Why don't we just do this ourselves?
Lex, can you animate? And I can I no.
I can't either. We can.
Just try a little stick figures. That'll be basically, yeah.
And that. You do hand puppets.
Except all of my puppets will have to be dwarves and gnomes,
yeah. 'Cause you have your tiny little
child hands. For calendar.
To the burning region for Gilnaeus or has not done for the
Lich King. For the.
Cindori for the alliance. For the Horde, for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
I am one of your hosts, Manny, AKA the true villain Manny and I
am joined, of course by the other two parts of the Triangle
of Good because I screwed up last time.
First introducing to my left lex Rance.
Hi, Manny you. It's up to you whether or not
you want to keep my screaming laugh in the audio version of
this podcast. Well.
Actually, I do want to give a special thanks to the third
member of the Triumphant who has been editing these last couple
of episodes. Mr. Sean.
Hello, How are you doing? Manny, I don't have it in me to
tell you that the triangle of good is what Japan, Italy and
Germany called themselves during the war.
Wait, are you? No, you're making that up.
I don't know how you've managed to twice paint us as the bad
guys. Wait, Manny, Manny Seinberg,
He's, he's making this up, right?
I've never heard that before. It's making it up.
I would have no no the the the axis of evils was AUS propaganda
thing. Yeah.
And for any of our listeners who are history fans who are
violently screaming at their radios right now that I made
that up. Yeah, I did make that up.
Yeah. OK.
All right. You know what?
We're going to get two more. We're going to call ourselves a
pentagram. There's no negative mentions on
that. Yeah.
But aside from, like, running through, like vague, you know,
associations with bad, evil things from the past, how has
the World of Warcraft been treating you guys?
Have you guys been diving into the World of Warcraft?
John, let's just start with you. Yeah, so I've actually been
playing, believe it or not, a little bit of Season of
Discovery lately. And I also bought a Tartarus,
which for those of you who don't know, is like one of those
single keypads. It's like got 16 keys on it and
a thumbstick, and it's just for your left hand and it replaces
your keyboard for key bindings. And I had one of the past, but I
had to get rid of it because I have tiny childlike hands that I
didn't think that it fit, but I wanted to give it another go
because I've been seeing them a lot lately.
For those for the audio listeners, Manny's holding his
hand up to the camera right now and it's huge.
I'm very jealous of his pianist fingers.
That's a normal sized hand. No, Lex, my hands are like
Cabbage Patch Kid size. Look at this.
I'll hold this up. I have a Cabbage Patch kid on my
desk here and I'll hold up his hand and you'll see that my hand
is roughly the same size as his hand.
Yeah, yeah, that's actually exactly what happened.
By the way listeners, Sean does have Cabbage Patch sized hands.
Yeah, and the weird part is my fingers are stitched together
like his, so it makes it really hard to hit the.
So the so this this device that you use, how do you actually hit
these 16 keys? Tell me about.
This it's just like a keypad anyway, it's I'm slowly adapting
to that to see if I can get used to it.
I want to try and improve my DPS.
Right now I think my biggest issue when DPS ING is that when
I have to move, my rotation goes all the shit.
We're allowed one swear word and that was it.
So with this I have the thumb stick for my thumb and hopefully
that can help me resolve that issue.
The other option is I I have a razor not a mouse, the Trinity
and I could put the 12 button side panel on the side and but
my fingers are small but my thumb is so fat that those
buttons are too small and I hit 2 at the same time all the time
so it's hard for me. Fascinating.
I have. I'm horribly proportioned human
body. I'm a mystery of science.
Yeah, Manny's get. Manny's got one of those mice.
But you have those nice lean pianist fingers, Manny, you're
like. OK, but the thumb, the thumb
isn't there. So what I do?
Well, my thumb is like a giant sausage.
Look at this. It looks like one of those
little cocktail wieners. Again, your camera's off off and
this is horrible radio. No, you're fine.
You're you're fine on the thumb. But what I would suggest people
do because like I've had this problem with the the Raisin, not
a. Wait, wait.
Sean, put your thumb back up. You have your thumb is smaller
than Manny's. What are you talking about?
Because I'm farther from the camera than no.
You could what I understand proportional size, Sean.
Hold on, let me. Newborn info.
Let me hold my thumb up next to something for size reference.
See how? See how this thumb covers
multiple keys and for the for the audience, it's like so I'm
like my the start of my thumb to the first notch.
I can easily cover up three starting to touch the the 4th
right. What I would suggest for people
who have this right is all these keys one through 6, the top
half. Ignore them on your mouse.
You can hit them with your with your other hand.
What I would suggest is you keep all of those bindings on your
keyboard, the ones that you use for your mouse, you're going to
rock your thumb so. You see, I have a seven.
I have a 7 button mouse. Well, Sir, you're not going to
have an issue. Adriani has a 12 pad I.
Also have I also have a a gaming mouse like the 12 pad mouse.
Yeah, you also have regular Manny's normal size.
Thumb. Manny could have been a a hand
double for Adrian Brody in 2002's The Pianist.
Like he's got a beautiful face. You don't know Adrian Brody.
I. Don't know.
First, they don't. But I here's my advice for
people who want to use and just use the tip of your thumb my
man. Just do.
It's not that you you can differentiate between these
keys. It takes a little practice.
You don't have to only use half of your 12 key mouse.
Like, no, no, no. But my brilliant thing is, is
that I don't have to move my thumb.
I just tilt up and I could press the lower part because my thumb,
because now it's there and I could tilt down and I could
press this without even ever moving my thumb super fast.
I don't. Have the dexterity, the muscle
control to not just mash the meat of my giant get.
There, Sean, you have to work on it.
It takes time to the first few weeks you're like, this is the
worst thing I've ever done. And now I literally, if you like
I once had to like I tried to play video games on a like a
laptop, like a normal, a normal keyboard without with a normal
mouse and I couldn't do it. I don't understand how you cast
spells with your no, it's impossible.
