This is how I play. I can't run this thing at like
lower than this level and feel good about about bringing this
character to a raid. And that level is different for
me than it is for Sean and the level that he plays at.
That's different than the level that like Max or people on Echo
or people on Method Play. Victory for the Forsaken.
For Lauderon, for the Karentor, for Pandaria.
For calendar to. The burning region for Gilnaeus
but has not died, for the Lich King, for the Sindora, for the
Alliance, for the Horn, for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azra.
My name is Manny A gay, the true, real Manny, and I am
joined by the wonderful, the amazing, the Wisconsin Lex.
Hi, Manny. Those are words that everyone
says was about with Wisconsin. Every single time when I think
Wisconsin, I think wonderful. I think amazing.
I think wheat. I know wheat.
What else? Wheat.
I don't know. It is Wisconsin.
Wisconsin's definitely cheese, but like this is this is where
I'm hitting the limitations of my US geography.
I feel like Wisconsin is one of those fly over states, which is
just like a lot of agriculture, not much of the of like a reason
to stop there. And usually it's just like plane
flying over to your thing. So I'm, if somebody was like
point out Wisconsin on a map like I'd be pretty lost, Lex.
So if you want to give me the crash course here, where the
hell is Wisconsin? I'm sorry, 'cause in Wisconsin,
don't ask me. Where I failed every single time
we had to do a like map test where we had to like put in the
names. God help me, I was terrible at
that. I'm off the hook.
It's OK. I grew up in Iowa, as I think
I've mentioned a couple times. So I think this is true of all
of the Midwestern AG states. We are very agriculture, but
it's all corn, corn and soybeans because you can rotate them and
they like replenish the like the soybeans replenish.
I don't remember which one it is.
One of them is like really draining of the soil.
So then you rotate it out with the other one and that one
enriches it. I think it's the soybeans are
enriching and the corn is really, but anyway, you, you
drive through Iowa and it's like corn, corn, soybeans, soybean,
corn, corn, corn. So I know what you're talking
about. But next time you're thinking
Wisconsin, think corn. And I might be wrong.
I haven't been to Wisconsin. OK, All right.
I can't, I, I can't affiliate corn with Wisconsin because like
in a little place a little bit north of me in Ontario, we have
Buckhorn and the motto of the county is corn country.
And so Buckhorn is here in corn country now.
They're all that's just everything remotely western.
It is I I just googled it. It is.
Corn, soybeans and hay are the major, major crops of Wisconsin.
Got it. OK.
But it is a fly over state, so I'm I'm OK with this all right.
The Midwest is all again. Again before anyone.
I mean you can drop as many angry comments as you want.
They increase our week. But I I'm an Iowa girly so I'm
allowed to talk shit about the Midwest.
But I mean. OK, right, Well, you haven't
travelled far, but how is the World of Warcraft treating you?
It has been so good. I am still really, really loving
this season. As somebody who primarily plays
solo, I am realizing that my, you know, significantly more
mature adult friends who have children and things are playing
on a very different schedule than my little I Want to Wake Up
with the Sun by puppy dog. So unfortunately I'm struggling
to get groups with my friends but I'm learning to pug M0,
which is not as scary as I thought it was.
So I'm pugging DPS. I've come to understand one
thing about myself, which is that I I might, it's possible
that I would conceptually enjoy tanking, but the degree of like
stress and like the people pleaser in me want they so
obsessed with doing it right and perfectly and like Oh no, I
messed up and oh God I'm not facing this correctly.
I just, I cannot currently relax and enjoy it.
So I started pugging as DPS and what I'm learning from pugging
DPS and no longer being in a role where everything feels like
it is my fault because I was healer before I tried tank is
I'm like a solidly middle of the road player.
Like I was convinced that I was terrible at mythic and like now
I'm like, oh you guys, if are we not doing mechanics like are we
just am I the only one interrupting me?
It's. Like my everybody stupid?
No, I'm joking. Yeah, there's some and I, I was
feeling a lot more confident in myself and I'm coming to
understand that. Like if it feels like the group
is making a lot of mistakes, it might not just be me.
There might be other people making a lot of mistakes too.
Yeah, I'm having I I am, I am loving the prey system so much.
That is super fun. I'm very grumpy with the the
world quest rewards felt really great for the first like day and
then I learned that it's all one handed weapons and rings and
trinkets and I'm sick of it but that's OK, whatever.
I'll just go gather traps because I don't want to do the
world quest anyway because. They're doing nothing.
I don't hate you. I don't hate you, I just like my
world quest have been cloaks and I have gone I have gone
trinkets, but it's all the stuff that I don't need.
I really need some rings and until like just minutes before,
maybe an hour before this recording, I needed a main hand
for my warlock in the worst way. So you to be like, Oh yeah, just
main hands and tricks them like in rings.
I'm like, come on. That's those are the holes in my
gearing up strategy right now. I.
Swear to God that it is reading whatever we have and giving us
what we don't need, because I spent the last two weeks in 165
pants doing everything I could to get any other pants.
It literally I have two O 7 pants now because I was whining
about this so hard that my leather working fans made me
pants and I I I haven't seen any.
It's terrible, like and and I was just unlucky with my like.
I also, I've gotten so many like I'm I'm sorry Manny, I really
don't mean to rub this. No, no, no, I'm listening.
Like I keep the same weapons keep dropping in my also sorry
let me finish this the same weapons keep dropping in my
delve chest every single time. Also Speaking of world quest
rewards being terrible, I once had two unique I think it was a
unique ring in the same zone and I'm like why would I want this?
Well, in terms of world quest rewards, they do all pull from
the same table. So regardless of like it just
sucks that they have to be the exact same zone right beside
each other, just staring you at the face be like.
