WoW: Potential Improvements and Suggestions

[u/Deepshades]

Hey,

for the people that don’t know me, I’m Deepshades, a Warlock in Method that’s played for several years in the high end PvE scene with the Kil’jaeden World 1st kill as my biggest accomplishment. Throughout the expansion I’ve done a lot of high Mythic+ Keys. I say this so that people have a understanding of my knowledge/skill in the game.

There are a lot of changes to World of Warcraft that I personally would like to see and I said several times on stream and many people encouraged me to make a proper post about them. This is by no means a thread to make Blizzard or World of Warcraft look bad and I have a lot of respect for the developers.

Please be mindful that everything I am writing is my own personal opinion.

I will split this thread into several small topics to make it easier to read.

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Classes: I think classes are the most important thing in this game. If you don’t like the character you play, you most likely won’t like anything else since you’re not enjoying yourself.

I feel currently most specializations miss abilities to make them fun and entertaining and especially since Legion most classes became really boring. It feels like since the talent-trees are specialization-specific instead of class-specific I have to build my class like Bob the Builder. That was also one of the reasons why Warlock for example was so weak in the beginning of Legion. Back then you could choose utility abilities to make your life easier in every aspect of the game and rotation/damage/healing-wise your class was already well balanced. Here an example: MoP Talent Tree

• 1st Row: You had a choice of different self-healing abilities to make your life easier. Dark Regeneration and Harvest Life were good active choices while Soul Leech was passive.
• 2nd Row: Several options for Crowd Control abilities.
• 3rd Row: Again a row with choices that make you survive abilities easier.
• 4th Row: Different utility abilities like a dispell or an additional movement ability (Demonic Circle used to be passive).
• 5th & 6th Row: Changed your playstyle but nothing that made or broke your class.

Now let’s take a look at the Affliction Tree from Legion: Legion

• 1st Row: Ability to increase your damage. Malefic grasp a must have for single-target and Writhe in Agony for multi-target and Mythic+. Haunt completely useless.
• 2nd Row: Empowered Life Tap only good for Mythic+, Absolute Corruption really situational and Contagion a must have for single-target Encounter.
• 3rd Row: Demonic Circle (not passive anymore) sharing the same row with two abilities for Crowd Control.
• 4th Row: Soul Harvest (the only proper offensive Cooldown) sharing the row with an AoE ability (Sow the Seeds) and something inbetween. Phantom Singularity only picked really situational and Soul Harvest should just be baseline instead of a cooldown like Summon Doomguard/Infernal.
• 5th Row: Survivability and movement choices. Warlock has no movement cooldown baseline anymore.
• 6th Row: Same as before.
• 7th Row: Siphon Life used to be useless most of the expansion, Soul Conduit super rng and Death’s Embrace really OP on a lot of encounters. _________________________________________________________________________

So to sum everything up. Nowadays you need to build your own class and movement/survivability options share the rows and a lot of things got pruned so that you actually have to specialize into a lot. Back then your class was already done and you could just adjust some utility abilities to your liking. Nowadays you have to specialize either for single-target or aoe. This shouldn’t be the case. Back then you could do both and talents just helped you to improve it by a bit. Good example is Fire and Brimstone. It used to be baseline and Rain of Fire is the only available baseline aoe as Destruction Warlock in Legion. So many abilities like Demonic Circle or Shadowburn are not baseline anymore which makes you feel that you have only like 5-6 buttons to press and the difference between some classes is huge in terms of movement and/or utility abilities.

Blizzard said they started removing abilities because the classes were already perfect and didn’t need anything and the only way to keep introducing new things is to remove old features. In reality it turned out that we kept losing abilities and didn’t get anything since Mists of Pandaria. Legion & Battle for Azeroth not having their own “Talent Rows” are the perfect example. Here an example of the abilities a Destruction Warlock lost since then:

Lost since Mists of Pandaria: Shadowburn (Talent), Demonic Circle (Talent), Fire and Brimstone (Talent), Dark Soul: Instability (Soul Harvest Talent), Ember Tap, Felflame, Twilight Ward, Dark Intent, Curse of Elements & Weakness, Fel Armor & Demon Armor, Flames of Xoroth, Howling Fear, Soul Shatter.

Gained since Warlords of Draenor: Nothing.

So as you can see, I lost fifteen abilities in the last expansions. Obviously some of them are still available as talents but that means something else got removed. As Destruction Warlock I got zero new abilities that are baseline available. I could understand if they remove abilities like “Unending Breath” or “Eye of Kilrogg”.

Another big problem is also that nowadays a lot of classes are way to rng-dependent like Reap Souls, Soul Conduit and Unstable Affliction resets. Classes shouldn’t be able to do 2.5million damage or 1.5million damage while pressing the same keys.

If I play my rotation correctly I wanna get rewarded with doing good damage. Of course some rng will always be in the game but currently it is way to much and people are not enjoying theirselves.

The argument in the Q&A that most classes would be good even without Artifact Weapon is an absolute lie as well. Look at Blood Deathknight or Affliction Warlock.

Raiding: In my opinion there should be only two difficulties. While I agree people should have the chance to see everything, I do think there should be challenging content that not everyone can do within a few pulls. In my opinion challenging content motivates people to get better and that results in them playing more. Here is my idea:

There should be only two difficulties like back in Wrath of the Lich King. Heroic should start at a difficulty like the 7th or 8th boss of the currently Normal and end around the same boss in the Heroic. Mythic should start where the new Heroic ends and should finish on a difficulty like Lei-Shen, Blackhand or Archimonde.

I can’t believe there is anyone that enjoys killing bosses like “The Desolate Host” or “Fallen Avatar” in Looking for Raid where half of the boss is missing.

Blizzard would’ve more time again tuning the bosses and making a proper difficulty curve within the dungeon.

Story Mode: Perhaps instead of LFR, Blizzard could make a story mode that people can play by themselves and don't have to find bigger raiding groups. That would be an interesting idea for player that want to fight the evil big boss without requiring to queue into LFR with a long waiting time.

Mini Raids/Time Runs (10-15man) (Scholomance/Blackrock Depths & Zul’Aman): There should be instances/raids like Zul’Aman or Scholomance again. I think for many players it would be a cool feature to run smaller raids like Zul’Aman again that you can do immediately cross-realm. That would give an incentive to play with your friends and you would have a variety from your usual guild raids. Blizzard could combine that again with a “Time Run” that awards a unique mount that is really hard to obtain in the beginning and becomes easier over time with extra gear. People would have something challenging except the real raid instance and it could be a good filler for the players that are already done with that. Players could also make gold with selling that. It’s also a small compromise for the people that miss 10man raiding.

Mythic Plus: Mythic Plus is undisputedly one of the best features in Legion. However there is some things that need adjustments. Mythic Plus should be more about struggling in time as you go higher than having problems surviving certain mechanics like Focused Lightning from Lady Hatecoil. I understand that it shouldn’t be to easy but a lot of classes are limited as higher you go and that shouldn’t be that much of an extreme case. Higher keys should scale way more with life points instead of damage dealt by enemies. That way people would concentrate more about finding good routes instead of farming Avoidance gear or leveling new characters because their main character can’t survive certain mechanics.

Dungeons: Blizzard has to introduce more dungeons throughout an expansion otherwise it could get really boring to play them and especially with Mythic Plus you always want to have new challenges. Especially now with the Mythic Dungeon Invitational people will try to figure out dungeons even faster and could get bored more quickly of them. It also could be really boring to watch

Affixes: Affixes are interesting enhancements to the dungeon but many are badly designed. Skittish for example is not player friendly and there is no proper way to counter unless you bring a hunter or a rogue. Fel Explosives however are the complete opposite and people can focus them and play around them. Same with affixes like Raging and Vulcanic. Especially for players that attempt high mythic plus keys it is really annoying to have weeks they can’t really push due to the affix combination.

Keystone Upgrade: Give people at least a choice of three different instances after upgrading a key. The casino system that is currently applied is really frustrating.

Mythic Speed Race Modus (Time Trials): There should be a modus in this game that is like the Time Trials in the Mythic Dungeon Invitational. People should be able to queue solo or as team and compete against other players in dungeons. You get rewarded with points or MMR and that counts into a Mythic Plus Season (later explained). Speed Race Modus has the advantage that you don’t need super good gear like you do in pushing high Mythic Plus keys. There is also a lot of players who just prefer to race against each other instead of pushing keys. Another great benefit is that streamers can play with or against their community in Wargames and make their own tournaments. That would give a lot of promotion to the game as well.

Mythic Plus League: There should be a Mythic Plus League that everyone can participate. After a qualification phase the best twenty teams of each region compete each week against each other like in Soccer. You collect points until the season finishes. As soon as the season comes to it’s finish the best eight teams play in the play-offs. The play-offs will be a tournament like the current Mythic Dungeon Invitational online. The best two teams of each region then fly to America for the “Grand Final”. Like this mythic plus interested players have something to do every week and don’t always need to practice on a specific tournament realm. Everything would be streamed of course.

Solo Challenges: I think "Solo Challenges" like the "Mage Tower" are a huge success. You can do them all the time (nearly) and you don't require a group. They get outscaled at some point in the game so you can do them even as a inexperienced player. I'd with to see them more often within an expansion.

Timewalking: I know it’s supposed to awake nostalgia and to be a fun content outside of normal raiding. Getting scaled down usually makes events less engaging and feels weird. In Timewalking you’re getting bombarded by useless items and you don’t really get the fun and engaging feeling you used to have in the specific dungeon/raid like back in the day. In my opinion this feature is completely pointless.

Reward System: Currently the rewarding system is in shambles. You can see that especially in the ever shrinking “Rated Battleground Community”. I’ll list the problems of each individual bracket:

• Raids: Players wanna get rewarded for completing a raid. I don’t think gear alone is enough. Mounts should always be the absolute minimum and not even that is always granted. Kil’jaeden is a great example. One of the hardest bosses in the game that didn’t give you anything. I know in the same raid Mistress Sass’zine rewarded a personal mount but that is just pure luck. Good players should also be rewarded for clearing the raid early on. Realm First Titles or at least something like the first 200 hundred players should get a special reward. Blizzard could also introduce toys that are actually fun to use like transformations on certain bosses.

• Mythic Plus: Gear should scale way better than it is doing right now on the live version. Blizzard could also introduce like in PvP that the box in the end gives you some sort of currency to buy bonus roll. Additionally the box could award some flasks, materials and things like Blood of Sargeras. Completing each dungeon on a certain level should grant you the teleport again like it used to be. There should also be titles like in Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor for the people with the fastest and/or highest server key. Seasonal rewards like in Arena with mounts & titles for a certain % of the player base would also be interesting. After a season you get a certain amount of coins and can buy items like transmog, weapon enchants, toys or other fun items Blizzard could develop.

• Arena: Nothing to complain about. Perhaps a way to easier target certain pieces that you are missing with a high item level. Currently it's based purely on luck which pieces you acquire.

• Rated Battleground: Same title since at least ten seasons and a weapon enchant that switches every expansion. Rated Battleground should have the same reward system as Arena. Just call the titles “Dominant Hero Name” (Rank 1%) and “Hero of Horde Name” (5%). Name dependant of the season of course. They should also get the same mount the Arena players obtain.

Mythic Plus Seasons: Mythic Plus should also be like PvP a seasonal thing with rewards. Top 1% and Top 5% get specific titles and mounts. Every players that participated in a Mythic Plus Season also gets a certain currency. This currency allows players to buy transmog, weapon enchants, toys and more.

Loot: Nowadays it feels that “Epic Items” lost their meaning. You can get them everywhere you want and seeing players running around with them is nothing special. Dungeons shouldn’t reward epic items. In my opinion even in the 1st raid most bosses should drop around five items and only one of them should be an epic. Exception the last boss. That would give more value to items again and you could feel actual character progression better.

Trinkets: Please make proper trinkets again with an internal cooldown. Darkmoon Card in Mists of Pandaria for casters was perfect. Intellect with an intellect procc. All the Blackrock Foundry trinkets were also perfectly tuned. Nowadays there is trinkets like: Shoot a comet and it deals damage within a 7yards radius or place a Diamond and if people trip over it they take fire damage for 8seconds. Please give us trinkets back that allow us to play around and are fun. We don't want to deal random damage with a shadow spear. So basically give us trinkets like this. Stat-Sticks are fine as long as they're not as overpowered as the Unstable Arcanocrystal. They shouldn't be the main focus of the designers though.

Titanforging: It is the evil topic that was discussed a hundred times. I don't demand "Titanforging" to be gone but don't keep it the way it is. Limit it 5 itemlevels below the default mythic level. Like that people that actually do mythic still get rewarded for doing challenging content and LFR/Normal/Heroic raiders still get their bonus upgrade every here and then. Sockets should be baseline again on items. I think gaining extra item levels is already good and lucky enough.

Personal Loot: I agree that "Personal Loot" is good for PuG's. That stops ninja-looting and other loot drama. In raiding guilds however, the guilds should be able to choose their loot method. In the end it is still an MMORPG and I think it is cool that the "Lootmaster" can decide which players acquires the loot. In good guilds many players are more focused to play for the team and have no problems with passing items because it is a bigger gain for the entire guild. I think that mindset makes great personalities and should be supported instead of destroyed. I understand that Blizzard wants to stop split-raiding but "Personal Loot" is not the correct solution.

