I want to be super clear, if midnight launches without some
of these functionalities that we've discussed in the last 15
minutes, PVE is going to be really, really rough for a lot
of people. Like exceptionally rough.
Victory for the Forsaken. For Lauderon.
For the Karen tour. For.
Pandaria. For.
Calendar to. The burning.
Region for Gilnaeus, but has. Not died for the Lich King for
the. Sindora for the Alliance, for
the Horde. For Azeroth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
I am one of your host Manny, AKA the Truvan Manny.
And of course, I am joined by the other two parts of the
Triumphant first introducing from the far Far East where the
sun rises an hour earlier. Not sure it's Sean.
Hello, Sean, and how are you today?
I'm doing well, man. Yeah, it would.
I'm an hour ahead of you, so by rights the sun would rise an
hour sooner for me, probably the same time, relatively.
But for you, it's an hour shooter.
I feel like. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's definitely.
Listen, I, I used to be a rocket surgeon.
I definitely understand how the time zones work.
Got it, got it. I feel like rocket surgeon and
time zones are different things. But also also joining us, of
course, is Lex. Hello Lex, How are you and how's
the World of Warcraft been treating you?
I am good. The World of Warcraft has been
treating me well. We are still working on
dementias for AOTC which we are hopeful we will be getting soon.
He's tough boy. He's chunky my God.
But but vibin bopping along it's.
We're also in stick season which everyone whines about except
it's actually in my opinion the best season because it's all
spooky and pretty outside. But we love stick season because
it's pretty and spooky outside but nobody is looking at the
trees except for me so I can let my dog off leash.
Manny, I forgot to tell you my news, my Warcraft news.
I was so busy telling jokes. True, true.
I I believe you have an update as well.
So how's the World of Warcraft actually been treating you?
We killed dementias last night, we secured CE for the season.
We ended up at world rank 423, which is pretty impressive on
two nights a week, six hours. Very, very excited for that.
We dummied him. He's like a 220 ish to 250 ish
pull boss. We did it in 155 and we actually
gained 100. We we we we shaved 159 spots off
of our world spot from our Nexus King kill.
Yeah, we progged the snot out of that boss.
It was a lot of fun. I really liked it.
Really fun tank fight. I got to be the gravity runner
in P1 and then obviously in P3 it's it's very tank heavy.
Anyway lot of fun, loved it, big fan.
Lex, I can't wait for you to get your kill.
Then we will all be Dementia's devourers.
Nailed. It.
Here we go glad that you guys are pushing through going up the
ranks in the in the dementia's Prague there and doing much
better than last season. And of course, Lex, you're going
to nail that kill soon. Have you guys like, I kind of
want to go into a little bit of where you're at Lex, because as
you guys reach certain points like you've now started locking
out and and extending, Have you had those conversations where
you're like, OK, are we going to sit people?
Are we asking people to like really push their gear so that
we we can get it? What are those conversations
like for a Guild such as yourself?
So not really with dementias would we're, we're not seeing
if, if, if the conversations in the Guild tend to be very like
something is like, it is very obvious that what we need is we
need a couple fewer people off. So like with galleyworks, right,
we were struggling in such a way that it felt like the pulls were
impossible. And that meant that the officer
team, like we'd watch so many videos.
We'd made sure we had the like, we understood the dance and we
just like, like we're dying in ways that it wasn't even like,
oh, if we'd done XYZ differently, it fully felt like
unfeasible. And so then we had conversations
as officers and we're like it based on what we're seeing.
We have to have a conversation about sitting people or like,
and we set gear requirements and things like that to make it so
the people knew exactly what they had to meet to be able to,
to go into the polls. But if people can't meet that,
we just, we, we have to try without them so that then we
can, a lot of it is mental. There is some degree of like
once you get a kill, you can get a second kill.
We are not really. First of all, we've only had a
couple nights of prog on to Mencius and we're not seeing
those sorts of issues. There's not a clear like, oh,
first of all, it does seem like we're able to push.
It does seem like when we're having issues, it's issues with
getting the dance down versus issues of like, I don't even
understand how we're supposed to survive that sort of thing.
And we're not seeing like anything that would that would
make us think that like, if we cut a couple people out, we
would be better, right? It really feels like right now
we just all need to get the dance.
We're all doing a pretty OK job. And we would always prefer to
not sit. If we can avoid sits during a
season, we absolutely will. But you have to balance that
with like, you know, it's also really frustrating to be on
Prague for, for weeks and weeks and weeks.
So it is a very complicated topic.
And every time it has come up, it has been we, we've tried our
very best to handle it very, very sensitively and very gently
and make it very clear to people when we're thinking about it and
give them very clear expectations of like, here's
what we would need to see to avoid a sit.
Because the last thing we want is for somebody to log on one
night and then get the whisper like, Hey, you're out and like
midway through the night, just be like, Oh, well, this sucks
and feels bad and I am not having a good time.
And this frustrating poll now is like a devastating I'm not going
to hang out with my friends poll.
Can I say two things to that? Number one, I applaud you not
sitting people. I don't think there's any reason
ever to sit people on Heroic. I figure you're a team.
You've gotten this far as a team, you will finish it as a
team. That was something that we set
up when I helped raid in EU with Fates were forged.
That was one of the things that's really important to the
GM and that as a Rave leader for me was like, everybody can do
this. We're going to get it together
because like you said, it sucks if you get a kill and you don't
have you're not so team. And the second thing is
something that might help, if you're able to do it, is try to
tell yourself that you're not progging dementias, that it is a
rekill, that you've already got the kill.
If you can shift your brain because you're so right when
you're in, it's like your brain is in a different mode in Prague
mode from winning. It's in farm mode.
You're going to get this kill and the next week he's just
going to fall over and you're going to be like, I don't
remember how we ever struggled with this.
If you can switch your brain into thinking he's already dead.
I know all of the dance. I know what I have to do when
the things happen. I know what call oats mean what
we have killed this boss. This is farm.
It actually helps me and I know it helps some other people to
get over that hump of we're still progging and that that you
know that what comes next mentality and you seem pretty
good at like making your brain believe things.
If you believe that we don't all love you here, so that.
Was nowhere expecting that to come.
You should try that, though, that that could that could and I
again, I I really do applaud the no we did, though.
She believes that we don't love her, is what I'm saying.
But we do love her that that. Was I know it felt it felt very
like sweet and validating and also kind of like a like a
collar. Backhanded compliment.
It's like love yourself, smack. Yeah, you guys will get it.
I'm sure you will. Oh yeah, I do too.
And I think we, I, the, the first night that we were
pragging, the team knows this. So I don't think that anyone is
going to be like surprised when I said this.
I think we were kind of like myself very much included.
I, I, I have a bad habit of being a chatty little girl on
raid. We were a little bit in like
vibe mode, some members of the team versus like push mode.
So we had a, a little chat as officers about the importance of
when pull timers going. That is when we stop having our
cute little conversations on the side.
So realistically, we've had one night of really solid prog and
we did really well. We had really solid prog in that
night. So I, I am not concerned.
I, I knock on wood, I'm anticipating we're going to, I'm
kind of anticipating we're going to get it this week.
I don't know if we will, but I kind of think we are.
So we'll see. I believe.
Well, good luck to you and congratulations to Sean.
I guess that means that a lot of people who are in a similar
state are now focusing on Legion Remix because that is going to
be our first bit of news this week.
Legion Remix has gone its first post launch content update.
This is the rise of the Night Fallen and that includes it is
returned to Carazan. It is the night hold the Somar
campaign. I am really happy about Cara
because that was like the first mega dungeon.
I think in my mind it stands as the best mega dungeon is the
most like cinematic like my goodness, this feels like a five
man raid of all of the mega dungeons in my opinion.
Sean. Yeah, like I love Carazan.
You're the person who fell into Legion Remix the hardest of all
of us. Are you still going strong?
How is Legion Remix for you? Manny, Manny, Manny coming
closer. Let me tell you the little story
of Legion Remix and how quickly I fell in love with it and how
just as quickly it was pushed to the side when I discovered
another game last week that I gained access to that scratched
every itch I've ever had and some that I didn't know I had.
So I have not been keeping as I won't.
This is a poet cast of a Warcraft.
We're going to talk about Warcraft.
I'm not going to get into what other games I may have fallen
into, but it is I have fallen. I have not kept up with Legion
Remix. I did log on yesterday after we
killed the Mencius and we celebrated with a quick Carrizan
run as you mentioned. A lot of fond memories from
Carrizan for me from when it was a raid in BC.
I think Lex was going to say she remembers watching her dad raid
it in BC. That's.
Exactly what I. Was going to say, yeah, so we
did that. We did a quick run of that and
it seems fine. The the buffs went in for for
healers and DPS. They have 100% extra health in
dungeons and raids now and a bunch of extra damage.