But yeah, they do all pull from the same table.
So you are going to see those those duplicates there.
I have had some bad, bad luck on different things.
I've had some good luck on stuff.
I do think that, you know, we're, we're human, we're going
to remember the bad stuff more so like when I did pray and I
can tell you like, Oh my goodness, on my, on my warlock,
I got the same reward like twice in a row when I was trying to
gear up. Like I can't remember what I got
on the shaman, but I'm sure it was good because like my shaman
was like pretty good on the spread.
So we do remember the bad luck a lot more.
But that's part of game design. In theory.
You kind of want to avoid the appearance of hard done ship
that that that can cause people to like feel bad.
Those feel bad moments is what what they've said a couple of
times. And maybe maybe the loot table
could use a little little bit more love.
But one thing that you did mention though, is you're a
leather worker friend making you that those pants.
So you got out of those 160 fives guys, I'm not sure how
much longer this will last and but go on the auction house, buy
yourself some Blues. You will find that probably not
by the time you listen to this, but if you if you had some time
machine, you could go back a week.
They were going for like 2 digits.
Like you could buy a pair of of 200 or one mirror 200 pants for
like 50 gold. Like it was, it was ridiculous.
Which kind of brings us to our first story, why the auction
house is in this state. There was an exploit where
people could infinitely get knowledge points for their
professions. This meant that people could
craft like the best stuff that you normally wouldn't see until
much later in the game, not much later in the season, but like
much later, like season 2, Season 3, sort of like they had
infinite knowledge points, maxed out their trees, and therefore
they were making rank threes with like the lowest quality
stuff because they had it all kitted out.
And as they were then the only thing that they needed was to
get their skill points from let's say 50 to 100.
There was some people who did this exploit that were cranking
out items. And because the market got
flooded so fast with such high quality items, prices dropped
and are still quite low. So whereas, like, the first
week, you could find maybe a blue pair of pants, Lex, and it
would have cost you a couple of 1000 gold, and you would have
been like, maybe I want to do this.
Yeah, at one point I was buying up Blues for disenchanting at 25
gold apiece just like, OK, sure. And it would get the 50.
And I'd be like, I'll wait till somebody drops that down.
Now we're all of you guys wondering, oh, man, I got to get
me some of that. Actually, yesterday, everyone
who used that may have been hit by a big old band wave.
This band wave lasted is going to last seven days.
So from Tuesday through to the next reset, all of their
knowledge points have been reset.
I'm not sure if that means that they're back down to 0, which
would be wonderful concerning how short the the ban the ban
is, but they might have just been reset to what they would
have been without the exploit. Lex, you could have taken
advantage of this, but I'm assuming that you were you.
You were nice clear from all of this, and clearly because you
didn't pick up stuff, you were also not partaking in this, even
indirectly like I was. What do you think about this?
So I, I think I'm kind of moving a little bit off of my, if
Blizzard makes a mistake and people exploit, it sucks to suck
because I mean, that did actually effect like, I, I think
this was one where it's pretty clear how people exploiting
something affected other players and affected the economy and
made it so you kind of had to exploit.
So as much as I know this is hypocritical after some of my
historical takes on this podcast, I do actually think
that was a good ban. And I think, I mean, they, they
have put a little bit of the fear of God in people.
Like I was when I was doing the delve quest, the the opening
quest there's when you go in, you can go talk to this woman
and she gives you a free delve and if you haven't closed the
window, it looks like you can click on the item again, right?
It doesn't go away and it's a free item.
I think it might be too anyway that it looks like you click on
again and I was so scared to click on.
I did hear from one of my guildies that it doesn't it's
not a true exploit, right? You can't get unlimited keys out
of that. But I think that is honestly for
the best because I think it the idea that these are innocent and
that these people genuinely didn't realize they were
exploiting is not feeling very true.
I think if it was like a like a true, for example, the people
who are like grinding the frogs that drops extra stuff in
original Mr. Pandaria remix that I think you can actually like,
I, I can understand the mindset of like, hey, I guess they're
offering it, you know, whatever. I'm just being smart.
I'm going to the place that grinds easiest.
But yeah, if it's blatantly obvious that somebody made a
coding bug and you're using it, at least at the very least
Blizzard has made it very clear, you should not be surprised if
you get a ban. And at this point, I feel like
everyone understands the fire they're playing with when they
actually. Yeah, I think that in this case
it's a true exploit. In the case of the frogs, I'd
say that's a creative use of game mechanics.
And I think that the way Blizzard went about it shows the
difference between the two. Where with the frogs, they said
OK, well, like, OK, that that was a little too far.
And what we're going to do is we're going to roll you back to
something decent. We're going to shut down that
that thing so it can't happen anymore.
Even though anybody can argue that it shouldn't have been in
there in the 1st place. We're not having an argument
right now. It is now that it we're at this
point what what is fair for Blizzard to do and then allowing
people who had not taken participated in that a way to
catch up further. So people are on a relatively
stable thing. I think that is the like our
bad. OK, we can't we we're not going
to throw the book at you. But this one was literally a
weird a weird thing that like after you do it like, let's say
2 three times, you're like, oh, knowledge book, huh.
It's weird. It didn't go out of the IT
didn't go out of stock. Let me go pick up another one.
That's odd. It didn't go out of stock.
Let me pick up another one. And then you do that hundreds,
if not thousands of times. Yeah, no, that, that is, that is
not a creative use of game mechanics.
That is an exploit in what is clearly not not the intended
behavior and. Have to keep the the trade
window open. Like it wasn't like you could
close out of it and then go. So come on.
Like, yeah, again, maybe the first copy like, oh, that's so
cool. The Blizzard lets me keep buying
this. But you know what's going on?
