Anyway, she has informed me that no, I am not in fact the star of
a worldwide phenomenon television show, and that I
should stop feeling so. Eric.
For Lauderon. For the Karen Tour for Pandaria.
For calendar to the. Burning region.
For Gilnaeus, but has. Not done for the Lich King.
For the. Sindori for the alliance for.
The Horn for Azeroth. Hello and welcome back to
another episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts, Manny,
and I am joined once again by the other two parts of the
Triumphant. First coming from sunny parts of
the US, we have Lex. Hello Lex, how are you and how
has the World of Warcraft been treating you?
I am great Manny. The World of Warcraft's been
treating me very well. I realized the reason that I was
parsing with the tanks in raids because I had not updated my
talents since 11.1. And I'm sure everyone listening
to this is saying who doesn't update their talents until 11.1.
But I believe that there's one person listening who also forgot
to update their talents and is sitting there like oh wait
that's why I'm parsing with the tanks.
So if you're listening, you're welcome.
Update your talents. So your talents weren't that bad
off all the way through Undermine.
So the first of all, it's, it's possible, but I actually don't
update my talent since 11.0. I the the at least with Demon
Hunter, the way that the tear set hit us was so heavily on
ammo aura that you kind of needed to reset your talents to
make immolation Aura like very like more frequent, like a way
you can make it go twice instead of once.
And I hadn't done that. So I was doing immolation aura
very rarely. And I also in my head it was
still a relatively low priority in the rotation.
It was kind of like and if you think about it, you hit ammo
aura. In fact, actually in my brain I
was still back in 11 point whatever where ammo or the point
is that you do it with your big pre metamorphosis and pre Ivy
rotation. So I frequently fully forgot.
There's a lot of reasons that I was doing poorly, but I now have
four piece. I have the 30% ratio wrap boots
and I also have updated talents. So now if I'm bad this raid
night, that's embarrassing, but I can feel better about the
entire rest of the season. Hey, I mean you put you put the
effort in to improve. So like, we'll see what that
that performance is. I'm jealous of you.
I don't have my boots yet. I've gotten 0 drops out of the
raid that I, that I have rolled on because my RNG apparently is
crap. But you know, that's in the raid
particularly because I have been pushing for Mythic plus and so
forth and getting that and hopefully it's been balancing
out. My vaults have not been
horrible. So I've been enjoying that.
What about you, Sean? How has the this first little
bit of season 3 of The Ghost of Koresh been?
And I, I mean, you've got two different regions and multiple
different characters that you play.
Have you been getting lucky overall or how's it been going
for you? Things have been really good
actually my whole life. Everything like not my whole
life as in hold on my dogs, under my chair.
Sorry. Dog conscious is great.
Yeah, my dog. Yeah.
Have you ever have? Have things in life for you ever
gone so well that you questioned whether or not you were like the
the main character in The Truman Show?
Yes, actually not like main character in The Truman Show,
but just sort of like a how am I this lucky?
How is my life? I'm really glad that you're
feeling that. That's where I'm at.
Like everything, we found a new. We decided we wanted to move
within like 2 days. We found a host that is
absolutely perfect for us in every single possible way.
Put an offer on it. There was three other, two
other. There was two other offers with
three total. They countered one of the other
offers because it didn't have the condition of needing a house
sale, which ours does. The people that had put that
offer and I guess got offended that their offer was countered
and that they were now in this bidding, quote UN quote bidding
war. It wasn't a bidding war.
I just immediately offered exactly what the person was
asking. I didn't try to undercut it all
because I don't like to haggle. And so that that deal fell
through and they ended up accepting hours.
So and it's just a gorgeous house.
We love it, we're super happy. So now we're selling our house.
All that's happening. That's great.
My EU team, which I I joined as a helper in a mute or so I left
in season 4 of Dragonflight and came back to help again with
answer wreck. So can court start with answer I
Prague with to help them with and then took over as their raid
lead for Undermine. And this was my second tier as
the raid lead there. And like my third tier, I guess
4th tier if you count the two tiers where I helped them on the
final boss. But every tier that I've helped
this team, they've gotten better.
So we just got AOTC on Sunday past, which is the third week
reset, which is the fastest they've ever gotten it.
They're they're and they are an AOTC only team.
So it's not like this team of mythic blasters that got AOTC
like they are. They're a team that only goes
for a OTCI think in I got to think I think they got the
answer one on week 7. So we like cut the time in half
basically or more than cut the time in half for for the end of
this year. So that was really exciting.
The sad news is it's probably my last raid tier with them.
I have a lot of other things coming up that are going to make
me really busy. So we haven't told the rest of
the team yet, but the the GM knows that this is probably and
the other officers know that this is probably the last year
that I will have the bandwidth to be able to raid with them.
But they'll be fine. They're in a really good spot.
And then my NA team is four of eight and I think we killed the
Forge Weaver, Weaver. But on also on Sunday.
All of my raid days are Thursdays and Sundays.
But our one of our main tanks missed it.
She was at Dragon Con, so I had to fill in.
She had done all the Prague I had to come fill in and we got
the forge Weaver kill, which was great.
Felt really good to step in and not make a bunch of mistakes and
not have to relearn the fight for everybody and get that kill.
And then we did some fractals pulls.
We will kill fractals this week, I'm certain.
And they're leaving me in for fractals because I was there for
all of the Prague for fractals. So my vault next week and
because of the way the raid works, if you kill a boss, you
get all of the loot. You're eligible for all the loot
from all of the bosses previous to that boss in the vault.
So I'm I'm in for Sentinel and then I'm in for fractulas, which
will give me one vault slot. But that vault slot could be
loot from fractulas Soul hunters who we haven't killed yet
because they're technically before fractulas in the raid.
Soul Hunters, Fractulas, Forge Weaver, Lumithar, who I haven't
killed yet, Soul Binder who I haven't killed yet, and and
Plexus Sentinel who I have killed.
So that's pretty exciting stuff. Yeah, things are going good.
And I had really good news at work about a podcast that we
started and that's that is continue.
That's the show that's going to be continuing with anyway.
It's. Been like a great whoa, don't
don't skip past that. People should be aware of and
checking out the weekly no lever.
That is the other podcast that she's doing with Raider IO had
some phenomenal guests so far. I think the last one was with
Dan, Mr. GM. Yeah.
And yeah, so do make sure you check that out.
That is so awesome that everything's going so well for
you. I'm beaming.
Just like with like reflected Glory.
It's like, that's so cool. That's so cool.
I have for you. It's great.
And like I so I actually and I went to high school together and
I had a huge crush on her. And then we went our separate
ways for 20 years and then reconnected in 2020.
So as I was having this realization, we were driving
home from Prince Edward Island after looking after making the
offer on this house and everything was just going so
well. I looked at her and I was like,
are you like an actress that they brought back into the show
to keep me here and if so, demand more money.
Anyway, she has informed me that no, I am not in fact the star of
a worldwide phenomenon television show, and that I
should stop feeling so arrogant. Well, that sounds like something
that somebody who's trying to keep you in a worldwide
phenomenon TV show would say in. Fact, Somebody like pulls Lex
out of camera and she gets replaced by a look alike.
Yeah, Lex too. This one remembers to change
your talents though, so everyone's happy.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's right. Anyway, that was a long answer.
