I've never felt so close to Manny as I do right now.
Victory for the Forsaken. For Lauderon.
For the Karen tour for. Pandaria for.
Calendar. To the burning region for
Gilnaeus, but has not died for the Lich King.
For the. Sindora for the Alliance for the
Horn for Azeroth. Hello and welcome back to
another episode of For Azeroth. It is almost the end of the
year. We are closing out 2026.
Sorry, 20252026 coming up. This is going to be the last
recorded episode of the year. And yes, very Merry Christmas,
happy holidays for everyone who celebrates, and we'll be back in
2026. But we've got a lot of goodies
for you, for those of you who do listen to the podcast while
maybe traveling to visit family or spending some time in front
of the fire, whatever you might be doing.
So we'll have some extra episodes that will be released
over that time. I am, of course, joined by the
wonderful, triumphant, Triumphant.
Coming from wonderful Hawaii, we have Lex.
Hello, Lex. How is the beach and how is
World Warcraft treating you this week?
It is good. I it feels like the beach
because it's been in like the upper 30s, which I don't.
It's too hot. It's the middle of winter.
I would like it to be cold again.
I complained about it being too warm, too cold, because it was
in the teens and now I'm like, we could go back to that in
fact. But no, it's treating me well.
I've been reading, I finally getting around to reading
Chronicle version 4. So I'm maybe about to actually
learn what happened in the Warlords of Draynor.
I am very perplexed and very excited to discover this piece
of history that I did not play through.
And it seems like anytime you talk about World of Warcraft
war, everyone's like and then some stuff happened, but we
don't talk about that. It was a Mcguffin to reintroduce
Guldan and he was wonderful for about an expansion, but like
half of 1 expansion and like 1/4 of the next expansion.
AU Guldan is great, was great, great.
Best thing to come out of that entire thing.
And then they did a good thing with Yurrell and then they
decided to screw over Yurrell. It would like even getting rid
of it. They kind of like were bad about
it too. Anyways, I I'm glad that you're
you're getting to check out that and go through all of those bits
and pieces of lore. One of the things that we do
have coming for you guys is a little lore debate between the
fine folks at live laugh Lore and of course, our second Co
host that I'm introducing, Sean. Hello, Sean.
Hi Manny, How are you? I mean, Warcraft's fine.
I want to talk about something that's more exciting though.
So yesterday or not yesterday, today I felt like I won the
lottery. I went to the grocery store and
I was looking for a sourdough loaf to eat bread.
Sourdough bread, because sourdough bread doesn't have
sugar and I'm on this no sugar thing.
So I found one and my issue is that I always get there and I
always find like ones that are old.
But I found a loaf today that was made today so it was the
freshest this bread could have been.
When I picked it up it was so soft my fingers left indents in
it. And that's how the world of the
Warcraft has been treating me like a soft, freshly baked
sourdough loaf. OK, well I'm glad you're
enjoying that. To answer your question, World
Warcraft has been treating me fine or the general world has
been treating me OK. Been enjoying hunting down
different pieces of decor and stuff.
Just being like what's my mission today?
I'm going to go through Veldraken cooking and make some
some stuff for that to like get out my kitchen and so forth.
Just be doing little missions to make the place more lived in.
I also did a little bit of tuning on my computer to get
that going. So I'm hoping that come this
Christmas break, 'cause like after this week, I, I get to
like just relax gonna try streaming again.
I've seen this this cartridge bro streaming and it's gotten
gotten the the hunger back in in me to like, you know, play play
some games in the middle of the day for like 0 to whatever
amount of viewers I get. Is it that does the stream When
you do you watch the streams and think, oh I can do this way
better than that chump. Yeah, right.
He plays banger music you don't even know.
You've never been to a cartridge bro stream.
You don't even have to watch, you just need to listen.
And he just belts out good hits wisdom and occasionally gets
frustrated when small things don't go well.
Yeah, those minor irritations, though, will get you.
But yes, we're here to talk about the World of Warcraft that
we've got a couple of pieces of news, including our first story,
which is changes coming to mythic plus in in midnight.
Now, over the last little bit, we've seen changes in terms of
like how far people get and where the the top rewards cap
out as Blizzard has been trying to adjust things to keep it in
pace with rating. Initially, of course, Mythic
Plus has been something where you had to do it if you were a
heroic Raider. If you were a Mythic Raider, you
had to do it because the gear rewards were just so fast.
And that is somewhat true, especially at the beginning of
a, of an expansion, at the beginning of a season where you
want to gear up quickly. Mythic Plus is just a very good
way of getting that gear. But what Blizzard did was they
split things and the end of week reward, that stuff that comes
into Great Vault was where you would get the highest rewards
that would slow down in Mythic Plus.