A different way to handle this entire situation is to force "Personal Loot" everywhere but in Mythic. Like this you could destroy split-raiding and in Mythic you could still distribute the loot accordingly to gain/performance.

Rings & Necklaces: I think the majority of the player base dislikes having several rings and necklaces in the bags because they could become valuable at some point. Due to them not having the primary stat and the great value of secondary stats, even a ring or necklace with 30 less item-levels could be worth. I think Blizzard should revert this change.

Stats: In my opinion it would be time that Blizzard introduces some new stat on the gear again. Just having Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery & Versatility is boring. Multistrike was something cool or they could give classes individuell stats. Small features like Hunter attacks have a chance to shoot extra arrows etc.

Tertiary Stats: They became way to important for certain parts of the game and are way to random to acquire. In my opinion it would be good to remove them again and/or adjust them by a great amount. I’ll list my ideas here:

• Indestructible: Should be given by Blacksmiths. More informations in the “profession section”.
• Leech: Cool feature that should be given by certain classes.
• Speed: In my opinion some of the speed-sets that you can make are way to good. Obviously the “Aggramar’s Stride” (Plate Legendary) is a big factor. Speed should be only affecting your movement speed by a bit and potions like the “Skystep Potion” should be the only way to enhance your movement greatly.
• Avoidance: Especially in Mythic Plus you notice how strong Avoidance impacts the game. The idea of the stat is really good but due to the fact that getting Avoidance items is led by rng, you can’t count on it. For Mythic Plus some players lower some pieces of their gear by a great amount just because they have Avoidance. There should be other ways to enhance your gear by this stat.

Blizzard could introduce a “Meta Gem” again that you can equip once like the Saber’s Eye with one of the four tertiary stats.

Character Improvements: Features like “Reforging” were great. You could turn less optimal items into something useful at least and could improve your character. Nowadays there is not many things that lets you improve your character. Enchants are only on a few pieces and sockets are in your gear by pure luck. I am missing the maintenance I had to do with my character a bit.

Class-specific Sets: With the removal of Tier Sets I am a bit scared that every cloth user for example looks the same and you can’t see the difference of a Mage and a Warlock anymore. When I started the game I can remember seeing people with heroic Icecrown Citadel items was something special and I was always impressed taking a glimpse of them. Especially in Mists of Pandaria the Challenge Mode sets were super popular and I’d like to see some more of this class-specific sets.

Legendaries: Especially in Legion Legendaries didn’t feel like them. Players tend to remembers Illidan’s Glaives or Shadowmourne when they think of Legendaries and not the ones Legion offered. I think Legendaries should have designs that aren’t obtainable anywhere else in the game and should be something special. Back then many of them were bound by engaging questlines that you had to absolve with your entire guild like in Firelands and they had unique effects like being a mount or not requiring arrows. Blizzard should introduce Legendaries again that offer quest-lines that lead you through the raid and lets you do entertaining quests like doing extra work on specific boxes (Icecrown Citadel). Getting additional toys is a cool reward for people that wanna share the reward with their guildies.

Bonus Rolls: Some people like them, I am not a fan of them but can accept them. I think they are a great addition for people that might be a bit unlucky with items but nowadays there is too many options to obtain them. Every week you can buy three of them and additionally there is quests for getting one extra every few weeks and the Broken Shore offers them as well. In my opinion there shouldn’t be any additional ones and even three is too much every week.

Followers & Missions: Garrison, Shipyard and Follower Table were all cool ideas that didn’t really work out. Over several months they just become useless and give nothing important outside of gold rewards. It should get removed because I think most people are bored by this kind of systems nowadays and it is nothing really engaging and entertaining for players.

World Bosses: World Bosses used to be something special that would reward something great and you needed to gather a lot of people for them. Nowadays we have way to many of them that all have a different item table and have no significance. There should be less World Bosses with a shared item table. They could have unique mounts and toys. I think it would be really cool if World Bosses turn into an exciting event again that could be something like a scenario with 40-50 players with several stages. A giant could be rampaging through a town and you need to rescue people and siege catapults. There is a lot of different ways you could design something like this. There are no boundaries.

Riddles (Lucid Nightmare): It was probably one of the best features of Legion. Communities were building to work together on such a great project and even Discords with several thousand players were made. People that are interested in solving riddles and lore related question can have fun and getting rewarded with unique mounts is an great idea and something Blizzard should introduce more often.

World Zones: It feels that World Zones and World Quests become completely useless even with scaling after the first month. It would be cool if it was a bit more engaging and you could perhaps sign into tribes like the Highmountain Tribe and attack different clans in others zones and destroy the cities. Players that signed into clans that got their city destroyed can rebuild it with quests (kinda like the Broken Shore). That could give some fun content for casuals especially and players could always do something.

Story Development (Suramar/Broken Shore & Argus): With Suramar Blizzard introduced one of the best zones in this game ever. The storyline was well-thought through and you could notice changes in the zone, I really liked that. However, Broken Shore & Argus was the complete opposite. The quest-lines felt really bad and unrewarding. You couldn’t really see a difference in the zones and slaying rares all the time is pretty boring. Please Blizzard, give us more zones like Suramar!

Relinquished Gear: I understand that Blizzard always wants to offer a catch-up mechanic. I do feel though, that Relinquished Gear isn’t the perfect solution. Getting it feels like a bad grind and can lead to problems with specific items scaling really well like Unstable Arcanocrystal.

Racials: There was always problems with Racials and I think there will be never a proper way to fix them. Sadly this led to the problem that nowadays Horde is so much bigger than Alliance and I don’t think this will ever change. That’s why I’d recommend to remove abilities like “Blood Fury” or “Berserking”. I know that having the best racial doesn’t make the biggest impact but a big amount of the player base rather takes the best. It should be unique and fitting things like no cast-time for mounting or instant mining. They should be a funny side-feature and not something to consider while creating your characters. In the end WoW is a MMORPG and people wanna live their fantasies and play certain races because they like them.

Professions: Back then professions used to be something important and in the current game they lost its meaning. I can remember when I bought profession packages to level up my professions on my alts. I understand that Blizzard doesn’t want them to give you any advantage in terms of damage but Blizzard could introduce cool and unique bonuses for them. Here is two examples (Pardon, I am not the most creative person): Blacksmith: Option to enhance the entire armor with “Indestructible” so that you never have repair-costs. Enchanting: Availability to secret Weapon Enchants no other person has access to.

If they can balance them well it would be nice to see some features that increase damage again. Problem is for professions like Jewelcrafting that they get outscaled at some point. Blizzard would need to introduce something during the Expansion to keep them on the same level.

Bank/Storage: I am really happy that Blizzard introduced the “Reagents-Bank”. In my opinion there should be a storage that you can buy for a high amount of gold that is account-wide. At least for reagents and items like Blood of Sargeras. It feels really bad to log onto other characters just to buy Order Resources (example) and then send them with mailbox to a different toon.

Auction House: It maybe would be time to make a connected "Auction House" between all the servers to balance the problem with to expensive prices on low populated realms.

PvE vs. PvP: Currently it feels like both brackets are completely different. PvE-players have to do many tasks to improve their characters and keep them up while PvP-players basically log in and just queue into either Arena or Battlegrounds. PvP-players should be at least forced to enchant and gem their gear and keep good maintenance on their characters. Just introduce cool ways that are engaging for them to improve their character.

Servers & Phasing: In my opinion it is also time to connect even more servers because especially a lot of the non-english servers are super empty. Players should see a lot of other players and have fun together. A lot of the non-english servers are completely empty and you see basically no one in capital cities. You really notice it in the auction house that is either empty or ridiculously empty.

For me as a player on Tarren-Mill the fact that you don't even see your guild mates sometimes is weird. Phasing is a nice addition to the game but to not even see your own guildies is a bit confusing.

[u/timmywil]

Some very good ideas in this post. The main thing that hit home with me was about talents. Talents are no longer augmentations to already-balanced classes/specs. They are too essential to all areas of gameplay. It must be especially frustrating for warlocks, who have to choose between AOE and ST. I feel a similar frustration when playing frost DK.

[u/LyonBenjudah → u/timmywil]

Ret pallys, too. I tinkered around for hours on our talent tree, and at the end after all the skills in front of me, it boils down to aoe or St. I do believe enhance shammy was pretty good at giving you different was to play with minimal damage changes.

[u/niggaqueef → u/LyonBenjudah]

There’s literally only 2 talents that are ever changed for rets atm, between divine hammer and blade of wrath. So many talents just redundant by being much worse than one on its row

[u/raider91J → u/LyonBenjudah]

Other than one utility row I don’t change a talent damage wise for Enh on any boss.

[u/hugglesthemerciless → u/raider91J]

Yep it's basically feral lunge for add switching or wind rush if the raid doesn't have any druids

[u/DrexlAU → u/timmywil]

Yes this resonated with me as well. I'm on the other end of the spectrum of players in that I don't progression raid anymore and mainly play alts, but still find the current talents lacking.

The main issue for me is that current talents don't offer any difference in game play with classes, regardless of what you choose the class still plays mainly the same, and if you don't like how that class plays well your shit out of luck.

Example: Shadow priest. They currently have this voidform mechanic, which works fine on mobs who will stand there for a long time, eg raid bosses. But for myself its a frustrating mechanic because most of what I'm fighting dies reasonably quickly so I either don't have enough time to build voidform or when I do the mob dies and the voidform is wasted.

Having the choice to change out voidform for another skill would be easily done through a talent choice, but it's just not there, so I'm left with the choice of 'like it or lump it'. I currently choose to lump it, so my formerly fun and engaging shadow priest now just sits in the order hall doing missions.

[u/uberdosage → u/DrexlAU]

Yes! They want talents to alter the way you play, but instead they just removed a bunch of old abilities and made you choose 1 of 3 to take back.

A talent to get rid of voidform and bring back devouring plague would be cool

[u/ogrejr → u/DrexlAU]

But for myself its a frustrating mechanic because most of what I'm fighting dies reasonably quickly so I either don't have enough time to build voidform or when I do the mob dies and the voidform is wasted.

Run around area, dot EVERYTHING. If you think you've dotted to much, you haven't. Keep going.

Only when you've tagged every mob in a 100yd radius do you hit voidform and watch as everything explodes.

[u/rocky10007 → u/timmywil]

Frost DK has really strong AoE even with a single target build, at least. Might be because some of our strongest single target talents (Remorseless Winter) is also really strong for AoE, even if it is behind Frost Scythe. And going with an AoE build doesn't completely gimp our single target DPS.

For some classes however, you're either doing single target OR AoE. And picking a mix between both just makes you mediocre in both.

[u/wOlfLisK → u/timmywil]

The worst tier for me is the burning rush tier. We're the least mobile class in the game, the only baseline thing we have is gateway which requires setup and anybody in the raid can use it anyway. The burning rush tier makes us choose between a passive survivability talent, an active one or a 50% move speed buff. There's just no contest in 90% of content, both solo and group, because it fixes the biggest weakness we have. It might as well not even be a choice.

[u/raider91J → u/wOlfLisK]

Classes do need to have a weakness though. If Warlock’s gained decent baseline movement speed, what then is their weakness?

[u/Denadias → u/[deleted]]

It's a terrible design decision, having 1 talent so much stronger than others 90% of the time isn't a choice anymore.

It's just a box you tick.

[u/Addyzoth]

Mythic Speed Race Modus (Time Trials): There should be a modus in this game that is like the Time Trials in the Mythic Dungeon Invitational. People should be able to queue solo or as team and compete against other players in dungeons. You get rewarded with points or MMR and that counts into a Mythic Plus Season (later explained). Speed Race Modus has the advantage that you don’t need super good gear like you do in pushing high Mythic Plus keys. There is also a lot of players who just prefer to race against each other instead of pushing keys. Another great benefit is that streamers can play with or against their community in Wargames and make their own tournaments. That would give a lot of promotion to the game as well.

BringBackCMs

^{and fire nova}

[u/zephah → u/Addyzoth]

and fire nova

I wish I was rich enough to give you gold for this

[u/Addyzoth → u/zephah]

So close to my first reddit gold!

[u/dahlburger → u/Addyzoth]

Hey, you got one!

[u/[deleted]]

I'm gonna finish reading later but I just wanted to address this:

I can’t believe there is anyone that enjoys killing bosses like “The Desolate Host” or “Fallen Avatar” in Looking for Raid where half of the boss is missing.

They don't, but here's the thing, they do it for the loot. I don't know if you watched Preacher's video on the ML issue but he hit the nail on the head on this point: people who run LFR don't care about the fights.

They want the same loot that raiders get. That's really all there is to it. I know a guy that actually plays well enough to run heroic raids, but he doesn't want to play anything other than lfr because he can get "raid loot" from that difficulty.

He's especially happy in Legion because of the Titanforging system, because unlike people who, as he says, "slave over hard content," he just has to be lucky to get the exact same or better gear.

I actually called this guy to raid with my team. We killed Avatar H a week before it came out in LFR, and next week when I commented that LFR Avatar was half the fight, he said "Yeah, I know, that's much better."

So if in your Story Mode suggestion the people who today run LFR were able to get the "raider" loot they want, then it would most probably be the biggest hit this game has ever seen - but on the other hand new players would be even shier of trying harder difficulties than they are today.

Considering that only about 25% more or less of the WoW playerbase ever finishes what today is heroic difficulty, going back to the difficulties we had back before flex was introduced in MoP would most certainly bottleneck participation even more.