That's good. So that sort of levels that
playing field. I think everybody's at the point
now where they're realizing like the first two weeks of Lead
Remix, everybody was like, oh man, for the first week, how
long has it been out? Two weeks, two weeks, first two
weeks, everyone's like, oh man, I got a power blast right now.
I got to get Max power. This, you know, this is
happening. And everybody who in work like
Warcraft, people tend to do this thing where they get like really
insane over a new mode. And everybody did that.
And like a huge majority of people are running around at Max
item level already 7:40 and then working on those power games.
There's a group of five in China who have their artifact weapon
up to 999 power already. They've timed plus 106 I believe
it is. It might be 116.
It's a big number they have over.
I think it's over 3,000,000 radar IO score from those
dungeons. 116 was the last. So they're probably up to 8
million score now because as those keys go higher, the score
gets exponentially greater as well.
So people are still blasting about.
A lot of people are realizing Wow, we have way more power than
we ever thought we were going to have as these phases are rolling
out. And so now where there was a
gradual increase in the speed with what you were killing and
clearing raids in Phase 1, the raids and the dungeons came out
in phase two and it was like instantly one shooting bosses
and people are still hungry for more.
They're like, Oh no, I want more, more.
It's like, it's great. It's like Kylo Ren in that one
scene from that Star Wars movie where he's got his mask off and
he wants more. I don't know which one it is.
I love Star Wars but I those 3 blend together for me.
Except for the horse thing in Last Jedi.
The best of the pack don't at me.
Anyway all I had to say remix like Mythic plus fell off a
Cliff because of Remix and that game that I mentioned.
And Remix is like going hot and heavy now.
And I now that we're done Prague and I don't really have a
reason, Turbo Boost has ended, which we're going to put next.
I did my Crest conversion, so my turbo boost lasted all of 4 1/2
minutes. I will probably dive back into
Remix this week if I can pull myself away from that other game
that I'm really, really enjoying that does so many things so
well. Are we not supposed to say other
game names? Because I had an entire season
where I was talking about the Valeguard like every single
episode of For Azeroth. I I feel like Dragon Age isn't a
direct. Oh, that's true.
That if they're competitive, though I have also talked about
Final Fantasy on an unreasonable amount.
But you can keep your secrets if you want to keep your secrets,
Sean. I don't want anybody else to
join me in my fellowship. No, I think it's good that you
have a fellowship of friends and that you guys are all like
running through. So that's that's good.
Yeah, I jumped in over the weekend.
It was like, OK, I'm going to do some Legion remix, some remix.
I did the starting things. I saw the points where Sean was
like, Oh yeah, they do the skip there and isn't that cute and
nothing and that sort of thing, and got down into Azura and I
was like, OK, I'm going to start doing these quests.
And I cleared out like one or two quests.
I'm like, you know what, maybe I want to try this on hard mode
because like, what's going to kill me?
Here's the boredom more than anything else.
And yeah, I got my butt handed to me by this one core hound,
fell core hound that had four affixes and decided that it only
needed two to hand to hand me my life.
So I had to turn off the hard mode.
And I am both really happy that it's there and really sad that I
fell so short. It might be that like, like I
just need to avoid like particular enemies and stuff,
which is cool. I'm going to give it another
shot. I think that levelling up
through questioning is just not something I can do.
As somebody who's played through the Legion content maybe about a
dozen times. How many classes are there in
the game, including Evoker? Well, Evoker can't.
You can't be an Evoker in a Legion Remix 13 if you count
Evoker 12 available in Legion Remix.
Got it. So I have done legion content at
least 10 times so I I'm I'm burnt out on it.
Can I offer a suggestion that might help juice your your
gains? And it's not, it's not, it's not
whey powder or creatine or whatever that gym stuff is that
people take. I'm so I'm so so fit you.
Guys need to watch some videos so you can check out Sean's
climber body that he was talking about in the pre show but
continue on. I, I just, I want you to know
that in 2002 I won second place in a hard bodies contest at the
Palace in Halifax, 4 weeks in a row in the 1st place when it was
obviously somebody who actually had a hard body.
But I had great stage presence and continued to get like I beat
actual gym people. It's wild.
I wish I had a picture. Anyway, that's not important.
Nobody's here for that Legion remix here.
I'm gonna juice your, I'm gonna juice your gains and remix.
You're just getting into remix. You missed that first two week
wave. That's OK.
Here's what you do. First you go in and you install
the add on Legion Remix helper, I think it's called.
You install that add on. You're going to go into those
settings. You're going to set it so that
you automatically open all your boxes so that it automatically
opens all of your bronze and so that it automatically accepts
and turns in quests. Then you're going to go back,
you're going to turn on normal mode, you're going to pick
either Stormheim or Val Shora and you're going to go and
you're just going to mindlessly run through the zone completing
the quest. Don't read the quest text, just
blast through on normal difficulty until you hit level
25, between 25 and 30 at 3025. If you're brave at 30 though,
then you turn on hero mode, that you turn on the hard mode and
you go back and you keep leveling those up.
Every day you log in, you do 1 heroic dungeon through the grid
group Finder, 1 normal dungeon through the group Finder and try
to do and then at 80 then you would you hit 80, you do that
same thing. You keep doing the normal and
the heroic dungeon, but then you include the raids.
You want to tie in mythic and heroic grades.
You'll get invited to groups. It doesn't matter if you're not
740. Even if you see groups that say
only taking 730, still apply their lies.
That's advertising. We're using that to bring in the
hotties, the juicers, so that we can have them boost all the
other people that aren't that high.
It's OK Apply to those. And then then just relax and
just do that everyday. You should go through if your
goal is Max power go through and finish all the questing
campaigns. There's a lot of good bronze
there a lot of power to be gained there.
But if your goal is just bronze, then just log into your heroic
dungeon, do your normal dungeon and then do it one round of the
raids every day and you're going to get enough bronze by the end
of the three months If you do that every day that you'll be
able to buy whatever you want to buy.
Yeah, that's trust me juice yourself up with that that
Legion remix helper add on it also auto scrap stuff for you.
You open up your thing to scrap and it just force feeds it all
in there. There's there's a bunch of other
add-ons that help like plumber is nice, but you probably
already have that on and people are using easy scrap but you
don't need you don't have plumber.
So I I used to have plumber and then my friend convinced me to
uninstall the game and I don't have most of the add-ons I used
to have so it's it's I I'm thinking of reinstalling stuff
but it's a process now where I have to get them all back again.
Is. There a good for you though, it
like gives you an opportunity to be like what actually do I need
and what did I just have downloaded?
Wait, which one is which one's plumber?
Plumber it's AUI add on that like gives you different views
of like your reputation and all these different windows.
It's it's basically like AUI Fixer that makes things look
much better and presentable and much more easy to read.
Yeah, get it. Gotcha it auto it auto fills
your power into your artifact weapon for you.
It was big in mop. It was big in Amerdrasil
Seriously install this is for everybody.
If you're listening to this show right now.
Hi thanks for listening. We appreciate you.
Why don't you pop into the discord at that LY slash Fez
discord and let us know so we can all say hi to you there but
install plumber. If you're not using it, it is
the best add on bar none. It if you have no other add-ons,
you need to use plumber. Yeah, it's it's done by Peter.
You the same guy that does I don't think he does narcissist,
does he? He does dialogue UI.
Does he also do narcissist? Sean, do you want to be really
careful saying that? Because if you tell people that
they need an add on then Blizzard's going to be like
shit. And then they're going to make
it so you can no longer do UI add-ons.
I mean, we're going to be talking about UIS later, but I
think that there is going to be a conversation about UIS that
have survived what Blizzard has done because there's many of
them and what UI stuff, what kind of add-ons we would
recommend for midnight would be a cool kind of thing, but
that'll be a different episode. Moving on from Legion, we now go
into live realms because live realms, after quite a bit of
downtime, got the turbo boost and so now you can upgrade all
of your items another couple of tracks on whatever they were on
before. You can now reach a new level of
Max power you can buy trinkets, weapons, or other items from.
Instead of it being on one vendor, they're actually 2
vendors now. So one is for the heroic level
stuff and analogous to heroic level, and one is for the top
level mythic stuff. This first week you are getting
a quest to go kill bosses and raise or go do Mythic Plus, and
that will give you 3 of the Puzzling Cartel chips.
That is enough for you to buy your first trinket.
But over the next few weeks you're going to only get one per
week. So on week 4, that's when you'll
be able to get your next one. And then again on Week 7, that's
when you'll be able to get that last one there.
And that'll be all of the Puzzling Cartel chips.
This is pretty much similar to what we had in Season 2.
They've just sort of split this deployment up this time around.