Warcraft's going great. Everything's going that.
That is awesome. I'm really glad for that.
So with everything coming up, Sean, unfortunately the hour is
getting late and midnight is approaching and it seems, it
seems that things aren't going so well for Blizzard because
we've been getting a lot of news and a lot of conflicting signals
with the news. I know a lot of the conversation
has been about maybe the miscommunications, the
conflicting information, the fact that some panels were not
aired or were aired in a weird order, that it's just generally
being hard to get the information correctly,
accurately out of Games Kong. And of course, last episode we
started on our journey trying to parse through that and get that
information out to you. And we're going to continue with
that today. Today specifically, we're going
to be focusing on a number of articles that Blizzard has put
out that is based on the information that we got on Games
Con. But it seems the troubles aren't
quite done yet because we have already seen some mistakes and
redactions and corrections with these articles.
So the first article. Oh yeah, I was just going to
just real quick, not just to Blizzard, but to like everyone
everywhere. Fun fact is that like marketing
is a degree in college for a reason.
Like you actually want like a marketing and social media team.
It's not just it's not just like a money thing.
So just not sure where that certainly not Blizzard centric
or anything, but maybe maybe consider if you're thinking
about not having a marketing team, don't do that anyway,
Manny, we're talking about World of Warcraft.
Okay, so the first article we're going to talk about is the user
interface article. I have been really looking
forward to something based on this because this is them
bringing in a lot of the stuff that we currently handle and
weak cores and add-ons into the base UI.
And they had said at Gamescon the things that they were going
to be targeting next in line to sort of bring that bring that
up. And that includes things like
name bars, that includes things like timers.
The this article includes that boss alerts and just some
general quality of life. So Sean, do you want to give us
the rundown of this real quick? Yes, there's sure there's no new
news in any of these articles. It's all just information.
Sorry, there's very little new news in in these posts.
It's information on Gamescon. But we do get one look at the
four different potential styles for the nameplates that you'll
get to choose from, presumably, and what they're doing to
indicate a important cast that you want to interrupt.
And it looks really good. I still have some concerns.
I'd love to make a list of like, here's the pros, here's the
cons. Maybe we'll do that.
But the name plates look like they're in the right direction.
They definitely still have some work to be done.
Do we want to break down the like the name plates or?
I do think we should break, break this down just because
like there's, there's a lot of details that if you miss it, you
might not realize what the effort that they're putting into
this. Yeah.
So let's first we'll just talk about there's four different
styles that it appears you can choose from.
One puts the enemy's name in the health bar, one puts it above
the health bar. And then along with that, you
can have the name of the cast below the health bar with either
of the name options or the name of the cast inside the cast bar
with either of the name options to give us four options for how
they look. And then a simple cast is just a
regular cast bar with the yellow Blizzard cast bar that you see
now. And an important cast adds a
little bit of flare, light flare to the outside of that to let
you know, hey, this is an important cast.
I think all of this is fine. In the very blurry image that
they shared that you struggle to read, you can see that there are
some options for things that you can select, including an aggro
display. So presumably they'll change
color based on aggro. You can add mob buffs, personal
debuffs and it looks like shared CC.
You could those are and they're in the image these they show you
where those would appear on the name frame.
And one thing I do want to shout out as being awesome in the in
game options, there is a preview where it is showing you what it
could potentially look like based on the selection you make.
I really hope this is dynamic and that it changes based off
the selections you make in the options so that you know before
you ever leave the options how it will look.
And then you can add enemy player debuffs, friendly player
debuffs. And then there's a simplified
nameplate option. So the good the pros, four
different styles of nameplates, how they look pro that you can
add player debuffs and mob buffs and shared CC to see those
things. I don't want to say that I think
that's all the brand and I guess pro it they look nice.
I think these are much more visually appealing than the
current raid frames. They they look much more akin to
what you would see from not bass player, but like a slightly
stylized player, but still very much keeping the Warcraft theme.
So that's the pros. Now I would like to say some
potential cons. We don't over certain that these
are cons because these name puts are still under development.
But as it stands right now, we don't see any way for us to
adjust what debuffs are tracked. It's just track debuffs or don't
track debuffs. And I got to tell you, I don't
need to track every single debuff from my class that
there's typically usually one or two that I want to track.
Another option we don't see here is something that is very
popular in Plater is the option to recolor either the border of
the nameplate or the nameplate itself when a mob is affected by
something like Moonfire. Because when I'm tanking, I want
Moonfire on all the mobs. All of my names turn blue and
all of my health powers turn blue when they have Moonfire on
them so that way I know how to glance.
Hey, this mob isn't at Moonfire. I need to put it on that one.
This doesn't have an option to do that yet.
It looks like the biggest one. The Casper's look great, but
they still don't say who they're targeting.
This is the number one biggest thing these need to do.
If it if it doesn't tell you it's targeting, you don't know
if you need to kick it for sure and you don't like it makes it
makes spell reflect absolutely useless without knowing who is
being targeted. And then the third thing that
could be a con, but I think there's a so it's it's coloring
of the name plates right now. If you use plater and use any of
the popular profiles, they color the name plates.
So regular mobs are red when you're fighting them if you have
aggro, if you're DPS, if you have aggro, they're green if you
don't have aggro. And that's happiness.
But they'll make like casters a light blue color, for example.
So everybody knows, hey, this is a caster mob.
It's going to be set to need to kick.
They'll make priority kill targets purple, for example.
So you know, hey, I want to, I want to priority kill this, this
mob that we're fighting, you know, if a mob does a frontal,
it's a darker blue. So you, you know, these things,
you color code these things. I don't expect that Blizzard is
going to give us the option that and that.
So that's done through Plater via Ahmad that specifically
recolors each individual enemy nameplate.
It doesn't do it in groups. It's not like all casters get
this. It recolors each individual
enemy. And I think that level of
granularity is going to be more than Blizzard wants to give to
the majority of players. But what I would really, really,
really like to have is an option that we can turn on or off where
it is set colors that Blizzard picks that denote the same
things. And you know, Blizzard has
decided casters will be blue. Blizzard has decided priority
kill mobs, nameplates will be purple.
I would really, really like that option.
And if they don't do it, then hopefully Plater still has
access to reskin at the very least the color of a nameplate
for these mobs. I think we're heading in a good
direction. But those especially the
targeting, if you're listening FAZ Dev, it's like the number
one, it's, it's, it's the number one thing you have to tell us
who is being targeted by these casts.
It has like it absolutely has to say that or these name plates
remain useless. In that particular situation,
yes, yeah, yeah, I, I agree with you that there's a lot of things
that we haven't seen that that people definitely use.
I know that they have said that some things will not be
contextually aware, but there are some things where it is
going to have like that situational awareness.
They already talked about, like how if you're tanking, it will
tell you if a particular mob gets like behind you so you're
not able to parry or block, right.
And that that is a situational awareness.
It'll change as you turn to face it.
It'll change as you've turned to face away from it.
So they are giving us some awareness off that, which means
like which which situational awareness are they not going to
give us? And what do they find is going
to be too much information is a question that they are going to
have to either come out and ask us or it's going to be when
we're on the alpha or when we're testing this that they're going
to be. There's going to be a deluge of
people who say, hey Blizzard, but what about this, right?
And that is part of like the building of these things.