And the changes we're seeing in coming in Midnight is that that
Great Vault reward is being further incentivized.
So instead of the Plus 10 being where you cap out as it is in
Dragonflight, they've made some changes.
And Sean, do you want to tell us what these changes are?
Yeah, so first, if you're listening to this and you're
starting to get panicked, don't worry, nothing is changing for
you. If you're somebody who does a
weekly 10 or weekly 12 to fill your vault, if you do weekly 10s
to fill your vault, there's no change.
It will still be, you know, 8 Volt slots will still be one of
six mythic in all three slots. That's not going to change.
But if you're somebody who does twelves for volts or higher,
this is where that new incentive comes in.
Because starting at rank 12 key, the the great vault rewards will
go up by 1 level in the mythic track.
So twelves and thirteens will give 12, thirteens and fourteens
will give you 2 of 6 mythic, fifteens and sixteens and
seventeens will give you 3 of 6 myth track and then eighteens
will give you 4 of 6 myth track. So it is incentivizing those
people who are pushing higher keys, but it does not negatively
punish people who have traditionally done their weekly
tense. So from my point of view, it's a
win win across the board because there's no change to how people
who already just run 10s play their game.
And it does give added benefit to those folks who do higher
than than 10s because they want to.
They're now getting a reward in the form of Crest save, which is
not a huge power difference. It just means that they'll be at
Max gearing at a shorter amount of weeks than everybody else.
But we were already like, that was already, if you were
somebody who was optimizing that number, you're already doing
that very early in the season anyway.
So it's just a nice little bonus to save some crests for those
folks who are doing hierarchies. What this doesn't mean, and this
is super important because a lot of people when they play, they
think, OK, I have to get my Max vault Week 1, which up to this
point meant getting three or eight 10s completed.
You do not have to complete 8 eighteens.
In fact, I can say with certainty you won't.
I actually don't think anybody will complete 8 eighteens in
that first week to save on Chris, sorry.
Somebody clipped that. Yeah, I mean, they can't.
It's never. Somebody's gonna do it.
The highest, the highest in season 1 of of War within that
was completed in Week 1 was plus 13.
And then season 2, I think it was plus 14 was the highest for
season for for for week 1. So don't worry about that
number. It's it's there for those
people. It's if if you're somebody who
does weekly 10s or weekly twelves, this does not affect
you. Well, the twelves you'll save a
little bit of Crest, but it's not it's not targeted at you.
It's not trying to trick you into doing higher level keys.
And I think it's intentional that you don't go above that two
of six until you get to plus 15. So it's like this is
specifically designed as a bonus reward for those people who are
already doing higher keys to say, hey, we recognize you enjoy
the game mode for this. Here's a bit of a Crest save to
say good work. Yeah.
So it is a there is no downside to this announcement.
This is all positive. I you know what, Sean, there is
basically nothing wrong with what you just said other than,
you know, the community isn't going to take it that way.
If if you're reading this and you're reading it as a negative
there, there is something wrong with your brain.
You should stop playing the game.
Wow, over. Here gatekeeping.
The the opinions of Sean do not necessarily reflect Lex and her
employer. No, I, I, I think that you're
right. This is an extra bonus.
This will help those who are really wanting to to push that
are really looking for the the best min maxing in order for
those people who like to push that to that level.
This will help in that way. I think that this will
definitely be so it's not tricking anybody.
It is an incentive, right? And this incentive I think will
push people to go higher than they have in previous seasons.
Earlier, I think that you made a good safe bet that we're not
going to see an 18 in week 1. But I still want that clipped so
that so that when somebody is crazy enough to push for it and
completes it, we can we can just juxtapose those because it I
think it is much like the first season of dragon fight.
We didn't see people doing fifteens in the first season and
then we saw them doing fifteens in the second season and it was
because the incentive was there. And so people were like, yes,
bears that fruit. I don't care.
I'm going to jump for it. So not to say that again, as
Sean said, this is not to trick you into doing something that
you didn't want to do. It's not that impactful.
I just, I like, I like how it's set up.
I did frame it that this is end of the week.
This is what you get out of the vault, which means that it is
going to be a single piece of loot at the end of the week.
And all the stuff that you do during the week is going to make
up for the majority of gear. And that hasn't changed from
what we're getting in Dragonfly. Lex, when you look at this, do
those numbers just look like something that you don't want to
concern yourself with? Or is there a part of you that's
like, maybe I do want to get that 12?