And I also think that one difference that I saw and you
guys can double check this for me, if I want to buy a
particular piece, let's say it's mythic level quality from a
mythic plus, I only have to beat that particular dungeon that it
would drop out of instead of having to get all of them at
twelves. And the same thing is true for
raids. You only have to beat the boss
that would drop it on a mythic level to then be able to get it.
So I could see a couple of runs for the well could be second
boss, but Luminar being suddenly offered in trade because that is
a choice trinket that's very early in the raid and so I I
can, I can definitely see those carries being spammed.
Yeah, loose the the boss is the boss condition is the same as it
was last year. You had to beat the boss on
mythic difficulty and just that boss that hasn't changed.
But you're right. Don't buy a loom with our carry.
It's it's a very if you if your gearing is current, if you're at
a point when you're like worried about getting a mythic loom with
our trinket, your gearing is probably pretty current.
You'll be able to plug that boss you if you just put enough time
in. You know it'll be painful
probably at first, but you should be able to plug that
boss, especially a couple of weeks from now when people are
all turbo boosted up. It is a change though to the
mythic plus for for you only needing the the plus 12 in the
dungeon you want, which I think is good.
It matches it up better with the raid.
So I think that makes a lot of sense.
And there was another change that they made.
You can no longer earn credit towards your Puzzling Cartel
chip quest by going to LFR. The they made it so that you
have to do, I think it's at least normal.
Yeah, to get that credit. LFR no longer gives credit
towards it. And as well, in order to buy the
pieces, you have to have done the raid on at least normal.
So LFR no longer counts to for you to buy those pieces either.
And I have a lot of thoughts about puzzling cartel chips in
the dinars in the implementation the last two seasons.
This it's it doesn't matter. My thoughts don't matter on it.
I hope we see iteration on it in midnight.
I'm, I'm of two minds 1 is that if this is how it's going to be
going forward and it never changes from this, I'm fine with
it at this level, right? If it changes, I was fine with
this level in season 2 where I was like, oh, it could be more
disruptive going to the next season, but this is the end of
expansion. Open the floodgates like if if
it if this is the implementation for this season and not a model
that they want to carry going forward, then this is This seems
the wrong season to be so restrictive in my mind.
Well and like Oh no, someone who only did LFR might have slightly
better gear and might have a slightly better chance of doing
higher levels. Like I, I don't know, I as, and
maybe this is my AOTC only Raider brain speaking, but like
I feel like I feel like boost should help the people who are
lowest the most, right? I really don't, frankly, I think
if you do only do LFR, get heroic gear, right, I don't
care. I would like you to have the
highest boost because clearly you're at the level where you
need it, where you will benefit from it the most, right?
I would like people to be able to.
I feel like the point of turbo boost is to help people get to
levels that otherwise they wouldn't be able to.
So I don't personally see any benefit to taking things away
from people who only do LFR. I don't like oh.
Are they going to go in and? All of a sudden Cutting Edge is
going to be screwed up because the people who do LFR only have
extra gear like the game's ruined guys.
That's my take on this. Also side note in case you are
potentially a little bit stupid like me, I had somehow never
heard the phrase cantrip items before.
So if you were listening and you're like what's a cantrip
item? It's like gear but it has like a
special little effect. So it's the cool extra stuff.
And you can get those puzzling cartel chips, too.
So like a direct example of this is like the boots from from the
demon hunters. They are gear that have a extra
effect and having completed AOCC and my guilt no longer rating, I
never got those boots. So now I'm like I should get
those boots. For somebody who does not have
even the boots on normal, this is a big power game for me.
If you're going from the heroic boots to the mythic boots,
you're only really getting the item level difference, so it
doesn't feel like it's it's not as big a jump in my opinion.
Does the proc rate's not increased?
Is it? I know normal to heroic is 30 to
40 so I assumed mythic was 50 but.
Yeah, it is. The percentage change does go
up. They that that changed late in
the beta cycle in the PTR cycle. For the raid it was initially
there was no difference, but then just before the raid for
the the patch went live they changed it to have that
difference. I passed that to a guy who
already had normal. That would have been so much
better for me anyways. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
We were past, we were like past prog of that part and just doing
farm. So I was just like, I don't
care. It's trans mog for me.
I'll come back and get it later. OK, All right.
I I still think that if this is a mold for how it is to go
forward, I'm somewhat OK with this.
I don't think it is taking things away from people for them
to not get access to gear beyond what they would normally use to
progress. I think that the extra item
levels is additional power to help people push and if they are
now tempted to go into high levels of difficulty to access
those higher things because it's so surgical about how you unlock
it and you don't have to clear all things at 12 or all of the
raid in order to get to these items.
And specifically because unlike in last year, the good trinkets
are on earlier bosses. Like if you remember back in
Undermine, those good trinkets were on like the last two bosses
and stuff. So like you were fighting all
the way to to get to those things to unlock them.
So this seems like a lighter ask, an easier ask to get people
in the door. And once they're in the door and
then they get that trinket that gives them power to push through
further. They've already cut their teeth
on the content and maybe don't feel it as it is as hard.
And so in terms of guiding people into that next level, I
actually think this is better in terms of rewarding people.
Yes, this is more restrictive and.
Then like, and, and to be fair, it is definitely a case of like,
if this is how they did it at the beginning, it's not like I'd
be sitting there like, what do you mean you don't get puzzling
cartel chips for LFR? Like it's it, it feels like a
removal because it used to exist and they changed it, which like,
fair enough. I, I don't, I mean, I don't
think it's, I don't think it's devastating either way, right?
I don't think that anyone has ever been like, oh, I wasn't
going to do normal, but now all of a sudden I have this one
piece of gear and suddenly I'm, you know, going to be pushing
AOTCI. Would be a little bit surprised
if somebody who wasn't intending to step foot in normal or I
suppose heroic would be like, well, for this I'm going to push
forward, but I could be wrong. I have a very, I'm very, you
know, I do the same thing every single tier.
So there's never any question of where I'm going to go or whether
I'm going to go higher. Yeah, I, I, I think it, it just
feels like in in my opinion, again, like why?
Right. I just don't.
I know that I fully understand the benefit of taking that away.
Would I hear you? It's it's just reset and we're
experimenting with different things.
But yeah, I mean, I'm not going to, it's not going to be my new
every single episode. I'm like, and remember when
Blizzard took away the ability to get puzzling cartel chips in
Alafar? Like, I don't, I don't think
it's. Oh no, I've I've got like
grudges that I hold for forever. Like when we get that 3D access,
I'm going to like go on Earth, that meme where it's like, oh,
the poor's finally got their access and I'm going to pass it
out everywhere. I remember stuff.
Sean's line is blown. He forgot about it.
I remember. I will.
Understand that I remember saying it, I stand by, I stand
by. I would like to give before we
move on because I feel like we're about to move on.
I would like to give one tip for turbo boost for anybody who
isn't aware of this. And you probably, if you're
listening to a Warcraft podcast, you are probably already aware
of this, but you can Crestron Cat now.
So you can go. And if you haven't converted any
of your old crests all season long, you can now convert all of
your lower crests all the way up to gilded if you have that
unlocked or to whatever level you have crests unlocked at.
I ended up with 380 gilded crests.
But do buckle up because it's depending on how many you have,
it does take a long time. And as far as turbo boost, my
thoughts are just that fun game modes should be fun.
OK, so then we'll use that as the queue to move on to a.
Fun game mode. To a fun game mode, yes.
So we've talked about Legion, we've talked about the regular
retail. Now we're going to talk a little
bit more about the alpha. As we are now moving into phase
four, we've had some time to test out The Dells in the
upcoming expansion. Dells are now part of the main
levelling experience. They're integrated into the the
story campaign and they still continue to be an end game
pillar. So we've taken some time to like
do those Delves and we're going to be talking about how Delves
are so far on the alpha. So we've got people who hated
Delves, people who have been loving Delves all the time, and
people who have flip-flopped between Delves right here.
So we're going to get a couple of opinions.
Let's start with you. What did you think about Dells
in The War Within? So I've been enjoying them.
I think they are. I'm on record saying I think I'd
like them to be a little bit more pushy and I do kind of
agree, although I understand their the reasoning.
I won't make us go back into the life, but what about the fact
that some people get axed and all that?
I, especially playing on Havoc, have had a very good time with
them. They've made gearing a lot
easier. They've made it a lot less
stressful for me to get to the points that I want to get to,
Especially without somebody who doesn't love Mythic Plus and
somebody who doesn't have a ton whose whose time frame in
playing World of Warcraft does not tend to line up with my
guildies. By which I mean I go to bed when
all of the parents put their children to bed.
So congratulations to me. I go to bed at the same time as
a 5 year old. Well, you know, like we all have
responsibilities and people who take care of five year olds also
have to go to bed to be up with five year olds.
So it's not just the five year olds.