Although I will say the one thing this has done is it means
that I have never gotten out of the habit of keyboard turning
and will never get out of the habit of keyboard turning
because my mouse is for casting and aiming.
My hand is for moving. OK.
All right. Slightly aside from this, do you
guys use modifier keys along with your pads?
Like Shift plus one or whatever? Yeah, I use alt.
I can't reach shift because my fingers are so short, but I do
use alt because alt Alt is perfectly spaced for me to just
smush my giant thumb into it, so I use that.
I use Alt. OK, maybe maybe Sean's wouldn't
be over with this pianist thing because like, moving my thumb to
alt is like contracting my hand together in this weird you have.
These luxurious long fingers, you're like salad hands over
there. You just have this beautiful
grease. You could probably go pinky to
thumb, right? Afraid from 1:00 to 9:00.
I suppose I was. I was told by my loot teacher
that I'm particularly long 2. 00 Manny, that's a tanky finger
you've got there. Wait, what is this?
What are we testing? Pinky to thumb.
How far from the one can you go across the top?
I mean again, am I allowed? How much am I allowed to
stretch? You stretch it all the way out.
Manny's hitting zero there. He's got a.
A Missouri hitting zero. Yeah, I I hit 0 comfortably.
I hit the minus key alright. I get to 6, I can reach 6.
No, you're lying. I'll drop a picture in the
discord. This.
Is this is this might be OK for those of you who are audio
listeners? We don't have a video chill
anymore, they're all audio listeners.
OK. The best radio they've ever
heard. We've lost 100 viewers.
No, no, I'm going to bring it around the The title card for
this episode is going to be a picture of Sean reaching from
1:00 to how forever party can reach.
I don't believe he. Said for a second.
You. Literally you have to be holder,
your hand would have to be like a scrunch together like a child
could reach me on 6. Second, I happen to have a child
nearby. Let me just no, I'm joking.
We'll put some pictures in the discord.
If you're in the forest around Discord, bit dot LY slash fast
discord, come on in. Send us pictures of your regular
sized thumbs and fingers. And people with hand fetishes
are going to join a discord. Yes it works.
It works. Your kink is not my kink, but
your kink is OK. If you join our discord because
you have a hand fetish and you listen to our episode, more
power to you, my man. Yeah.
Please, please talk about wooden Warcraft.
Next week we'll talk about shoeless foot pedals.
OK. So Sean, you're working on
improving your game. That's what I'm doing and I'm
playing a little bit of season discovery.
OK. All right.
Lex, have you had any time between the puppy rights?
Oh God, no, I still haven't. I'm I'm so excited.
We finally have a date that we're getting the next season.
Now I'm like over the moon about that.
And I think that for me is going to be my hard line of like this
is when I have to stop saying, oh, but if I play video games at
night, I don't get puppy snuggles.
I don't get to snuggle with my puppy for four hours straight.
She's like this. And then she likes to put her
and she sits over next to me and she pretends she's not going to
snuggle. And then she looks over at me
and all of a sudden she like runs her little body over
George. She goes to bed and she takes a
little poppy snuggle. And if I play video games, I
don't get that. I don't get poppy snuggles.
So I can say that until the date, which I will not say yet
because I'm sure we're going to say it as a big announcement.
We know. And then 11.111 point.
Oh, it's coming out. I mean, Lex, in the business, we
just call this a Segway. So let's talk about the news
then. The first big news is that this
week we got the release date for Patch 11.1 undermined and so.
He was undermined. It's not.
It's not happening anymore, you guys.
So on February 25th, the patch will go live in NA and then of
course that will be the 26th in EU and the 27th in China because
China's back in. That means that we will have
that week with all of the time to go through the story and
check out the dry system or ignore it as you so please.
And then the following week, that is March 4th, that is when
season 2 will officially begin. That is when we will have our
new Mythic Plus lineup. Remember that Mythic 0 also
follows that lineup. Heroic also follows that lineup.
So if you are trying to do achievements that require you to
complete dungeons at mythic level or higher, which there are
some even though the meta chief is not there, you're going to
have to hammer those out before it switches over.
And also on that, on those days, we will be getting the new raid,
the Liberation of Undermine with the fight it's on. 8 boss raid
that culminates with a fight against Galliwicks and I am so
looking forward to taking that fat goblin down.
I just want mods guys. I just anybody in the sound of
my voice. I just need a mod that puts a 2D
image of Bobby Kotick's face over top of that goblin.
So when I down this guy, I'm not going to ask you for a Blizzard
unless unless Blizzard, you've done something a little spicy
with Arachnophobia mode. That would be good too.
I've got to be honest with you, I kind of think Galley looks
already looks like Bobby Kodak. Oh yeah, that's true.
You don't even have to do anything.
Just open your. DM It's like if you just found
him after he rubbed a bunch of money on himself.
But yeah, I'm looking forward to the raid.
I'm looking forward to this new season with the Mythic Plus, and
we have received a ton of Mythic Plus changes.
Before we dive into those changes, the build that came out
recently was a release candidate.
So that already told us that like we were getting close even
before they released this this date.
But we received a number of hot fixes and and changes just today
as at the time of this recording that have huge ramifications.
They are really doing massive changes to classes to the to
mythic plus as well. One of the big ones.
And we'll talk about the Mythic plus changes first before we
touch the class stuff. One of the big ones is a 10%
blanket nerve to all health of all creatures in mythic and
Mythic plus just from the get go cut.
And while that might seem like, oh, that's just 10%, that
actually compounds as the levels go up because it is the, as you
go up in key levels, that is a compounding percentage of the
health. And if the initial health is
down by 10%, that means that the 10, the sorry, 7% before you
hit, before you hit a certain level and then 10% afterwards,
all of that's also smaller. So like this is a huge cut all
the way through mythic Plus. And I, I, I'm surprised this
happened. This is huge.