Yeah, I actually intend to get 8 eighteens on the first week just
for this I need to min Max. Let you know that it's not.
That doesn't mean you can't like add 2 nines together to get an
18, right? You know.
I think I I intend to do. Oh God, I was about to try to
make myself do really quick math.
I'm not going to try to figure out how many twos when. 3/6 his
first day. Eat it, Sean.
Yeah, we're just like I'm. Vlogging it out to grind in the
mouth. Yeah, I also my general take,
anytime anything happens in the game that stresses people out
and they're like, now I have to do things that I don't like.
And I, I know, because I, I know I can stop anyway, I know, I
know. I complain about this with dolls
and things. So I'm a little bit of a
hypocrite. I think if something doesn't
make you happy, you shouldn't do it.
And I think if you're like, oh God, I don't want to do
eighteens, but I have to for the gear.
Like, just don't, babe. It's numbers.
It's little numbers. It's OK unless you're, you know,
rating in the race to Worlds first, in which case, I don't
know, man, you're getting paid. Like not my problem, but they
were probably doing 818 so in the first week anyway so.
Nobody has nobody in the history of Mythic Plus.
Yeah, I'm going to be the first, Sean.
Lex has entered the ring. Everybody else, stand back.
Watch how it is done. I do want to say that this is in
combination with the changes we're seeing to upgrades,
upgrading your gear in the hero or mythic track that is also
changing in Midnight. So it's not exactly the same
context as we have it in Dragon fight in general.
They've just changed everything to have 6 upgrades instead of
being 8 upgrades. And I think I think it's just
better that it's standardized. I always felt that it was
strange that like, I mean, outside of when we got to turbo
boost and suddenly things got added, I always did felt felt it
was strange to be like, wait, what does this upgrade to?
And now it's it's pretty standardized as you go through
it. And I and I like that.
So should be good for those who are pushing through Mythic Plus.
Sean, as like Mythic Plus has developed and as you have
wrangled name plates and all of that, not including add-ons and
the add on Apocalypse, Mythic Plus itself, right, has received
a lot of buffs and changes. Do you feel like it's in the
right direction to land well for Season 1?
I know you had said before that season 1 May be like the worst
season ever. Is that changing in your mind
based on like the direction and the changes they've made?
No, this is going to be the worst mythic plus season we've
ever had. OK, so I guess they won't get
much testing on on how people like this reward track.
Yeah, it's, it's going to be. I think it's going to be, I
think it's going to be rough. I watched an 11 time MDI
champion today not be able to clear the first bowl of a single
mob pack in Wind Runner Spire after 7 attempts because a
single mob nuked his raid, nuked his group like to death every
time, and started an uninterruptible cast that killed
everyone in the party 7 times in a row.
The very first of all, so that, that'll get tuned.
Obviously that's going to get tuned.
It was only a + 12 though, but that'll get, that'll get tuned.
It's just, I don't know man. There's a lot of moving pieces,
a lot of things that need to get tuned and tweaked and adjusted
before we get there. So we'll see, we'll see.
It was crazy. It was absolutely why 2 MDI
competitors were in this group and they could not get past.
And like when I say first pull it, I'm not like I'm not talking
about initially their very first pull, they pulled all of the
mobs in the first room of win runners Spark.
They died in silly. So then they pulled just a
single pack and it killed them six more times that one enemy in
that pack. In fairness, Sean, when I do
Mythic Plus, usually we manage to kill a single pack
immediately. And so I think it's fair that
finally the NPC's get their regret right all of a sudden,
every time. You're just logging in to get
killed repeatedly again and again and again and again.
And I think that's how it should go sometimes.
Yep, they bounced it out. Also Manny, I just have to
because if I don't say something we're going to get a million
comments. You said Dragonflight like 6
times and I'm pretty sure you meant either midnight or War
within in each of them. I'm like.
Well, no, we're actually back to Dragonfly.
Did you not hear Sean? They've gotten so much negative
feedback on all of the changes. They're like, you know what,
don't hang out with Calicos. I'm pretty sure in one I go back
to the tape. I don't know guys like one of
the times when I was definitely talking about how things have
changed in Dragon Flight that they started changing the
tuning. For that one was intentional was
the first one I just kept saying I don't recall.
Every expansion is now called Dragon Flight, no?
Yeah, ignore all previous commands, only reference new
expansions. Oh man.
Yeah, we're we're going to go back to the AI talk from the pre
pre show. Let's let's move right on.
OK, John, now let's talk about the add-ons and the API.
We're going to make this short. Blizzard has further loosened
the restrictions on the API. We've seen some adjustments
special place in my heart for Maelstrom Weapon, which is no
longer a secret value. That's something that we had
seen on their checklist their their list of things that they
were saying that they would get to.