You know what you're doing. I may have gotten a second copy
of one of the books on one one of my characters because it's
sort of like a oh great, there's the books and stuff.
And then I'm like, did I buy that already or I, I can't
recall. And so like, but I didn't catch
a ban. If you did it once or twice
innocently, maybe it knocked you down a point and didn't throw
you a ban. I can't tell because I, I
genuinely don't know if I had done it.
Please don't make this the like let's report Manny podcast
because because I might not have.
And then you're just wasting their time.
Anyways. There was another one, Lex, that
was also changed in in Midnight the first week, the Legends of
Har and our quest. You could do that on one
character, go back on another character, pick a different
story. And if you had enough
characters, you could do all of them, right.
And that they changed to be no, no, actually you're only
supposed to be able to do one story each week per account.
So in that way, they didn't ban anybody.
They didn't even remove anything.
They just said OK, like the last two are still locked out in in a
couple of weeks where you're actually supposed to get the
like additional story stuff. You will get the additional
story stuff and you can now and you can now wait for other
people to catch up. But there were no bands about
that. I actually don't know if they if
they are allowing people to like redo some of the ones that they
didn't do on other on their other characters.
So like, let's say your priest hasn't done any and your war and
your Demon Hunter has done too. I'm not sure if you're if your
priest is now locked out of everything your Demon Hunter has
done or if you're allowed to do that again.
Regardless, there were no bands there.
There were there was just like a hey, you're like, yes, this,
this should have actually been locked to the account level and
we're going to change that. So do you, like, do you think
that Blizzard should put down a notice of like, here's here's
the stuff that counts as pure abuse, Here's the stuff that
counts as like creative usage? Or do you think it's better that
they keep it ambiguous so that they can act accordingly?
I think, I think keep it ambiguous.
I think, I think if they were like, if they were to make a
list of potential exploits, they would almost certainly miss
something. Like I'm sure they wouldn't have
thought in advance of like, oh, if we accidentally code
something. So something you're only
supposed to buy once, you can buy an infinite number of times,
right? And also presumably if they can
think of a potential exploit, they should be checking for it.
Their QA team should be looking at that specifically.
So I, I do think it should stay generally like what's up,
whatever is going on. Because, yeah, I mean, I, I
think if somebody could genuinely good faith believe
this is what Blizzard wanted, like, I, I, I can, I think this
is what Blizzard wanted us to do, right?
Or I guess they, I guess they changed their mind, you know, I
guess, oh, maybe they did actually want to be able to do
all the legend of Haranar on week one.
That's crazy. Anyway, I I that I think should
not come with punishments if it's that type of mistake.
I also like by and large think if it's not game breaking, if
Blizzard makes a mistake, like generally I don't think that the
players should get punished for finding a mistake.
Like if it's something silly and fun, right?
Like the people who figure out how to get into Galliwick's room
early in the race, like, yeah, obviously they shouldn't be
getting rewards out of it, but like, whatever it's go for.
But something that is potentially like, affects the
way that other people can play the game.
For example, devastating the market on crafted goods in a way
that if you don't do the exploit, you're not really
capable of making money in a certain period of time.
I think that's a different that does need to be handled a little
bit more strictly so that people don't feel that they can they
should exploit these things. That could make other people's
game less fun. Yeah, actually I think that was
an amazing example. The Galliwick's skip back in
Liberation of Undermine was something that like, clearly
that wasn't supposed to be done and they removed them off the
Hall of Fame and then they locked that away.
So yeah, like there are definitely levels to it.
I just, I wish that there weren't so many recent examples.
I remember a podcaster that was like, I, I feel like it's making
that they're like they're doing this pace so fast and I don't
want these guys overworked. We'll we'll keep that person
anonymous for now, but let's let's hope who knows?
So anonymous person somewhere out there in the Internet.
Wise words. So, yeah, but that was just the
start of our Week 1 of Season 1 because we've also seen a number
of balance changes both to the classes because they said, hey,
we're holding off on balance until week of the heroic week.
And so this is the first week of the balance changes.
There is going to be more coming later when when hurric week is
done. And it got the data from people
running through dungeons and going absolutely nuts or running
through raid and going absolutely nuts or struggle
busing, whichever class that might be.
So there will be more tuning. But in this first wave of
tuning, we've seen some pretty big swings here.
We have seen, of course everybody could point to the
particular ones that were over performing and we're so far
ahead and so some of those classes have received some
pretty heavy nerfs. We've also seen the back of the
pack being lifted up. If you are a guardian Druid, I'm
really sorry the nerf bat came for you.
This seems like some pretty heavy nerves and some for their
damage but people are saying this might be too far.
This may have killed guardian druid.
I don't think it's just that guardian druid caught the caught
the nerf bat. I think it's also because
Ferrell that was doing pretty well and balance also received
some buffs. And when you're when you're
looking at this, this kind of stuff, this is this is where
Sean would chime in and talk about like how things are in the
race, the world first. But it's matters in that way
because these teams, they're going to define the meta.
They are going to take particular classes, they're
going to fit it into their entire matrix of what they're
taking into the fights. And if Guardian Druid isn't
doing well and the other specs that also bring those that
utility that the class brings are is are doing well, well then
guardian gets SAT because it's easier to go grab the feral and
fit that into DPS or the boom can and fit that into the DPS.
Then use a tank spot for that. And then brewmaster monks, yes
one of their specs got hit, but there are other spec wasn't
doing that bad. And when I say spec, I mean hero
talents wasn't doing that bad and so people are saying that
Brewmaster Monk may have dodged. I said that I feel like I just
made a pun. I'm sorry guys.