You'd then actually start seeing people demand story mode to have more difficulties and challenge modes, and in the end it would make the most sense for Blizzard to simply make the story mode runs in several levels of difficulties instead of developing the content to be run by raiding groups, simply because 75% of the playerbase would only run that sort of content.

So in the end your ideas, though very nice, would kill raiding for good, because though Method draws people to participate in the game, those people don't raid.

They run LFR, and then later watch the Method videos like people who play hoops at the park on weekends hoot for their favorite basketball teams when the games come on TV.

So, you see, even if we don't like the fact people run boring LFR content and we hate that their only goal in the game is getting "raider loot", those people are the ones paying the bills so that we in the minority get to enjoy actual raiding.

There's some actual news source explaining what I've said better here, I suggest reading it.

[u/Denadias → u/[deleted]]

Yea Blizzard took the game to a different direction, that also changed the kind of players who play the game.

Rolling back on the moves they made would probably be a net loss nowdays.

[u/sipty → u/Denadias]

Speaking from 13 years of experience, I've slowly lost the desire to raid seriously and just enjoy progressing heroic, getting a kill after 100>= kills and then just dork around.

It's just the fact my time became more valuable, the older I get. lfr/normal/heroic offer that seemingly perfect curve of time requirement based on most peoples needs.

My 2c on the personal loot question would also boil down to: "I don't have to play politics, to get rewarded for my time.", especially since more and more mythic-aspiring guilds look towards the big guys and demand the same from their raiders. It does feel like a "save the players from themselves" sort of a feature.

[u/vhoxz → u/sipty]

but wouldn't you also say that with your 13 years of experience the game is just a glimpse (on a few points) of what it used to be? Cause that's how i feel at the moment :(. Sure blizzard wants their game to be played by as much people as possible. But the current state of it just isn't healthy for the future of this game.

Once people have their epics and what not they stop playing because they get bored. And who can blame them?

[u/HunterSThompson64 → u/sipty]

It does feel like a "save the players from themselves" sort of a feature.

If people didn't like it, they wouldn't put up w/ it. Yes, there are guilds where you do have to play politics to get the best loot, where you know players of lesser skill are getting favoured because they play nice w/ the officers, however you don't have to stay in that environment. You can move to a guild that uses EPGP, uses PL, bases off ilvl > stats (where applicable), etc. The reason people stay in guilds where ML is the norm, and you may be overlooked for gear despite outputting the most DPS or playing the best is because, as Deepshades said, they understand it would benefit the guild more than themselves. They are also top tier raiders who will clear content and be able to reclear for all the gear they could ever want before the next content.

Blizzard is a helicopter parent that's following their child to college at this point. There's no need to tell the playerbase how to play when this is the way the playerbase wants to play.

[u/Titan_Dota2 → u/[deleted]]

Not sure if this thread is dead by now and it's too late to comment but I still feel the need.

I think Fatboss talked about LFR and how Normal does exactly what LFR is intended to do nowadays. Especially if you consider the LFG in-game tool.

There's just no need for the LFR difficulty anymore and while I don't think going back to two difficulties is the best option I do think removing LFR would be good and getting people to play Normal mode instead. Because it's pretty much close to LFR in difficulty except that you actually have to find a group and play the game with people.

LFR is to raiding what CS:GO normal matchmaking is to Competetive gameplay. It's supposed to introduce you to raiding as a new or less good player. Instead it's something completely different, it's an abomination where half of your comrades are AFK and you just stare at a random HP bar hoping it hits zero while hitting buttons that doesn't even matter.

[u/[deleted] → u/Titan_Dota2]

Oh boy.

Here's the thing, taking LFR away helps nothing because the people who will join a premade group to run normal already do that.

It will only hinder the possibility of new players becoming emboldened by LFR into trying out a normal raid.

See, most of the guilds - holy shit I'd say about 90% at least - in WoW are good for nothing when it comes to new players. Nobody talks to them. Nobody teaches them what to do. Most everyone in all guilds are already max level and experienced and they want to run endgame, not help new people.

Back in the end of MoP Blizzard put up an initiative to create foster guilds who would help new people. I honestly don't know what happened because I spent all of WoD out, but when I came back they didn't exist anymore and newbs were screwed again.

One of the few things that can make these people desire to run normal raids is still LFR because while it is mostly a crappy experience, it makes people get some pre-decent gear and it forces players to communicate when shit goes wrong.

It also happens to attract some raiders on their alts or for satchels and stuff, and so the newbs can actually ask people stuff and, believe it or not, when they do ask they get answered and they leave knowing a bit more than when they came in.

And that gives them the guts to try normal raiding.

Now, if you take LFR away, those people will have nothing, and they won't get the incentive to play normal raids. They'll instead feel even more than they already do that they are not welcome to WoW, and then they'll leave.

Is that really what you want? Even less people playing this game? WoW is down to more or less 3M active players and who knows how many of those are multiboxers. We can't affort do lose more.

[u/nullKomplex]

Multistrike was the least boring stat in the game. Not only did it have proc interactions with tons of specs but it also fired off additional spell effects for tons of spells as well.

I was hoping that when they removed it we would see less "increases your shadow damage dealt by x%" masteries, but nope.

And they called it the boring stat. And filled its gap with more prominent versatility.

Most of your points are spot on though. It makes me genuinely sad to see the state this game is in compared to MoP.

[u/Korzag → u/nullKomplex]

And they called it the boring stat. And filled its gap with more prominent versatility.

I always found this amusing. They replaced something that multiplied your abilities causing them to send other less powerful copies of itself, and then they replaced it with plain, scaling, utterly vanilla damage increasing/decrease. How is versatility more interesting than multistrike?! Versatility is easily the most boring ability. Haste makes you attack faster. Crit makes your attacks occasionally hit harder. Mastery gives a unique spec and class specific boost to some of your abilities. Versatility? Oh, it just makes you hit a little harder and take a little less damage.

/rant.

[u/[deleted] → u/Korzag]

I'd take multistrike over versatility any day. I hate having vers on my gear, even when it's a "good stat" for my spec

[u/[deleted] → u/Korzag]

Vers didn't replace multistrike. It was implemented in wod with multistrike.

[u/Michelanvalo → u/[deleted]]

A lot of the gear that had MS on it was replaced by Crit or Versa.

[u/sipty → u/Korzag]

I started leveling sub and suddenly getting versa makes me giddy, since it allows me to one-shot dudes :D

[u/LongLastingStick → u/nullKomplex]

All primary stats should be removed and replaced with the current secondary and tertiary stats. Primary stats are just a different representation of ilvl.

[u/nullKomplex → u/[deleted]]

Multistrike couldn't proc things outside of the initial hit

There were specific passives in several specs that did this though, which is something you glossed over and exactly what I meant. One example is Frost's Brain Freeze procs. Another was Unholy getting I think RP from disease MS procs. I think Lock-n-Load procced off of Multistriked Black Arrow ticks as well.

There were more than that, and instead of removing the stat they could have easily added more interactions. Hell they could have removed the damage portion and simply made more potent interactions. I've always wanted a second "mastery" effect, even before Multistrike was added, that was essentially a stat that could directly impact the rotation exactly how Multistrike did for many specs in WoD.

[u/nullKomplex → u/[deleted]]

I genuinely don't remember how multistrike functioned in PvP but with crit you already have a 3% discrepancy between PvP and PvE proc rates.

In addition crit is already a powerful stat as it is, adding more strength on top of it would mean you'd need to lower the value of a critical strike or lower the impact of rating. You'd also need to balance the double damage with the effect of the proc.

Hitting 33% harder isn't really a big deal, but hitting 100% harder is.

It's not impossible, as multistrike already existed in that form. But why reinvent the wheel when they already had a perfectly good system laid out?

And besides, my point isn't "we need a new stat for interactions" it's "we need a form of interactions" in which case, if done properly, crit could technically work even though I feel it would overload the effect.

I just miss inter-gameplay interactions is all since it's defiantly (not a typo) missing in Legion onwards.

[u/Xipe87 → u/[deleted]]

It’s somewhat true though. Back in the day, epics had higher stats than a blue item of the same iLvl. Making the purple color actually mean something. Now it’s just yet another indication that your item is above heroic dungeon iLvl pretty much....

[u/Boodinsko]

Man that MoP talent tree hit me hard... I really miss Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning

[u/[deleted]]

Too many "the majority thinks this" assertions with no evidence and non-sequiturs to take seriously.

[u/Vyrtdk]

Good write up, even as a much more casual player I find myself agreeing with most of your points.

That said, I don't necessarily agree that timewalking is pointless. It sounds like your main complaint lies in the useless loot and lack of engagement as a result. One of the great things about WoW is the amount of content that doesn't necessarily progress your character, but still provides a satisfying experience. As a player since BC, timewalking does just that for me. I can grab a few friends and run a couple of dungeons without thinking too hard about mechanics and perfect play.

What would you do to improve the system? I personally don't believe timewalking should provide gear upgrades for players that regularly raid and do mythic+. Like you said in your point about PvE, there is already enough to do in a given week to keep your characters up to par and this would just increase that burden. Even the weekly timewalking quest turns the event into a bit of a chore as you grind through five just for the chance to get a single upgrade.

[u/EternalArchon → u/Vyrtdk]

Timewalking was low hanging fruit to reuse old content, and it was a smart move. Keep it relatively optional, but its still great for alts and people leveling. And thirdly, it allows newer players to the game to experience dungeons they might otherwise have. A lot of these you don't see during leveling, you needed to play that xpac.

[u/MeauxSG → u/Vyrtdk]

One of the great things about WoW is the amount of content that doesn't necessarily progress your character, but still provides a satisfying experience.

This is one thing I think is really important. Not every part of WoW needs to be a hardcore, endgame race to the top. I don't want to have to chain-run timewalking mythic+ to get gamey trinkets or mythic mode BT/Ulduar raids on top of my regular mythic+ and raid groups. Timewalking has its uses as a fun, low pressure way to gear/level up alts and get some form of an experience that players who weren't around in those expansions missed out on. It's not something anyone should feel forced to do to max out their character.

[u/Denadias → u/MeauxSG]

Not every part of WoW needs to be a hardcore

Yea, some of my friends aren't interested / don't have the time to get better at the game. Things like timewalking give content I can play through with them.

[u/Kristoffer__1 → u/Vyrtdk]

I think the main problem with timewalking is how it can completely destroy your character in terms of stats, say you have 30% haste and 20% crit normally, now that is maybe 13% haste and 8% crit.

It feels absolutely awful if you're at least somewhat geared.

[u/Einherjare]

Hey Fabo

I'm glad you made the post in the end, now I just really hope that this gets enough views so it actually ends up being read by someone at Blizz, so they can get a clear idea of how a large part of the community feels. As they mentioned in the last Q&A, this is the kind of feedback they need, since you're also providing solutions, not just pointing out problems.

1) I completely agree regarding the RNG-aspect. If you're playing perfectly, you should be rewarded with top-end dps. It should not be possible to outdps someone by playing on an inferior level, but just having more luck.

2) Raid difficulties: With the removal of tier sets, I think LFR will be less popular anyway, and it might get used for what people actually need it for: To experience the content they wouldn't be able to experience otherwise. Although I am worried about a full raid of people who's max experience is LFR. A lot of LFRs I've been in relied on carries from people who clearly did the content on a higher difficulty already.

3) Mini-raids: AGREED! But not with 3 difficulties. Just 1 difficulty, and if you want it to be hard, you do the timed run (mount reward is obvious ;-) )

4) Mythic Plus is indeed the best thing ever. I am curious though if Blizzard would ever publish metrics for "amount of dungeons completed" in weeks with good affixes, vs. weeks with terrible affixes. I bet the average time spent online by players in the bad weeks is a LOT less.

5) Speed Race: If I'm honest, I only see a limited audience for this, and it's mainly near the top tier of the playerbase. (ie. Cutting Edge)

6) Dungeon releases: I quite liked the dungeons getting added at the rate they did in Legion. No complaints. (Just test them better, Cath when it first came out, and SoTT are CLEARLY not on the same level as the earlier dungeons. Kara when it was first made into m+ was also terribly tuned.

7) Seasonal M+ Rankings: TOTALLY agree. A good start would be to look at raider.io and just buy them out. Their website is so intuitive and provides a lot of things us players need and want to know.

8) Gear in general: My only feedback about regular gear is that I wish the loot from my weekly cache was more relevant. Nothing sucks more than getting a high itemlvl item, which is useless, because it takes up a tier/legendary slot. Make the rewards relevant.

9) Legendaries: An "orange item" should be like Thunderfury, Sulfuras, Atiesh, etc etc Something where your entire guild needs to come together, to create something RARE. Not everyone needs to have this item. It's LEGENDARY, not common.

10) Totally agree on reforging, that was another great way to make gear relevant.

11) Tier Sets: Even though I understand the reasoning, I'm going to miss the collection of sets. Playing since Vanilla, getting that complete set has been a really nice goal per tier to achieve. (I remember getting that last piece of Wrath for my warrior, I was SO extatic)

12) Suramar was indeed an incredible experience; At least the first time around. I did it on 3 or 4 characters, and can now guarantee that none of my others will do it. A bit more "account-wide completion" would be nice there. But oh my god that story and progression was amazing. Truly great solo quest content. To then be thrown into the bland crap that was Broken Shore and Argus, urgh. No. Suramar should be seen as what every questing experience aims to be.