If it is like the cool down tracker and it's where it's like
this is just version 1 and we're going to get additional versions
before they start restricting stuff.
I like this a lot because it is a much more complete looking
version one than that cooldown manager ever was on it as it is
currently in game. Flex.
What do you what do you think about these name bars in
particular? Yeah, I agree.
I really, the thing that I really want to see live before I
have an opinion on them is how it's going to display the aggro.
Because one thing that's kind of standing out to me is the name
plates are better, but I don't know that I would say they're
like highly readable. One of the first things that I
noticed when I saw this article, and you're going to have to look
at the article to to believe me, is.
So they give you the options that Sean listed out, right.
You can either have the the enemy name in the health or
outside of the health. You can either have the cast
name outside the cast or in the cast.
And I understand this is going to be like toggle on and off.
So it's not like they're forcing me to do this.
The cast name in the cast is, is absolutely unintelligible.
The way that they chose to display this like you cannot.
I know what it says because I can see it in other places.
You can't read it. And so the, the fact that they
published it so in it makes me worried, right?
It makes me a little bit worried that they're either going to
give options. They can say, look, we gave you
an option without really testing whether it's like visible and
understandable or it's going to remain like, I guess that it
confused me as to why they published that option to begin
with. And that scares me.
But I might be reading a little bit too much into an option that
I do not have to pick. So again, I don't have that.
That's my big thing is that right now, reading aggro on
World of Warcraft's name plates is essentially not possible.
And especially as a, a relatively new tank who doesn't
immediately have the sense of like how to gather groups
quickly, how to identify what's away from me, that is to me the
most important thing they need to do.
They need to make aggro very visually obvious.
Like Sean said, if you get a name plate add on almost
universally, they they change colour.
Like it is a drastic difference when you have aggro and don't
have aggro. And I'm guessing they're going
to do something like that, but they haven't shown me.
So that to me is my like. I feel like I can't make a call
on this until I have that information.
Yeah, I I definitely agree, Lex. Readability, how quickly you can
parse through this information is as important as how what
information they're giving it to you.
John, you're saying color-coded, Lex, you're saying color-coded.
That is a big thing where you can just like quickly at a
glance, say like, oh, that bar is blue.
I know what that that is. Rather than having to read, oh,
that bar says the Ramas sorcerer.
Oh, it's a caster that is that's definitely something.
I do think that there is a number of things that we're not
going to see in this article. That is going to be stuff that
like I would say, Oh, well, that that's important, but like it's
never going to be in an article. The space between bars, how
close they float to to the characters.
That's all stuff that like I Finnick with when I am setting
up plater, I like if they're all stacked up on each other on each
other, are they like is it a cluster of bars?
Do they stack up in on top of each other?
Do they, they only go so high in the, in the screen so that like
they're actually something I'm looking at instead of like
looking way up to the very margins of my of my monitor.
So like those are all things that are things that plater and
other add-ons have added in that Blizzard may not have
considered. So we got to, we will definitely
look at that. I also think that there's stuff
that they've put in that they haven't even shown us.
Like the important cast has that flare, but I don't expect that
flare to be a static thing. I expect that to be animated.
And if it's animated, that will draw my attention way faster
than if it is just like that flare and nothing and nothing
moving. Like that's sort of like a, oh,
did I notice that that that bar had like a little bit of extra
jagged spikes or was it like that light flying out of the
edges? Because one thing will get my
attention way cleaner, way faster.
So there's a lot of things that like in an article in a picture,
you may not see. Whereas when you're playing it
or even seeing it in a video, when other people get into the
alpha, you'll be able to see it and you'll be able to like go
like, OK, you know what, that isn't that bad.
The important cast name actually changes color as it gets closer
to like casting. Well, that's amazing.
That sort of stuff it, I wish they would talk about it, but in
a quick article where it is very overhead like this, sometimes
you're going to get a lot more questions and you get answer and
answers. And I think that's going to be a
repeating theme unfortunately, with these.
Yeah, it's too bad we didn't have like a dev video where they
just sat down and in real time went through the builds of these
features in the states they're in and showed us the menus,
showed us what they look like in action as opposed to a single
static image in an article that was probably written by a bot.
All right, Next up, damage meters.
We're going to talk Damage mean name plates.
So like Manny said, better steak than Cooldown Manager was to
start. Still a lot of work that needs
to be done. Please give that feedback.
Get on the forms, hammer that feedback.
Send it on Twitter. Do it positively.
Do it, do it constructively. Don't just tell them it bad.
Let them know why it bad or why it could so damage meter.
So we're we're looking at damage there's next Blizzard is
building in their own damage meter system.
The number one biggest selling point of this, it's going to be
handled server side, which means it will be 100% accurate, which
means it will be more accurate than details is in most
situations. Anybody who's ever been in a
raid where you have to split the raid knows that your damage
meter D your details damage meter is basically useless for
the duration of that fight because you're not getting the
information from the people that are away from you.
With all of this being handled server side by Blizzard, that
should be rectified. That's great news.
It looks like it has multiple things you can track.
So in the image they showed the top there's two boxes, 2 details
ask boxes. The top one says damage done and
it shows the damage being done by the party.
It looks pretty. I actually am really enjoying
this new art style for the UI blizzards come up with.
All we need now is a square mini map icon and we're golden.
And then the the box below that which after some talking with
friends we realized is the healing done box damage done but
it also says damage done it. Is the damage done you can't
see? That's right, Yeah, the reverse
damage done that's. Tracking elemental shaman doing
the third into healing day done. Yeah, but there is a drop down
menu, We can't see what other options there are.
So hopefully we can get things like interrupts, dispels,
deaths, damage taken, seeing those things are good and people
like to track that information. It helps you get better at the
game. A lot of people make the common
mistake of thinking that damage meters are toxic and the only
reason they exist is so that people can flame other people.
That's not true. People use details every key mid
pull sometimes to know what happened, why did somebody die
here, why was this damage so high, What mistake did I make?
What caused this wipe? And that information, at a quick
glance, without having to search through logs, comes from
details. So we'd like to see that.
Lots of options here. That looks like we can change
the numbers from right now. The vision it gives us is a
simplified version. I imagine there will be a more
detailed version. I'm not sure what that'll look
like because they don't show us. But some things that I would
like to see that I don't see in here.
Can I click the bar and get a detailed breakdown of where that
damage came from? Can I know what this elemental
shaman, what his damage breakdown was?
How much of this is chain lightning?
How much of this is Flame Lash? That's an elemental shaman
spell. Manny didn't correct me.
I must have. No, no, that's an enhancement
spell. Nice try though.
So close. It's lava Lash.
Flame Lash doesn't exist, but keep going.
Oh, fire tongue. OK, that's what we call Manny
off the air. And so my, my hope is to why
they will give us that breakdown, that detail, the
breakdown, which is by the way, folks, where details gets the
name from is that it says players want to players want to,
to know whether a new talent build or trinket is having the
desired effect. Here's my concern.
That same sentence could also just mean here's a basic damage
total to tell you if the thing you changed did more damage, and
not necessarily be indicating that they're interested in
breaking down those damage sources for us.
So I this looks pretty, but it feels super light on the details
right now. I'm going to need to see more
from the Blizzard damage meter. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm going to be a little bit.
Can I be a little bit of a hater?