Brewmaster. Brewmaster Monk dodged the
bullet on this one. And so Brewmaster Monks are
looking really strong. There are of course some things
that are like doing better. Relative Elemental Shaman was
doing pretty good, but wasn't one of the outstanding ones.
It got buffs, while all those other ones that were like, oh,
the outstanding ones, they've received nerves, which kind of
catapulted elemental in people's eyes ahead of this.
But the The thing is though, guys, a lot of this is
perspective. A lot of this is not exactly how
tightly they're balanced, but how people feel they are
balanced. So Lex, again, you're mostly
playing solo. You've been really into the game
and less and less about like all the conversations going on
around the game. Have you been hearing people
like moaning about how how much their class has been done in by
the nerves or how much they've been helped by the buffs?
I haven't heard much about buffs or nerves.
I do feel like I had heard things like I feel like it
actually heard that monk was really good.
So I'm kind of surprised that they got they got some cute
little buffs there. I think maybe I've just missed
it because these I mean, like there are some big changes that
that they released with this. So I'm kind of surprised that I
haven't heard more people freak out a little bit.
But no, I've somehow missed a lot of the stress about about
tuning in general. Yeah, I'm really glad to hear
that. Because like, I don't know, I,
I've so much of the World of Warcraft conversation in the
past has been about like the meta specs or what is like the
OP thing that you've got to bring or you got to be playing
Lex, get off of Havoc, you've got to be playing Devourer cause
Devourer's craziness. And I find that like modern
balancing and generally content creators have acknowledged that
for the, for the overwhelming most part, all classes are able
to do pretty much all content. It's just that the cutting edge,
the bleeding edge of like race to world first and and that's
the sort of thing is what the meta is based on.
I am playing a enhancement shaman and I'm sure if you were
to look over on Wowhead you'd see enhancement shaman is not
anywhere near the top of the meters.
I am playing an affliction warlock and I'm sure if you were
to look at I think Calamazzi does things he would be
bemoaning afflictions single target damage.
Enhancement Shaman. With the this week's hot fixes,
they received some general damage buffs to the spenders.
I think this is actually pretty good for enhancement shaman.
Obviously I am absolutely biased, but I think that the
buffs to the spenders actually bring Stormbringer a little bit
closer to Totemic because Stormbringer generally relies
more on it. It's it's finishers but that is
a too far down the shaman talk tree of.
I'm surprised that Affliction didn't get much of anything, but
I am playing with some people who are playing at like mythic
level and I'm hanging in there even though affliction this is
like my first tier playing affliction.
I was literally learning the single target while I was
raiding the other day and I'm glad that the tuning isn't so
off that I that I felt like out to lunch.
Also find sorry little aside, I find that like the classes in
terms of their complexity and how you can learn them and pick
up the rotation at a really good spot right now.
I know I have friends that are three crafters that would
ardently disagree with me, but Lex, how?
How are you feeling about class complexity?
How does it feel to play your Demon Hunter?
So one thing that I think I might have mentioned on the show
before when I switched over to Vengeance really quick,
Vengeance is actually much harder than happy.
Maybe it's just that I like and Havoc is particularly easy
because it is a very structured rotation.
Like you can basically tune out, like plan out exactly what
you're going to do. There's really no procs.
There's a little bit of like certain talents mean that
certain things will come off cool down faster, but overall
it's a very clear structure of what you were going to do at
what moment when Vengeance is very much more of a build and
burn, which I've just never really played.
So it feels really, really overwhelming to me.
But havoc I'm like, I don't know, I guess I'll put blur on
my hot bar because I don't know what else I put here.
Like I had like open spots. I don't know what to do with
vengeance. I'm getting all my key vines and
like, you know, also another level up and like it's vengeance
scares me right now. And but so havoc I I I still
kind of miss my sigil, but we so we really didn't get we got our
sigil taken off and I think we might have gotten a couple other
like utility spells managed. I'm actually so I'm on the
Wowhead list right now. I didn't realize I was playing
AD tier mythic plus DPS. So that's why nobody's inviting
me to groups. But that's also not true, by the
way, because I did get into plugs.
So who cares? I'm not a stupid, but havoc.
I mean, so I have also one thing I really decided to do this
tier. I don't have ADPS meter going
right now because I was thinking about it and I'm like, look, I,
I never like choosing to do bad DPS, right?
If my DPS is low, it's never because I'm like, I will do a
bad job today. I could choose to be better, but
I instead I'm going to do poorly.
So I'm always pushing at my top output.
So all that a damage meter does is make me feel bad about
myself. So I have no idea where I'm
hitting on dungeons right now. I don't know if I'm, you know,
just hanging with the tank. I don't know if I'm top.
I know I'm pulling aggro a fair amount, so presumably I'm doing
well, but I'm, I'm really not allowing myself to look at that
because I'm with rating we log. So I can, you know, after raid
go and look and see how I was doing and, you know, plug things
into wow analyzer and figure out what I was maybe struggling with
and things like that. But I don't see a huge benefit
of putting the damage meter. I I feel so much better in
dungeon when I'm not focused on DPS and what I am focused on
things like havoc has a lot of utility and a lot of dungeons
right now because we have a ton of I'm actually kind of
surprised it's so low on the on the list.
DPS must suck because you know, there's so many tasters.
So the fact that I have my interrupt and also my group's
done like I've, I wipe out half the mechanics with that right?
Like so many things are interrupt, you know, like
interrupt, all these different things.
I can run into a group, hit whatever, then it's green.
I know what the button looks like.
I don't know what it's called. Knock everyone out and have a
good day right, so I pay off Nova right right, and I mean I'm
also it's it's super useful with all the casters because it's
really easy for me to run over to a caster mid cast, kick it
and make it run over to the tank like I'm learning how to play my
class with like the utility of it is is really strong in my
opinion. I guess I don't know.