Sean, I believe you had a much more tumultuous time with
Delves. How's your experience being in
the War within for Delves? Delves from a fairly well geared
tank POV serve no functional purpose outside of the first
week of the season when I'm trying to get extra tear and I
do not find them enjoyable enough beyond that point to keep
doing them for fun. Now I have friends who like them
so I do end up usually filling my delvers journey and spending
time in delves because my friends are like hey I'm adps
who likes this but I'm tired of getting my face pushed in can
you please come stand in front of me with your shield?
But as a solo game mode I found them to be tedious, boring, and
just not worth my time from a reward perspective.
If they had included some cosmetics I guess there was the
delvers set. You could, but you could buy
that as well. Yeah, and also it's ugly but
fire you. Continue.
And they had to look great. You're right, You're right.
A lot affected, but yeah, I just I wasn't great for me wasn't
fun. There's no as a tank, there's no
challenge, even a tier 11. It's just you don't there's no
loose condition. I can't die unless I like
massively over pull the dungeon and I'm just consumed by casters
out of my range. There's which is why would you
do that? There's no way for me to die,
which means now it's not a question of skill.
It's just a question of time and because you're a tank and they
have so much health on all the enemies in there, it just takes
forever. So now it just becomes this
tedium. It's just, I've said there's
lots in the show. I found them to be.
They're not great for tanks. They that they need a drastic
change. And I went into them on the
alpha with that hope that they would have done something to
change it, to make it better for tanks.
OK, we'll get to your alpha impressions in the moment.
So just recapping so people don't have to go back into the
archives of the show, but feel free to do so if you want to.
I started pretty enthusiastic about Delves behind the scenes.
We were like really looking forward to Dells trying to like
figure out like what what they're about, how competitive
they could be. See if this was like Blizzard
has positioned this pretty much as a new end game pillar.
And so I was looking to see how how far it would go if like if
when you turned it up to 11 is this was going to be something
incredibly engaging. And unfortunately, delves have
never quite fit the mark in terms of end game pillars for me
as Adps melee DPS. Season 11 was a matter of
getting to the gear point where they wouldn't immediately get
you in a global before you could react.
And then once you were at that safety level, yes, there was the
interplay of like, oh, let me grab those potions so that so
that I can keep myself healthy and that sort of thing.
But like, the gimmicks were what really did it for me.
Each one had this weird little run around with the candle don't
drown underwater sort of thing that proved to annoy me more
than engage me. As the expansion went on, they
actually pulled back on those mechanics.
We had the entire underwater levels just get drained at the
in the last season, the candles and the air purifiers became
multi charges that you wouldn't get screwed over with as easily.
And so Dells became more enjoyable or maybe more
tolerable depending on your your your position in season 2 and in
season 3. But once I was geared, it was
kind of like you were saying, Sean, I'd push season 2.
I remember us all being like, whoa, wait a second.
I just did Elevens on the first day when the world happened.
They may have nerfed this too much, but I think that's
preferable to like the frustration of people getting
like one shot because they're on the wrong spec or healers not
being able to get through it at all.
On the addition of healer. Brand was a was a godsend for
healers. So I think Delves in general
have been in a much better position in in its refinement
going to the end of the war within the last thing that was
missing was that I think it's just unanimous between all three
of us. I hate Bran.
What an annoying like he's the reason that I turn off sound in
in World of Warcraft. Half the time I'll be doing the
dementia's fight, be like, oh man, I got to turn on, turn on
the sound for this music and then it don't stand in those
webs and oh, OK, immediate, immediate mute on that.
So Bran and the feel of Delves as being this weird kooky sort
of thing also kind of made me not take it seriously and kind
of detracted from the experience as well.
But I felt Delves definitely ended in a much better position
than they began with. So I mean.
I had this on the show as well. I do think like only in an end
game pillar is complicated because it ends at the point
where most like the other end game pillars start, right?
Like where you start actually pushing is, is the gear level
and the challenge level. That and like we've had this
5,000,000 times. I will.
I will anyway. Anyway.
It's it's weird because if you're separating Mythic plus
from all dungeons before it, you are 100% right.
I would say that your argument is so hard to fight right.
If you're separating LFR from all other levels of rating
content, then I would say you're right.
It's it definitely does not go as it go as far.
And then we've had the conversation about it's
balancing all the way through. But I got to ask you guys, your
experience on the alpha now, how was that for you?
And I guess, Sean, you were kind of leading into it.
So we'll get to you first, your experience on the alpha.
How have you felt Delves have been?
I've run 3 or 4 now, I can't remember specifically because
they run together. It is the exact same.
I feel the exact same about the Delves in Midnight as I do about
the Delves all through the War Within.
Now, obviously in Midnight, we can't do up to Tier 11.
We can do up to only do up to Tier 3, but our characters are
scaled appropriately for Tier 3. So it's the same as if I was
doing Tier 11. They are fundamentally missing
something. And, and I want to say because
we're throwing a lot of, I feel like we're like really coming
down on Delves. And I know we have at least one
listener who loves them and that means we have more listeners who
enjoy Delves. These are for some people and I
am so happy that they exist for those people.
They are definitely not for me in their current state, and
that's OK. I have so much other things I
have to do anyway that it's kind of nice to not have to do delves
and I can't AFK them like I can the theater event.
So it's really difficult. But yeah, I didn't.
I found with the with the exception that I don't have to
listen to Bran. I actually quit my EU rating
team because two people showed up in that with that stupid
brand toy on to a raid. So I pretended I'm going back to
school and told them I had to quit because I couldn't listen
to don't stand on those webs anymore.
Anyway, Velira is better, but it's only because there's no
voice lines in yet. I'm sure she's going to be just
as annoying, or at least none that I noticed.
I'm sure she'll be just as annoying.
And and that's I think I genuinely do not understand the
decision not to rotate the companion because I didn't hate
Bran when he came out. I thought he was kind of funny.
I thought he was kind of cool, right?
I was like, I'm actually kind of surprised.
I expect this to be more annoying than it was, but this
is actually a good time. I loathe him now.
I think that they should end the war within.
They should give us a fun scene where we personally get to kill
Bran. I hate him so much.
I want him deleted from the files of World of Warcraft.
I never want to hear a stupid little voice again.
And yeah, I agree, I'm having more fun with the leader and I'm
like, oh, this is so like the vibes are different.
This is so cool. This is so exciting.
I'm going to hate her in a season, right?
It's going to be the exact same thing.
Because the issue is not that Bran is particularly annoying.
The issue is that if you hear the exact same thing multiple
times a day, every single day, you will hate it.
There is no voice fun enough and there's no line cute enough that
you will not loathe it by the end of that.
So yeah, I, I, I do, I, I maybe it's work and I'm famous for
saying I want Blizzard to have lower workloads, but I can't
imagine it's that hard to just change out the character we're
running it. But I don't know.
I don't, I don't code. However, I'm really excited
about Dallas and Alpha. I think that might be a kind of
unpopular opinion. I don't think that I've heard a
lot of people are loving Delves in Alpha, and I'm going to feel
really, really silly if this is not new in Delves and I somehow
just missed that it was occurring in other Delves.
One thing that's really standing out to me is that when you pick
up the curious, you get a little stacking buff on your character
goes up and up and up, and I think that's cute.
I like the the idea that actually exploring and doing the
delve stuff and doing the Delve mechanics makes you do better.
And that that means that I can push higher levels and delves
much lower and it's easier. I mean, I do kind of agree.
There's a little bit of a issue with it being a little bit easy,
obviously. But like, I think that's that's
a cute idea of how to how to use the mechanics within the delves
that we're already doing to make to choose whether or not you're
going to buff yourself or not. It will also say, final thought.
I tried to play on Devourer. Holy Mother of God speaks and I
as having just said that things are too easy.
If you do delves as a ranged player on purpose on a regular
basis, you are stronger than God.
What are you talking about? I changed to Havoc in three
seconds. I can't do this.
So I'm weak and bad, but I'm having fun at Havoc again.
Oh, OK. All right, so this is where I
change. I flip the script and say that
I'm really happy about delves in alpha.
I have done 1 Delve the first week.
No, sorry, two delves of both delves the first week multiple
times, right? It was two of the first one and
then one of the second. Second week I only did one of
the delves as we went into Dolom on this week I have done both
delves and that was a real struggle because the alpha has
been having this stupid lag later in the week.
Luckily when I went into the instance it wasn't bad.
So maybe it's only in the out world but like I've been
struggling to play on the alpha because of the lag that I've
been suffering. Regardless, I've been enjoying
Delves. I think regardless of where they
go in the end game, I am very happy to see Delves integrated
into the storyline. It makes for bigger moments as
punctuation points in the levelling campaign.
Whether that is clear like closer to the end as a capstone
for like whatever happened to these guys or if it is a big
reveal moment before like they do a little reset.
I do genuinely like Delves as part of a story element.