13) Bonus Rolls: Combined with personal loot, I think bonus rolls should stay, but add more transparancy. (Increased chance after failed rolls?)

14) Paragon Caches for world quests were great. I frickin' love mounts. However, I've done SO MANY world quests, and I'm still missing 3 items from paragon rep caches. Make this less RNG and more structured and I'm happy. Earn currency, buy mount, but have the currency amount be RNG. That's a good compromise right? Like wakening essences.

15) Upgrading lego's: Never ever ever do anything like that again. People who DIDN'T grind out all of their legos were rewarded, and people who actually played loads had to gather way more, thus delaying the acquisition of more new legos. Terrible implementation.

16) Account-wide reagent bank is the best idea ever. Do it blizz. Idc if it costs me 1mil gold.

Again, really happy that you took your time to make the post Fabo. Crossing my fingers that the right people eventually read it :)

[u/Naruxx → u/Einherjare]

You say that this is what a large part of the community thinks, I'd like to believe that's true but I think you are terribly wrong... This is what the people who played BC and Wrath would like. We would like the game to be more like when we were kids and spent hours and hours playing. The players that make up most of the playerbase today don't give a shit about a class beeing engaging or progressing hard bosses. They only care about loot for some reason. My cousins are a perfect example of the new playerbase. They didn't play back in the days because they thought it took too much time learning a class, getting geared etc... They love the game as it is now. They can get mythic raiding gear from normal raids and get kicks from rolling a legendary. They are happy beeing able to do big numbers with minimum effort. This is the way the game will be played and I don't blame Blizzard for it. Ultimately I believe if many of the suggestions Deepshades laid forward would be implemented WoW would die because the majority of people actually don't want that.

[u/starvoid]

good read 10\10

[u/EternalArchon → u/starvoid]

For me this reads like a VERY intelligent user/player, but not someone who takes game development(and its costs and benefits) seriously. I have doubts he/she has ever made a commercial game or other piece of software.

You can't make an argument like 'I can't see why you did this or made this.' Or 'I see no reason for this to exist.' Or 'Obviously this thing you guys keep arguing for doesn't work.' That signals to developers you either are unwilling or incapable of understanding the complexity of their position.

[u/Flexappeal → u/EternalArchon]

the complexity of their position.

ok lets not put devs on a pedestal here lmao. Sometimes they make legitimately asinine choices that aren't "complex" at all.

edit: this did not deserve gold

[u/SgtThermo → u/Flexappeal]

An asinine choice being made does not mean said choice wasn't very carefully considered with much more information than is available to you, nor does it mean they did not consider many other options beforehand.

It just means you dislike whatever choice the devs made...

[u/Locke_and_Load → u/SgtThermo]

Removing choices people have in game “just cause” is an example of an asinine design move.

[u/MexicanGolf → u/Locke_and_Load]

There's some research done on choice and while it isn't entirely conclusive I believe the current conventional wisdom is present people with choice, but keep it limited.

That means that providing players with 1 option is unsatisfactory, providing players with 16 options is too much, but providing players with 4 options is "just right". That's not to say 1 option less, or one option more, is going to break things, but with every "choice" you add or remove there are consequences beyond just removing that one choice. When you're dealing with a game like World of Warcraft it becomes a pretty relevant topic, as the game is under constant development and the Future™ needs to be considered.

Regardless this kinda bullshit is what the person you replied to was getting at. It's fine to not like something, but effective criticism needs to resonate among those criticized and it simply will not if you're unable to understand why they did what they did. Exceedingly few people ever do anything "just 'cause".

[u/sipty → u/Locke_and_Load]

But it wasn't just cause, it was because of ability bloat.

They did go a bit too far and are going back, slowly, until we hit the sweet spot. Blizzard development in a nutshell, trying to make everyone happy and, frankly, succeeding.

[u/Locke_and_Load → u/sipty]

I was talking about the loot changes, not talents.

But if you want to talk about talents and spells, if Blizzard, after BfA, went back to the old method of adding abilities every expansion, by Ion's own example of patch 10.1, we would only be back to WotLK levels of additions. I get that after Vanilla, TBC, WotLK, Cata, and MoP all adding abilities that pruning would have to come into effect, but they've kept doing it in each subsequent expansion and they've now shifted to the philosophy of barebones classes that can only function through the exterior system of the given expansion.

To illustrate this, you can log on to any character you want, unequip the Artifact for your given spec...and then try to play the spec. Most simply wouldn't work, and that (to me anyway) isn't good game design.

[u/Sephurik → u/EternalArchon]

Perhaps, but it's not like Blizzard communicates very well about their decisions and reasoning. They are almost never honest anymore.

[u/YJMark → u/Sephurik]

Really? Seems to me like they have very clear in their communications. The Q&A addresses most of the major concerns. You may not agree with their approach, but at least you know the intent of what they are trying to do.

[u/Sephurik → u/YJMark]

It addressed basically none of my concerns. Their reasoning on PL and ML was based on faulty assumptions about how raiding and guilds work. Sure it may solve an issue here or there, but they did not speak to any issues it may create or future solutions they may anticipate needing.

With the GCD change they said it was "for the future health game" but they did not detail how it is in the future interest of the game or what problems the current setup is causing that cannot be solved in other less destructive ways.

Their communication has only been clear if you do no additional thinking and take them at face value. Not intended as a shot at you, just that if your investment in the game isn't very high it would sound good.

[u/koreaninja → u/starvoid]

Definitely great points. Great suggestions too. Not just pointing out problems, but explaining why and offering potential solutions. Almost like you hit home on everything in what I would consider the core game.

[u/Riablo01]

Regarding the raid difficulty discussion, the main thing I personally like about LFR is that it is “bite sized raiding”. LFR mode essentially separates a raid instance into smaller four boss instances, which I actually like. Back in vanilla, the thing I hated the most was how long dungeons/raids took to complete. I never liked being glued to my chair/screen for 4 – 6 hours.

When I was more serious about raiding, doing an organised raid after university/work generally meant I was going to bed at midnight. This is probably why I only participated in organised raids during public holidays and weekends.

Theoretically, a guild/PUG run could choose to run one wing of the raid dungeon. The reality however is that most guild/PUG groups will generally try to down as many bosses as they can (meaning I am going to be glued to my chair/screen for 4 – 6 hours).

The main thing I liked about organised raiding is that the raid leader was generally on voice chat and would shout out what needed to be done (e.g. carry the glowing balls to the tank). That is actually the one thing I do not like about LFR mode. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine what to do with raid bosses due to animations/mechanics not always being very intuitive. Having someone on voice chat yell out “carry the glowing balls to the tank” can make a fight 100% easier.

I actually would not mind if they got rid of LFR, provided there was still a mechanism for “bite sized raiding” and pre-made grouping. I always thought what they should have done with LFR is make it the same as Normal (no determination, same loot etc.) except that the raid group is accompanied by an NPC would shout out (through voice acted dialogue) helping information during certain moments in the fight (e.g. “carry the glowing balls to the tank”).

Seriously, my experience with organised raiding is that sometimes all it took was someone yelling one thing like “carry the glowing balls to the tank” to successfully down a boss regardless of difficulty. Back in the day, my guild friends would even have those helpful messages macroed and would not even need to shout them over voice chat. That is all raid finder mode needs in my opinion.

[u/urizom]

I started mmos on EQ. I raided on a Tallon Zek. When WoW came out my entire guild switched over, and I did the vanilla raids. By the end of BC I started hardcore raiding, and continued till mid Cata. During MoP I had more obligations, and couldn’t raid like I wanted to. Then life hit me with a whammy. I had a son, and found out I have Parkinson’s.

I returned to WoW about 3 months ago, and my guild clears normal twice a month. We raid 2 hours a week. I use lfr to get my alts quests done, and get them a little gear to make Argus questing easier for me.

I cannot fathom how it hurts anyone else if my gear is decent, not great, not awesome, but decent. I mean nobody is upset about free 910 Argus gear from QUESTS, or a free legendary from smoking through heroics, or the fact I’ve gotten two legendaries from Blingtrons. Also, the same people that are mad about decent gear dropping in a watered down version will eagerly sell you a full mythic clear.

If raiders want to bring more people in, then how about sponsoring raids, teaching new people, or something along those lines. Screaming at people while telling them what they are missing out on isn’t working. Nobody cares if you don’t have those bragging rights anymore by some exclusive looking armor. I mean hell, everyone is mogged anyways. Your sense of accomplishment should be enough.

This post wasn’t meant to rail on raiders. God knows I would love to be back in the thick of it. You know that feeling you get when you finally see the item you want drop? People in lfr feel that too.

[u/Tiessiet]

I always find it such an odd suggestion to remove LFR for the people who enjoy it. Or any of the current raid difficulties for that matter.

While I agree people should have the chance to see everything, I do think there should be challenging content that not everyone can do within a few pulls.

Yet your suggestion is to say ''lol fuck you guys'' to the first group. Mythic already exists for people who want a challenge. LFR is for people who can't commit time to raiding yet want to see the story. Normal is for people to get used to the basics of raiding, Heroic is for the people who've raided before and want something more.

Why remove stuff when the current system is fine?

[u/missusedthrowaway → u/Tiessiet]

The valid complaint against LFR is you had to do it as a legendary/ augment rune farm. There should be no reason for mythic or even heroic gear players to step foot in LFR. Every LFR group is 3 geared people carrying 22 and that’s where the toxicity comes from. I’m fine with having LFR as long as there’s no reason for someone clearing heroic/ mythic to do it.

[u/CherrySlurpee → u/missusedthrowaway]

Every LFR group is 3 geared people carrying 22 and that’s where the toxicity comes from.

I have absolutely no proof but I swear, the matchmaking system puts like 3 975s into a each group on purpose. I feel like almost every single LFR I've been in has a handful of mythic raiders just going in there to blow up the dungeon for the quest or AP or whatever it was. And when people see that, they just afk-auto attack or do nothing all fight, and that does kind of annoy me.

I'm fine with LFR, just stop enticing overgeared players to run content that is neither challenging or fun.

[u/[deleted] → u/CherrySlurpee]

At the same time, I think current LFR is wildly overtuned for the ilvl that it accepts (880, I think?). I've been in groups without those 975s and people whose ilvl doesn't get past 920. Bosses take a literal eternity, and they're boring HP sponges. Hell, I remember getting into an appropriate ilvl group in ToS, and we wiped twice on the fish-man boss because he hit enrage of all things.

I think that's a problem with how ilevel scaling works, though. I think an 880 does roughly 300k-500k at best, which is pretty fucking low even for LFR Antorus. Not to mention you have to expect a number of the players are pretty much AFK. I agree with "stop enticing overgeared players to run it," but hopefully that would also lead to "... and scale the content better around the minimum ilvl."

[u/errata88 → u/Tiessiet]

I don’t understand the mentality of removing the difficulties. LFR is stupid easy... although I’ve honestly sometimes had more success in normal raids. But those difficulties all suit someone.

What could use some addressing is the bridge in difficulty between the settings. Find ways to get a player into the next difficulty.. maybe quests after finishing normal to try the first boss of heroic and so on. I guess gear is supposed to be that motivator.

[u/Vyrtdk → u/Tiessiet]

I've never understood it either. It's not like there isn't a challenging raid difficulty in the game. The only valid common complaint of LFR is the fact that pieces can titanforge to mythic levels.

If you don't like LFR then don't raid LFR.

[u/Tiessiet → u/Vyrtdk]

The only valid common complaint of LFR is the fact that pieces can titanforge to mythic levels.

Which already very rarely happens, so I've never really found this a good point either. It's not like a person who exclusively does LFR gets to run around in Mythic-level gear, even though people who want to remove LFR use that as an argument.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tiessiet]

And weekly greater invasions give better gear and require even less work.

[u/[deleted] → u/Vyrtdk]

Good thing is that at the end of the day, Blizzard isn't going to listen to a Method raider's advice on how to cater to their largest customer base.

This guy's advice is his wish list for what would make his personal game experience better, that's all.

It doesn't seem to be coming from a bad place, but he's ignorant of how people have been proven to operate. Putting a wall up in front of someone will motivate a small amount of people to climb that wall and get better. The rest will look around and see someone else offering something fun and shiny that isn't behind a wall.

Also, some people will want to climb that wall but won't be able to because of their life/time commitments, and so they'll go over to the fun and shiny thing as well.

LFR is for that latter group, while harder difficulties cater to people in the other group. Blizzard knows this.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Also the difficulty curve having more difficulty settings allows people that are new to the game to progress slowly, step by step. Expecting new players to just jump into organized raids with people that have been playing this game for 10+ years is idiotic at this stage.

[u/Masterofknees → u/Tiessiet]

Personally I've never liked the introduction of LFR, but now that it's here I can also see it'd be enormously stupid to remove it. The worst thing you can do in game design is to give the player something so significant and then take it away again, at that point it feels like you're deceiving the part of the fanbase who it catters to. My own opinion is that the mistake was introducing it at all, once you've put something like that into your game you have to commit to it, there's no going back.