I I have nothing to compare it to but I mean.
You used to play on your priest, so you you have a where you were
coming from. I will also say I think spending
any time tanking did teach me a lot of stuff.
Like for example I never before would have thought like if there
was a caster over there I would have been like why is the damn
tank not on the day? Over.
There, go deal with it. And now I see that I'm like, OK,
I know what's going on. They're not going to move until
they're interrupted. So I just have to, you know,
venture a treat over there, kick them fell rush back in do my I'm
being good. We're having a good day.
So I will say having spending time learning different classes
and different roles is really useful just because then you can
kind of start to get a better sense of what your healer's
dealing with, what your tank's dealing with.
You know how you can help, how you can use your utility.
I fully, Oh, I was. We were supposed to be talking
about how things are feeling. No, I I love this.
You're talking about getting more pieces of the puzzle or so
that you can like from where you are, know where you fit and what
you can do to help better. I love that.
Yeah, this is not a surprising take on the show, but one thing
I will say is like, if you are not playing this game as a job,
it is a game. And so therefore do what is fun.
Almost nobody that you're grouping with and you're like
random pugs is playing at an extremely high level.
So like, if the meta is looking at like the top players when
they're doing the top output, your teammates aren't doing
their top output. Like you're not playing with
people who've memorized the rotation to the perfect.
Maybe you are, I don't know, but you're probably not.
And if you, if you are, you're probably not listening to me.
You probably know to tune my little voice out every time I
come onto the podcast. So I, I, I play for fun.
I and I think that more people should play World of Warcraft
for the joy of it. I love Havoc.
I knew that Havoc was going to at least significantly
underperform Devourer, but it's such a just fun and joyful
spectrum that I within like a week on beta, I was like, no
chance will I be doing anything other than Havoc.
I switched back so fast. So yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a
video game. None of us are competing at the
level where we're doing SIM level damage.
Learn your utility, have a good time.
Well, despite being a DTA or mythic pluser Devourer caught a
small nerf. Would be 4% overall damage dealt
reduce? Devourer is killing it.
Devourer is SI think yeah, Oh, it's a plus.
Whatever. OK, well they they did receive a
small nerf. Meanwhile, Havoc received a
number of buffs, including a 6% global damage increase and
damage increases to specific spells, including emulation or
and and buffs to their a jockey Reaver, her tree as well.
So hopefully that'll that'll help you out.
But I think it's it is really about just narrowing that band.
And like I said, there are more buffs coming in the in the weeks
as they get more numbers. So if you're like, why didn't
you get touched right now? Or maybe it wasn't quite enough.
Don't don't lose hope. There is there is more buffs to
come. Were you saying in beta, Manny,
that you should really want your class to be significantly
underperforming in beta? Because anything that looks
really good early in the season or in like PTR and things is
going to get absolutely nerfed into the ground and anything
that is like really underperforming, they're going
to bump it right on up. So there we go, kids.
That's why I'm playing AD tier Mythic plus.
The exact place you want to be is kind of where elemental
landed, where you are not at the top of the pack.
So you're not going to hit the get those nerves.
But once those guys hit their nerves, you might be the top.
And I think that's where elemental is.
And elemental got like the most modest of buffs.
I think they got their spenders, which is like earthquake and and
earth shock. Oh, it was just the AOE stuff,
allegedly. Let me go look at the look.
Look at it right there. Because we got another round.
Oh wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, I might have been too
high. Is this?
PvP No, you're right. Elemental chain lightning by
10%, earthquake by 10%. So just the AOE got it got
shifted and that is well, I mean like that is their AOE package
right now chain lightning until you can spend on the the
earthquake. So there in AOE 10 percent, 10%
buff pretty much all around. And that's kind of where you
want to be. You want to be just with at the
higher end of the pack, but just at the higher end so you don't
get nerfed and let while the other the kings fall.
That's when you seize the crown anyways that again, there are
more bounce changes coming. So do not lock in exactly and
really just play what you want because I am finding that if
you're enjoying it right, you're going to have way more fun.
Maybe do like Lex and turn off those meters.
You can have them actually I'm not sure.
Back when we had details and the add-ons, you could hide them
while you were in combat so you don't like, you're not looking
at those numbers instead of like actually DPS ING and in the
middle of combat. Oh, yeah, I mean, like, also
people get different joy, right? There are, there's a group of
our raid team that has so much fun fighting each other for the
top of the meter. I've made it very clear.
I do not want to hear my name in that conversation.
I do not want to know. Like that is that is not a thing
that makes me happy, that makes me feel stressed and bad about
myself. But like, yeah, I, I totally, a
lot of it's a competitive game and people enjoy the
competition. So please don't take that as
like, you cannot have your DPS meters on because like said,
right, play however you want to play.
It's for fun, just don't tell me where I am on the DPS.
But I, I think that anybody who heard that advice is immediately
going to know if it applies to them.
You're going to be the person that like looks at that meter
and it's like, oh, why, Why am I not doing well and that sort of
stuff. And in the middle of a fight,
you're not going to know. Maybe I will say that I got a
lovely boot camp. I had just got my warlock up to
90 and I got pulled into the Mythic World 0 tour.
It was a great place to be because there was no way I was
going to compete with these humpers with their like actually
having geared out. And I was playing with another
person who was playing affliction warlock who raised at
a mythic level. And and so I got to see them
tearing it up and me like way down there fighting with the
tank being like, oh, my goodness, I hope I can like keep
going. But I didn't feel stressed about
that because I knew there was no way I could compete.
And I was able to directly look at what she was doing and be
like, oh, OK, so this is kind of what I should be doing as well
and learn immediately. And then?
