise pick the better secondaries" will give you good enough results. But people can always use stat weight addons like Pawn or sim their character if they really want to.

Tangent

The one thing this system is missing is a replacement for class sets. Some sort of collectible that players chase. But class sets don't really work well with the rest of the system. Getting a new titanforged piece and having to choose between it and your 4-piece bonus is annoying.

Perhaps something like guarantee that the major armor pieces (head, shoulders, body, legs) have a gem socket. Then the bosses drop "class trophies" which can go into sockets. Then the trophies, which are all unique-equipped, have the set bonuses. You can use regular gems until you get the class trophies you need. 

(I feel like I'm describing a system I've seen before, but I don't remember where. Maybe Diablo 3 legendary gems? Or the set bonus system used in Rift?)

The one problem with this is replacing gear with trophies when you don't have another copy.  Perhaps the trophy follows the Heirloom model, where getting one unlocks the ability to make more soulbound copies.

End Tangent

In any case, maybe the core gear system of Legion and BfA is strong enough, and doesn't need improvements. Perhaps Blizzard should treat it as a "solved problem" and put their design efforts into non-gear systems.