I play with an elemental shaman every single day.
He literally does less damage than I do if he's not in
ascendance like it is. It's not a joke, it's not a
meme. He does less than tank damage
when he's not in his cooldown window.
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 Sindori, for the Alliance, for the Horde, for
Azeroth. Hello and welcome to a new
episode of For Azeroth. I am your host Manny, AKA The
Treatment Manny, and I am joined by the wonderful, the lovely,
the Lex Rants. Hello Lex, how are you and how's
the World of Warcraft been treating you?
I am great, Manny. I just came back from the
Renfair. Well, not I didn't just come
back, but it's the Renfair yesterday.
So I'm feeling very inspired. I'm convinced that this fall is
going to be a Cape with fall. I think that's universal.
I think this is just the vibe of the fall for us all.
So go buy your Cape. Let's this is a a trend a a
trend prediction. A trend prediction is what I'm
doing. I'm very good at fashion.
So I'm I'm feeling hyped up, I'm feeling nerdy, I'm feeling good.
And then after that, I wanted to do some mythic plus with my
friends and I'm probably doing some mythic mythic plus again
tonight. So apparently I heal mythic plus
now, so that's cool. We ball.
We did not get lowered down, but we got pretty consistently into
phase 3. So it's just going to be, you
know, we're just working on getting a couple more item
levels and, and, and ready to go and we should knock on a lot of
wood, be good to go next week. I feel horrible I jinxed it.
I thought you were just talking about the one boss and then I
just no AOTC you. Guaranteed that fast devil heard
and it's like absolutely no AOTC for them.
Secret, very localized stealth buffs.
But we are not alone. We have, of course, the
currently silent but spectacular Sean.
Hello Sean, how are you and how's World of Warcraft treating
you? Hello, Manny.
Hello, Lex. I'm doing well.
Life's kind of a whirlwind right now.
We have home inspections coming up on Thursday for a place we
put an offer in on Prince Edward's Island.
And yeah, so that's happening. Warcraft has been good.
Turbulent time waves launches tomorrow as of this recording,
so I'm ready to hit the ground running in maxo.
The rest of my characters, probably just the tanks.
Maybe a healer. I was going to do this weird
healer challenge thing. I don't know if it's going to
happen now, but yeah Lex if you need a tank tonight for mythic
plus, I got nothing going on so hit me up.
I will happily come tank some keys for you.
I got lots of characters from Chris still but.
We we do unfortunately have if nothing a a a dearth of tank or
would I I might have mixed that mixed that we have too many.
Yeah, we have an overwhelm. Abundance.
An abundance of tanks. We are the one group I've ever
run with where occasionally we'll have to like split groups
and everyone will have to pug, or like one group will have to
pug a ton of DPS because we cannot get enough to, we can't
get enough DPS and we have too many tanks on heels.
I mean, Sean, how's your mage doing?
Yeah, yeah. Wait, you were like best friends
with the mage and then he? Laughed.
I feel like this is one of the Sean fads.
They last about two hours after the recording, just long enough
for him to say he's in. It was fun, I enjoyed it.
I I really just want to tank, you know, I'm going to try
Warlock out on EU. We'll see how that goes.
I really just want to tank. It's just.
It's your group. You know, yeah, it's my
preference, right? It's what I want to do.
But other than that, it's warm here today, so I don't have any
pants on. So don't ask me to stand up
because that would be super embarrassing.
OK, well we'll never talk about your pants again, Sean.
Let us move on. We started last episode and got
through about half of everything coming in 12.1, and so we're
going to talk about the rest of it as well as going a little bit
more in depth on some of the other stuff that we've now had
some time to test. So one of the things that we
didn't get to talk about and finally got some time on the PTR
and got to test this is that there are absolute abundance of
class changes, which includes a big change to just how they want
to approach some damage profiles.
For those of you who maybe were living and dying by your
cooldowns Shaman, they are aware that many classes were having
most of their power in those short windows of cooldowns.
And so outside of those windows, your class would feel sluggish.
They said you would feel somewhat underpowered.
And in terms of damage profiles, burst damage, if you do the same
amount of damage flat or if you do the same amount of damage,
burst, burst damage typically affords you more possibility.
Like you, you do your burst window, you do your damage.
If you get pushed off the boss outside of that window, it
doesn't hurt you as much as if you were trying to sustain
damage, But it's not what they want.