By the end of the time we had done the the run, I was no
longer competing with the tank. I was healthfully ahead of the
tank. I was nowhere near the other
guys, but I like, I learned how to to do it because I had that
person going along and I could just look at the meters and be
like, OK, so most of their damage is in this ability and
they're lining up the these sort of things and like this is where
they're getting their spikes. So sometimes that helps
obviously, and being able to talk to somebody and get
immediate feedback and say like, hey, make sure you're lining up
your burn window in such a way really did it did help.
And if you use meters in that way, that's good.
If meters are stressing you out, turn them off, hide them away.
You can look later. OK With that said there is yet
more for season 1 because we had of course this big Delve
controversy with the start of this week.
The Nemesis boss for Delves had opened up and there was a little
incentive for people, the 1st 4000 people to kill the Nemesis
at the well, formerly question mark, question mark.
Now tier 11. They've changed it from tier,
tier question mark and tier question mark, question mark to
tier 8 and tier 11, which is where it was all the time.
It just doesn't have the like weird nomenclature.
And so if you were one of the people to kill this one at the
top level solo and you did it within the top four 4000 you
would get a title fabled Slayer. And so people were trying at
this within the first night before the we morning hours.
This was complete and 4000 people had had earned their
title. There is a video out there of a
person who was working their butt off and then watched as the
gate closed ahead of them when they had the boss down to 5%.
And they did go on to kill it, but they didn't get the title
because they were the 4000 in first or second.
I'm not sure. But they they just missed the
the clothes off. So congratulations to all you
fabled slayers out there. But now there's a new fable, the
fable of sour grapes, because there are many people who feel
that this was too small a number for the fabled title.
This is almost a Hall of Fame as you as it were.
They felt that this happened too quickly and that the only people
there, there was one person who was very, very loud and said
that the only people who got this are the people who didn't
have any other responsibilities like a raid team or a job.
And so they were able to do this because anybody who was away on
Tuesday, that happened to come on Wednesday, No, it's too late
for you. Again, I don't want to talk too
much about that one because that is a straw man argument That is
like weakening what argument it was.
But the position that people were wanting was instead of it
being an exact number, what if it was a time period where it's
like, hey, did you kill it within the first reset?
Congratulations, you are a fabled Slayer.
Lex, I think you had some comments about the straw man,
but talk about the straw man and then talk about like do you feel
would be better for it to be like a timed event where hey,
can you get it done in in the first three set?
Yeah, I mean, like to the straw man, I would say.
Do you think that like liquid has jobs and like other jobs and
other responsibilities? Like, yeah, man, that's how you
get extremely like high level reward or like titles and and
cool stuff in World of Warcraft as you know, like it.
I don't have them. And anyway, I I, I am on record.
I, I think that because delves are open world content, and I've
said this a few times on this podcast, I think that people
feel kind of entitled, right? Delves should be easy.
They should be something that everyone can kind of get.
It's no biggie. It's just easy open world
content, right? It shouldn't be anyone's like
first priority. Is it in the vibe that I tend to
kind of get from the high level, you know, raid and mythic plus
people that like, well, it's baby content, so I should get
all the delve stuff because I'm better than the delve baby and
I'm I'm being a little bad faith.
I'm aware that I'm being a little bit bad faith.
I. God's not here, so somebody's
got to do it. Someone's got to do it.
To be fair, I doubt that the Blizzard team meant for it to
take like 12 hours, right? Or whatever.
I think it was 14 hours for that to go through.
So my guess is that it's going to be like next time they do
this, they're going to do something more like a, you know,
a reset cycle or they're going to increase the numbers.
Although, OK, this is a stupid question.
A mythic rating team that's 15 people, right?
Or is there 20 in Max is out on? So.
Oh, it's 20 of the team the. Team that does it is 20 players
fixed right? That like, does the encounters.
So many mythic grade teams include a bench of players that
may not be active in a particular encounter but might
swap in when needed. Right.
And when they get the achievement of Race of World
First, it's not just to the 20 people who got that last boss,
it's to everybody in the Guild. Right.
So that that is true, that's a fairpoint.
I think you could probably guess the point that I was about to
make, which is that the Hall of Fame is the 1st 200 guilds that
get the kill. And so it actually kind of adds
up to about the same, right? Because I mean it's more time
because grades take longer. And again, I really do not think
that the Blizzard team meant for this to take less day.
My guess is that also startled them and they are going to try
to make it easier for more people to get in.
But if you're talking a twenty person team for 200, that's
4000. That's the same number of people
achieved the Hall of Fame. And again, I this nuance and
it's complicated. I.
That's a good point. I hadn't even thought of that.
OK, Do nap. Do nap.
Yeah. So, so I, I think I think that
this would have probably been a better achievement to put on the
like mega delve, right, to make it more of a race to world first
sort of vibe. Oh, that labyrinth stuff that's
coming. Yeah, exactly, I think and that
would also potentially build actual hype and I again, I don't
think that delves have the pull of like mythic writing,
especially since they but I could imagine if that had more
of a Hall of Fame sort of thing, I think people be less grumpy
because it would take more time because I mean, yeah, you know,
the whole like the person who was watching it and got 4000 and
first not to dismantle to, you know, hand wave the fact that
that was like really devastating for them and they did a really
incredible job to get to that point.
And that really sucks. But I mean, yeah, man, that's
also what happens in world first rating.
Like somebody always is like a percentage away before someone
else pulls so. How many times we've seen like
Echo or Liquid Watch as like the other team gets gets world first
and they feel that kind of same kind of detection.
Right, right. And look again, I'm never going
to be competing for this. So I'm talking completely about
a situation that I. Because you're PvP queen.