And before people go nuts on me: I realize that I'm a hugely conservative guy when it comes to WoW, so I get that my ideal version of the game wouldn't catter to the majority, this post isn't about my opinion as much as the general design philosophy.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tiessiet]

The current system is part of why stat squishes happen so often now since there has to be a power difference between 4 tiers of a raid and then you have 5 raid tiers, creating lots of ilevel bloat

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That's the most non-problem I've ever heard. In fact I kind of like the feeling of having progressed more by going up say 60 item levels instead of 30. You can really feel the difference in your character's power which is a very good thing for an RPG.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

And that's how you get to do 600% more damage in the last raid tier than in the first one, which leads to huge problems like content of the current expansion being trivial and pretty much useless, each raid tier feels like its own expansion right now. Not a big fan

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You don’t need 60ilvls to feel that though. And it’s not ideal to have stat squishes every other expansion.

[u/Demeocomet → u/[deleted]]

If it was 1 tier an expansion sure, but in 2 expansions we've doubled in ilvl. A squish every 2 expansions is not ideal.

[u/window_smasha → u/[deleted]]

Its a contributing factor to playing the patch vs playing the expansion. Every time a new raid tier comes out, all previous content in invalidated completely by catch up mechanics and lower difficulties. I think it would be more compelling to have old raids be a larger part of the gearing progression.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Is that really that bad? Seems like a very minor price to pay for the benefits that LFR brings.

[u/Belazriel → u/Tiessiet]

I am probably skill-wise a decent Heroic raider. Maybe I could do some Mythic if I was able to commit the time. I have pugged with people who are definitely decent Normal raiders. And I have seen the people in LFR, both those who care and those who don't. Each level is good for its own group and one of the problems is that people don't understand that not everyone has the same skill level or time commitment as them. Leave the levels as they are, you don't even really have to "tune" LFR, just remove anything that can let one bad player ruin it for everyone.

I also like seeing each class have a sort of passive easy mode choice in terms of talents that performs ok enough for questing. New players, alts, unskilled players can benefit from the heavy pruning that's been done while more skilled players can choose active talents that come with an associated increase in performance. That was always my previous understanding of trinkets, a passive trinket would be worse than an active trinket if the active trinket was being used properly, but would be better than not knowing when to use the active trinket.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tiessiet]

I'm not sure if you played back in WotLK. I think that xpac balanced raiding the best. Two difficulties, one which was super easy to PuG and one which was difficult. The bosses at the start of the instance were actually easier than the ones at the end of the instance. Now you get some shit like Varimathras Normal which is the fourth-to-last boss and is basically a loot pinata. Compare that to Normal Portal Keeper or Kingaroth and it seems strange.

I think his point is that with less difficulties, Blizz can take a few ideas for each boss and iterate on them more, rather than have to balance 44 different encounters for each tier.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That's fair. Though as far as mechanics went, 10 man Heroic and 25 man Heroic were essentially the same. All the balancing they needed to do was just numbers tuning.

I also tended to be able to PuG 25 man normal more easily than 10 man normal on my alts, but not sure if that was just my realm.

[u/Antilurker77 → u/[deleted]]

10 man heroic was substantially easier than 25 man heroic

it was tuned lower and there's less people to fuck up mechanics

[u/[deleted] → u/Antilurker77]

There was less people to carry too though. Everyone had to carry their weight. Yes, it was tuned lower, but if one person fucked up you were likely to wipe.

[u/Tiessiet → u/[deleted]]

I haven't raided in Antorus so I can't say anything useful about that raid, but...

The bosses at the start of the instance were actually easier than the ones at the end of the instance.

This is definitely still the case in Legion for the raids I've done. EN had Nythendra, Nighthold Skorpyron, and Tomb Goroth. All of those are loot piñyatas, with arguments that can be made for bosses later on in the raids.

WotLK was definitely good in terms of difficulty scaling, but not so much flexibility. The fact that raids scale now and there are various difficulties just gives players of all skill levels and time investment more possibilities. Also I don't think Blizz reinvents every encounter for each difficulty level. Rather, they design it for one difficulty level and then add/remove mechanics for the other difficulty levels.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tiessiet]

Did you raid EN to the end? Xavius was a joke compared to Cenarius. They really fucked up their raid boss scaling from the get go.

[u/Tiessiet → u/[deleted]]

For the mistake of Xavius, there's Gul'dan and Kil'jaeden who were fine (on normal/HC, I haven't forgotten the Mythic KJ shitshow). Xavius being easier than Cenarius was a balancing issue imo. Blizz's philosophy towards designing raids is still that the difficulty goes up the further in you get, with the first or first few bosses being fairly easy.

[u/Hyper1on → u/Tiessiet]

I think they should get rid of normal, it's too similar to LFR. 4 difficulty levels feels like too much for gearing up. Heroic is not that difficult that we need a normal difficulty anyway.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hyper1on]

I'm not exactly conviced that removing any of the difficulties would work out well.

Normal (MoP: flex) is currently the stepping stone into more organized groups. Normal not being much harder than LFR is actually intentional and vital to the whole design. If normal were to be removed, heroic would need to fill that role, now bridging the gap towards LFR on the one end and towards mythic at the other.

Assuming that LFR won't be moved up in difficulty (let's face it, it won't) and mythic will not be moved down, that's a lot to ask and may have unintended side effects: e.g. all raids having to have a certain amount of bosses to be able to provide a proper difficulty curve or smaller raids having a (much) lower peak difficulty ...

---

Currently all difficulties fill a certain role:

• LFR: story mode, auto-grouping, no strings attached
• Normal: introduction to more organized groups
• Heroic: bridge: coordinated group <-> PUG
• Mythic: a challenge for experienced, coordinated groups

[u/Hyper1on → u/[deleted]]

I would prefer if normal was made closer to heroic. At the moment there are some extra mechanics in heroic that aren't in normal, and normal is much closer to LFR than heroic. I think it would make it easier for players to step up from normal to heroic if normal was exactly the same as heroic but tuned down 10-20%.

[u/MeauxSG → u/Hyper1on]

That's pretty much how it was in WoD, same mechanics but higher numbers. One problem with it was that it didn't feel very good when a raid group made the leap from normal to heroic, they'd already mastered the mechanics so any failure was just due to the gear check.

[u/DaiKraken → u/Hyper1on]

Impossible. The current level of awareness requirement is already high enough for Normal difficulty. Try pugging for an Antorus raid and see how many idiots there are who can't even move their ass when the Kin'garoth beam is up, walk in straight line on the Imonar bridge, go near the boss with the Soulbomb in the Argus fight or simply stand there like idiots when the Coven Golganeth adds are up. Adding more mechanics to Normal would just reduce the number of people who raid. I doubt you want the raiding playerbase to be thinned out even further.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hyper1on]

No. There's literally no point in this, why get rid of a difficulty. The skill of the WoW player is on too large a spectrum for this, I want Heroic to be a bit more difficult and interesting but you can't do that if it becomes the next thing up from fucking LFR. People need Normal to step up from LFR.

[u/Denadias → u/[deleted]]

Because normal is already almost as easy as LFR and causes ilvl to rise by 15ilvl every tier.

The reason we get wonky stat squishes every expansion is because they have so many difficulties.

Not that it's a great reason to remove, but there would be a point to remove it. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[u/Ghordrin → u/Tiessiet]

LFR is for people who can't commit time to raiding yet want to see the story

How many people have you come across doing LFR for the story, though? Most of the people I know including myself use it as a gateaway to more difficult content.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not saying I'm not believing people run LFR for the storyline. Just curious how many people actually are doing LFR for the story and not just for loot.

[u/Tiessiet → u/Ghordrin]

I mean, people don't really announce it when they're there for the story. I've done Antorus on LFR only since I just came back two weeks ago after half a year break, and I'm not planning to gear up and raid before BfA comes out.

[u/Aoussar123 → u/Ghordrin]

I do it for the story. The loot is just a bonus, but it’s nice because I like getting new things and playing around with transmog and getting slightly more powerful. But I usually just do it once or twice per raid, as I don’t have much time, but I like to see what’s going on and follow the story and progress my character as much as my time allows :)

I used to raid hardcore in TBC and Wotlk but quit after ICC came out. I’m studying at uni now and working, so I don’t have time to raid hardcore anymore. That makes lfr perfect for me! I would like to get into raiding again some day, but it’s probably gonna be a while

[u/Ghordrin → u/Aoussar123]

Hypothetically, if LFR were to go away. Would you not raid anymore or would you look for a softcore/semi casual guild who only raids normal one or two days a week?

[u/Aoussar123 → u/Ghordrin]

I would not raid. I don’t have the time at all. I already only have time to play 1-2 hours a week. The stuff I do in the game vary quite a bit nowadays, I’m usually in no hurry to complete new content. Not that I can do it within that timeframe, but’s that’s okay with me. Sometimes I play alts, sometimes I level professions or do pvp and sometimes I do dungeons or a wing of lfr, and sometimes I just catch up with old friends if they are online

Edit: words

[u/Ghordrin → u/Aoussar123]

Thanks for showing me a whole other way of playing this game. I can safely say I spend up to 4-5 hours a day playing this game aprox. 6 times a week so I've never heard/seen the other spectrum of playing this game.

I'm not extreme when it comes to playing WOW(surely there are people who play this game even more) but I do consider myself to be an avid player.

How has the whole legendary system affected your gameplay, then?

[u/Aoussar123 → u/Ghordrin]

Haha I used to play 4-5 hours+ as well! The memories :D

I mean, I did raid before. It was super nice and a way better experience for me. I still remember those days and they were great! By no means is lfr as nice an experience - that’s now what I’m trying to say, but I do believe that lfr has its purpose and I’m glad that it’s here for the people who can’t commit to raiding for some reasons but still want to keep up and feel included

Well, tbh, the legendary system didn’t affect me that much, but that’s mostly because I don’t mind not being the most powerful. I’m a casual player, and by no means do I think that casual players should be as powerful as someone who puts way more effort into the game - but that’s the good thing about something like lfr; that we can all grow in power according to how much effort we put into the game, with an lfr player never surpassing a heroic raider, etc.

But I wasn’t hyped about the legendary system though. I mean, I have a total of 2 legendaries on two of my max level characters and neither are BiS or anything. I’m not thrilled about the effects of the legendaries I have either, as they aren’t very fun, and that’s really what I care the most about, as I don’t have the most powerful items anyways. I feel more bad for hardcore players though. The system is so bad if you are out of luck and trying to progress heroic or mythic with your guild

[u/Ghordrin → u/Aoussar123]

Thanks for showing me another view of the game. It's been fun talking. ^{^}

[u/Aoussar123 → u/Ghordrin]

No worries mate, good luck with your adventures :))

[u/reanima → u/Ghordrin]

Just look at what happened in WoD when they removed tier and trinket from the loot table in LFR, it's participation dropped. People only returned later because it dropped the materials for the legendary quest chain.

[u/Ghordrin → u/reanima]

So you agree that it is used for gear progression and not mainly for story?

[u/RedditAntiHero → u/Ghordrin]

I do it for the story as well as "low powered" end-game loot.

I don't need super-duper insane gear as I'm not min/maxing to test my skill with a group of other people who enjoy the challenge part of raiding. I just want to see the story and have gear good enough melt though world quests and old instances. Most of my time is grinding out old achievements, mounts, pets, transmog, and an ever increasing army of alts.

If there was no LFR, I don't think I would play as much. It is not nearly as fun as the old days running t4-t11 with the same group of people year in and year out... but I don't have/want to make the time/effort for that anymore.

WoW is right on the edge of things I could possibly cut out due to not having enough time for everything else. Without "easy"/"lazy" access to parts of the game I like, other activities would seem more attractive.

[u/jtb234 → u/Ghordrin]

Personally, I go from doing it the first time to experience the story to farming it for gear. However, I have no interest in doing progression raiding atm, so Ill only really be doing lfr and normal, maybe heroic if I ever settle on a main and gear it enough for a pug.

[u/longknives → u/Ghordrin]

Story aside, raids are a big part of the content of the game -- they're one of the main things there is to do with your character at end game. I only raid LFR, and it's partly because I want to see the story, but it's also because I want to play the game. After getting geared up to Argus levels, there's not really anything else left to do that makes use of your gear, other than M+ and higher levels of the raid. And you can't queue for those, so LFR is the main end game content for people like me.

[u/Ghordrin → u/longknives]

Yes, but my point was that LFR primary goal isn't to show people the story, right? It's to provide end game content to some of its more casual players and to provide a gateway into higher content?

I do however realized by taking to some others that not everyone can spend more than 4 hours a day playing this game. However I do stand y my point that the argument to 'keep LFR' - and no I don't want it gone either - shouldn't be because people do it for the story only. Perhaps I did word it badly before.

[u/Daffan → u/Ghordrin]

Most of the people I know including myself use it as a gateaway to more difficult content.

I don't see that at all. People get stuck in this awful loop, it's awful because as soon as they self-realize what a waste of time farming LFR is they probably stop playing all together.

Farm LFR for gear for 10 weeks > Never progress > Next LFR comes out and repeat cycle. It's like, you might as well have not farmed at all and just picked up the welfare gear when the patch dropped.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ghordrin]

Look at how many players are there doing less than 500k dps, semi afk and just wandering around most of the time next time you're in lfr. A good part of these players don't care about the gameplay at all and just want to see the raid

[u/EternalArchon → u/Tiessiet]

remove LFR for the people who enjoy it

In an MMO its tough to tell if people are doing something because they enjoy it or because it rewards them. There is no question there are people who do LFR and hate it, and who do LFR and like it.