It's kind of reminiscent of Legion, how Legion had its
dungeons as the final part of a story and you would like go
against the drug bar to like finally get the last part of
whatever Mac Guffin that you were working on in that zone.
And them using Dells like this makes me appreciate Dells a lot
more. They are just generally really
good scenarios with like set pieces that are set up that way
and so I really like that a lot. As far as where I feel this is
going to be in the end game, like Sean said, we haven't had a
chance to test anywhere beyond three.
I don't know where 9/10/11 is. I would hope that they would
possibly look at maybe throwing in additional affixes.
In my mind season 1 was stop at 88 is what you need to get
through all the stuff you need and 9/10/11 are the challenge
modes for bragging rights. And yes, it might be unbalanced,
but if you can do it, like congratulations, that's
something to brag about. And I felt it was aspirational
content and I think is the term I was using at the time.
And I still think that there's a place for that in delves.
Maybe it becomes more like Tor gas where you get through all
the floors and then, hey, do you want to turn on like the the
void void corrupted version and like do corruption 1-2 and three
to make it that like extra challenge mode.
And that doesn't need to be perfectly balanced.
And it does. And it specifically should not
reward any kind of power so that people don't feel barred from
power. Because as soon as they added in
power to the later parts of The Dells, that's when they nerfed
it to the point where we're like, whoa, wait a second,
where's where's the teeth in this?
Yeah, well, I think I think this is the same thing that you were
talking about, but I was thinking a lot with the like
masks in the corrupted visions. So that's sort of like choose
your own adventure. And I do think to what I was
saying to Sean, I think that I'm giving more cosmetics is a good
idea and I think they need to be less ugly.
Respectfully, if you love Delves, I do.
I think part of the issue is in war within Delves were kind of
the like dinky work, right? Like the the game designers
themselves wanted them to feel silly and fun and light hearted.
And what that meant is that everything felt dinky.
Like I didn't feel like I was going through and getting this
gear that then made me look like an epic hero.
I thought it made me look like a silly little explorer.
And if that's what you want, that's great.
That's super valid. Not everything is for me.
And maybe delves are supposed to make you look like a silly
little explorer. And if you're happy being a
silly little explorer, I'm happy for you.
You look like a cool adventurer who's also a silly little
explorer. But I I don't know it just I go
through the raid and I get this cool, you know, voity incredible
like demon thing and I go through PvP and I got this
badass like, you know, fighter thing and then I go through
doves like a little hat like. No, not a hat.
Melted candle. We say hat on you.
Stupid melted candle I was mixing up.
It was just dumb. Like why would I push through to
get that? And again, maybe you really like
it and if you do, I love that for you.
Not everything is for me. Delves are not for Sean.
Delve appearances are not for me, but I, I, I do think war
within just the whole vibe was this is silly, right?
Like this is silly, goofy, nothing.
And this is what you go through and you play and all the websles
summon Naurubians and you got a melted candle on your head.
Ha ha ha, we're all having a good time.
Which fair enough, but again, it, it didn't make it feel like
actual end game content. It made it feel dinky.
Yeah, Manny asked me when we were getting ready for this
segment. Manny said Shine.
You can't just you, you can't come on and just say you hate
Delves. That's dismissive.
I need you to find out, like think of what about them would
need to be changed for you to enjoy them.
And I really put some thought into that.
I gave it a lot of thought because I'm a little bit afraid
of Manny. I don't want to get kicked off
the show, but also because I feel like Delves deserve that.
So much of this game, I enjoy, it consumes my life.
I can put this effort in. And Lex, you mentioned something
that that that initially came to mind, Horrific Visions.
I am on the record of saying Horrific Visions are the best
solo player content Blizzard has ever designed.
So I thought to myself, what about Horrific Visions that I
like? And it was a combination of two
things. The the mask system where you
could put on more masks for a risk reward.
Like I remember back in BFA, you're like, I'm just going to
go to sanity 90 and I'll just deal with the thing from beyond.
F it. I want all this power and the
timer that that timer, whether it's your sanity meter or what
it is that made a difference. Would those things make delves
better for me? Maybe I might enjoy them more,
but then are they delves anymore or are they now just horrific
visions with a friend? And would that ruin the Delve
experience for everybody who likes it because you can get up
and walk away from your desk while doing them?
Probably. So I, I think ultimately, if,
if, if they just had the inclusion of some puzzles, and I
don't mean those string puzzles that you have to untangle, which
for the record, whichever developer Blizzard does those, I
love you. They're amazing, fascinating
with you. Thank you so much.
But not just those, but like, I'm thinking like, you know,
puzzles where you're like, you have to flip a switch and then
flip another switch in a different order.
Or those chests, you guys have those chests and Tortas where it
was like you had to figure out which switch turned off which
number rune and and like work through.
And they weren't just it wasn't simple.
Those weren't easy. I always felt so smart solving
one of those threw a couple of those in there.
But no, don't let me go to the next room till I can do that.
I don't know, and I don't even know.
Maybe that won't. Maybe that won't do it because
maybe the the act of having to fight enemies as a tank where
the enemies have a ton of health and I'm just waiting for them to
be dead just isn't ever going to be fun.
Tor gas did modify enemies based on what roles you had and I
think that can be added into delves quite easily considering
that the technology has already been used.
I do like your want for puzzles. I I always felt that delves
because they were not time constrained because you could go
do it by yourself or go with a group that isn't pushing to get
it done in the next 15 seconds. Should have allowed for like
more things that like challenged you in ways that other content
wouldn't allow, like platform jumping or or like doing those
those puzzles. So, but like, again, that's you
and I who don't have particular funnels for the rest of our
gameplay. That's true.
I don't and and for the for the record, fast, if you are
listening, I do not want you to. I don't want ever there to ever
be a conversation that says, Hey, we need to make sure that
mythic plusers and mythic Raiders really love delves.
So let's let's figure like don't we don't matter and then talk to
the delve people find out what they want.
But platforming is great. And then I can I can I can hear
the comments of like, oh, well, demon hunters would make
platforming irrelevant. OK, cool.
They then they get easy platforming because they chose
to be a Demon Hunter. Let them enjoy their double
jumpy zoom life. That's that's their choice.
One thing I do want to quickly point out is that we're talking
about how we want more things that like makes solo content and
world content unique in Delves. We started this whole
conversation with Manny talking about how like the, you know,
the underwater breathing and the candles and stuff really sucked.
That was something that makes world content unique, which is
not the only thing. I do also agree I was kind of a
little bit frustrated with it at the end.
I. Yeah, that.
That did suck like that underwater breathing.
Yeah, that was, that was, that was a pain and it was it was
convoluted. I did not like that.
I do think I, I, I also wanted to feel a little bit more like
open world, like I, I wanted to have that open world content
vibe that, you know, puzzle doing like things that aren't
just hit enemy with sword. I do think one of the chronic
issues with delves and maybe if they make it look and feel a
little bit more serious, we won't have this.
But I don't know if that's true. And I, I worried this is going
to happen when delves came out, and I think to some degree it is
still true. Is that the World of Warcraft
community as a whole is so used to open world contact, meaning
face roll that we expect the delve equals face rule 2 and
anytime it doesn't anytime it's not just go in blast through get
gear, push back occurs and then it gets nerfed into the ground.
I we saw that with the you know, tier elevens giving gilded and
now all of a sudden they're, you know, babies first delve, not
really tier 11 is there's there's still challenge.
I don't mean to be rude and also be aware of the fact that yes,
like we are all Raiders. We are all doing higher level
stuff. So the level that delves that is
not where any three of us should be at.
But like delves themselves allow for progression.
So even if we are getting outside gear right, somebody who
is able to complete a three gear easily should then find a step
up in 4-5 and so forth. So like eventually you should be
able to, depending on your the speed that you activate to it,
you should be able to use the things that you get from an 8 to
beat the 9 to beat the 10 and finally conquer the 11.
And like, I think delves in general don't have the same
thing that you see in raids and mythic plus, where like once you
get beyond this point, suddenly there's an affix.
And maybe that's something that like they could put into delves
to like show that further graduation is that like, hey,
you don't have to deal with as many of these.
What we're we were calling is gimmicks, but mechanics at lower
levels. And rather than it just being
beat your face down harder at the high levels, you now have
more mechanics that would challenge you.
And so if you have yourself and two players, maybe you all have
to hit the switches in a within a particular time.
But if it's just you, you get the time to walk between the
switches to, to hit them in the right order, right?
Like that sort of stuff can like scale with group size and like
you can ask for coordination or you can just get your, your,
your companion, right, your delve companion, where it's much
like, again, we're going back to visions where you get to the
gate. It's like we have to press these
at the same time. And then the NBC will press 1
and you'll press another. And then if it's you and a
player, well, then you have to coordinate or get it within that
same window. So I think there are options for
it. I just don't think that they
they've explored ones that aren't just like like honestly,
the the candles and the breathing are annoying because
it is a restriction on your play, not a challenge that you
can do after you've kind of cleared out the area.