Are, are you sort of taken aback?
I know, Sean, you were doing a lot of testing recently.
Were you expecting such a heavy blanket nerve?
No, I don't think I was. But from a standpoint of
Blizzard and sort of the vitriol that they put up with for the
entirety of Season 1 and how unhappy people were with
dungeons and how everybody said how hard everything was.
It was too tough for them to come out and basically say
here's a keystone and a half levels worth of health taken
off. I think maybe we're looking at
Mythic plus launching the easiest it has in a long time
and also in a really good state because a lot of the they they
also made targeted changes as well that are are really good.
Really like every every week they come up with new Mythic
plus tuning with new Mythic plus patch notes.
They're all bangers that everything has been working
towards making the dungeons more accessible, and that's good
because the more accessible it is, the more people will engage
with it, and that's good news. Yeah, this almost feels more
about messaging than about balance.
Yeah, I, I do agree with you on that, Lexus.
Does this, does this interest you?
Does this make you more likely to like sort of dive in, or at
least give you like a reason to look at it even if you don't
ultimately dive in? Yeah, I mean, I do want to get
back into tanking again. I want to give it another try.
I want to give it a fair shake, shall we say.
And I, I mean, I am not opposed to it feeling kind of easy.
I like it when things are easy because then I feel good about
myself. Thank you, Blizzard.
I mean, I want to make sure obviously I, I've said
repeatedly on the show like I don't think that everything
should be for me. And I want to make sure that the
people who really want to push and try hard and you do hefty
things, they should have really hefty top level things that they
can do. And I want my fun little dinky
stuff. So I as long as it's not going
to make it so that mythic plus isn't fun for the people who
like mythic plus to be hard and painful.
I'm I'm down. That's good news for you, Lex.
What's that? Mythic Plus is infinitely
scalable, so making it accessible and quote, UN quote
easier for people who are just getting into it or people who
are only engaging with it because they like it at a
surface level or people who are just engaging with it for the
gear. It doesn't affect how much fun
those people at the top end can have because it's infinitely
scalable. It just means instead of doing
20s, they'll be doing 20 fours. Love it.
And that'll make them happier because they're seeing bigger
numbers. They're like big numbers.
Look how much better I am 20 fours this season.
I love this. That's true.
Then never mind. I think this is perfect.
I think it's the best change I've ever seen in my life and I
think that they should every single season, they should nerf
Mythic plus a little bit more, and I think this is a huge win.
This also means getting 3K will be easier for all of those mount
farmers out there who were like Oh my God, how much is it going
to cost me to get 3K? Well, it'll cost you a little
less, or you'll be able to attain it yourself.
Like, don't, don't talk to me about how much it'll cost.
I talked to this one team. I was like, oh, I want to.
I wanted to get like the the raid mount and I've never bought
raid mounts, but I wanted to get the mount from Ansarak Mythic
and I, I've talked to one team, they never got back to me.
So like, sometimes it's not even about the gold.
That's maybe that team needs the next two weeks to make sure
everybody on their raid team has gotten the mount and then we'll
be looking at sales that that mount is available the whole
expansion. So you'll be able to go back and
get that that that'll drop guaranteed the whole expansion.
Oh, really? So about specific nerves,
because I think there are some huge nerves in here.
Anybody who's on the Priory of Sacred Flame, the last boss has
a blinding flame. Sorry, blinding light effect,
that same thing as confessor, like charges up, you look away
and if you don't look away, you're blinded and you stumble
around for a bit. And she also can like 1-2 punch
you because she'll shoot this laser beam and if you're blinded
and don't know where to move, you'll get torched.
They nerfed that effect by 95%. The amount of time you spend
blinded is way less and I think that makes the move just in
general less frustrating. I'm worried some people will
just be like, wow, whatever, like like it doesn't matter that
much and I can just go through it.
But like, Oh my goodness, this is like it is pinpoint shots
like that that are in my mind are designed to like remove
frustration points, not necessarily balance, but
frustration points. Sean, you've been talking about
like the the consecrate that the that the enemies drop after the
second boss and how much better those are.
Are there any other specific ones that you're looking at that
are like Oh my goodness. So all of Theater of Pain, all
of MacDonald Workshop are improved simply by adding the
new visuals. We have run through it a couple
of Times Now and it's just wild. We spend the whole time going,
they change nothing. This mechanic has not changed at
all, except now I can see where it's landing and it feels like a
huge nerve. It's amazing how much better it
feels when you don't have to guess where the mechanics going
to hit. And I love it, but but I want to
just specifically call out that blinding light change by 95%.
That is a massively good change because no matter how many times
you tell people don't stare into the eclipse, some orange idiot
is going to look right at it. So it's really good that we have
this because no matter how many times you tell people they don't
look at the blinding light, somebody's going to stare right
at it. And now they're only going to be
dazed for like a second and a half, which is nice.
I think that one thing that I, I was looking at was in theater of
pain, they have that withering touch that used to hit like
everybody on the party and now they dropped the just two
people, just two people get affected.
That is such a huge change that went from something where you're
like, OK, I need to bring other people than my healer to help
deal with this effect or I have to deal with a diss priest for
that Mass, that Mass clear. And now any healer can deal with
it. And if you happen to have
somebody who's along with you, you can just instantly get rid
of that instead of waiting for that eight second clear to to
then go do it again. It's such it's such a great
change. This this to me, like I was
talking to a friend of the show, a personal friend of mine and
how people are saying like, oh, this, this meta is very set.
It's going to be the same, the same healers, the same stuff.
And with the changes that they have been making, it just seems
so much more wide open for people to play what they need
to. Obviously a meta will form.
I am not saying that a meta will not form.
I'm just hoping for a meta that is less dominant, less
compulsory to people who are just running sixes and sevens
that are like, Oh my goodness is too punishing.