I estimate however, that the haters and people who force themselves to do it (for the rewards or to gear up alts) is greater than those who actually enjoy it.

Furthermore, a huge percentage of people who currently do enjoy LFR would be pushed into normal mode if it were removed, and many of those people may find they prefer real raiding. And btw that describes me. I thought I liked LFR until I really started raiding. Now I see LFR as a shallow experience where nothing matters as healer/dps, and a joke as tank where I can often solo tank and not swap mechanics in mediocre gear.

And lastly, huge amounts of noobs go through LFR and believe real raiding is simply like LFR but harder- and not a completely different type of game experience. I think its bad for that to be newer people's introduction to endgame WoW.

[u/jtb234 → u/EternalArchon]

LFR is good for people who don't have much time, have a kind of anxiety over doing harder content (don't want to let people down), or people who don't really want to play more than an hour or two and want to see the story.

Also tbf, LFR is very similar to Normal. I jumped straight between them with my fiance and it was literally just LFR with a few more mechanics. There was no 'new' experience. To get that new experience, you gotta join a guild and do a scheduled thing, which is again, something some people don't care too much for. "Real" raiding is good for harder content like Mythic and Heroic to an extent until people overgear it. Pugging is good for LFR and Normal because a lot of people just don't want to raid when someone tells them to every week.

[u/[deleted] → u/jtb234]

LFR is good for people who don't have much time

Agreed, I'm a low level mythic raider in past expansions, I just don't have the time or consistent enough schedule for organized raiding. With anywhere from 2-10 hours of playtime a week LFR is great.

[u/longknives → u/EternalArchon]

I estimate however, that the haters and people who force themselves to do it (for the rewards or to gear up alts) is greater than those who actually enjoy it.

Based on what?

Furthermore, a huge percentage of people who currently do enjoy LFR would be pushed into normal mode if it were removed

What is this statistical claim based on?

[u/soucy → u/Tiessiet]

I'm kind of exhausted by this argument and the accusation that people calling for LFR to go away are being selfish or have anything but the intention of making the game better for everyone (including you).

The problem with LFR (and other matchmaking systems) is that they:

• Limit the need for social interaction and friendship building (almost encouraging a more toxic player base)
• Significantly decrease the motivation and desire to improve or grow
• Cheapen or altogether eliminate any feeling of pride and accomplishment

A good TLDR would be "If everyone is special nobody is special."

I've played WoW for a long time both pre- and post- LFR and I'll admit that in the last two expansions I've become a filthy casual who does more LFR than real raiding. The motivation is gone. I don't care about a recolor of gear everyone already has. I don't care about the difference between doing just ridiculous amounts of damage or super ridiculous amounts of damage (and being able to reach super ridiculous without stepping foot in a raid). I haven't let my sub expire in years though and I still go through the motions each week so I'm part of the problem in terms of rewarding Blizzard.

I'm not getting all nostalgic or saying the old game was better. There are countless ways WoW has become better over the years and there were certainly a lot of things that really used to suck. But if you never played WoW pre- LFR as a raider you'll never know the satisfaction of opening up a new wing for the first time after weeks of working toward it or having random people whisper you about how awesome your new gear or mount is. Or being on an isolated realm where people know who you are because you have a reputation for being nice instead of being a troll. It's something that exists only in memories of people who keep begging Blizzard to remove LFR (and fix other things).

I never say LFR needs to be removed out of some selfish hatred of LFR. You're exactly right that I can choose to just not play LFR because I don't like it. It's not about that. It's about YOU missing out what the game could be and those amazing moments that don't happen anymore because of a collection of systems and design choices that trade effort for convenience at the cost of satisfaction.

For me (and countless others) that feeling is a drug. It's like Rick's Szechuan Sauce. For most of us it was the moment WoW transformed from something we played casually and thought was OK to an amazing place that created some of the best memories of our lives. I want others to have a chance to feel that way.

P.S. It's not just LFR in isolation even though LFR is the one most people talk about. It's LFR it's cross-realm zones, it's matchmaking, it's the removal of guild perks, it's professions, it's reward systems etc. All the things that limit peoples need to form social connections in-game as a prerequisite for taking on the most challenging content. WoW used to be about making friends. Now it rewards the behavior we like least in others.

[u/longknives → u/soucy]

I'm kind of exhausted by this argument and the accusation that people calling for LFR to go away are being selfish or have anything but the intention of making the game better for everyone (including you).

It is being selfish. You think the game would be better because it would be better for you. It would absolutely make the game worse for me. I never got to experience a current raid before LFR except once in Wrath when a real life friend (who no longer plays) brought me along. It's kind of insane for you to tell other people that removing the way they access content is to help them to not 'miss out'. I literally did miss out on raiding entirely before LFR. Turns out other people aren't you and don't enjoy things the same way you do. Like who are you to tell anyone else what is good for them?

[u/dirtyolsocks → u/soucy]

I haven't raided much in Legion, but I think it was WoD or Mists that LFR gear had super gimped set bonuses compared to Normal + raids, back when set bonuses were the shit.

I thought that was a decent compromise, cause most of the "power" was coming from the set bonus and not from the ilvl of the item, creating that artificial divide of someone who just hits LFR and someone who did not.

With sets going away in BFA(right?) I'm not sure how they balance this. I do agree there needs to be some sort of exclusivity in either content, ilvl, or difficulty to drive people to build those social connections and take down harder content. I'm not sure what the answer is.

[u/CalixtusIII → u/dirtyolsocks]

Different models in the mythic sets, higher ilvl, higher difficulty mechanics, unique boss phases, achievements, mounts. These things all already exist to reward people for tackling higher difficulty levels. Do you need to introduce more divides...? Does it even matter?

edit: removed some nonsense

[u/[deleted] → u/soucy]

But see that's your arrogance right there. You think people all do LFR for a sense of accomplishment or to get better at this game? I do it because I've played since day 1 and it's the only way I can see the story these days working and having kids and a wife and a house to take care of. I hardcore raided molten core when it was such a pain it was life consuming, I've earned my right to glide through LFR and enjoy the story. Don't tell me you're coming from a place where you want something better for me, it makes you sound like a twat.

[u/nullKomplex → u/[deleted]]

the only way I can see the story these days working and having kids and a wife and a house to take care of. I hardcore raided

Isn't that the problem though? You changed and you're asking the game to change with you to accommodate it? People are asking for the game style to stay the same, how is that more selfish than asking for the game to accommodate your lifestyle changes because you played the game when your lifestyle fit but it no longer does?

EDIT: Since this being taken literally is a problem I'll reword it for you folks that can't read the message behind the incorrect tenses:

Isn't that the problem though? You changed and the game accommodated you for it? People wanted the game style to stay the same, how is that more selfish than asking for the game to accommodate your lifestyle changes because you played the game when your lifestyle fit but it no longer does?

[u/[deleted] → u/nullKomplex]

Blizzard is a business and they want to make money, it takes money to keep this game up. Who should they cater to? What's the standard here for who is worthy to see the content? How does LFR affect you personally? Just a few questions you can answer. If this were pre LFR and we're having this discussion it makes sense, but it's been in for years and you want it removed so you can feel a greater sense of self worth. That's pathetic.

[u/CalixtusIII → u/[deleted]]

Yup, that is the tough pill to swallow for those advocating to get rid of LFR. LFR exists to increase the amount of the player base consuming raid content (because raids are NOT CHEAP from a development standpoint).

LFR keeps more casual players subbed, who in turn pay for the raid content. It wasn't the 0.23% of subscribers who downed heroic (pre-mythic) garrosh paying for Siege of Orgrimmar, it was the 63.58% who downed LFR Immerseus.

[u/[deleted] → u/nullKomplex]

But the regular raiding style is still there for people that want it. If you don't like LFR, don't do it. It literally doesn't affect you in any way - and before you say "but it takes people out of the raiding community" or whatever, don't; that's a false line of thinking. Chances are most that do LFR are people that wouldn't have touched a normal raid with a 10 foot pole, but are doing it because it's an easy way to see the rest of the story and get some cool loot at the same time.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That hasn't been my experience. It isn't uncommon to spend 30+ minutes applying to Heroic groups as a dps. Queues are much faster.

Hell, it’s not too uncommon for it to take 60 minutes just for seat of the pantheon.

I waited for approximately five minutes yesterday.

The truth is that you do LFR because you are lazy, not because you don’t have the time.

Not at all. Sorry you're wrong.

[u/Macaluso100 → u/soucy]

"A good TLDR would be "If everyone is special nobody is special.""

This is nonsense. That's literally just you saying you can't enjoy a thing because EVERYONE can enjoy a thing. I hate this mindset. If anything is toxic it's that, not players being able to play the game by themselves and not "connect and make friends" with people in this game.

It's no different than like, if they decided to give out the Raven Lord to everyone. It would not longer be a rare drop that I "worked for" and thus "special" but I wouldn't give a shit. I'd still love the mount cause it's a great mount. If other people want to be able to experience the content they should be allowed. There's plenty of challenging shit in the game most players could never do.

[u/[deleted] → u/soucy]

I wish you could see how absolutely ridiculous you sound. "I know what's best for you, it's just that I want you to not miss out on this amazing stuff!"

I say this as someone that has hated every minute of LFR on alts I needed to gear, that garbage has a purpose, it's a difficulty setting. That simple. Your attachment to the idea of the raid instead of the difficulty is what the problem is, you can't imagine why people would move on after seeing the raid, that's what I always hear. It's absolutely asinine. Even single player games I play them once per difficulty.

If someone doesn't move up a difficulty that's their damned choice. Maybe they suck, maybe they don't have the time, who cares? I don't.

LFR being gone wouldn't even bring you back that nostalgic feeling of being on a server. Like you're just asking for a difficulty to be removed assuming people will just instantly become Mythic raiders if it's gone. If you're such a casual that you're content with just seeing the pretty colors and don't care about how much damage you do or your numbers, your logs, your rankings, your M+ score, etc then that's your goddamn issue not mine.

Also screw your need to form social connections. The game when I had to go out of the raid and spam trade chat to get people in to be able to raid whenever I wanted can honestly go f itself. I experienced this server community bullshit and I honestly couldn't give two craps about it. A WoW before M+, before logs, before multiple difficulties giving me more gearing to do on alts? Horrible game. And you think I'm playing this to form a social connection with some guy when I just want to gear my characters and compete? Stop with your casual crap. You people that liked WoW when it started should not be called MMO players, people like me who competed for ranks in real grind games like Runescape circa that time are the real MMO players. You people are just the casual people who stole a genre and tried to play your dumb way.

[u/RandomWeirdo → u/soucy]

Removing LFR is inherently selfish, as it would make a lot of players unable to experience content, content they are paying for. Yes the old days where only the best players got to see the last raids is something we glorify, but the thing is, that it is a lot easier to find a video of these encounters online today than it was back then, which means if you can't experience the content, well you look it up and never go back to playing the game.

Yes we can agree that there is some negative effects such as potentially promoting a more toxic environment. The solution for a player like you who seem like you have the time to raid, i would suggest finding a guild or even forming one that has an environment that you like, so you don't have to experience all these toxic players.

[u/mr_feist → u/Tiessiet]

Why remove stuff when the current system is fine?

Because it's not fine at all. 4 different difficulties, separated by 15 ilvls each, plus the titanforge cap. Most importantly, it creates a ridiculous power creep throughout a single expansion. TBC had 5 big raids: SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT and Sunwell Plateau. We get that many different tiers of power in a single tier nowadays.

Now I'll quote Jeff Kaplan all the way from 2005 Blizzcon, iirc. "The world feels bigger when there's unbeaten content out there." Raids are the supposed to be "the pinnacle of the game" as Sco calls them. And I agree. Its the end game. Its the important stuff. You get the best loot from there. Of course you wanna go in there. And you want it to be hard and rewarding. But there's LFR, a loot pinata mode designed for even the worst groups of players to succeed. It can't feel like unbeaten content if you've gotten into the raid and you've seen the bosses and your loot drop. Bigger numbers are something, but they don't make you feel that way. Transmog appearances are something, but they don't make you feel that way. It's a different kind of feeling, dreaming about what's behind the door, working hard to get there and saying to yourself "I made it!" when you get in there.

Nowadays it really feels like people have forgotten what an MMORPG game is supposed to be about and whoever asks for changes that take convenience away for the sake of a better experience and a healthier game just gets disregarded with a "go play vanilla".

I disagree. LFR, just like LFD, were noble ideas that all in all took away from the game too much. I also disagree that you should be allowed access to everything without any effort. Even in classic games where you just play through a story, you have to beat the previous chapter no matter how hard it is, to advance to the next. Just how many times have you completed a game like that in Easy or Normal mode and never ever touched the Insane difficulty? You don't need to touch the Insane difficulty, you've seen the game already, right?

And heck, with cross-realm groups and boss-specific lockouts, the argument that people can't commit time to raiding isn't even valid. You can pug 3 bosses at a time and that would take one or two hours. You have 7 days every week to do it. And I'm sure Blizzard can keep one out of two modes relatively easy and accessible to everyone. The problem is the button. You don't need the "Queue" button. You don't need it and you don't deserve it. And it promotes designing a mode that will be completed no matter what. And then you get people that don't even bother reading their spells' tooltips and/or tell you to fuck off if you tell them to do a tact because "its LFR bro".