I feel like I've been a little bit of a hater for like the last
few episodes. I'm going to do it again.
I'm not actually waiting for a response.
I'm just going to do it. One of the like constant
anxieties I've had since games.com, it's that all of this
feels really far from completion.
Like the fact for, you know, we we made fun of like, Oh, it's
both damage done. But what that tells me is that
they don't even have a version of this on their own internal
pre alpha that they can screenshot.
That's that they photoshopped it right?
Otherwise it would say healing done.
So like I'm and I felt this this way about like the the fact that
they're so coy about so many different things and like what
exists where and how different things are are acting.
It just I'm really worried that this is not where I'd expect it
to be when we're allegedly pretty close to alpha.
Am I tripping up? I would, I would say that
there's reason for you to be concerned because we're dealing
with information that's coming from a pre alpha state, right?
What gets shown and where they're pulling these screens
from and how further along it is by the time they're talking to
us, right? Those are coming from two
different states as well, right? So this could be coming from
something where they're like, hey, we need to do an article
about this. We're going to release this
right after games.com. Please have this ready.
And a month or two months ago, this was being compiled.
And then we have Gamescon and information has changed.
They're like, hey, you know what, get me a screen from the
from the current one, right? And then it's a hey, is this
build stable? Can we get a, can I pull this
together? Like there, there's reasons that
it might not exactly line up, but there's other things
happening around Gamescon and around the articles that are
being put out which which make me question the check of things.
Like before you publish something, somebody needs to be
reviewing this and that person needs to be knowledgeable about
like what exactly is going on. And if you're outsourcing it far
enough away from that knowledge base, a lot more of this can be
missed, right? So like those are the the issues
that I'm seeing coming up more where because it's not being
done so close to in house that we're seeing more, more issues
because the person who might be like going through this, right,
was going through this at a much earlier state.
And then the person who did a last check didn't have that kind
of like just internal knowledge, right?
These kind of mistakes can happen, but like when I, when I
think about like some of the, the issues that they've had or
the changes that they they've been doing or like even at, at
Gamescon where they're like, hey, you know what?
This is something that we've changed since we were just on
the team, the team stateside and we've decided that this is going
to change. That to me is an evolution of
their, of their, their stance on something, their position on
something. And I'm more lenient on that.
It's just that a lot of it's happening all at once.
And that creates another problem where it's like I no longer know
what to trust what is coming out.
And for those people who are, are in that similar boat, I'm
going to say trust what a developer says, even if even if
it's Ian, especially if it's Ian for two reasons.
One is that these devs have gone through PR training.
And part of PR training is if you don't know the answer, don't
make it up, right? It is so much more damaging to
have to go back on something you've said than to say, you
know what? I'm not sure the the team still
thinking about that. We'll have to get back to you
than to say something wrong, right?
Two, yes, you can trust Ian more than other devs for the reason
that Ian. Can always know best.
Ian can make a decision in the moment and make it happen.
Trust trust Ian, because your manager always knows better than
you do. No, because he can make the
decision in the moment and then have that carry out.
And there have been interviews where Ian will actually have
those moments and be like, you know what, this is something we
were going to say or share with, but we're leaning this way,
right? And then the part that people
hate sometimes about Ian that I also find is actually helpful
about Ian. Ian's very careful with his
words. He like, I know he has a legal
background and some people hate the like sometimes where it
comes across a little legalese, but he's very meticulous and
very selective about what he says and how he says it.
And so you can actually read more into some of the stuff that
he says. Then people who are just flowery
with their words and saying and saying something that's
evocative, but has doesn't have that quite that same substance.
I know Sean's hating me for that, but that's.
What? I don't hate.
I don't hate you, Manny. I just don't know what world you
live in where Ian says things that come true.
Again, things are subject to change.
And of all this is. A Mandela Effect The Ian from
Manny's universe has always told the truth.
And the Ian from Shawn's universe always tells lies.
We figured it out. There you go.
So they're. Like.
Like side by side together. Well, the question you're gonna
ask them to. They're like the door knockers
from the labyrinth. Exactly.
So to get us back on track, I have a very similar feeling with
the damage meters that I do with the name plates, which I don't
really feel like I can make a call until I can click on it
until I see a little bit more. One thing I do like is, assuming
that the screenshot is accurate, you can have a damage and a
healing meter together. Is that on purpose or was that
an accidental? Oh, let's show them we can do
damage and healing so that we don't have podcasters being
like, they didn't tell me they could do healing, so I think
it's going to be damage only. I don't know, but that'll be
sick. I'd like that I am with Sean,
though I do think we really need things like to spells and
interrupts and I in mine is so that I can flame people, but I
as a lead, the Guild lead, do occasionally need to Hey guys,
so we can see FYI who's not doing their kicks.
That's why I want it in there. I, I genuinely think that it's
going to include that sort of stuff.
There's no way that they have an article that's like, is your
trinket working and then just have your base damage without
being able to isolate how much that trinket was blocking and
how much damage it was doing that.
That would sort of defeat the purpose of the details, as you
were saying. I realized, sorry man, I'm
speaking one minute as I prioritized the joke and I
didn't say the actual thing that I actually wanted to say, which
is that the one thing that I'm noticing is missing from this is
the ability to toggle between fights.
I do not want only the damage from my most recent fight.
I want to be able to look back at what happened 2 fights ago.
I want to be able to like not go into trash and immediately lose
what happened in the raid boss 2 minutes ago that I think is is
an important thing that details has that I want them to preserve
and it does not appear that they're preserving it.
But again, it's not real. It's.
Photoshopped There's three buttons on the top of this
meter. One of them is the drop down
that selects damage or healing or X.
The next one is it looks like an up and down line which might be
a divider icon between the drop down arrow and the next icon
which is the typical cog wheel for settings.
But that up and down airline might be the fight selection.
Yeah. Sorry, not an arrow, it's just
an up and down line. That might be it could be an I
as well. Images they chose.
It could be a one. Which images they chose most?
Recent fight fight 2 for the thing Like yeah.
I didn't number it. I'm going to lose my mind.
And overall, like current damage and overall damage, like how is
it happening in this poll and how do we look over all?
Yeah. Anyway, those are all things I
just, I basically just want details.
Just give me details. It's I desperately, I don't
believe based on conversations I've had that they are talking
to the creators at any meaningful level of the add-ons
they're attempting to replicate. We'll head into boss alerts
next, which is the one that makes me say this, But I don't
believe that they are talking to the creators in any meeting And
they, I just don't. I know they have had meetings
with add on creators, but I don't think there are meetings
along the lines of hey, can you tell us some best practices or
things that you know people desperately want from your ad on
what is the most used function? I think it was more of a
symbolic gesture. But let's talk about boss alerts
because damage meetings are coming and they will tell us
something. Boss alerts are also coming.
So right now if you're fighting in the raid you or even in
dungeons, you're probably, if you're listening to a podcast in
World Warcraft, probably using an add on like Bigwigs yay or
DBM also yay but not my choice but I'm sure it's great.
So no little. Wigs.
Are we not going to talk about little wigs?
Bigwigs and little wigs are the same add on.
I'm just I'm partial. There is nothing wrong with DBM.
That was a joke if Adam happens to be listening.
These both add-ons are they're interchangeable.