It's oh, I'm running out of here and I got to run to here and now
those the harpooner drags me back.
So I start drowning and dying and man this feels stupid and
annoying and punishing and not me playing my character.
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I, I, the more I think
about this, I really think a mask, like a system similar to
the masks is the answer to how to make delves better.
I was even thinking when Sean was talking, I was like, if they
give this a timer that is going to that is the reason I don't
like Mythic Plus. I do not want this on a timer.
I do not want that stress, but it's primarily solo content.
Why can't this be choose your own adventure, right?
Why can't Sean choose to turn on the timer and he gets a
different, you know, be it cosmetic or or be it like Delve
internal, right? The same way that visions gave
you vision currency you could use to buy vision stuff, like
make it something that you know, delves the harder you do.
You can do things that make that you buy Delve gear or you buy
like Delve stuff, right? Why, why can't he choose to turn
that on and I choose not to put that dove mask in and we get to
do different things that make us happy, right.
One of the benefits of of single player play is that we should be
able to or one would expect that a single player game, you can do
a lot more tweaking without worrying about like, oh, but Lex
would hate if there was a timer. So like, OK, then just make it
optional, right? Why can't I make my own choices?
Why can't I make my own single player play feel different?
Yeah. Does anybody have anything
further to add or shall we move on?
OK. We shouldn't stand here any
longer. We'll summon the Rubens.
Next time let's do some harder hitting moves.
You guys so him so much. We prepped this segment to
saying let's have a fun little chat with Dells.
All right, so on the alpha coming this week, maybe up as
we're recording this, phase four of the Midnight Alpha will be
live and this will take players starting at 88 up to 90.
The caps, we are now reaching the level cap of 90 and includes
the new zone, the Void Storm, 3 new dungeons, Void Scar Arena,
Nexus Point, Zenith, Magister's Terrace which has been
reimagined from BC. We've got 2 new Dells which is
the Shadow Guard Point and Sun Killer Sanctum PvP is finally
getting its time now that we're hitting level 90 and so that
includes Slayer's Rise PvP zone and the instance version which
is a 40V40 battleground. Then the other point is all
classes should have their Apex talents integrated into their
spec trees. This is great.
Some classes have had it from the get go, some classes have
had it added as we've gone through the phases.
This is the point where all of our classes should have their
Apex talents. So I'm excited for this.
This is when we really start digging through those through
the classes and seeing what they're actually meant to be as
a complete package. So I'm looking forward to
digging into the. Alpha here.
What about you guys? What's your what's your top
thing on this list? Let's start with you, Lex.
So I, I guess I have to say Apex talents just because I am
actively trying to avoid story as much as I possibly can in
Alpha. I don't anticipate like
obviously I'm going to get spoilers partially because I'm
in Alpha, partially because I think that's I, I've come to
understand that's part of my role as a content creator,
right? Like I need to be getting that
early information so I can record things right when they
come out and I can jump right in and have that knowledge.
But by and large, like what I've been doing right now as I've
been going in, I've been talking to the person who boosts me up
as high as they'll boost me, and I just go play Delves and, you
know, follow our dungeons and stuff like that.
So I get that information. I can still do the alpha, but I
don't touch story. So yeah.
And I guess I'm excited to play. I'm excited to play more Delves.
I've actually not been doing many dungeons, so I should get
into that. I guess.
I'm excited to do dungeons. Manny, let's do much more
dungeons. OK, OK, we'll get we'll to track
down a tank and we'll we can do that.
I've actually been healing dungeons because shaman resto
shaman is is in a state. So yeah, we can we can do that.
Sean. OK, you're pointing at yourself,
so you clearly want to Give your opinion.
What are you looking forward to in Thanks.
He's excited. To tank, but Dang, since we.
Were talking. About a good tank.
Oh my, listen, Lex, there are only 46 protection paladins in
the world who have killed Mythic Demensius.
And I'm sorry, that's not true. There's 51 now, but I am the
46th. I was the 46th 1 to kill him.
That makes, I mean, I'm good. He's.
Happened to be on the team. No more than 46 Protection
paladins. No, no, no.
Sean's saying that he killed dementias with a garbage class,
so you know he's a good tank. Sean is not saying that Prop
Paladin is great. Don't believe the rumors,
they're not dead. I am most looking forward to
Listener who is waiting for us to get to the point being level
90 and actually getting to test out some classes.
I hope they have an option to make a Max level character.
I fear that will be next week's build and not this week's build,
so I'll have to level them up. But that's OK, I'll level them
up and that's only two levels. That should be fast.
But I'm looking forward to that testing index sounds and
obviously the dungeons. I love the dungeons I mean.
They're testing the battlegrounds.
Either they're gonna shift. You there's not gonna be 80
people on the alpha to test the battleground.
But that is genuinely a concern. They're going to be a big invite
of a bunch of very PvP centric people.
There better be that Brawl with the Blues to get people in on
like particular days to test it. But I was saying that the PvP
testing may allow, may get them to make 90 premades.
So you might actually get your 90 premades.
We'll see that. 'D be nice.
As for me, yeah, like I I do think that you're both right.
Dungeons, Max level characters and testing the the full
package. Like I was saying, I am
interested in the void storm just because we just had Koresh
and I feel like there's a lot of overlap there.
So I want to see how the world builders have made this
different and maybe it will inform like how Koresh was like
affected, like give a little bit of that story that world
development. So I'm interested in this zone
and it's world development there.
So to give a different answer, yeah, Void storm, new zone.
Let's see, let's see what they they're cooking because the team
has been doing some beautiful, beautiful stuff for everybody
who has seen anything out of the last phase, the root lands, the
harandar like wow, that is a gorgeous zone.
And so let's see what they do with the with the void storm.
With that said, Sean, would you like to take the next segment?
Yeah, I'd love to, Manny. I'd love to.
This is the part of the show where we would like to say a
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With that said, we are going to now talk about the UI features
with the start of the 4th zone. That and hitting level 90, we
are going to be accessing everything that the base game
has outside of the end game. Pillars of Mythic plus top level
delves. And rating of course right?
Rating. I can't forget rating and the UI
needs to support that. Over the last couple of weeks,
we've been talking about the various changes that they've
done to the API, and we really want to now take some time to
talk about the things that we think the UI really needs with
the launch of Midnight to get it up to a workable level.
These are not our wants. These are not a, this is not a
wish list of things that would make everything perfect.
These are the things that we consider Dire needs to make the
UI up to snuff. So starting with rate frames,
Sean, you have this one. Yeah.
So at a minimum, and this, there are some changes coming to the
UI with this alpha build. The build is not live as of this
recording. And I don't know if it was a
fever dream or if I read somewhere that there are some
things coming that are going to be good.
But as a minimum there, we know they're doing a rate frame
rework, but we need to be able to determine what buffs and
debuffs we track on the rate frames.
So we need to be able to whitelist and blacklist debuffs
on the raid frames. This is going to be mostly
targeted to healers because this is who's going to impact the
most. And when I say buffs, I mean
things like Atonement and Regrowth and Life Bloom.
Let the healers not just choose which ones they want to track,
but where they position them on the raid frame so that they are
always looking at the same thing every time.
It's so important right now. If you have too many Dots, sorry
too many Hots applied to a single player on the current
raid frames, it just doesn't show some of them so you have no
way of knowing that's the current rate frames.
So that is a bare minimum as well.
It will be. We like allow us to whitelist
and blacklist what buffs and debuffs we track, but also the
position and size of those debuffs.
At a minimum, a nice to have is changing the color of the
nameplate based on a dispellable debuff that's on them.
So if it's a poison or a magic curse, having the ability to
change the colors and plates. But if we are able to choose
that, that's a nice to have. That makes it, that makes it a
lot easier. But as long as we can track the
debuff specifically, then that becomes not a mandatory piece,
but more of a a nice to have piece.
But they the raid frames and by consequence the party frames as
well. It we know a rework is coming.
So it's I'm really hesitant to say, hey, this needs to be done
because it may already be in the pipeline.
Blizzard unfortunately to date hasn't told us what they plan
for the raid frames, just that they are making changes to them.
But they that absolutely has to be in there, play Raider healers
in a raid need to be able to quick identify who needs to be
dispelled. What players do I need to put my
buffs on to make sure that we're getting them.
And then it also not just healers, but it also works for
like Preservation Evokers. They need to know who they're
putting presents on. They designed this class with
the ability to apply presents to specific people.
We want to be able to see who it's on.
And you have to track that through the raid frames.
So those are just some examples, but that absolutely is a must
have for the for Midnight. That's a big thing like as of
this point we don't know what blizzards priorities are.
We don't know what blizzards timeline is we we don't know
exactly what they have planned. So this is really just us going
off of the best information we have at this time.