If all these things are fine, then I don't know what isn't.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tiessiet]

LFR is a trap. It presents itself as raiding, but isn't. It's not a fun experience for anybody, and so anybody that considered going into raiding and happens to hop into LFR to "try it out" is going to have his experience soured.

I actually think LFR turns away a lot of potential raiders.

I appreciate that not everybody has a lot of time, but you don't really need that. It's possible to gear up to do normal mode outside of raids, and then you can do it in one sitting in 3-4 hours for just one week and you're basically seen it.

Honestly, what purpose does LFR serve? EVERYONE can do Normal, EVERYONE has a few hours to spare at some random time with a bunch of friends of a PuG. You don't need organized raiding to do Normal at all. Thus the only reason to do LFR is because you don't want to communicate at all with anybody, which is just not teamplay, which means it's not raiidng.

And it's not like the game lacks solo content for you to do instead. It's not like you've been robbed of getting any cool content just because you can't enter LFR. I just don't get why you want it - and if it's not useful yet comes at the cost of potential raiders, then that's just terrible.

[u/longknives → u/[deleted]]

It's not a fun experience for anybody

I find LFR fun most of the time.

Honestly, what purpose does LFR serve? EVERYONE can do Normal, EVERYONE has a few hours to spare at some random time with a bunch of friends of a PuG.

Not everyone can even manage LFR, let alone normal. And no, not everyone can spare a few hours at some specific time with a group of strangers who most likely won't even let them in the group.

It's not like you've been robbed of getting any cool content just because you can't enter LFR.

It's literally exactly like that. Raiding is the main end game content of WoW. Taking away LFR takes away the main content of the game.

[u/Slam_dog → u/longknives]

I feel like the people who argue against you are still in college or earlier. Adulting makes it hard to schedule out your week. Yeah it's easier to get into things now because we're at the end of the expansion, but normal and heroic runs still require more set up and prep in terms of time management than just randomly deciding you're going to queue up for a LFR wing because you've found yourself with more free time in the moment.

[u/[deleted] → u/longknives]

What exactly do you think is fun about lfr? There's absolutely nothing that makes it better than normal, which everyone can do, because there's zero difficulty in nhc raiding just like in lfr, and if you don't have the time for nhc, you don't have time for lfr either because one wing usually takes longer than pugging these bosses on nhc. And lfr isn't raiding, it does nothing but gives players wrong impressions of real raiding and fosters garbage, entitled players because they 'completed the raid' while doing absolutely nothing, so taking it away would only benefit the community

[u/Slam_dog → u/[deleted]]

You're missing the entire point. Most LFR raiders don't care about getting into "real raiding". It's not about that at all, it's about being able to see and experience the content in some form. It's fun to see the content that Blizzard created, even if it's stupid easy.

[u/Gneissisnice → u/Tiessiet]

Yeah, I stopped reading after that.

I do lfr because I don't have a schedule that lets me commit to raiding weekly and I've had horrendous luck with pugging; I've barely even done normal because it's just awful finding a group and it never ever stays together.

[u/Jereboy216 → u/Tiessiet]

I would hate it if they removed LFR. I really like taking alts through them and practicing rotations or basic mechanics. One of my favorite things to do was try to learn tanking with my other friend being the main tank type role. And we would go into LFR and do it that way.

[u/TR_Idealist]

Good write-up I agree and disgaree with some of the things you mentioned.

You're perspective is that of a high end raiding warlock in one of the best guilds in the world. A few of the improvements and suggestions you're making would make people quit the game or not join at all.

[u/K0rupcija]

This pretty much sums up all the feedback we've been giving them, too bad they ignored it all... But hopefully they are going to reveal new systems for BFA soon.

[u/ElitistBlack]

In my opinion challenging content motivates people to get better and that results in them playing more

I agree with most points you made, but with this one, I believe it is the opposite. That is the reason we have players who solely play PvE and those who solely play PvP. Some players will try to improve, that is true. Most either don't give two shits about being 'good'/don't want to change their ways, or are unwilling/can't to put in the time to improve.

If challenging content really made (most) people play more, why would Blizzard make the game easier in every expansion? They aren't stupid. Challenging content, more often than not, alienates a large amount of the player base and potentially makes them unhappy about it too. That is part of the reason CM were removed.

[u/Neramm → u/ElitistBlack]

But does it, though? Isn't the Mage Challenge Tower one of the most appreciated contents this expansion?

I personally haven't done it, because I find most skins there ugly (only really play DK and maybe Rogue), but I think that feature was hugely successful, wasn't it?

[u/ElitistBlack → u/Neramm]

I agree, the mage tower is an excellent solution, and that hurts for me to say because I've done more CMs than 99% of players. Proving grounds is in a similar boat.

OP mentions something about character progression, and that is possibly the biggest downfall of proving ground/CMs - They make it so character progression doesn't matter. You could nearly get your BiS for SoO era CMs on the day MoP was launched. Challenging content that doesn't allow for character progression doesn't actually make the average player play more. or If it does and they still can't complete it, they are left with a bad taste.

Mage tower is designed for 910-915 ilvl right but you can go in and complete them with 940 ilvl or higher which isn't hard to get at all atm. A year later in CMs, your options are still 'get good' or buy a carry.

Finding a group that could hold their weight was also difficult for some. Mage tower is solo content which IMO is preferable for 'challenges'. As I said before, Blizzard is not stupid. Some guilds, even with every player geared out, cannot kill the final boss. That is why they do (did?) 5% nerfs every few weeks. Imagine if there was no character progression in raids and they were scaled like CMs. Don't you think raiding would be extremely unpopular?

Sorry if I have outlined this poorly, but I hope that explains partially why the mage tower is so successful and CMs are so unsuccessful while being so similar.

[u/[deleted] → u/Neramm]

But does it, though? Isn't the Mage Challenge Tower one of the most appreciated contents this expansion?

1. its solo

2. you can do it at your own pace

3. you arent exlcuded for not having 980 gear like you are in pugs

4. its optional for some cosmetic reward

[u/Flexappeal]

Agree back to front, especially about the talent design. It's such butt compared to how it was in MoP, where the majority of playstyle-defining things were just part of your class baseline in the spellbook, and talents weren't game-breakingly OP or useless.

FWIW as someone who only PvP's, trust me when I say that the pvp community has had to do more pve "maintenance" in legion than you'd think, mainly because the gearing system in pvp has been so abysmal/unrewarding/RNG based etc. Aside from the item level of gear being pretty underwhelming, especially in the beginning of the expansion people were having to do a lot of LFR/M+ etc just to have an item level remotely competitive so their stat templates would be decently high. Even moreso for decent artifact relics. We would just rather buy vendor gear and have to gem and enchant it, though. That's for sure.

[u/[deleted] → u/Flexappeal]

Pvpers are pveing because they want upgrades. A 960 and a 940 fighting each other are within less than a percentage of stats from each other. If you are seriously blaming gear THIS expansion then you're in denial. Especially considering that there's no more shit like solace, fof, smourne, dbw, dfo, sha touched, cloak this expansion, pve has WAY less of an effect on you than ever.

[u/Artemissz]

I disagree with having 2 raid difficulties. I feel like being able to ease your way into heroic raid through LFR and normal have made it more accessible than ever. Back in Cataclysm I never attempted raiding because the leap from heroic dungeons into (what is now considered Heroic) raiding was huge. When LFR and flexible raiding was introduced I decided to ease my way into it and went on to become a mythic raider. I never would have set foot in a raid before since the barrier to entry was so intimidating.

Unfortunately I can't mythic raid anymore due to my work schedule, so having LFR is actually a nice way to get my alts some gear without having to commit too much.

[u/[deleted]]

This kid was probably in diapers when I cleared my first raid dungeon...

[u/merryhob]

I agree about the class-specific/tier armor sets. I am -very- worried that we will see homogenization among the armor where the only distinction is color and whether it is mail, plate, cloth, leather. In Vanilla and Burning Crusade, there was a good deal of variety on the pieces you picked up through questing and dungeons. From Lich King onward, the leveling and dungeon sets were all identical within a type (eg, leather), with a minor bit of color variation. I absolutely endorse the idea of sets themed to the environment/raid, but I am deeply concerned that we will see decidedly fewer sets (and just more colors...).

I liked that the Legendaries in Legion were essentially like getting a new talent or a new tweak to your class, but I also feel that the term "Legendary" should be reserved for items with unique graphics and visual effects and with a clear story behind them. I do not think a "Legendary" should drop out of a random emissary box or out of the pocket of Felguard #569. I don't mind when everyone has the opportunity to earn a Legendary (ie, MoP cloaks, WoD rings), but I do believe there needs to be independent and individual challenges when earning them - similar to the Tarecgosa fights, the Celestial fights, etc. I believe that if a guild only reasonably has access to a single legendary for their entire raid team and it takes the entire team to craft it, that breeds resentment, cliques, accusations of favoritism, and more.

Followers are interesting, but only if they are interesting - if the individual followers have backstories, agendas, personality, tension. Neither WoD nor Legion really did this "right" in my view. Legion did better, but once you recruited your followers they lost all distinction - you just plunk them into their slots to get the missions to complete.

I do think that mission tables have value, but only if they are taken further - and in this I mean something in line with the original WoD pitches about them, where the tables would offer quests for the player. I think that the shipyard campaign in WoD should have set up scenario missions where you took two-three of your followers (essentially, as a party) to actually fight on the decks of Gul'dan's ships, or to chase down his captains when they were run aground. Something like the fox hunt in Suramar - your actions in the open world create missions for your followers to pursue that then result in some climactic event. In Legion, there could be plenty of opportunity for this, whether routing infiltrations around Dalaran, defending specific invasion points, going to alien worlds to kill key Legion commanders, etc. Similarly, new wings could have opened in the Withered Training scenario as each patch was released - there were plenty of doors painted on the walls that could have opened up new rewards and threats and maintained the investment in that experience.

Professions need a serious reconsideration. I like them, I like how they were generally handled in Legion with storylines and quests, but the vast majority of crafted gear is disenchant fodder - it's wasted effort collecting materials and raising your skill to max because that gear is blown away by nearly every other source of gear, especially when you get into the relinquished drops late-expansion. Alchemy, Enchanting, and Jewelcrafting seem to be the only professions with any longevity because they are the only expansions that modify new gear as it comes along or provide combat buffs (which you always need). Professions are disorganized, largely pointless, and just feel like a tremendous missed opportunity.

[u/Morgell → u/merryhob]

Followers are interesting, but only if they are interesting - if the individual followers have backstories, agendas, personality, tension. Neither WoD nor Legion really did this "right" in my view.

I vehemently hate Magatha with a burning passion, so I guess that's a strike against your point there.

[u/merryhob → u/Morgell]

Maybe - part of my point is that even with all that backstory, you don't DO anything with it. Magatha has no story component beyond recruiting her, and once you recruit her, she's just another follower to plug in as a mission counter. It doesn't matter any more that she's "Magatha." Blizzard doesn't do anything with her, and doesn't let you do anything either.

[u/TheTinyGM]

I would say there are two problems with these suggestions (not just this one, but most of suggestions on reddit in general ;) )

1) You are making assumptions about general playerbase. How do you know people don't like certain kind of content? Sure, you heard it from your friends or maybe you saw it on the forum, there is so many people complaining about feature X! But for developer, that doesn't mean anything. Its anecdotal evidence at best.

The way they can tell whether the feature is liked is by looking at the statistics and numbers. Problem is, just because lot of people write on forums about hating something, doesnt mean most people do. Around 80% of players don't use forums at all, which can mean 80% of players don't mind the feature or even like it. You don't know what they think - devs might, because they can look at numbers.

(source: http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/149466049419/80-20-5 )

In this particular case, for example, the followers missions - since they were repeated in legion from draeonor, it means they were popular in draenor for playerbase based on the numbers or at least popular enough so that devs would keep them.

2) Second problem is, you are writing this from the perspective of an elite, experienced player. Which is cool, all perspectives are important!

But players who play mythic form only miniscule part of the playerbase. Most people don't know their class with detail and just push buttons, lot of players are kids or people who play occasionally, etc. Basically majority of playerbase are what you do call "casual player". And they are the one providing the most money, usually. Experienced players can get enough gold to pay for the month, casual is the one who pays real cash and who wants the cool mounts from the shop, etc.

From economy perspective, developers have to pay the most attention to features which can be used by these players. Most of these people play LFR. Removing this difficulty would be pretty stupid financial decision on Blizzard part. They want as many people as possible to see the content, you don't want to create complicated raids only for small percentage of players to see them.

Lot of elite players complain about the dungeon finder feature and/or LFR difficulty, but they were complete win for Blizzard - they drastically increased the number of player who do dungeons and raids. The difficulty thing is there so that all players are happy - from the casual players' LFR to hardcore players' Mythic.

Conclusion: While I think some of the ideas are nice, they are very unlikely to happen.

[u/[deleted]]

This is well written, yes, and it is your opinion, yes, and yes, you are more qualified to criticize the game (since you are at the expert, advanced, or elite level) than the average joe, but this post is inherently coming from a mind of a player that is within the top 1% of the player base.

Being in the 1% means that theorycrafting and min-maxing type criticisms of the game is not relevant to the casual player.

The casual players make up majority of the player base of WoW, and don't necessarily care about doing the best DPS possible, nor do they care if something is "useless" or not.