I must go with whatever the best things are that people tell me
there is. And honestly guys, if you do
want to know that info, obviously radar IO has like
breakdowns every week of what what's there.
You can find that out there. Moving on from the changes to
sorry, the changes from dungeons to the classes themselves,
because we were just talking about meta, we received a
landslide of changes of different nerfs and buffs to the
different specs. Lex is somebody who is looking
to tank again. Is there one particular 1 you
want to point out here? Yeah, so they made a kind of
bananas interesting decision and they just lumped up all of the
tanks damage. I think the lowest one is 15%,
but primarily about 20% for every tank.
The the 15% that I saw was for Rhett Paladin.
Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope. Prop Paladin.
Rhett Paladin is not a tank. And brew master.
And brew master OK, And the argument is basically that the
damage, tank damage is too low. It hasn't been moving with at
DPS as DPS has been going up. And so they're kind of just
brought like everyone is getting a ton more damage, which is
interesting because I how is kind of was under the impression
that tank damage was supposed to be pretty low.
We were having an an interesting conversation in between the
three of us before the show. I kind of thought the tank
damage was supposed to be like 50 or less percent of DPS,
right? Like if everyone's playing at
their top level that we should be hitting around there.
And apparently that's not correct, is what I've been
informed. Yeah, it's, I mean the game.
In order to play the game, you need tanks.
In order to have tanks, tanks need to have fun.
In order for tanks to have fun, it would be nice if their damage
was somewhere at the range of 75% or so in mythic plus of DPS
and not in raid and raid obviously something vastly
different. If you're a single target your
tanks aren't going to keep up pace as much.
But in mythic plus, 75 to 80% of the DPS that ADPS is doing is
what I think most of the community like aims for.
You'll see occasional one of us where a tank main will link ADPS
meter where they're on top and you know they yuck it up and
it's a good time. Usually leads to nerves for that
class. But yeah, 75% is like the target
because then you feel like you're contributing and it's
fun, right? You need, there's a shortage of
tanks folks and there's a shortage because there's a lot
of pressure on them. They're usually the ones
responsible for the routing, the ones responsible for the shot
calling. You want them to have fun and
they're going to have that. If you look back historically,
the game was healthiest when tanks had fun and times when
tanks had fun with times when tanks had stuff like Vengeance
where they did more damage. Yeah.
So if they're. Doing like 75% of the DPS.
Why not just take four really good tanks and a healer?
Why not? Why?
Not OK, I will, I will. OK one I feel like above 75 in
my mind is is reaching heights that I wouldn't be comfortable
with. I think 75 is actually my higher
part and I'd say and my and I think my range is about 15%.
I really think that like tanks that are really focused on
survival and so have geared for survival should go down to
roughly 60% because you are giving up that damage to like
make sure that you live. But if you're willing to give up
some survivability, I think jumping up to 75% is a is a
decent number. In the in the conversation I had
said I wish that DPS could take 75% of the hits that tanks could
take. And I meant I meant that like
flippishly to sort of poke there.
I do think that there is an issue about survivability that
obviously Blizzard has has already mentioned.
It shouldn't be that as soon as your tank goes down, you are
guaranteed a full wipe. That's something that nobody,
nobody wants. There should be a the ability
for somebody, especially those who have a tank off spec to be
able to like hold for a little bit so that healer or whoever's
got the battle rest can get the tank back up and into into
action. So by that I mean that like
using a defensive stank stance if you're a fury warrior, being
able to shift into beer form if you're a druid or whatever,
whatever it is, just to hold for a little bit, not too long,
maybe be able to take one tank Buster, but not but not much
beyond that. I think that that sort of
flexibility should be there. So tanks being able to do this
damage at roughly 7060 to 75%, that seems healthy to me and I'm
glad that they are doing this. I think we shouldn't have tanks
anymore. I think that that would solve
the tank shortage. Yeah, no, just. 4D four DPS and
a healer DPS should be able to take all the hits.
Then all the DPS players would have to learn how to read so
that they could figure out their path to take when they're
pulling the dungeon. Well, I don't know how to read.
Didn't you have to quit tanking? Like OK.
That's a fairpoint. They they have that shield
because they take the brunt of the criticisms from from the
team right. And then when they deflect it,
that's when the healer takes it. It's all part of the holy.
We could. Just we could just go full Final
Fantasy and we could just make it linear and then the tank does
not the tank just, you know, you plot on forward and then you
don't need a tank. I'm going to blow your mind,
Lex. I'm OK with it.
You can send five DPS, send 5 tanks, none of that matters
because mythic plus is infinitely scaling and you will
get to a level when you can no longer do that.
There was a group back in shadow lands that ran 5 tank dungeons
and they were one key level off from title range.
So they didn't get title as just 5 tanks, but they were able to
do up to one key level below title range.
I think that the breaking the Holy Trinity should allow for
you to serve some progress. And we recently had a tournament
that that I put on as part of the dungeon Dojo.
And we had one team that was 4 boomkin and a mage right?
And they pushed through keys and got to like keys of like fives
and sixes and stuff. And that was like amazing to
watch and that like, I wish they had shifted into guardian form
war to sort of rotate it, rotate through and maybe they would
have gone further. But just as boomkin and a mage
through kiting through through snares and stuff, they were able
to progress through the dungeon. And I'm I like that that's
available. We talked a few weeks back about
the ring and how it was having some teams not use healers at
all. I'm less about that, right,
because that is because that is not mastering your class to a
level where you can go further than you really should.
That is using a like literally slapping on a ring and then
slightly adjusting the way that you play.
We had five tanks in that same tournament, right?