I just happen to prefer bigwigs. I'm biased.
So we're getting and what those do is basically tell you a
combat timeline, usually in bar graph form of what ability is
coming next. You get a bar with a timer and
then the icon of the ability, the name of the ability.
Blizzard said, yeah, that's great.
We know people like that. We're going to give them the
same thing or something similar and they've taken it and they
have created their own timeline now.
Super huge pro here, Bigwigs. DBM.
Both have to rely on getting the data after the fact and there's
constant updates to them because data changes.
Blizzard makes changes that aren't documented so those
things are always constantly being updated for timers and
stuff. This is coming direct from
Blizzard, so presumably the timers will always be the most
up to date. And when Blizzard makes a change
in the raid on Week 2, their combat timeline will update
immediately with that change because it's pulling from the in
the internal hooks. Oh my God, I hope that's the
case. And this is I've just unlocked a
new fear as I was saying that because I was like, what if they
don't? OK, what's?
Up well we lost the other was just giving him just an absolute
fair grip to you. Your voice got filter just was
like no. Reached down my throat and was
like they're never updating this so but they're not giving us.
We don't see anyway the bars that we're used to.
There is a very popular week or right now that takes the
information from Big Wings DBM and turns it into a vertical
timeline where you see an icon and the next spell moves down
the timeline until it activates. Blizzard's boss mod replicates
that. You can have it be a horizontal
timeline with icons or a vertical timeline with icons.
You have the option to toggle the name of the spell on or off,
You have the option to toggle the time on or off.
You can adjust the sizes, and you can get text alerts that
tell you the name of the spell as it activates.
All very much the same as Bigwigs and DBM.
This is great as long as they give us the option to also have
it in that bar format now. They already have gorgeous bars
that they're using for the cooldown tracker, just give us
the option to toggle this timeline into that.
That is as it stands right now. I can't believe I'm about to say
this. That is the only ask I have for
their combat, their boss alerts. Just let me make it a bar graph
instead of this vertical line. Other than that.
And and ask 0 Keep it up to date.
And yeah, S 0, please, like update this.
You can't if this is out of date for a week, it is you will lose
the trust of everyone. Nobody will ever want to use
this again. Yeah, that's it.
Other than that, I mean, this is a basic, it's a it's a Brit.
They're pretty simple add-ons and like they're very complex,
but in in the case of what information they convey, what
spell is next? When is it happening?
Oh hey, it's happening now. That's all you really need from
these. We don't bigwigs DBM offer auto
marking for for enemies and for like icons and things in the in
the map. They're like auto mark pylons.
If there's things to kill it, it doesn't need to have that built
in. We can go back to manually
marking. That's a nice thing.
That's that's a it's a quality of life thing.
I don't expect blizzards going to want to do that because
they're probably going to want us to solve these things
ourselves without something doing it for us.
So I'm fine if it doesn't have that.
If if your goal is just here's the abilities and when they're
coming next, that's great. I would ask that you included
for dungeons and not just raid. And I desperately want either
natively the option to turn it into a bar.
I like the bars in the cooldown manager.
I'll take those. Or let current bigwigs in DBM
have access to reskin it to make it look like there's even if
they can't get the same combat hooks, let them reskin the way
that it looks so that it looks the same.
Other than that, I'm not super. I am terrified as of just this
moment. I'm terrified that this is going
to get launched and never updated.
They make so many changes that are not documented on flights.
Timers are just So anyway, they're going.
They're surely. Sorry.
What I want them to do with this is to build it in such a way
that it is always pulling from the the boss's data.
So if they change something and the boss does it at a different
time, it automatically changes the the timer.
It's not a separate process, just if they can, because
they're they're working out with this integrated into the game.
So I want this integrated in a way where it is not a separate
job to update the timers. The timers are always reflecting
what's happening happening there.
The thing that I noticed about this is if you look at both of
the pictures, they have one ability called savage charge and
Savage charge has like the icon in red now with a red outline
rather and then and the name is in red.
The they have blade storm and that's got like a orange
outline, but the icon looks the same when they show it in the
horizontal one. Again, Savage charges like big
and bright and stuff. Is this their way of showing
like this is an important thing that you the raid needs to be
ready for. This is like the big the big
ability compared to all the other ones.
Cool, but I'd also like to be able to adjust that my myself to
say like, hey, this is the ability I really want
highlighted because this is the ability that my my team is
struggling with That would be that's the kind of again, it's
another thing where you're looking to modify it, but just
to be able to highlight an ability, just be able to get an
alert when it passes by that 5 second mark because they've got
it all marked with like each thing has a timer.
This thing's at 0, this thing's at one second and so forth
right. I would love if I could just get
like a little alert when particular abilities get past
that 5 seconds. Or as a raid leader, I can be
like, hey team 5 seconds to the savage charge, 5 seconds until
whatever ability get your like cooldowns and so forth.
That sort of thing would be great, great for it.
And it's something you can do with like add-ons.
You can have particular things give like the big like runaway
girl and so forth. Or just even small things have
smaller sounds that that go off through there.
Because while all of this is shown to us visually, a lot of
players use audible sounds in order to like lessen the visual
noise and like adjust through things all the way.
So that's, that's what I would like.
And of course, there are, there are players that have different
accessibility, right? And just because it's on bars
that are going through that doesn't affect some players the
same way it affects others. Manny uses DBM because that
sound cues from DBM. Yeah, Cole, like voice DBM and
like I totally I've, I've used them all though, right?
I've used them all. I like which one of us is right.
So you and I. On the wrong one.
No, you're not the wrong one, even if you're outnumbered on
this small segment size, right? Yeah, yeah, I think sad.
I'm looking forward to this again.
This one I think is the most from what I could see add on
that looks like it'll be it'll be best used out-of-the-box from
what they've what they're showing.
But again, it's something that I hope that they are responding to
feedback and that they will also adjust things as it goes based
on like as they develop new things, as like the needs and
the wants of the community demand.
So from there, we're going into more of the quality of life
stuff. I'm glad that they are
constantly changing these things.
This is something that's been ongoing since Dragonflight when
they first started adjusting the UI.
And I'm really glad that they are doing this now.
Looking back, it looks like this was sort of a precursor.
Let's update the the UI, make it a little bit fancier so that we
can start pulling back on these things.
I know people who still don't use the one bag and some people
who are very much attached to their Addy bag still.
And some people who said, hey, I don't need Addy bags.
The people who who drop daddy bags.
I think you're not quite sure of how the power that the Athlon
still have. Anyways, I'm really glad that
they do continue to make these quality of life choices changes.
But the big one that I'm really glad to see improve is, of
course, the cooldown manager. In this article, they talk about
how, hey, you can pull these cooldowns from like essential
cooldowns to utility to like things that are not displayed.
All of that is what we're been saying with all the other ones,
allow us to modify the information that we're getting
to what we as players deem as important.
That way the feedback isn't Blizzard, you need to change
this so that I can accurately track buff XY and Z.
It is, oh, I'm just going to go into the UI and make sure I can
track XY and Z and not track ABC.
And that's what this cooldown manager is, is starting to do.
So I'm so happy for that. What do you guys think from just
the pictures? Because again, this is not
something that we have through through there.
Let's put that one over to Sean first.
They I'm interested to see this in action when it comes out 1125
with all of the changes it's made.