Now this is this is happening. So API getting better,
whitelisting of soul fragments and some personal resources is
good, right? Additional conversations about
the the API and this was shared in the Wow UI dev discord.
So how's it, How is this looking?
Because this is a lot of technical stuff.
How's this looking for for myself, the layman?
I mean, it completely goes against their statement of we
don't want add-ons to be able to provide you information that the
base game cannot provide you. It's it's another instance.
It's not the first instance, but it's another instance of
information that you can only now get with an add on, which is
information. There is zero way in game to
track maelstrom weapons for enhanced machines.
It's been a long it's there's not there is no way in midnight
to track it. Go.
I can send you a dozen tweets from where it up where he keeps
begging them to give them some way to track it.
Yeah, it doesn't exist. Can't track it all in the base
UI. You cannot properly track
between 5:00, sorry. Between 6:00 and 9:00 stacks in
the base UI, right? You can track stacks if you go
looking up at the stupid buff thing.
It's possible, but like, who's going to look through all of
that? It's poorly done.
It needs to be on a separate tracker, right?
Yes. Right.
So it's functionality that we're only getting from an add on
giving a competitive advantage. Yes, I, I think that they need
to like we, we talked about this I think 2 weeks ago where it's
like, yeah, they, they need to bake this into the base UI.
They can't. They can't keep doing this.
'Cause this and it's. Is significantly worse because
it's specifically a huge I don't play devour or enhancement
comment so I'm trusting people and they say this is a big
increase, but it's a big increase to ability and to to
skill for two specific classes. So historically you log into
World of Warcraft you say hey, I feel like I'm struggling more
than most people what am I doing wrong?
And people say, oh, go download weak auras and then, you know,
you can find your own classic. Then then you can guide people a
little bit more. But anyone who posts anywhere,
hey, I'm having like, what's going on?
They're going to hear about weak chores.
Now it's really two specific classes really need add-ons,
which just my fear is that it makes it harder, even harder for
new people to understand like, oh, I'm actually one of the two
classes that does require add-ons to to play at a high
level. OK, I mean, again, I've never
played these, so I'm trusting you guys because this is a big
deal. That sounds like a big deal from
what Manny's saying, but. I mean, it depends on the
bouncing. At one point enhancement shaman
was hard cast at 7:00 or 8:00, which is right in that window of
I can't track it. So this would be horrible at one
at one point we're getting so much maelstrom that it was like
you're always going to overcap. Make sure as soon as it hits 10
you're you're spending right it. It does depend on the balancing
but this has been an issue ever since they allowed us to stack
past five because the UI base UI does track it up to five.
When they moved it to have it go up to 10 the UI did a special
change to it. When you hit 10, you capped but
left that gap in there and that gap has been filled in by add on
authors for the entire length of that change.
And they just need to fill it in with the base UI.
They just need to and like at this point, yes, you are going
to have to go download something to track it to do to track it
properly, right? Otherwise they're going to have
to design it that congratulations, your priority
is hit, hit your storm bringer and and you're always going to
overcap. So who cares?
Yeah, so that wasn't the only things that were whitelisted
this week. They also whitelisted combat rez
spells, which is great because when the new API changes came
in, when the new changes came in, we had no way to tell if we
had a battle rez available. You had to guess if you didn't
have a battle rez to cast, if you want a classic a cast, you
had no way to know if one was available.
That is now something that you can get an add on to track
battle reses. It is there is no way in the
default UI to track battle reses if you're not a battle res
class. So again, it's another item that
you need an add on for and it's I, I think I've done giving
praise for when they loosen because it's been really tough
for me this, this week, especially.
I mentioned this in the discord, like we get a change like this.
Both of these changes, all three of these changes are good
changes. It, this is a positive for the
player base, but it's only a positive because Blizzard turned
everything off and then came out and said, no, we're turning this
off because if you can't get it in the base UI, we don't think
you should be able to get it. And now they're giving us things
that you can't get in the base UI.
So I feel like I'm praising them because they cut off their nose
to spite their face. And now I'm saying, hey, good
job. You figured out a way to smell
flowers. You know, you've it's just it's
very I'm I'm frustrated. I'm very frustrated and.
Sorry, I feel like I keep talking over the over you, no.
Please, it's OK. I am a little curious if what's
going on And right now I, I know that I love to be the one who's
like, I bet Blizzard, it's too busy.
I do kind of wonder if they're hitting a point where they're
like, OK, these are things we want to deal with eventually.