And I think that perhaps even if tanks aren't doing damage, if
they are able to do off healing in a significant fashion, that
can contribute greatly. In Dragonflight season 2, we had
a short lived meta where because of the amazing off healing of
paladins, they weren't bringing healers and they were pushing
high level keys. So I think that the games can
sometimes do it, but you got to give an edge to the DPSA
significant edge to the DPS in DPS so that there's a reason to
take them. You have to give a significant
edge to survivability to the tanks so that there's a reason
to take them, and you need to give a significant advantage to
sustainability and maybe CC Blizzard, maybe CC to the
healers so that there's a reason to take them.
I was going to say, I will say, and I'm going to sound a little
bit like I'm being snarky and I mostly am, but I'm kind of not
the based on this conversation, the a group that's really out of
alignment is the healers, right? They're the only group that
consistently people feel like they like if if you're playing
around with these groups, it nobody's run A5 healer dungeon.
So maybe maybe if we're doing big percentages, maybe give some
big percentage of survivability to the healers.
So I could have my first full, you know, 5 healer dungeon.
I think that'll be sick. I think that'll be very fun.
I'm all four healers doing more. Let's give you, let's give the
healers 20% extra damage. Let's do it.
John, want to want to hear my hot take.
Oh man, this is where Manny tells us he hates healers.
No augmentation to Voker gets switched to healing.
Yeah, you know, 100 yes, they they switch to healing and the
escrow survivability. They can then start buffing the
tank the tank into healer again. But like, can you balance that
against other healers? That's a scary thought.
That will be interesting. I would like to see that as like
a thought experiment. Well, and like in first person
shooters, usually the groups are tank, DPS and support or even
just DPS and support. And usually there are things
like that where like the buff. And part of that is because
first person shooters are a very different game than an MMO.
But I, I, I honestly would consider a buffing class to be
more aligned with a healer than with the DPS.
And I think that's one of the reasons why augmentation of
ochres tend to struggle like it it, it's, it's hard to figure
out how to track them and how to put them on charts correctly
because they're not really ADPS, They're not really doing
increase damage per second. They're there to increase the
skill of the other people around them, which is identical to what
a healer does. Like, I mean, not identical, but
it's very similar to what a healer does, where a healer
exists not to do things on their own, but to make it so that
other people can do things more successfully and more
efficiently. Yeah.
And I feel like when you're talking about healer damage,
right, and their contribution, because like there's a point
where if the healer is able to passively keep the team afloat,
like there have been in some seasons of mythic plus, well,
druids are great. They slap on their hearts and
then they switch into Kitty or boomkin and, and supply a
significant amount of damage. So there have been points where
it's it's like that disciplined priest is like the poster child
for this. They damage to do healing.
And if they can provide a sufficient enough of healing and
they just start wailing on on damage and this priest becomes
very, very much better in that way.
If you have something that is like, OK, I don't directly deal
damage to the enemies, but I will buff the others to
contribute damage, right, Then that would be a significant way
of having healers that are also like fighting for that same slot
of like, hey, I can also contribute damage or
survivability and stuff. But that again, is an entire
thought experiment and maybe it maybe something we could do on a
bonus episode or something. But moving forward from that,
though, I I got to talk about my poor boy, my poor boy
enhancement shaman, which, Oh my goodness, Baz, Baz Dev, whoever
you are, wherever you are, what the hell did I do to you?
Because well, you know, it's I I'll, I'll, I'll fess up to it.
Enhancement shaman was looking incredibly strong for mythic
plus the AOE damage that enhancement shaman was doing was
just it needed to be reined in. And that's the specific things
that have been targeted with this with this series of hot
fixes. So on top of the particular
spell that was doing a ridiculous amount of single
target damage, which was lava Lash, they have reined in the
AOE. So for both elemental and
enhancement Shaman, well actually elemental just got
visual changes just to make sure that they don't flood the entire
screen with effects. But enhancement however had one
of their buffs cut in half. Their tear set bonus get a 3%
drop for for the crash lightning chain lightning thing, their
chain lightning damage is flat out reduced by 15%.
Their ability to spread damage based off of a ability and
Stormbringer cut by an additional 20%.
The secondary damage of our main ability wailed by 15% and then
moving into single target, we had a roughly 25% reduction in
the duration of a proc that we that gave us a single target
procs. We had the buff to that same
proc slash by an additional 30% where it used to buff 12% per
stack. Now it's getting hit by 8% and
just just to make it oh so sweet are tier set which used to
increase the the damage that we dealt to the primary target with
an AOE enabler change from doubling it to only giving it
75%. So they have rained in a ton of
stuff and that's not even talking about Totemic, which
again, their one talent got wailed for about 30% and then
the base damage of the main part of Totamic got hit for another
10%. So enhancement everybody who was
afraid that an enhancement shaman was going to go
absolutely wild in season 2 and be a runaway hit.
I'm not going to lie, I think we still are think that they may
actually need. To Manny fast.
Are you listening to this? Started that.
Out. I'm not.
I'm starting with that. No, no, I think, I think having
played having like saw, saw this and like jumped in and then went
on training dummies, I was like, actually, this doesn't seem that
bad. But like with all of those
nerves, they went from like grotesquely beyond like.
And I'm not sure if John, you've been running with some
enhancement shamans on PTR. Yeah, I almost only ever play
with Stanky. OK, so stinky enhancement
Shavin, the content creator does a bunch of events.
Yeah, the the AOE was significant.
The changed from the tier set that we began the the PTR
testing to what it now is only helped that and these changes to
rein it in and the way that they targeted it because Lava Lash,
I'm not sure if people have been paying attention, Lavalash was
making up something like half the damage that was being thrown
out and like, and that's out of a list of like 15 different
individual sources. Lavalash was making up like 40%
of the damage if you buffed into it.
And with the with the changes that they've made, this should
put Enhancement Shaman in a place where it will be good,
maybe not even the best, but still a competitive spec.
I'm really glad for enhancement shamans, it's been so long since
they've had an opportunity to shine.
It's nice to see them getting one next patch.