It will need. They would basically need to
make weak or as non functional for me to swap off of them.
Because as good as the cooler manager isn't letting us
customize what goes where, what spells were tracking, how we're
tracking, it's still not going to give us the visual control
that we go as give. It's not going to give us the
full flexibility that we go as give for what we track.
You know they can you can set it up so things grow in size or pop
when you know it's a button you want to press right away from a
proc or you can yeah, there's just a lot of things you do that
maybe you'll be able to do eventually with cool on manager.
But I doubt I I feel like cool on manager is going to be like
weak auras light really, really good for anybody who's not
comfortable with weak auras hasn't used them a lot and put
those people on on pretty much even footing with the vast
majority of the player base who are using them.
But even like I've mentioned it before, I like the zoom 30% look
of the icons because that makes the icon a box and cooldown
manager by default, you have to have the border.
I'm not in love with the border. And it also doesn't allow you.
You can adjust the space between them, but there's a minimum
space between them that you can adjust.
And it's still too wide for me. I want them closer.
So just those kinds of minor things 'cause me some still some
consternation, but it does look like it's getting way better.
And somebody who's not using a full week or a pack, I think
this is going to be a massive game changer.
And there I know people who do use WE core packs now who will
want to move off of them to the Blizzard option because they
believe it will increase their frame rate, which I don't
believe, but it may. Depending on the strength of
their computer, we cores are one of the number one sources for
people to have issues. And I think this past week we've
had issues with LVUI causing like some issues with frame
rate. So like sometimes add-ons do
'cause that. And if you are on a older PC or
you just so happen to be on like some non standard hardware,
yeah, yeah, I can understand that.
What about you Lex? What are you thinking about
this? I'm feeling pretty good about
this. So I am famously a tell me one
girlie and I would I would much prefer to use the base UI than
to use an add on. That said, and forgive me if
this has been discussed in another place, I'm forgetting
it, there are some functionalities of tell me when
that I don't believe they've said yet are coming into
cooldown manager things like I can set it.
So maybe that maybe this actually is a tracking defensive
thing, I don't know. And I can set it so that, as I
was saying at the meaning of the show, my MO aura doesn't show up
until I'm out of MO aura. I don't, I don't want to see it
unless I both have it up and also don't need it or I do need
it at the moment. I, some of my skills only show
up when I'm at a certain amount, like I'm at like 30% of fury or
less, right? Again, I do not want to see that
unless I don't want to be looking at my fury.
I want it to not pop up unless I need to use it.
I don't know if they have that degree of customized ability.
I think that is relatively necessary to make a good
cooldown tracker. I guess my, what I, what I would
say is I feel in my completely unbiased opinion that the way
that I like I, I use cooldown trackers at a pretty low level
and there's some functionality at my low level of cooldown
tracking that I'm not seeing in this.
And I, I, I think I will, I'll probably, I'm going to stick
with tell me when until they either turn it off or this has
the same thing. So tell me one has just because
I, you know, why would I make the game harder on myself?
I'm already parsing with the tanks.
Yeah, you're doing that on your own.
Exactly. I'm not doing my talents.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's going to be reasons that some
people are just not going to turn this off, sorry, turn off
their add-ons until they are forced to specifically with weak
cores. It's because they're so
programmable. Like if I have a trinket and I
want to track a trinket, I don't expect Blizz is going to put
that in my cooldown manager. I don't think I can like pull
that in and and track how many stacks I'm getting with like a
trinket with a trinket that I want to use above a certain
number. I don't think I'm going to be
able to have like a little audio cue that plays as I'm as I have
this buff or even something as simple as like, oh, when I am
above of a a certain level of resources that it changes color.
These are things that I don't expect Blizzard to put in
because it is so specific to me, but weak cores allow me to
engineer that that UI exactly how I want it, and so power
users are going to stay with those add-ons until they're
forced off. Super quick note, they actually
do say in this that come midnight you will be able to set
sound alerts to our cooldowns. That said, you actually ruined
my life when you mentioned they probably won't let you talk
trinkets. I will if I I I'm not even
kidding when I say if I can't track trinkets on my cooldown
manager, I will either have to go hard it to like like I will
refuse a trinket if it is not on a quip or yeah or, or I suppose
I'll learn. You know how to do a basic macro
that my team has explained to me 20 times.
I guess I could do that too, but that actually would also be on
my list of like making this like.
I should macro my trinket with my ascendance.
I forgot to do that. I'm pressing them separately.
Thanks Lex. I'll be changing that probably
tonight anyways. But that actually is a good
point. There are like some unused
things that you. Ascendance 2 minute cooldown
trinket I'm using too confusion. The confusion isn't in what you
said. Manny, how are your I get it.
I understand Lex not having her triggers macro.
She's still running the dragonfly demonic balance.
I accept this. I just got this.
How? Was it triggered that macro to
ascendance Manny? I I just got it yesterday and I
didn't do the macro change. You don't just have an auto
macro set up for a slot 14 a slot 13 with your ascendants.
No, because sometimes the trinkets are are not aligned.
Sometimes I'm using a talent that doesn't use ascendance,
it's using the deeply rooted elements which pop every so a
second. So I keep the all.
Right. I was judging and I shouldn't
have been. I take it back.
Honestly, if you get enough haste and you just go deeply
rooted elements, oh it's so good.
Anyways, that's separate I I am looking forward to these
add-ons. Obviously, there's going to be a
gap between when they come out and they're alive and where they
need to be for us to comfortably use them and not the add-ons.
That 4%, because Blizzard has said like, oh, they want to have
this have like 96% of functionality and there's going
to be that gap. That 4% is really going to be
important as we get closer to the point where they say, OK,
we're going to start restricting the APII.
That's where my fear is because I don't expect these to show up
day one and be like, amazing. I just need them to get to that
4% and that 4% to actually be comfortable, not like, oh, this
4% is something I really need before they shut off the API.
So we will be putting forward additional, additional
commentary criticisms as we see this.
That was only one article and we're already at the hour mark.
Guys, I got to, I got to ask, shall we cover the transmog?
Yeah, the trans mug we could probably cut.
OK, great. Let's just talk about this
survey. I'm sorry Lex, I'm pretty sure
you love trans mug. I.
Actually understand how to use chat in this podcast.
Lex is the only one of us. I was, as you were asking Manny,
I was like, oh, we have a chat message here.
We have Lex. Lex said the thing Manny's now
verbalizing to the guests. I'm verbalizing to everybody,
don't worry. Hello.
Now everyone knows we cut transmog.
Yeah, now we cut transmog. I'm I'm sure there are people
who are going to be upset. Clearly not Lex.
So yeah, we got to talk about M Plus, by the way.
So if we got to cut to anything, it's going to be Transmark.
So let's talk about, let's talk about M Plus.
Let's talk about this survey that's been going around
because, you know, Blizzard says don't share this survey and
apparently nobody listens because they're being Reddit
posts. There have been tweets about
this. The discussion has been rampant,
so let's throw this one to Sean You, you love M Plus, give us a
give us a breakdown. People saying that we're getting
fellowship coming to Wow. Yeah, so there's it was a survey
with six questions, Blizzard saying, hey, give us your
interest levels on these six type topics ranging from not
interested at all to extremely interested.
One of these was about the potential for group Finder.