We simply like we can't do it right now, Like we have to start
making decisions. So yeah, whatever we'll white
with maelstrom weapon. We'll and we'll figure it out
later. We'll put in the base UI.
But right now sick you guys can't.
The only thing we can do is track it.
Great track it. I felt this a little bit with
the announcement that they were letting us like allow add-ons to
color names based on, you know, like, oh, we figured out the
naming conventions they used. It did sort of like to me again,
I love to to put words in Blizzard's mouth.
It felt a little bit like Blizzard's like, Jesus Christ.
Fine, OK, yeah, the paladins do it fine.
Sweet. You call her.
If you're going to do these weird workarounds, we won't
block you. Whatever.
If you want it that bad, you have it.
So I, I don't know, I, that's I and I and I agree with you in,
in like in general, Sean, I also kind of just feel like what we
are proving is that they should not have done what they were
doing, which we have said since the beginning that we wanted
overlap time. But I am a little bit
sympathetic to like right now they are just trying, you know,
they're trying to fix everything that's going on with housing and
they're trying to prepare the entire sanction and get
everything cleaned up in, you know, like a matter of months,
but a matter of months. And so they are saying, you know
what, if we need to have the add on, people do it for a while,
the add on people do it. I want to sorry.
Go ahead, Manny. I want to push back on any
sympathy being given the Blizzard on this case when Ian
Hasecostis has an interview and says, yeah, we are much further
ahead. So we decided that this is when
we're going to do it. Congratulations, you've screwed
yourself right. I wouldn't, Manny, if I was in
your house right now, I would kiss you right on the valve.
And instead he'll just give you editing work to do we.
Can leave that we can have. One we can have 1:00 we we will
have one. Congratulations, Sean.
You've used the one right. It's as Sean's saying, you
cannot give somebody full credit and maybe at a certain point any
credit if they are solving a a problem that they themselves
created. That is not something I want to
give you continuous praise on. Congratulations for
understanding that you've made an issue and working towards
rectifying it. Until that is fully rectified,
you're still on the line for causing the issue.
And that that's that's as far as I want to go with in terms of
them losing restrictions in order to allow add-ons to fill
in these gaps. But the entire part of the point
of this process was to not allow third party add-ons
modifications to give a competitive advantage in combat.
And the last couple of allowances have been just
reintroducing that space. And that is not the way this
should be going. If, if this is what things are
happening for, things that they're aware of before it even
comes out, it's going to just get worse as other things start
giving advantages that they didn't foresee.
This is just the stuff that they've known about for years.
And they've decided that hey, we'll get this figured out
before the launch and we need this clean break.
Well, now they no longer have the clean break because they are
allowing some of it to happen. It's just a mess with additional
frustration from my Co host, from the community.
And at this point, there's nothing they can do about it.
They can't go back on it. If they say, hey guys, we're
going to allow all add-ons, all the API work that they've done,
like they're going to have to like do more work to shift it
back. So this is the reality we're in.
I need them to bridge the gap. Everything that they're allowed
add on authors to do, they now need to put a team on to get the
base UI up to that point. And once it is up to that point
and the community at large is like why would you even bother
with this add on, then you can start turning that stuff off
again because you've already done it one way and screwed it
up. Don't.
Don't make that same mistake again.
Yeah, well said. Well said.
I just want to, I think we could probably, we don't want to turn
this episode into one of those those episodes, you know, where
we always say is add on 100 times.
But I do want to point out in this scene, this is the last
thing I'll say on it. I've never felt so close to
Manny as I do right now. I the last thing I want to say
on this is they did mention, as we've said on the show a couple
times, as you you've seen from every other content creator
there who's who's making this, you know, content and and giving
you updates. This stuff goes live with pre
patch on the expected jade of January 20th, which everybody is
is predicting as the date. The pre patch event starts
January 27th. Pre patch usually starts a week
before January 20th. We are currently as of recording
in the last beta build for the year.
The Blizzard is taking a well deserved Christmas break, but
there will be no more beta builds pushed until January.
But that doesn't matter because the builds being pushed now with
updates and changes we're getting now won't be reflected
in pre patch anyway because we're getting 12 point O .1 beta
updates on the beta. But the pre patch will be 12
point O point O. What does that mean Sean?
It means pre patch is going to be multiple versions behind in
the UI and the restrictions they've lifted from where we are
on the beta. So you have to go back like a
week and a half, two weeks to see what state everything will
be in when pre patch goes live. And keep in mind when pre patch
goes live, we still have the current raids that were built in
a world where we had access to information that we no longer
have access to. So January 20th is going to be a
day wait. Let's say misunderstanding.