Moving on from the raid frames, the cooldown manager is
something that both you and lex have something for I'm going to
let you give your first one then we'll go to lex and then you can
give your second one Sean. So Sean, what is your first ask
for the for? Sure, I'm actually going to flip
the order them because this sort of goes along with the rate
frames. The cool down manager needs some
way to track buffs and debuffs with white and blacklisting.
So we now have some and this is the thing.
I thought I read them. I thought I read that they're
adding buffs to the cool down manager, but I may have dreamt
it last night. But then we need to be able to.
I would like to be able to also fundamentally choose what buffs
are tracked by the by the cooldown manager.
But if we can't choose from all buffs, then let us.
No, you got to let us choose because you just don't know.
You don't let us choose our buffs, but our debuffs.
There's no right now the only way to track debuffs in the game
is the debuffs next to your mini map icon, which is not great
because you've got things like Time Warp on there or any long
debuffs that aren't really relevant in the middle of
combat. You really want to track those
short debuffs in combat and we don't have any way to do that.
You have a bleed on you. You have a cursor on you.
The only way to know now is to look at the mini map and you can
use the edit mode to move those debuffs.
But again, you have all of these extra debuffs that aren't
relevant and the same with their buffs in the top right.
There's it's just not not relevant.
It's not a good way to parse that information.
So we need a way to whitelist and blacklist buffs and debuffs
in the cooldown manager. Cool down manager does allow for
some buff tracking. Right now I would like that it
be opened up and let us select anything from any buff that we
could possibly have Let us track it because right now that I
don't have that option. I don't know if I have iron bark
like if I get an external from a healer, there's no way for me to
track that other than the mini map which has 45 buffs.
I have 45 buffs right now. I got to look and see if one and
they're all moving all the time. They just keep moving.
They just it's like I'm in a swarm of bees.
So they need to let us, they need to look that we need, there
needs to be a way for us to track that.
And I understand you want to remove complexity from the game,
but some of those people like it's as a tank, you can't do
your job correctly if you don't know.
Do I have an external now? Do I have to send a defensive?
That kind of coordination and communication needs to happen
visually on the screen. That's my first one for the
cooldown manager. OK, Lex, for your want for the
Kodai manager, what do you have? So I think we need alerts based
on resources that we have. Things like rage, fury, mana.
Presumably. This might be Demon Hunter
specific. I haven't played that many
classes, but I feel like I'm constantly having abilities that
I only cast when I am building right.
Things like the point of this is to build or on the flip side, I
do not want to cast this right now because they don't have
enough resources and I I need to to wait until I build more.
And to my memory that is not something I can do with the
cooldown manager right now. I can't have things turn on to
like, OK, this is going to pop up if you don't have.
I mean, what I really want is I want deep interaction ability,
right? I don't know, I don't think
that's ever going to happen. But usually I have stacking
requirements on my tell me when like this is only going to pop
up if I do not have this buff and I am under this percent and
I need this like I would like that.
But at the very least I need it to be like, OK, this is only
going to pop up if you're under 40 ferry.
Definitely other classes do use that.
Anybody who plays like Elemental Shaman or even Enhanced Shaman,
making sure that you don't overcap on Maelstrom is a is a
part of the skill expression. So sending something at 8:00
because you don't want to suddenly GCD and go to 11 when
you and waste a proc is part of part of it.
Or when you want to, you know, that you can send a earth shock
or elemental blast followed by the the empowered earthquake,
you need to make sure that you're above a certain threshold
that allows you to spend both of them in succession.
So like, yeah, there are multiple classes that do it.
I'm just talking about elemental shaman.
But there are times where I, like, I'm playing on my warrior
as a protection warrior. And Sean would know more about
this than I, I do. But like I want to have like a
safe pool so that I can be ready for a defensive for maybe
something that's coming up. And hey, when I'm above a
certain point, yeah, now I want to start spending what I
consider extra rage. But below a certain point I want
to be like, okay, conserve. So I do very much think that
this is something that is part of the game.
And yes, there is there is a chance that they could simplify
it enough that you could track that manually.
But I also think that the game should just intuitively give you
that information because it just makes for a better intuitive
play. It makes for people able to like
feel their character more than just like tracking the HUD.
It's the the resource, the personal resources are in dire
need of help that right now on Brewmasters, the stagger bar
only goes up to 100%. So if you're staggered at
anything above 100%, it's a guess.
There is no way for you to know from the base you are.
That's a great, that's a great show to Lex.
Maelstrom Weapon, which is the core resource for Enhancement
Shaman, is a buff that gets lost in the 45.
Oh, the the the buff situation is monstrous.
They call everything a buff like somebody's got it.
If if we want to simplify something, girls simplify that
what is happening? Which is Sean's first act, but
going to Sean's second ask what do you got?
Yeah #2 CVS. So we're still talking Cooldown
manager here #2 Right now I'd like to be able to track my
racials and my trinkets. The only way for me to know if
these are on cooldown is by looking at an action bar.
And the only way to know if I have the buff for either of them
active is to to look at the action bar and see is it on
cooldown in the window while I have it available now and or do
I see the buff in the top? It's there's just not, we're not
tracking them. I guess it's just, and you're
going to have to update that. This is like, I think
fundamentally the cooldown manager.
I would love to see it have an implementation where you can
shift click from the spell book or from an item or drag and drop
things into it to track it. I I think it's too much to ask
people to go and look up item IDs and spell IDs.
But if we had some way to drag and drop things in there.
So next season when I get new trinkets I don't have to wait
for Blizzard to implement them. I can just drag and drop them
in. Or if I decide to run old
trinkets because I am a a time runner and I want to build
myself a time walking set and I'm running old trinkets, I
don't want to have to be just lost now because they're gone.
I'd like to be able to drag and drop that stuff in that
functionality to bring it closer.
To tell me when and closer to what we cores provides would be
massive. Giving the players agency over
it. You can still suggest an
offering like they do now, just like you do with starter build.
You suggest starter talents, but here's your suggested starter
cool down manager and you have that, you know, this is what we
suggest, but giving us the option to add in the things that
you may be didn't think that that we want to track or that
you just forgot about. You know what, it happens.
That will be huge. But yeah, we need to be able to.
We need to be able to track our racials and our trinkets,
please. Unless they're removing
trinkets. Are they just making all
trinkets passive? Yes.
I'm also listen. I'm also for.
That I will not. I will.
Please, I'm begging you. Get to you.
They're not, but I do think that they need to remove the trinkets
that have those weird. I've got to count the stack sort
of thing and know when to pop this.
There's there were a couple that were in even the latest raid and
that were like, oh, this thing goes up to 20 stacks.
And then when you, when you click the button like you can
expend the stack. So you have to like watch and be
like, Oh, have I hit 20 stacks? I better click the button to
expend those stacks because now I'm wasting getting more stacks.
Or I remember one from like Dragonflight where it was like,
hey, if you do this, you'd get stacks of this.
And if you if you do this, you get stacks of this, but you
start losing the other stacks. And so your entire thing was
balancing the stacks, which is the most complicated trinket
ever on top of everything that the game expected of us.
No more of those trinkets. Just regardless of what we're
tracking, that is a weak ore trinket and I don't want it
anymore. Moving on from Cooldown Manager,
we have nameplates. There was a really good video
put out by Sean about the nameplates, and I will throw
those into the show notes. But Sean, you have some
additional asks for the nameplates.
So do you want to go through these?
Yeah, I'm going to start at the bottom.
This is a trend. You guys may expect it.
I'd like to be able to white and blacklist the buffs and debuffs
that we're tracking on the nameplates.
So right now Blue Jet has a set number of your debuffs that are
applied to the enemy that it tracks and they've chosen what
to do it. For Paladin, it's Judgement, for
example. I don't care about Judgement,
but there are other things I might care about.
I might care about Avengers Shields and if there's still
silence, I actually think that does track in the share.
It's easy, but let me white and blacklist what debuffs on track,
debuffs on tracking from myself and what buffs the enemies have.
It's just that that player agency like granularity.
If I played Pro Warrior right now, I can almost guarantee
they're tracking a dozen things I don't care about and probably
one or two things that I do, but there's no way to select which
ones I see on that name play bar.
It's all or nothing, which is a problem we're going to talk
about coming up as well, the all or nothing mentality.
So that's the number one. That's the only one that I think
is is super desperate and dire right now.
The next one I want to talk about is actually able to be
solved with an add on currently that is being developed that I
have had hands on with, but it is health park.
I I think it should be functionality built into the
game because it is, it's going to be one of those things Ian
said. I don't want there to be an add
on that is mandatory that we're not providing a solution for.
And it's the health bars changing color based on aggro.
So right now there's an add on called Platinator made by the
same guy that is Bagnator that is being developed actively for
midnight, but it's also available to be used in retail
in in Legion remix and nothing it does in remix.