Like eventually maybe you'll shy your hand at PV.
Exactly, exactly 1 day. I'll I'll try out a delve, but I
I think it's really cool. Cool.
The delves are getting an opportunity to have really hard
push like to, to, to for for people to feel like they are
pushing and being like a top level delver that that's a thing
you can get a cool title for. That's like really exciting.
And if people see you walking around with that, they're going
to be like, are you serious? You got to be in the 4000 that
closed in 14 hours. And I and I think either delves
need to be made like if if we want delving to be something
that you can compete for and push for and work for, either we
have to make them significantly harder, right?
That's one way that we can make it take longer is if the nemesis
delve I, I I don't want that. I don't think that, you know, I
mean, actually that's not true. That's a huge lie.
I just lied directly to all y'all's faces because I love to
complain. The delves should be harder.
So I take it back. I think that there should I,
yeah, actually immediately revert that.
We absolutely should. I, I'm fully on team making
delves harder. But more so, I don't think that
you guys do. I don't think that the the world
as a whole wants delves to be harder.
So the only other real way to make it to to to make things
like that genuinely challenging and genuinely impressive is to
make them really fast, right? You have to push through it.
You have to. Absolutely hustle your butt and
you have to work really hard in advance and you have to go, go,
go, go, go and make that your entire life and then you get
your nemesis kill in the 1st 4000.
I think that by making them harder, at least the Nemesis
boss harder, you would achieve the same thing.
It would take longer for people to get through it all.
And so like, but I think that I like kind of how you structured
this giving Dells this entire prestige is, is legitimizing it
more like for way the way you started, like everybody is being
like, oh, Dells are easy and they're not real content and and
that sort of thing. And this prestige and having
4000 people in all of North America and 4000 people in all
of Europe have, well, I guess all of the Americas in Oceanic.
I apologize. I don't want to exclude people
who were part of this and did many people in those regions did
try for this and few of them did earn this like stand tall, stand
proud. You put in the effort and you
prioritize this and you got it done.
And that is something where I've only beat it on like the
question mark or sorry, rather the tier 81, because I just
wanted to get that done for my other priorities, which is
rating, which is mythic plus, right?
And I love that there are people who made Dells a priority.
That will make Dells a priority, even if it remains exactly as it
was this time. They'll be like, oh, wow, last
time it went at 14 hours. I've got to make sure that I'm
locked in for this. And that's treating Dells
differently than they have traditionally been through the
war within. So good.
Good on that. I love, I love you know what,
Lex, no notes. Maybe, maybe all of that was
notes, but from here on, no notes.
Perfect, Lex. Delves are also, by the way,
really OK. Caveat, I have to say anything
time I say anything about Delves.
I play a Havoc Demon Hunter and Havoc is particularly strong and
solo content, so your mileage may vary.
However, I I'm having such a good time with delves this
season. This is like so strong.
I'm finding the pacing to be on point.
I am very happy I don't hear Brand's voice again.
I am really really digging this season of Delve.
I'm feeling like I am excited to log on and do delves.
Also, they threw keys at us like candy.
They were like, oh, I was so stressed about the fact that
before I was going to be able to do my delves, I was going to
have to go like grind out some keys.
And they were like, oh, you're worried about keys?
Here's a couple. Here's 75 shards.
Here's like every single thing is given to give you.
I think I have like at least 200 more shards at this point.
I think it might be 300. Anyway, +2 full keys.
Anyway, I'm flying high. It is a great time to be a Dell.
Yeah, I like when I did the entire like tour the relicre and
stuff, I got like 6 keys out of that.
I was like, that's amazing. Went and did a delve and got
another 2 keys and then like some shards I'm like, oh, I
guess I could get more, more keys.
And like Dells are relevant to me right now in terms of gear
level. I actually think that they're
going to stay relevant for me maybe through a lot of the
season. Like right now I'm like, my
entire thing is balance right now guys, I am staring down the
barrel of running 2 characters at the level that I ran a single
character. My raid lead said like, listen,
you don't need to get do it at this level.
But like my response was, I'm really glad that you do not
mandate this. I know a lot of people on the
team do not, do not want to do this, but like this is how I
play. I can't run this thing at like
lower than this level and feel good about about bringing this
character to a raid. And that level is different for
me than it is for Sean and the level that he plays at.
That's different than the level that like Max or people on echo
or people on method play. That's different than Dratnos
and the like the the crazy stuff that he like makes the
spreadsheets for. That's different than like my
mage friend who I cherish so much.
But it is like my anchor to like whenever I go like, oh, I'm
being like super casual. This, this is my friend who does
not read much on Wowhead that is playing for like Lex.
As much as you want to be like you're the Super casual and
stuff you will never compete casual casualness.
I've got my anchor. She is wonderful.
She's been my friend for decades at this point, not, not quite 2
decades, but we're reaching there.
And it, it, the perspective is that people will play at the
level that they that they enjoy, or maybe they will stress
themselves out. And I will always play at the
level that I enjoy. And if I, if I, if I feel like I
can't balance the two characters at the level I enjoy, I will
drop one period. But that's all that is to say
that now I'm playing delves on two different, very different
perspectives of a range DPS and a melee DPS and really enjoying
it both in both perspectives and seeing what they can do.
It's, it is definitely a shift of like how I even approach
them. And I love that that is that
shift. So I'm going to say delves do
have like obviously different, different challenges for
different specs, but also different ways you can approach
that. I I so like, yeah, Dells, I'm
glad that they're here to stay. They're a good addition.