I'll just read them. Group Finder can automatically
form a group for you based on criteria you set as a group
leader. How interested are you in this?
This is one of six options and apparently the only one anybody
read. The second one says, because
people read that and instantly thought we're getting solo cues
and Mythic plus, Blizzard is giving us solo cue.
They're forcing solo cue on us. Mythic Plus is dead.
No one's going to Mythic Plus again anymore.
Blizzard ruin Mythic Plus. And then it flipped somewhere
around noon today, and the Hall of Fame guilds who were classic
raid loggers were suddenly like, we're getting solo cues.
We have people to do dungeons with again.
Anyway, the second question of 6 let's think what 12 percent?
12% of the questions was about solo queue.
Now group leaders. Second question, Group leaders
key is resilient. This means it won't drop if you
deplete it for the first group they lead each week.
How interested are you? Second question and 3rd question
was group leaders receive additional crests after the
completion of the dungeon. The 4th question was group
leaders receive additional valor stones after completion of the
dungeon, which to me I think is the most important question
because this means valor stones still exist in midnight.
What the heck, Blizz? Why delete values?
On question five, Group Finder will recommend players with a
similar skill level to you as a group leader.
How interested are you? We already can sort of do this
with filters that they give us. So I guess I'm as interested as
I was when you first implemented it, Blizz.
And then question six, group Finder will recommend players
with similar play styles or goals to you as a group leader.
And again, I'm pretty sure you can already filter by this as
well, whether they want completion or in time.
So this is the survey. The Blizzard obviously
recognizes that there is a community problem with with LFG
tool. The LFG tool.
I want to be super clear here. The LFG tool is not a problem.
LFG tool does exactly what it is meant to do.
It allows people to post keys, that allows people to queue for
those posted keys, and it allows the person who posted them to
select keys to put a group together to run a dungeon.
LFG does exactly what it does. People however also do exactly
what people do and get super picky and super weird and super
toxic while putting these groups together.
And sometimes people get invited because they're hunters and then
the group says are you marksman? And the hunter says no on BM and
they kick them because they don't understand that their
weekly 10 doesn't need a marksmanship hunter.
So are we getting solo queues guys?
I guess that's the question. I think that two things have to
happen for me to actually care about the solo queue.
I think that if the first key you run with your key is
resilient, I think that that is incentivizing me to lead a
group, right? If that resilient key has to be
done through this like solo queue group Finder, so be it.
Like it's like, OK, I've got nothing to lose.
Let me just throw a random group together that like please, it
puts together and hopefully it doesn't take me an hour to get
through a 33 minute key, right. That sure, OK, on a day I'll
give that a a test and I'll go through it.
I would much prefer resilient if I am the person on the first
time that I put my key in as a group leader that to me, sure,
I'll I'll put go through a group thing and I'll still deal with
like all the toxicity that is going to happen, right.
I just don't think that the solo group Finder is good for mythic
Plus. If you can burn your key, I
think that's going to be painful.
Especially when we already have sort of a response to this
abandoned abanders thing where people are sort of extorting the
like, Oh well if you're not going to force the abandoned,
I'm just going to butt pull everything.
I'm going to purposely wipe until nobody wants wants to do
this key. I don't need to be thrown in
with randoms for where that behavior becomes that much
easier for them. So yeah, I, I'm really afraid of
solo queues right now based on based on experience with current
bad stories. Like I've only had like 2 bad
groups this this tier and one of them was like great attitude
just unable to like God Blizzard bring me the interrupt.
Bring me the interrupt tutorial please Blizzard.
Instead of vote to kick, you vote to put them in the
interrupt tutorial. That's the most toxic thing
Manny's ever said on this podcast.
It was so painful. Manny ran a key and at the end
of the key said you should try the interrupt tutorial.
No, no, no, I didn't wait for the end of the key, I mean.
No Manny, Manny, Manny. How could I'm supposed to be the
toxic one? I'm but I remember to hear it.
When I was saying it anyways, I do think that solo group is
definitely something that I don't want.
I think that group Finder in general kind of pulled apart the
fabric of community of communities.
I think that people who are pushing higher keys typically
will find one another and and form groups and stuff so that
they like. I don't think we're seeing
people push like top tier keys without like a dedicated group.
And I don't think those those those groups that are even like
close to that are using group Finder.
And so I think that if you can find people and they're and you
like like running keys with them.
I've had keys where it's like, oh, let's run another one.
What did your key turn into? Sure, let's go do that.
And I think that that is like something I would like to
encourage. And it gets less likely when,
let's say two of the five people can just be like, yeah, no, I
get an instant queue anyways, I'm out of here.
Yeah, I was already thinking that.
If you're 1. Out of threes as a tank I would
get instant cues. So if it's going sideways I
would just leave and re queue instant.
But I think everybody's cues would be pretty fast.
I don't know how solo shuffle work.
I don't know if those cues are instant.
I I actually think group Finder giving the option to auto put a
group together based on people who applied for a certain key
couldn't possibly be worse than the reality that we live in now
where DPS sitting queue for 45 minutes and don't get invited to
any keys, or an hour and don't get invited to any keys.
Or they finally get into a key and they get kicked because
they're the wrong speck of hunter, you know?
Or were you queue up for five and in those five groups the
group leader has no intention of taking you.
This is actually APSA if you're waiting for a specific class or
you're like, I don't ever want a group with shadow priest because
I hate classes that do amazing damage and come with good
utility. If you are this person, decline
those people who signed up because they can only queue for
five at a time. Don't make them sit there in a
key queue they're never going to get.
And on the flip side, if you're somebody who's queued up for
your five dungeons and you get declined for a couple, don't
send that group leader a nasty message saying why would you
decline me, I'm 3.1 K, I'm the best guy to priest on the
planet. Except the fact that they
weren't going to take you anyway.
Now you can queue up for another group that might take you.
But all this will be fixed when we get so accused.
Well, I, so I, I think, and I will say I'm about to
regurgitate a conversation that happened in my Guild discord.
So if you're like Wow Lex, you're speaking with a lot of
confidence for somebody who famously doesn't do a lot of
mythic plus, because I'm not speaking myself, I'm speaking as
my guildies. I think part of the issue is
that this isn't answering the core issue with queuing right
now, which is that there's like no tanks and healers, right?
Like if you solo Q, it's going to be just as long, if not
longer, because it's not going to change the number of tanks
and healers you have. And again, we had a long
conversation about this in my Guild discord.
I don't have a lot that I can say for what would make healers
more likely to sign up, but one thing that was kind of
universally agreed upon in my Guild discord is that it is the
like part of the issue that won't be solved with any of
these things is that the challenge rating to get in as a
tank is just really high. The number of things you need to
be able to balance if you're going to tank, especially a pug
Mythic plus. Like when I mythic plus with my
Guild, they walk me through things.
Who cares that I don't know routes?
Who cares that I like, you don't have to Google the mechanics.
Who cares that I like, don't fully understand which packs can
pull together and which packs can't?
That's fine because somebody's going to talk me through an
invoice. I really want to pug M plus keys
like conceptually that sounds really good for me because I'd
like to be able like I don't really play at the time.
So most my friends play and I I enjoy tanking as a concept.