Listen, the the the fact that we got two in a row maybe right is
maybe unheard of. Enhancement has had its winter.
Let us have a little bit of time in the sun.
Two seasons ain't that bad. That's fair.
That's fair.
All right, OK. All right.
John. Yeah.
Can we talk about Warriors this patch?
Because. We can.
So we're going to 20% damage buff like all tanks and a 10%
buff to Mountain Thane. There was something with
Mountain Thane, they got a 10% buff, Thunderblast, Thunderblast
and then Arms and Fury both I think.
I don't know if this is the second week in a row or if this
is just patch notes catching up to previously announced buffs,
but I think it's the second week in a row.
Have gotten damage buffs to the tune of like 20 and 30% on
almost all their abilities. It's grotesque, like I was just
like like 20% is the lowest buff, 40% to whirlwind on arms.
But now I want to say this is happening because they've been
so far below every other DPS class and I want to point out
something. I would like to point out that a
lot of these buffs that are happening to Fury warriors
specifically maybe wouldn't be needed if Fury didn't get gutted
at the start of the War Within based on heroic dungeon profiles
do. You have any opinions on that
shot? I do not.
I am not a flex. I am on record as saying I am
not a game dev or a. Human Psychologist.
Or a human. Yeah, Not a people psychologist
either. Yeah.
So warriors just getting lifted back up to the middle of the
pack where they feel comfortable, I guess.
Yeah, a lot of changes. There was actually changes.
I realized we didn't talk about this last week because the news
broke after we recorded and we didn't drop it in our channel.
But they changed the raid renowned track for the raid and
they moved to where the raid skip happens and how the raid
skip works and they removed the dinars.
But they have said they are not gone.
They're just not going to be in the renowned track where they
were. They're going to reappear in
some other way. We don't know what way.
Yeah, I guess. OK, full transparency, there was
an episode that never made it to air where we initially talked
about the renowned track. For those of you who may not
know about this, this is. Did we not air that episode?
No, that was the the. Oh, was that the that?
Was the episode where we're like, yeah, woke up next board
and we're like. Yeah, I was.
It's like when you it for anybody who's listening, the
kind of episode it was is the kind of episode like you,
something really bad happened at work and you're really
frustrated. You go out with your friends
drinking heavily that night, and one of your friends really loves
Patrone tequila. And so you drink a lot of
Patrone Gold and then you drink a little bit of rum because rum
makes you angry and you want to be angry.
You want to feel that anger. And then you send a text message
to your boss to let him know exactly everything he's doing
wrong. That was the episode that we
didn't hear. Lex was smashed on tequila.
It was wild. I am actually quite surprised
that individually the two of you both were like hey did you put
that up? I have never gotten like the the
morning after DMS like episode. Yeah, it was pretty wild stuff.
Manny tried to break up with Fazdev in the middle of it.
It was crazy. It was.
It was so we got 2 truths and lies.
Is that what we're doing here? Crazy stuff.
Anyway, Yeah, so there's a raid renowned track where they give
us all kinds of fun stuff. They have changed that track
right now. There was a raid skip that was
happening at like week 17, I think it was.
It was sorry, it was, it was rank eight.
It was, was rank 8 to week 8. You would have gotten this raid
skip. They've moved it to rank 5.
So after 5 weeks you get it. And initially it was open.
Once you got to week 8, you had the skip for every boss, like
for every difficulty. But now it's changed.
You have to kill Mugsy. That's the boss that you skip
to. You have to kill Mugsy once per
difficulty and each difficulty that you have killed him on.
After we ranked five to week five, you will get the skip.
So once week five hits any guilds that have already
previously killed him on normal and heroic, the skip will be
unlocked for them in normal and heroic, and then any guilds that
have killed them on mythic the skip will be unlocked for them
on mythic. And then that Then going forward
when you get your kill, you get it so you don't have to do 3
kills anymore which is great. I heard Jin talking about it on
Live laugh Lore and he mentioned how he couldn't recall the last
time he got a raid skip because he almost never gets 3 kills of
the boss required the skip. So that's good.
That's a good change. And that also makes it better
for teams that are progressing because that week 5 mark is
when, especially in heroic when a lot of teams that have already
had it, we would have for sure. And then they also had dinars.
So the dinars or the bullions which people use to
deterministic buy items. There was one at week 17 and one
at week 19 on the track and everybody I think unanimously
was unanimously was like, those are terrible spots to have those
at that point the raid tier is over, like what are we doing?
And so Blizzard removed them from those spots and they have
said scars are came out and said, hey, these are going to be
back. We just are not having them
where they were on the renowned track because they heard the
feedback and they want to put them somewhere that makes more
sense. I think this raid track is
pretty cool. I was fine with them being at 17
and 19. It's more a matter of messaging.
At 17 and 19. It was, I've had the worst luck.
Let me immediately fill in that spot and that's what I think
they were being positioned at. I just think that a lot of
people look at dinars as I've been waiting for six weeks, six
weeks, and I need my my best in slot item so that I can actually
compete. And four other people have
gotten it over the course of these weeks.
So I'm falling behind. Come on, Blizzard, why are you
screwing me with RNG? And it's like, OK, so I think
that's a disconnect of where Blizzard was positioning them
and where the community really wants them to be.
The community wants them as bad luck protection to be used while
they're still progging the raid. Blizzard had them in a spot that
they were bad luck protection long after most teams would have
been done progging the raid. We have different definitions of
bad luck. I guess yeah, maybe.
Yeah. Not getting the item you want
from the video game you play is my definition of bad luck.
I would have meant to say is players versus the game devs
have different definitions of bad luck.
Players definition of bad luck is not getting it while they're
like actively playing game tests is like never getting this item.
Right. Yeah, the tears about to be over
and you don't have it yet. Thank you.
You'd have it for sure, honey. Yeah, It's all yours, baby.
That's your ring. No.