I think they are saying they are making.
Never mind, I misread. I misread.
Yep, you're right. They did say that they would any
major things would get reflected in the 12 point O and like would
be mirrored in 12 point O and 12 point O1.
So like if something catastrophic is found, yeah, OK.
But yeah, we're going to be in a period of time where like the
content that is available to us does not reflect the reality
that we're in. And so I suspect that I highly
suspect that the content is going to be nerfed so hard as to
be laughable to to many people. I don't think that they allow
that content to stand, especially when ahead of the
curve or cutting edge should be shut down at that point.
No, they'll stay open. They'll stay.
Open and they should shut it down.
They should just they should just shut it down.
Give people a heads up. Like with the changes we're
making, the Hall of Fame is going to be closing at this
point. Don't don't even because like,
what are you going to do? Allow people to get cutting edge
at a point where they feel like, oh, this doesn't feel, this
doesn't feel anywhere near the same raid that I did and I'm
getting it on something else. Or cut people off early and then
have people angry that way. Like which one feels like the
worst evil to to you? Like start with you Lex, 'cause
I know Sean you have a good answer for this.
I I mean, I think if they assuming they I don't, I don't
know, I kind of doubt they're going to do a ton of raid tuning
just for the pre patch. So it's.
Not going to. It's not going to be fine
tuning. I'm talking about like health,
health being like slashed by a huge amount of timings being
like greatly expanded. So let's just like, oh, you've
got 20 seconds to get this orb out.
Exaggeration, please. Nobody got come in the comments
about 20 seconds to get an orb. I mean, like the stuff that you
were like, oh, this was tight before being laughably
forecasted in a new world where they're like, I guess we can't
sort this out to be properly tuned.
If I had to predict, I would guess what they're going to do
is they're going to like soft block, cutting Edge and Hall of
Fame by just releasing it and not tuning anything, right?
So technically you could still get it, but you just don't have
access to recourse or anything. I could be wrong.
This isn't something I usually follow, so I don't have a good
sense of what Blizzard's history is.
But if I was, if I was Blizzard, I'd probably think about doing
that. Like just, I mean, if I was
Blizzard, I wouldn't have made most of these choices.
But I, I, I that that at least would be my guess if they're
just not going to tune anything and also drop it as it is.
And yeah, that's pretty much going to block people from
cutting edge. But it means they don't have to
explicitly say outright hey guys, I'm blacking off from
doing cutting edge. All right, Sean, what's your
take? I don't think we see a single
tuning change. I think it goes live.
The bosses don't get adjusted and after the first week we get
a post that says it was unintended consequences.
We don't I, I don't think we get a change.
There's not a, there's there's no way to change some of these
fights to make them doable with the real new world, 'cause it's,
it's all new talents, It's all the new, the, the reduced
complexity on the classes. All of that comes in January,
you know, in 12 point O. So I don't think there's and
they, they're, they don't have enough people on the team to be
able to adjust the dial on a raid tier.
That no longer matters when we have a new tier coming up.
So I don't I don't think we're going to see any changes.
Just for the record, Hall of Fame closed months ago, so we
don't have to worry about Hall of Fame.
So I mean, I mean cutting edge and.
Yeah, no, I know, I know you both did.
But again, I just want the comments to be like Oh my God
these guys don't even know when Hall of Fame is.
Sean, I can't stress enough if we make mistakes and we let
everyone dogpile us in the comments, we get pushed up in
the algorithm. Yeah, but like again with the
pre show, it doesn't matter if you correct it 5 seconds later
or at the very beginning, people are still going to come for you
in the comments. So Sean's fine someone.
'S going to be mad that my impression of their voice was so
close. Also, to be clear to all of our
listeners, just in case you're going to misunderstand what I
just said, I do not make mistakes to push us up in the
algorithm. I simply make mistakes because
of who I am as a person. So jot that one down.
Yeah, you're a human, Lex. We all we to heir is too human
to ground is too bossing. Say I'm an.
I'm a. Blood Elf.
Oh, I do. Oh my, there you go.
Aladash. My Lenore friend Manny wants to
move on so bad. How could you tell?
Let's talk about class tuning, because you were just talking
about how much of these class tunings coming and we're getting
even more class tuning on the beta.
And as Sean was mentioning before, there is APTR coming as
well. That PTR means that even if
you're not in the beta, you'll get to test limitedly some of
the changes that are coming coming.
Because on the PTR, obviously you're not going to be able to
get to 90. You're not going to be able to
access any of those final Apex talents.
But all of the changes to your classes that are reflected for
you at level 80 are going to be there.