So it makes a ton of sense to me to just start popping in pug
keys. I get very overwhelmed when I
look up routing guides. If you don't, if you haven't
routed before, it's complicated. Like maybe I'm just a little
stupid. I'm also a little stupid, but
like, it's it's scary to go in and be like, Oh God, I don't
really know that I fully know the route and I don't really
know what I can pull together, but I know I have to pull
multiple packs at once and like, oh, wait, wait, was that a pack
that like now everyone's mad at me because I'm not supposed to
pull this one thing or I'm supposed to notice me by it.
And on top of that, I'm also trying to like do the mechanics
and make sure that I'm not, you know, wiping my team as the
tank. And I'm also trying to do my
rotation and that and, and on top of that, if things go wrong,
everyone's going to yell at me. So the first thing we can do
with a Blizzard can't even fix. But I this is to all the
listeners. If you just sat in queue for
hours and hours trying to find a group and you get a tank and the
tank is kind of sucking and you're typing out your little
message of hey, idiot, learn to tank, you loser.
Maybe consider that the fact that they're learning to tank
right there is the reason. Like if, if more people were
learning to tank and were willing to be kind of crappy in
in in mythic plus, you would sit in queue for shorter periods of
time. But all of which is to say,
yeah, some of this, like the resilience seems pretty popular
universally. I think that's a good idea to
make it easier and like safer to to pug keys.
The crust of the valor stones. I guess to me, again, I don't
really do my thick plus it doesn't even make sense as a
like it it would make you sign up more.
But if I as the player, don't get additional crust of valor
stones, why wouldn't I? I'd still just leave, right?
There's no reason I wouldn't deplete a key and feel like, oh,
well, this is going poorly. I'm just bouncing.
I guess hypothetically I could get voted out, but whatever.
I I do really wish that there was a way and I know you can
kind of do it in in the LFG right now, but like I would love
if there was a way that I could mark myself as a baby tank.
And like when I sign up, it just gives a notification like this
tank has said that or like this player says that they don't like
that they're playing it like, and I know there's like discords
and stuff that kind of do that, but like, yeah, I actually kind
of would like that, right. I would like to sign up in nice
queue. Let me go over to learning queue
and then you guys can go to your hard queue.
But I don't think any of this affects the fact that the two
most sought after groups, A lot of people like if are are so
popular that they're just in groups already and and are
really pugging. And the fact that, fairly or
not, Mythic Plus has a reputation of being toxic and so
people don't want to pug into it because they don't want to risk
that. Yeah, I mean, I do think that
all of those all of those points are just stand.
It is one of those things where you force out the people who are
trying to learn it, which makes it harder to do those, to find
people to do those roles. And it causes things the people
that are good kind of get scooped up.
But like I don't see the point in giving extra valor stones and
extra crests. Like if I'm filling my row of
vault, I'm hitting the the cap on Crest, right?
Unless I'm doing like my 1:10 and then that's what am I gonna
do? Like not lead a group until I'm
ready to do my 1:10 to get extra crests in that or do that as my
first one where I'm going to be through and then not and not
lead a group thereafter. It's just, it's just a very
strange, strange thing. And I don't think it gives them,
I don't think it gives them what they're looking for, which is,
hey, more people listing groups. If there are more people listing
groups and there are more group groups out there, then it's
great. But like, let's say you have
something so great that everybody wants to lead a group.
Well, now everybody's leading a group.
There's nobody to fill. Like I don't think this is
solving the problem that they that they're actually looking
at. So I don't like, I don't see
these as good quick fixes in my opinion.
I do think that a solo queue would do more harm than good
because the they are they're already talking about the social
contract and every so often you have to sign in and be like,
yes, I will play nice, but when you.
Unless people in my group don't kick and then I'm going to ask
them to do the interim tutorial. I was relative, I was nice.
I did not put any profanity. I spoke about the mechanic.
I. Just wrote the word kick 6 times
question marks. I did.
I, I took the time. We were, we were depleting
anyways. I said, hey, you know what?
It's just going to be a completion.
You're obviously an idiot. Let me explain to you how this
interrupt. Button works on your balls.
Who the hell puts together a group with like anyways?
Anyways I. Love you, Manny.
I'm glad. Listener, if you were in this
key with Manny and you saw the shaman named the true villain
Manny attempting to explain to you how interrupts work, you can
send your thanks over at bit dot LY slash faz discord to let him
know. Hey Manny, thank you.
I will do that interrupt tutorial when it comes out
because I also don't know how to stop casts.
Sorry, it's. OK, you know what?
Swayed me, by the way, I'm I'm out now because as a tank, why
would I ever use so like you when I have my choice of groups
in LFG right now? Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, I just, and then like, I just think that they just need
to put things together in a way that just encourages you to,
like, make friends out there because, you know, the world's
crappy enough. Make some friends.
That actually is I I will say I do have a little bit of
nostalgia to I did play briefly as a small child in like classic
and and BC and rap. I might have actually been BC
and rap, but whatever. And I feel like I made a lot
more friends. And I think that actually is
another thing that solo Q would pull us further away from.
I. I feel like I was constantly
adding people to my friends list after doing dungeons and
chatting and having a good time. Not I'm sorry, I'm sounding like
a little. I'm ending on a little
funkiness. You said, you said classic and
you said classic BC wrath. And I was OK with that.
I thought you're going to be in fact, when I was a little kid
back in like BFA shadow lands and I was like, I was about to
die. I was about to this keel over
dead in my in my chair, just like I, I hope I got the
gravesite pulled out. But I'm glad.
I'm glad that you said those things.
Yeah. Social, social.
The social part of this game is something that I would like to
have not restored. I don't think you can really go
back and pull things that force people to like rough it out
together, but like at least maintained.
And the more they automate things, the less attached you
are to, to people. It's like, oh, kick that tank
and we'll get somebody to fill in fill in in the next 5 minutes
anyways. And so the learning tank has to
suffer through like the quote UN quote, humiliation and like
depression of like they got kicked midway through through a
key or the healer or the guy who wasn't interrupted interrupting
or that or that shaman whose damage was too low, whatever you
want to call it, because you don't take the time to put the
grip together because it's so easy to just jump into the into
the next thing. Like your interactions are so
flimsy, so like replaceable. And I don't want to encourage
that. So like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not
for the solo queue. Regardless, I'd love to hear
from our listeners what their thoughts are on this, what they
would like out of M plus or what would encourage them to start
making some groups in M plus. I think that regardless of how
your group goes, whatever the bonus is needs to be there just
so you don't need to lead a successful key.
You just need to try and lead. But until next time, guys, wait,
go ahead. I want to do it.
Wait, I want to do a giveaway. Join the discord bit dot LY
slash faz discord. I'll pay for this.
Tell us what class you made and tell us the name of your
interrupt on that class and everybody who does that before
we record next Wednesday. So September the 10th, we record
September the 10th at 8:00 PM, 7:00 PM Eastern Time, Eastern
Daylight savings time. Everybody who does that, I'll
enter them in for a chance to win a epic edition of midnight.
I'll I'll buy them an epic edition in midnight.
OK, We'll draw a live on the show.
So that's your chance. If you're listening to this,
hopefully you listen to it before next week.
Tell us your main what, what you mean, what class you mean and
the name of your interrupt just so we can start building that
base, that solid base of players that we can group with when we
start doing key. There you go, and until next
time guys, may all your hits be crits.