Everything it does in remix it can do in midnight.
He's making it like he's including the midnight
restrictions in the in the in the version.
It now allows you to to change the nameplate color based on
threat. So instead of all the bars being
red all the time, they can now change based on who has aggro.
Whether it's you as a tank or your Co tank in a raid or if one
of your DPS has it. And same if you're ADPS or
healer. But that should be built in
functionality. That is for anybody playing the
There is such a huge difference in the game as a tank for
instantly knowing who has threat.
And you need to know that especially if you get higher in
dungeons. And if if the goal is for the
name plate, add on that the in the in game name plate
functionality to let players bridge that gap to compete at
that same level. We have to give them this
functionality because the current threat identifier is not
good. It's red, the plates are red.
Everything's just a sea of red. So health bars changing color,
but it's not doom and gloom because if Blizzard doesn't
implement it, then I'm just going to tell everybody who
install that plater, you know, I'm, I'm certain plater will
come up with a similar but platinator.
I'll just tell everybody to install that and that'll be the
case. And the last one for name
blades. And this is something Blizzard
has not been super clear on their intentions.
So this might be something that they no longer want us to have
the ability to do. They may consider this a bridge
too far, but it is the ability to change the enemy, the enemy
name colors based on like specific criteria.
So the example I'll use is making all caster nameplates
green and making all Lieutenant nameplates purple, making, you
know, being able to change them so that at a glance, you know
what is in a pack, you know, OK, these are the enemies with cast
bars or with, with, with with spells.
So I'm going to have to watch them for kicks because right now
there's no way to tell that outside of the naming
convention, which is not always fully clear, or the, the shape
and size of the models, which is not.
That's not a reasonable thing to expect people to to tell so big.
But but Blizzard hasn't said whether or not they intend for
us to be able to do that. They may think that changing the
nameplate colors based on the mob type is too far too much.
And so we don't, we just don't know their intention.
I'm working under the assumption that they also recognize that
being able to tell at a glance instantly whether a pack has
where, how many casters a pack has, and how many you know non
casters it has is a is a an advantage and something you want
us to do. You don't want us guessing who's
going to be casting. But that's all I have for name
plates. It's definitely a conversation
that we had prior to the filming of this episode where if you
have a bunch of a bunch of characters, let's say you're
attacking Stormwind and you have Stormwind mages and Stormwind
Pike masters and Stormwind guards, and then the nameplate
only has enough room. It said it like shortens the end
of it. And so all of them will say
Stormwind, but you might not know what the breakdown is.
And so then you're focused on the models, which can get lost
in a mob in a swarm and become hard to click on.
And then you're really hoping that Blizzard is making sure
that the animation of like the Stormwind Mage is so great that
nobody can ignore it. And I think that like, yes, you
could do that, but building in the redundancy so that people
who might not be able to read it as clearly as the designer
intends do have that backup is a big thing.
So colored name bars definitely help changing the nomenclature.
So not everything is where you come from.
Class or spec is a big thing. Like switch it up.
Not every troll needs to be Zolomon something it could be
like hex caster of Zolomon if you really need to put in
Zolomon. But I think that they need to
understand that the the problem is caused because the name
plates aren't quite doing the goal.
And there's multiple ways of doing it, but you should be do
it. You're trying to like work on
all of them because not everybody is going to be
benefited by the one solution. So that deals with the name
plates. Going back to Lex, let's talk
about the encounter warnings. So this need feels I'm almost
worried I missed something from Blizzard because it feels like
they must be planning this in encounter warnings.
I need to be able to set sound customizations.
I think it is at minimum once arrayed, usually two or three
bosses that we have a mechanic that DVM or whatever has a lower
like, you know, it's like a little like morning and it needs
to scream at you because it's a big deal.
And you absolutely have to know when that mechanic is coming
out. I need to be able to go in and I
need to be able to be like, oh, this one I actually want to set
to the like blast alarm. And I want this sound to be
this. So that ability to like open up
a thing and this is the boss. And these are the abilities they
cast. How do I want them to Alert me
of these? And I want to be able to set
ideally again, high level granularity, but the very least
I need to be able to set the warnings audibly to the way that
I I need them to warn me. I want this built into the
dungeon Journal. If I'm clicking through the
boss's abilities, I want to be able to click on it and it's
like set alert, just build it in immediately.
That's what I would like. I think that that would be the
easiest way and so intuitive. It's like, whoa, that looks
dangerous. Right click, set alert.
What sound do you want? The other part of the sound
alerts, which is weird, is that unless I were to go through and
figure out where the sounds come through, I don't know what
channel they come through and I need the alerts to be on a
separate channel. I want to mute people's voices,
I want to mute the background music, I want to mute all that
stuff, but keep alerts at a separate volume control and a
separate channel. They are on their own channel.
OK. Yeah.
But all of the alerts are on the same channel, so you can't have
the volume control per alert like Lex is wanting.
But alerts are on their own separate audio channel, which is
huge. Good, good, because I couldn't
find it at first. I was like, I got a what are
what exactly are these coming through?
It's not on master. I was like, that's weird.
The other thing is with sound customization and this kind of
goes back to cool down manager. Maybe I should have thrown this
in. Is that like I, I believe that
the audio cues need to be done not just when things come off of
cooldown or they're in their pandemic.
There are so many ways that audio cues have been used
intelligently in game design. I've talked about dead, Sorry,
you're rather Dead by Daylight as a as a game that really uses
this audio well. But there are classic games that
use audio well. Anybody who's ever played Super
Mario and knows the invincible star, that is intuitive sound
design. You know when you have it
because the sound is going. You know when it's ending
because the way the sound goes when it's when it's about to run
out. You don't need to know the
exact, oh, when I pick up an invincible star, I have 10
seconds to run around or whatever the time length is.
The audio cue gives you all the information you need.
If you're playing Mega Man and you're charging up your shot,
it's not just like the visual cue, it's an audio cue of like
that charge up sound and when it stops, you're like, OK, I'm
ready. Can I have something like that
for like Mayan power spells or something along those lines?
There's a lot of things that, like I put it with Cooldown
Manager because cooldown is dealing with a lot of those
abilities, but in general, the game, it can do a good job.
And I think for encounters, bosses generally have particular
lines for particular spells and that has helped.
But every so often you'll get like a mad beast that doesn't
say a word. And so I need to know what
Screech means what? So there's still some work that
can't that needs to be done. Sean, you have the last word on
encounter warnings. Yeah, it's going to sound a lot
like things that I wanted for the CC manager and for
nameplates, but it's the ability to turn on and off warnings
based on role. Right now, the way the encounter
warnings are set is, and this includes DBM and Bigwigs.
There is no way for them to turn off what you get.
You get all of it. So whatever Blizzard has decided
goes in that encounter warnings, it goes to every player.
So even if there's a mechanic that you're like, I'm ADPS, I
don't have to worry about this is the healer thing.
Doesn't matter. That's on your encounter
warnings. I'm a tank and I don't care
about DPS things. Doesn't matter.
That's on your encounter warnings.
I would like to be able to to set which warnings I want and
don't want to see specifically. It may be character level, but
at a role level at the very least, so that I don't have to
be cluttered with things that I don't need.
We don't need sensory overload. A friend of mine made a joke
that maybe that's their plan to make us not want to use these.
So just give us hit us with the fire hose and say, oh, you want
warnings? Here you go.
Here's all the warnings. Obviously not the case.
That's not what they're doing. But yeah, I would like to be the
ability to turn on and off the ones I do and don't want.
I want control. I I understand it.
The the the thing about Warcraft is with 13 classes and was it 39
specs or 42 specs? I think it's 39 specs and people
with varying degrees of ability and cognitive load and just
everything, accessibility features.
There's no answer that's got. Blizzard's not going to be able
to give us an out-of-the-box thing that works for everyone.
You might be able to serve a large portion of the population,
but there's going to be so many of us who need things just
slightly different and all you have to do is let us turn things
on and off. That's it.
Just give us the option, throw in the dungeon journal like
Manny said, I think that's a great idea.
That is a super elegant way to solve how to set these up, But
we need to be able to do that like otherwise it's, it's going
to be sensory overload. And, and, and we like, we're,
we're framing this as, Hey, this is the stuff we want.
I want to be super clear. If midnight launches without
some of these functionalities that we've discussed in the last
15 minutes, Pve is going to be really, really rough for a lot
of people. Like exceptionally rough.
So there needs to be either a fix from Blizzard for these or
they need to open up enough of the API that add on devs can do
what add on devs have done for 20 years and that's filled the
gaps. Well, I hope you guys like these
suggestions. If you have suggestions of your
own, please jump into the discord bit dot LY slash fast
discord and we will hear from you.
Until next time, though, may all your hits be crits.