Worries no fuzz, but there is a lot of good stuff here.
They have recently put out a a video.
I do like that about the the goblins like oh look at this for
now track and it's great and it's like how are we even making
money on this? So I think that it it's cool.
I'd like to see this repeated the raid renowned tracks.
I'm not sure if there's other places I'd want to see this in.
I could see it in like a I'm working with whoever the delve
buddy is in season 3, which is obviously going to be Bran
again. Or if they put it in midnight.
I wouldn't mind this because like the the journey track is
already kind of the same thing and just standardizing it.
So everybody knows like, oh, for now track, I know how this works
and it's all over the place. Just it seems good.
I like this. What do you guys think?
I like simplicity. It makes me happy.
And I have to remember 20 different things, especially
this is on a podcast, so I have to, like, actually pretend I
understand things so I can, like, sound intelligent and
like, I know what's going on. Yeah.
Make it easy, please. Always.
Yeah, big fan of the renowned track.
I think it's fantastic. Hope to see more of it in the
future. You know, iterate on it, tweak
it a bit as it needs to be tweaked.
But yeah, big, big fan. Big fan of the renowned track.
And I also do want to give a special shout out to Blizzards
social media team because they've been doing a lot of
those like undermined goblin shorts and they are fantastic.
The voice acting is incredible and I'm pretty sure it's just
one of the members of the team. I actually think it's Eric from
Generic Live. No, it's an AI voice.
No, it's not. Every time he does it, somebody
says it's an AI voice and he's just be getting like he's just
like that's funny. And then he's like lost the
humor of it because it keeps on happening.
Yeah, yeah, they're, they're really, really good.
I've really been enjoying them so keep those up please.
With that said, our last bit of news is a little interview.
I guess we kind of talked about this at the beginning, but just
when Galliwick's ring his ugly head, so too is Bobby Kotek.
Bobby Kotek had an interview where he talked about a little
bit about the World of Warcraft movie and made some some
comments about how he didn't like it, how it distracted the
team and LED to delays and patches in expansions, and also
went so far as to say that having seen it himself, it was
one of the worst movies ever. His quote, not mine.
I still haven't seen it yet. I I think this is a great piece
of marketing on Blizzard's part. Get me that ad on.
I am now like I was like not really feeling this expansion
now I hate galliwicks. Yeah, it's an interesting take
have as somebody who's read Play Nice because it Bobby Kodak kind
of just didn't like anything that Blizzard was doing was kind
of my take away. This is not like I I it was
months since I've read the book. So this is a a nuanced take, but
based on at least that reporting, it seemed like he
kind of just wanted Blizzard to stop being Blizzard and start
being a like, you know, media grinding machine, which, to be
fair, kind of seems like Xbox did too.
And they're kind of winning, But not not that not that this stuff
feels like media grinding, but like a lot of the stuff that
Kodak really wanted, like these on really set schedules we have,
you know, we're always publishing at these certain
times. You know, we we can consistently
we're like, you know, there's always new content.
We're getting a new expansion out every, you know, a year and
a half. Pump, pump, pump, pump, pump,
pump, pump. Those are all things Kodak was
pushing for. And it does kind of seem like
Microsoft succeeded in convincing Blizzard to do, or at
least the Blizzard has decided are good ideas.
So I'm rambling. What I was meaning to say is
Bobby Kotick thought that the team was distracted because they
were doing something fun instead of doing, you know, putting
their nose to the grindstone and making heartless, emotionless
content like Call of Duty. Say it ain't so.
Yeah, I mean, like, OK, Kotek has his vested interests and so
all the stuff that he said in this just made sense from his
perspective. The the World of Warcraft movie
was not something that his company would directly profit
on, so he would call it a distraction.
If it had been far more successful and brought people in
more into the franchise, I think his criticisms would have been
far more far more muted. And I think that the World
Warcraft movie could have been that.
But I think he made a fair criticism that it is a very
insular self congratulatory entry.
Like a lot of it requires prior knowledge.
It's not going, it's not going to be somebody sitting down and
talk to their date and be like, oh, that's a blood elf.
Like that's not what is going to be happening here.
It's going to be people who are already fans who are able to get
those references, are able to know move through all was at the
end was the big thing he said. So I think that that was
actually a fair criticism. But again, knowing the history
of Bobby Kotek, knowing exactly what his motivations were, I do
think that he was unnecessarily critical and prioritized stuff
based on his pure interest alone.
And. Can I just say Bobby Kodak never
agree with me again if I state an opinion publicly first?
Keep it out of your mouth. There we go.
OK. Let's hope that you don't get
the lawsuit following it, Lex. Is getting rid of the right here
Bobby Kodak diss track? Oh man.
But I do have a question for you guys and maybe for the audience
too. Like obviously we've seen some
great success with TIE insurance or other things.
There has been the arcane is a is a big one, being one of the
most expensive productions that ever.
But there's also being stuff like Fox Machina and and such
that have had TIE insurance or things that have gone through.
Do you think that there's any future for that in World of
Warcraft? So many people look at like
Overwatch and those things are like, oh, give me a miniseries.
There's something that could be done for math and multimedia for
World of Warcraft. And like what kind of format
would you envision it in? Hi, Sean.
I'm going to throw this one to you first.
Oh, OK. Yeah.
On Netflix animated series please.
Or a trilogy following the fall of Arthur's The Lich King
starring Henry Cavill. So either a trilogy of movies
specifically following Arthur's specifically with Henry Cavill.
If you do this and you don't cast Henry Cavill, what are you?
What are you doing? Or a Netflix animated series?
Because I really do think nailing the style of of Warcraft
is hard. The movie.
I am a huge fan of the movie. The movie did a great job of it,
but I think that adds a huge cost to the budget.
Whereas in even animated series it's a bit easier.
I don't know if you guys watched it when.
You say animated, do you mean like traditional animated or do
you mean like 3D animated or do you mean like cel shaded?