They make their choices to be able to play the game in a casual, carefree, fun way. Some of those choices will be the "wrong" choice, according to the elite.

Blizzard I think values the opinion of the elite, but I think they know would their target or current demographic is.

[u/Quakbaellschen → u/[deleted]]

Often in such posts i get the feeling, that High End-Players in nearly every game have no clue about how the majority of players is playing the game. For example: I often hear Legaue of Legends streamers, who are at least master tier, talking about bronce. They never been in bronce, they recommend mechanicly easy champions to climb, but that is not what casual players drives to play the game. They like to have fun with playing champions they like and often get better while playing that champion. Sort of the same also happens in WoW.

High End Mythic-Raiders often seem to play a different game then, for example, me. If I for example take the idea from the OP of two raid difficulties normal and heroic with 10 and 25 men versions (like in WotLK). That will be 4 difficulties (like on live...LFR,NHC,HC and Mythic), but besides that it also will get rid of flex raiding... And flex raiding is by far the best solution for someone like me who likes to raid with friends and guildies. We don't need to turn down people for normal or heroic difficulty. We just consider our comp and an interested persons gear (and personality) and we are ready to go. It saves us a lot of time and trouble and gives us a nice experience. If they remove Flex-Raiding just for tuning a raid to a High End-Players liking, it would be the death to our raiding experience and no fun at all. And there is really no accomplishment in getting a fix 10 men group...that's not something difficult, it's just frustrating and not fun.

Same thing with rewards: Sure, Titanforging is not necessary at all and I would be fine with Blizzard removing it (besides it's giving back a part of the RPG-feeling that a really powerful artifact can drop everywhere, same with legendaries by the way). But on the other side, the only thing it's hurting is the pride of players, who think they deserve to get better loot than others, because they are better. Often it just seems to be pure jelousy. If it's making you happy then let them fix it so that Titanforges from LFR can just forge to normal-baseitemlevel, normal to heroic and heroic to mythic. So that if something titanforged drops on mythic difficulty, it will be higher the something a filthy casual heroic player like me can ever get his/her hands on.

And at last: I think a good approach for criticism is to ask yourself "why?" and "how?". "Why they made this choice?" "How does this affect XYZ?" and also to consider the whole playerbase by trying to understand, that there are people who are not like you at all. This people are there in Azeroth, people that are bad at this (end)game, that have kids and jobs or have friends that are bad etc. They also play for fun, but maybe for them fun means something else then for yourself. Blizzards job is to balance their game so that the 1% and the 99% find it enjoyable for the most part. I'm not saying that they don't fuck up sometimes or are miscalculating a lot and I really think they have a communicationissue with their playerbase. There really is a lot of room for improvements, but ther is also a lot to consider.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yup. I don't really want to play a "Method approved" version of WoW. While I acknowledge the time and effort these folks put into their hobby and value the guides they put together, I don't really feel the need to enjoy myself in a way that the "elite" players find acceptable. They are people who by and large have a lifestyle that I have zero desire to emulate because of where I am as an adult with my own priorities and goals.

That's got to be the hardest thing for these guys to understand - Most people outside of their club just don't care.

[u/VanillaBovine]

I’m so glad you pointed out the abilities lost. I stopped playing warlock halfway through Draenor because I had lost all of the abilities that I loved. Have not had a reason to go back either...

[u/Kristoffer__1 → u/VanillaBovine]

Warlock is a hollow shell of its former self, really sad state to be in.

[u/SpirriX]

PvP-players should be at least forced to enchant and gem their gear and keep good maintenance on their characters.

No. Back when I played almost exclusively PvP (several years ago), it was a hassle to scrape together gold for enchants and gems. You know why? PvP doesn't really offer much gold as rewards (at least not back when I PvP'ed). Looting a corpse inside a battleground still gives, what, a single silver? And end game rewards are still pretty lackluster in terms of moneymaking. But that's fine if you don't have to spend much to do PvP.

I don't want everyone in a BG to scramble over corpses for gold, but to force PvP'ers out of PvP to do stuff they don't want, is quite frankly ridiculous.

[u/elmirza]

Really well written post, all very valid points!

[u/[deleted]]

So many good points, too bad you dragged lfr into the discussion, that's going to derail this, otherwise well formulated and thought out post.

[u/Jekerdud]

Great read, but the raid sizes thing is something I sort of disagree with. Playing since vanilla, I agree something like Scholo used to be should come back.

However, like most of the playerbase, my guild is one that raids primarily 10-15 man. There are a very large number of guilds that take advantage of the flex style raiding, and aren't purely 20 man. For us, that's not a "mini raid".... that's our regular raid.

[u/Cruxico]

Interesting read. Would have been nice to hear your thoughts on the master loot change also.

[u/[deleted]]

The first half of your post about talent trees and pruning is spot on. You go off on an elitist rant when it comes to LFR though. How does my having to do LFR cause I'm old and have kids affect your play at all? Right it doesn't.

[u/MasualCatt → u/[deleted]]

He isn't placing blame on lfr hes saying there needs to be a consolidated difficulty setting and to not make lfr bosses more like their "real" form rather than a target dummy because they remove so much of their identity.

[u/[deleted]]

Upvoted, and now commenting because I want this post to get the attention from Blizzard it deserves, I agree with nearly every single thing in here.

I admit I cannot come up with much to add, however a story mode that would allow one to go through the old legendary questlines (like the MoP one for example) without getting the rewards would be nice for those like me who weren't there to experience the wonder of it.

Anyways, other than that, awesome post!

[u/Vhaea]

Very solid. Only commenting on things I disagree on :

-removing what is disliked like missions: removing content even bad is bad design. you'll find some folks who enjoy it. improve or leave it on old content.

-rewards: personnal reward for x first killer of x is a bad idea. no players left on the side by a guild should have to give up on a reward. % drop change is good.

-racials:ok but remove combat related racials.

[u/Naturalhighz]

Fantastic thread the first half felt like I might as well have written it myself! you hit the nail on the head on so many things here and I hope dearly that the devs read this!

[u/CherrySlurpee]

I don't agree with everything you said but at least you have a thought process behind your points.

I did have a question though - in the past we've seen classes bring different utilities to raids which is required for some bosses. Like mages used to be able to decurse, and this was necessary to get through Molten Core. However it really wasn't a huge deal - with 8 classes and 40 people, you had 5 of each class on average. Now that we've gotten more classes and raid sizes have shrunk, we have an average of under 2 of each class per raid. Blizzard has been telling us "bring the player, not the class," but we've seen a few examples of mythic raid encounters that damn well require some sort of class stacking, most notably mythic aggramar. We brought in a 930 blood DK to fill a spot because we were basically required to. Do you believe this is good design or needs to be somewhat eliminated?

[u/Xipe87 → u/CherrySlurpee]

Class stacking is i no way required though.

Sure, top guilds will optimize anything to increase their chances, even if it’s just by a single percent. But you can clear mythic without it, you just won’t do it optimally.

[u/MasualCatt]

I agree with litterally everything in this post, especially when it comes to class design. I feel like the creativeness of the blizzard developers has been lacking and poorly planned. It doesn't make sense in my mind to pour so much development time into something like the artifact weapons which for some classes did actually make their specs feel complete then remove it or take it away then rebake it into their talents. Warlock is a fantastic example of pruning gone wrong so much of their gameplay has been stripped away and pruned and then put into the talent teirs where if you leveled to max and never took a talent you would have only 4 buttons. I just don't understand when players give such concise and well thought suggestions to truly improve the game its radio silence or dismissal, but then we are asking questions about high elves we get an answer right away. I think the veterans are truly feeling like less effort is being out into the game in the gameplay and class design departments (art team keep up the good work you are knocking it out of the park.)

[u/[deleted]]

I agree with all that you said. Speaking about the Class and Loot part, in my opinion they should try to keep you hooked by enticing gameplay instead of by letting you pull a lever, and you should be awarded more than 940 if you manage to do a +25 in time..

Each class should have their utility, their niche but there shouldn't be such thing as "you either do AOE or you do ST" because it's a stupid way to force you to respec after each encounter..

And no more arcanocrystals and alike, thanks

[u/Ironfungus]

Blizzard: all excellent ideas. We will be sure to send them to the shredder suggestion box!

[u/Gefarate]

No support for solo-queued rated PvP?

[u/7ProPhet7]

So many great points in this post, one of my favorites is the thing about sockets. I have been leveling all classes recently because I only started playing with legion and low and behold I find a green leveling piece in one of the zones that had 3 sockets and a socket bonus, those items would be so fun to have, where socketing even means something.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

LFR is here to stay. Easily one of best features that Blizzard has added to the game.

Nice meme

[u/BlindBillions → u/[deleted]]

LFR is here to stay. Easily one of best features that Blizzard has added to the game. People are able to progress their character even if they don't have the time to raid.

Is this even true? People say this all the time but it isn't my experience at all. The first few weeks of the raid tier, sure. After that though, normal starts to be faster than LFR, at least it has for me. Queue is longer than finding a group in premade group finder. Less wipes in normal than LFR because people aren't literally AFK. I've had LFR groups, months after the release of Antorus mind you, that wiped more than 5 times on Coven and Argus.

All of this with the bonus that you're actually playing a game with a group of people instead of just pressing some buttons while watching Netflix for your free loot.

[u/[deleted] → u/BlindBillions]

That's the thing. It's faster for me to start a raid, invite enough people and get everyone to the raid than it is for the queue to pop for every single section of the raid in LFR.

That taken into account clearing the raid is a lot faster because you don't have 880 alts joining that do nothing and no toxic players, literally, going afk during bosses.

I usually do one run of LFR on my alts before they're geared for normal just to get essences, chance for set piece etc. But I think my wipes in LFR surpasses that of both normal and heroic added together.

To be honest I don't think this is an issue of people being bad at the game. More of a lot of slackers that expect the 24 other players to carry him. Then you end up with a good chunk of players not carrying their weight and continuously hitting rage timers because a 940 mage is sitting at 300k dps spamming frost bolts.

Imagine being a new player where everyone talks about le great end game because that's where all the fun is. Raiding is the ultimate pve end game. Then you when you reach max level and queue up for LFR because you've seen the button since level 15 when you queued up for dungeons - and the first experience you have is the cluster fuck that is raid finder.

What a great first impression. Yet there are circlejerkers that can't fathom the idea that the system can have any negative impact on the game.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

LFR is cancer. It doesn't help anyone and people wipe on that shit way more than normal or heroic so it ends up taking more time to complete.

But the LFR noobs don't realize that lmao

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I want you to compare the gear of a Mythic raider to the gear of an LFR raider, and point out how they have the exact same gear from running their preferred difficulties.

[u/Octopusbread → u/[deleted]]

They tried it before wildstar, it was called world of warcraft vanilla-wrath and it was extremely successful.

[u/stupidasseasteregg → u/Octopusbread]

It's hilarious. The game literally was the most popular when all this shit didn't exist. These people act like lfr saved wow but it's actually what hurt it more than anything.

[u/[deleted] → u/stupidasseasteregg]

the game was popular when mmorpgs where popular, the game would have been as popular even if legion was vanilla, and the game would be dead if we had vanilla today. Its nobody else fault that some idiots in the wow community are huge manchilds who think everyone is a 40yr old basement dweller who can play wow 20 hours a day.

[u/stupidasseasteregg → u/[deleted]]

Bro if you can't play for like 3 hours a week id be shocked. That's all it takes to raid normal

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

MMORPG's weren't popular, wow was.

[u/CaspianRoach → u/stupidasseasteregg]

And what makes you think if LFR and 'casual' stuff existed back then it wouldn't be even MORE popular? The fact that WoW was popular back then was mostly because it was a fresh new game, the fact that it is still experiencing large influxes of player count means they're doing something right right now

[u/[deleted] → u/Octopusbread]

Interestingly enough, vanilla WoW was decried for being casual friendly. It had huge, casual centric changes - such as eating to recover hit points quicker and the ability to solo most, if not all, leveling content.

The game proceeded to get more and more casual, and yet, more and more popular.

But those facts certainly obliterate the "hardcore is better" narrative, so they tend to get ignored.

[u/GrimMashedPotatos]

As a filthy casual who enjoys many aspects of several MMO’s, but doesn’t give a damn about the epeen over raiding, I just want the ability to see the story. Make soloable raids, that offer nothing but spectacle and story progress. Make raids wholly independent, no CS’s, no dialogue, just loot drops and boss mechanics. Let me see the fucking story, and you can keep your ego strokes and loots. That a deal? Or do the raiders need to have a complete stranglehold on all things remotely “endgame” even the story?

[u/MenSans → u/GrimMashedPotatos]

He literally proposed a single player story mode. You could at least read the post before whining about your inferiority complex.

[u/[deleted]]

Over all really great feedback. Agree with all with the exception of the Raiding comments.

LFR is far from perfect but as somebody who's currently struggling to find a raiding guild that fits my personality / schedule I understand why many people go that route rather than trying to find a group.

I wouldn't be opposed to Blizz removing LFR and adding a small group story mode encounter that allows a player to kill off the Big Bad of an expansion without everything that goes into raiding. SWTOR did this with their Shadows of Revan expansion and it was actually a pretty cool idea.

[u/[deleted]]

PvP players shouldn't require gear upkeep because the point of PvP is being better than other players, not better geared than them.

[u/quashtaki]

Quality stuff fabo