I'm, I'm obviously I again, I, I, I, this is such a good
expansion for solo player, which I know there's going to be some
people who are going to put validly be like the, the fact
that an MMO is pushing for more solo play is nothing to keep an
eye on. But I mean, I don't know, we're
adults and we have busy lives and it's complicated and the
World of Warcraft community is beautiful in a lot of ways and
complicated in a lot of others. And I think clearly the
community was hurting for some like was hungry for solo content
and we got it. And I'm having such a good time
and I get to go do my little pray.
I get to go do my little deal. It's A and I, I love that you're
like so into like the content that you're at solo play and
stuff. And then also, I don't think
you've touched housing. Remind me, I don't think you've
so really touched housing that much, right?
So housing I had a little shift actually after our our
conversation off off podcast about like making housing your
own and like doing whatever makes you really excited.
So I was thinking about it and I was like, I have an actual house
that I hate decorating. Like I, this is my least
favorite part of anything I've been talking about.
Like I I'll be like, oh, you know, be cool to do is XYZ
thing, but I never do it right. It took me 3 months of having
the right paint for my bathroom to get around to painting my
bathroom. Like I still need to paint my
bedroom and the wall behind me. I'm, you know, I'm, I took me
half a year to put art on the walls, right?
Decorating is not a thing that is, is particularly exciting to
me. So I readjusted the way I was
thinking about housing and now I'm like, it doesn't have to
look nice. I have my living room and the
point of the living room is that it's like a Demon Hunter
paradise, right? There's things to bounce off of
and backflip off of every every single corner.
There's like little pillows with books and coffee.
The the coffee by my bed is my favorite thing personal.
Then I have my vice kitchen, which I'm current that these are
all works in progress. The vice kitchen has my a ton of
coffee, a ton of like wine and alcohol stuff.
I got the hookah, of course, that's getting built out.
And then there's my favorite, which is the fire room.
And it's a room where I am taking every single thing that
is flaming that I can possibly get my hands on and I'm making
it so that the room is just like, you know, top to bottom
flames. I love the fire room.
That is awesome. And so like, I guess with all
the stuff that you're getting as you've been leveling and doing
quests, you've just been like throwing things in as a work in
progress. Yeah, I do.
I actually am thinking the fire room might also become my prey,
treasure or. Gallery.
Notice that every time you do a prey, you get a little bust and
they get like fancier the higher, you know, whether you do
it on a nightmare or normal. And it's kind of flamy in its
own way. So I'm like, that's kind of fun,
right? It kind of matched the fire.
Oh man, OK, after this, after we're done this recording, I do
want to check out this this room.
I have done nothing with my house since the expansion began
just because I've been so and on the expansion and doing doing
stuff at end game to get ready for that.
But I got to ask you, how is prep being for raid?
Are you ready? Do you feel ready for raid?
I know your team does some fights blind.
Have you chosen to go blind for the entire raid or just
particular fights? How are things with Timbermoore
Tavern? So we are going to do another
soft blind normal is what we call it, where basically we're
not going to like ban you from like watching Race to the World
first. But we are asking the people
don't. We're not going to like have
people watch videos and stuff and then prep for things we
don't know because we now don't have add-ons.
We don't know how it's going to right.
It's possible that with significantly less information
from like a week or not week or some DBM and things like that,
we are going to start to feel like this actually kind of sucks
and we're actually not really having fun.
And then we'll go back to what we were doing in the past was
always just. Right before a boss poll, we
would send a video. We'd be like, we're going to go,
everyone, we're going to take a 5 minute break.
Everyone you go with, watch together.
And then we'll come back and we'll all know the same strategy
and we know everyone did it. So I mean, worst case we go back
to that. But our plan right now is to go
through normal without doing any official studying and especially
with the officers not really studying what we're going to do.
So we can kind of go in and be like, oh, what's working, what's
not, what seems to be going on. I, I'm really excited.
We did also set our gear level pretty low.
So we set up like you had to be at least 2:20 to get into normal
raid with us, which I mean, I'm almost 2:30.
I'm almost certainly going to, I guess raids tomorrow.
So we'll see. Depending on whether or not I do
some delves tonight, I may or may not at 2:30, but I, I am
very excited to get back into trading rating is the thing that
brings the most boy to me. So that is that is very exciting
to have that actually coming back up tomorrow.
Then we will check in with you again next week and see how
that's gone. I've had one team go as a it was
very strange. It was a community night because
they were doing like the general community and the prog nights
are actually Thursday, Mondays now, which kind of lines up with
your team. So that's when we're supposed to
really go in. But like, I was like, oh, let me
just get as much gear as I can and every and everything.
And then I looked at the time. I was like, oh, community night,
I guess I'll go for that. And that's when I like ran, ran
through that. So I I've had like a little bit
of of practice with like the raid enjoying it so far.
Dragon seem to be the step up challenge for many teams, but
we've seen a lot of teams clear 7 out of eight.
Then the last boss which again will avoid spoilers.
The last boss being another bit of a wall for some teams.
I despite the fact that the dream rift is supposed to be a
middle of the pack in terms of difficulty, I would suggest to
anybody just go do the dream rift if you're doing it on
normal. Like it seems to be incredibly
easier to understand than even getting to three.
The third boss, the twin Dragons in sorry, that's the fourth
boss, The fourth boss twin Dragons in in this raid, which
is actually, yeah, the mid level.
It's a it's a, it's far more easier to understand.
And so therefore your execution and getting through that fight
is good. You'll be handing out tear to
people because it does have tear there and it's a great little
quick like oh, we got it done. Now we can go and work our way
through the other bosses. So that's my suggested pattern
for people on normal mode. I have not dived into heroic yet
and I have done the first two wings on LFR, which if you are
min maxing, yeah the LFR is on the table folks.
But that will be a discussion for another episode.
For now, though, may all your hits be crits.