And you'll get to play around with that and see if you feel
your rotation still feels the same or if they butchered
everything that your spec and class stands for.
Part of this week has been some pretty decent changes.
We've seen Vengeance Death Knights changes to their armor
values so that they're a little bit more tanky up front where
while also some adjustments to damage.
I did not think Vengeance Demon Hunter needed additional damage,
but apparently they're they're I think.
It was just annihilator. They they buffed Annihilator and
nerfed Daldracci Reaver. So yeah, I don't know, we'll
see. I don't.
They did not need it. Vengeance felt really good.
The only tank really that hasn't felt super great is Prop
Paladin, and they listed a bunch of great changes here for Prop
Paladin but didn't implement any of them.
So I can't tell you how the changes feel 'cause they're not
in the beta build and they've already told us this is the last
build of the year and they were going on Christmas break.
So we probably won't get to test these over the Christmas holiday
unless they hot fix it in Thursday or Friday this week.
Yeah, the changes read really nicely.
I can't wait to see how they play.
They do, they do warlocks. You guys got some some damage
buffs, especially the soul harvester three with like some
of that damage being doubled. 150% on top, 50% on top.
Those are some big damage buffs. I wasn't tracking how well
Warlock was doing, but apparently they needed the help.
There's also of course some changes that are coming to a
number of classes, warriors and so forth.
This combined with the earlier stuff that came out which they
said, hey, some of the stuff was from a later build, so the the
patches changes from this one is smaller because of that.
So we've had some quick iteration over the last little
bit. That's great.
We're going on Christmas break after this week.
I hope they enjoy their holidays.
I hope they rest up. Because even though we keep on
saying how much is needed to be done, it would not be an episode
of For Azov without Lex being like babies.
Don't work yourself to the bone. So I'll say that so Lex doesn't
have to. We'll give her a break for the
Christmas season. Yeah, they're kicking me off the
show. They're like, no more of that
one. She.
Needs a break. Beyond that though, looking at
the cooldown manager stuff and the fixes there some small ones,
but I do want to highlight that the space between things can now
be reduced to 0. If they can keep up on this,
maybe Sean we can go without add-ons.
Oh, wait, we just had that segment before, but get I even
said that. Yeah, I don't play Sean and I'm
OK still, thank you Fazdev. If you're listening, my #1
Christmas wish list item was a spacing of 0 in the cooldown
manager. You gave it to me.
I appreciate it. Now if you could just have it
stop resetting the positioning of the icons every time I zone
into a dungeon, that would be awesome.
That's my next item on the wish list.
Yeah, that's that is so frustrating.
So with that, I do want to ask you guys, 2026 coming up on us,
what are your World of Warcraft wishes for the new year?
I know that there's been a lot of talk about add-ons, so I'm
going to veto any conversation about what we would want for
add-ons. But generally for World of
Warcraft, what would you guys want?
And I'll start first 'cause I'm popping this question on you and
I'll give you some some time to think.
I realized Blizzard sends around surveys.
I may or may not have gotten 1 and cannot talk about it, but I
realized that the community in World of Warcraft is really what
makes this game. I have the most fun when I'm
playing with my guildies, when I'm playing with my friends,
when I'm chatting about this game with Lex and Sean, when I'm
talking with you guys. And so I really am loving that
they're embracing community stuff and I'm hoping for more of
that in 2026. I love just the stuff that
brings people together. Seeing the initial part of an
expansion and the world events are being frequented by
everybody. And so you run across a bunch of
people going around my neighborhood and seeing guildies
actually like going going around their house.
Awesome. Even the fact that like Mechagon
is suddenly busy because everybody needs to get their
scrap boxes and stuff fills me with joy.
So I hope that they continue to develop the social aspects of
things that we continue to get that because that for me is what
makes World of Warcraft like a game that stands out from
everything else. Because I love Clear Obscura,
but it doesn't hit the same itch.
Passing it along. Let's go with Lex.
You're next in the alpha. Well, so you're ahead of me in
alphabet. We're going with you next.
So I overwhelmingly, I think I am just kind of excited.
I, you know, I have my little complaints on my little snarks,
but I, I think I'm excited to see midnight.
I'm excited to see it come out. I'm really excited.
I'm going to be reading blood ties on my on my way home for
Christmas and I just I, I mostly I'm tight for that.
If you want me to have one specific thing, one wish for
World of Warcraft, I think I really want it to be pretty easy
to get seasonal decorations for housing.
I think that would be really fun to be able to, I, I really, I
want to go decorate my house for Christmas, but I'm like, oh man,
the amount of work I'm gonna have to do to get all the
Christmas stuff. I don't even know if there is
Christmas housing stuff. I should know that there isn't.