You ever watched the Dragon Prince?
Cel shaded animation. OK, cool.
Yeah, I would. The dragon Prince I would take,
I would take an arcane style. Either of those was great.
Not I'm not a huge fan of the style they use in the
Castlevania Netflix series. Yeah, or even like the original
avatar. Like give me some of that too.
I don't care. Just give me Blizzard in my
veins. Yeah.
So I think animated series, I very specifically think they
should do an animated series. It is a new story set in the
World of Warcraft, like the world of Azeroth, the World of
Warcraft. I say it so I don't know the
name of my own planet. And it like there should
obviously be like some like references to what goes on in
the game. But the point should be it is
written in such a way that it will be an interesting story
regardless of whether or not you know the lore.
Because I do think one of the biggest issues with Warcraft
media at this point is that the lore is just too expansive.
And I think that was one thing I felt with the World of Warcraft
movie is that it felt like it was just kind of this like
random chunk of time. And on the one hand, that made
it feel kind of like, oh, wait, why are we starting?
We're starting here. OK, that's an interesting call.
All right. There's a lot of stuff that you
need to understand if you're going to jump into this part of
the story. Oh, and it's ending here, But
this isn't, this isn't the climax of the story.
There's so much more that needs to happen before you really
understand what any of this means or why any of this is
important. But you kind of have to do that
if you're going to use the established story because the
established story is massively long and you know, you could be
like, oh, we're going to do this expansion, but everyone has
their own take on it because they've played it and also we've
played it. So we've kind of been through it
already. Maybe the like artist is isn't a
bad call because I think it's a really interesting story, but I
really think the best call would be animated, yes, to like cut
down on the cost and also to kind of keep it magical without
it feeling funky and silly, which is it's difficult with
live action. It kind of struggles to cross
that line, but I I think really making the point being like here
is a a story that we are telling that you will understand the
references if you have played this game for your entire life.
And if you haven't, we are going to assume that everyone's
starting at .0 and explain everything.
This is a a new completely from scratch, new characters knew
everything. We're going into it.
All right, here we go. Alex, I got a pitch for you.
We follow the return of a veteran of the Second War to his
family's home in Stratholm, and we go through them sort of
dealing with the aftermath of the war.
And there's minor things around the city that they deal with,
you know, small side quests, sort of like Witcher esque.
And it's only 8 episodes and it ends on the eighth episode with
because there's famine happening and they're so grateful because
they've received a shipment of grain.
Like really make us fall in love with these characters, really
tug on our like we become like, we love these.
He's got kids. We love them.
We see them struggle and and stride and they get better and
everything. Like we fall in love with these
characters and they add the series ends, you know, they're
grateful for this shipment of grain that's arrived from.
I can't remember where the grain comes from, but yeah, that would
be that would. Be incredible exactly like
you're You're taking established lore, but you're developing an
entirely new story that none of us have any connections to.
Yes, What that is exactly what I think they need to do and I
think they'll bring in more people.
I think I mean the same way that my understanding is that's
pretty much what Arcane did is they took established
characters, but they made an entirely new story.
But again, I don't play League of Legends now, so I haven't
seen Arcane, but that's my understanding.
I the way that you successfully make a video game story,
especially a story as big and as like an MMO specifically, is
you. You, you make it separate.
You make it so you don't have to be a player to understand it,
because being a player is not going to benefit you in the
understanding of it. Or we could do a blood elf
family in Dalaran and they're just talking about all the
wonders in Dalaran, everything they've seen, and this kid who's
trying really hard to learn how to join the Kieran tour and
they're studying and they're working hard.
And then it ends with Jana cracking open the sky and
teleporting into town to banish them all.
Do you really just want to? You really want a traumatic
ending you hate? Do you hate happy ending?
I want people to hurt if you don't feel something.
I do feel that what you're saying, Lex, makes perfect
sense. And I think it's the best way to
do it. The way to bring people in is
give them a jump off point. You can reference events, but
you never get in the middle of them.
If it was even just like some, some kids like, oh, I'm going to
I'm going to join the the storm wind army one day.
And he's like growing up in the in the Chapel and like somebody
comes in and like tells a little bit of story and then that
person goes off. And then he goes into the to the
town and maybe you hear about stuff, but he's on his own
adventure of like, oh, he doesn't join the army.
He become, he becomes an adventurer.
His sister gets lost. He's chasing after his sister.
And then like that could be his entire thing where it's like,
oh, he makes his way through Ellen Forest and he gets he gets
to the Westlands and it's like, and he comes across like these
remnants of the Tofias and stuff.
And like, people will be like, Oh my goodness, I know that
place. I know that place.
I can visit that place, I can visit that place.
People who are new to it are like, oh, what, what are they
talking about? And they do a little bit of
explanation of it and it would be great.
And it wouldn't tie into like the big thing happening on the
Dragon Isles or the big thing happening in the Dornegal or
whatever. It would just introduce players
to the world. I think that is amazing.
But also a period piece. And the grain comes at the end
just so half the audience is like.
Oh, happy audiences. Anybody who doesn't know their
story is like, oh, right on. Like a crane.
The town is safe. Anybody else who does is like,
Oh no. And in my mind.
You do, you do. Nothing to tell people what
timeline you're in so that it completely tears them apart when
it happens. But like, that's glorious.
Yeah, I think you guys are such great ideas.
Why don't? We just do this ourselves.
Lex, can you animate? I.
No. I can't either we.
Can just shot a little stick figures that'll be basically
yeah and that we. Can do hand puppets, except all
of my puppets will have to be dwarves and gnomes, yeah.
Because you have your tiny little child.
Hands have you have you seen the show at sunny in Philadelphia
yeah this episode is the gang beats a cease and desist the.
Gang meets. You're right, yeah.
Thank you everybody for listening.
Until next time though, all your hits secrets.