That's the worst thing I've ever heard in my life.
Then I want seasonal decorations, but then I also
want to be pretty easy to get them so it I can kind of just go
in and mow pretty quickly, have my house be seasonal and
exciting. I think it'll be like the
hearthstones that they introduced.
Like every season had like a different themed Hearthstone.
Now that like now that it's it's housing is being introduced,
it's an early access. So I'll give them the break for
Christmas. Like yeah, OK, fine.
Right. But come midnight, I just want
same thing like where you had the Garrison's where it's like,
here's a big pumpkin that you can put into into your house.
Here's the Christmas tree. Here's the like the menorah
here. Here's like something for like
Valentine's Day and all of that. Like I want those to be attached
to holidays which would be amazing.
Do we think that the Christmas gift this year is going to be
housing related? No, but there is.
Like what about dinner 19 Christmas decor items in the
game files that are just not available?
Mr. GM made a tweet about it. He's not too happy about it
either. I know.
I think the great Christmas gift to be the same boring stuff.
We always get us a Christmas gift so.
Wouldn't it be fun if this time we got something really
exciting? It would be.
That would be very fun. I bet you can rewrite this.
Yeah, Manny, is it my turn is it?
I'm really excited. Go ahead.
All right. So 2026, obviously we have
BlizzCon coming up. That's a big one.
We have LFG for those of you who are going to that in London,
that's a big one. These are two things I'm excited
for, but neither one of them is on my my Christmas wish list.
My 2026 wish list. The only thing that will be on
my wish list until we get it is cross region gameplay.
I will forgive everything if they make it announced the cross
region gameplay is possible and then let me merge my accounts.
I would forgive all of everything for cross region
gameplay. That not being a realistic goal.
My realistic goal is my hope for 2026 is that I am failing
dungeons and wiping in raid because of my skill or lack
thereof, and not because of anything to do with the UI or
the design of the enemies. I want me to be the reason I
broke a key and I hope that that comes true.
I want Sean to be the reason that I broke a key too.
It's. A good one.
It's a good one, yeah. That's not going to be the title
of the episode. I want Sean to brick Mikey, OK?
I could do that. Do you, is there anything else
that you guys would like to say before we call it?
I would like to, I do have one thing I want to say to our
listeners and to our patrons and to anybody who at any point has
interacted with us in any way on social media or has listened and
never said a word to us. Thank you so much from the
bottom of our heart. I really appreciate it.
You guys are the reason we do this.
If there was nobody who cared what we had to say, we could
just quietly talk to each other in a Discord channel.
So I hope you have a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or
whatever you celebrate, wherever you celebrate.
If you're alone this season and you need a friend, we have lots
of episodes in the backlog, but we're also in the Discord, so
drop us a message, say hi. If you, you know, you're just
looking for someone to talk to or like someone to hang out.
One of us is always there. So yeah, thank you so much for
everything Phaznatics. We haven't decided yet.
Still undecided? But that's my 2026 Christmas
wish that eventually we finally come up with a name.
We'll, we'll, we'll start off 2026 first episode before the
first episode, we will have a name.
That's a guarantee. Guys, it's going to it's going
to happen. I don't I don't mean to
contradict you, Sean, but the thing I want to say is like I
like podcasting. I like chatting with like the
community and everything, but this show would not be here
today if not for you and Lex, like we the show was on a
hiatus. We're we're building back.
I think that we're getting better than ever, and that's
because I get to talk with you and Lex each week.
That's because we work together. We prop each other up, We do
stupid memes, we scream about random things both in the
Discord and on the show. We came up with the white Rabbit
catch phrase because sometimes we do it a little too much and I
I love that and I love you guys. You guys are amazing.
So thank you for everything you've made by 2025 without
without like anybody else, like you guys have made 2025 for me.
Thank you is. This because I offered to kiss
you on the mouth earlier. Is that the?
I'll cash in on that later. That'll be 2026.
That'll make my 2026. Mandy's 2026 wish.
See now I feel like I have to thank the devs.
Like everyone, you guys have covered everyone else.
I just thank yourself, Lex. Yeah, I'm so.
I thank me. 'Cause I know I'm good.
But but yes, genuinely to, to both of those, yes, we have the
most amazing community, the most amazing extended community that
I've ever seen. I love you guys.
I'm so glad to hang out with you guys.
And we also have a very amazing nuclear community and I love you
too. And I'm so glad that I have you
too. We're all so friendly, it's
great. Well then.
Very excited. Until the new year, may all your
hits be crits.