So they are taking the axe to many of these cooldowns and
adjusting the things so that you do more damage outside of your
windows. Now this is true for many
classes. We have seen this for the demon
hunters. The rather devourer demon
hunters are getting some adjustments there.
I already said elemental shamans, even if you weren't
like the most bursty, they have adjusted a number of classes all
the way through. In general, though, Lex, has
this been something that like your team has noticed or
complained about or is this sort of like, oh, I like it was just
gameplay for it at your with your team?
Sorry, I got really distracted 'cause I read the preset bonus
for the first time and I was trying to figure out whether or
not I ever cast the spell renew. So anyway, we'll talk about that
in a second because I'm confused, but that's OK.
That's it's definitely not saying we like talked about per
SE. Demon Hunter is always super
bursty. So like that's the only thing
that I really played enough to think deeply about it.
And I kind of just I get a little surprised when I learned
that other people don't just like press 2 buttons on repeat
until it's time to boom and then you boom and then you press 2
buttons on repeat. Have a good day.
So which I enjoy. So you know, I'm not, I have
nothing to complain about. I and I'm sure again, we'll talk
about this in a second. I honestly kind of wish that the
tear set was just like it makes your core rotation stronger.
I think that's fine in general, because what I'm, and again,
I'll complain about this in a second, but what I'm seeing in
in both of the set bonuses that I know anything about, is it it
it changes the way you play in ways that people don't often
play or there's I I'm really confused about this holy priest
set bonus. You guys.
I'm clearly not a good holy priest.
Because what the hell. But I and and it always feels a
little bad when you get like kind of strong armed into
spacking into something you don't want to spack into.
I feel this is apotheosis. I learned holy priest as a holy
word, serenity girly and to the fact that I'm now spacking into
apotheosis, which is not like I just don't I don't want to spack
into apotheosis. I don't OK, like whatever, I'll
do it right. You have to basically, but
whatever. So I think the when the
personally, I feel like when the the set forces you into a a
certain talent tree, that can be a little annoying.
And I think that often is what they do, which maybe means it's
the point. Maybe that's what they want if
they want to be affecting the rotation, but I think it's
silly. Yeah, definitely.
They do want the set bonuses to be affecting rotation to make
you consider things that you maybe you hadn't before.
One of the goals for the set bonuses themselves were was
specifically that they didn't want to reintroduce burst back
in after them trying to reduce the burst in this season.
So a lot of these set bonuses you'll see will be after your
cooldown expires, you'll get a bonus or things that will adjust
like base level abilities that aren't part of the big button
that you'll you'll press so that you'll they're again putting
that damage outside of the cooldown windows.
Now, Sean, going over to you, tank bonuses are a different
thing, but tank rotation I don't think has been really that
bursty. So I'm going to lean on, I guess
the your experience with your team and with your mage.
What do you think about burst versus not burst?
That's a great question and I I think my answers probably going
to be unpopular with a lot of people, but I believe it to be
true in much the same way that I believe a lot of these changes
are designed to make the game more accessible.
So right now, if you have a class that is heavily reliant on
its burst window, elemental shaman, unholy death night, they
look great when they're in that window and they have the full
time to do the rotation before the mobs die.
And they do. There's the proper amount of
mobs pulled for that rotation. Or if it's overrated, it's a
single boss and they execute that rotation correctly.
If any of those four things are missing, you mess up your
rotation, you're dumpstered. It's basically a you, you, you,
you might as well write it off. You're in the, you're in the
dumpster. If the pack is dying when your
cooldowns come up, like the tanks not pulling around your
specific cooldowns, that's a problem.
And if the enemies die ahead of time, that's a problem.
By removing the the emphasis on DPS hitting the cooling windows,
I believe yes, it does make those moments outside of those
windows feel better for classes. Elemental Shaman.
I play with an elemental shaman every single day.
He literally does less damage than I do if he's not in
ascendance like it is. It's not a joke, it's not a
meme. He does less than tank damage
when he's not in his cooldown window.
In his cooldown windows he's a golden lightning God, but with
but without it he's not by so but by eliminating that.
So classes like Frostmage. Frostmage doesn't really have
cooldowns. They essentially have buttons to
press every 30 seconds because of the Cdr they get from other
talents. That gives them a very flat
damage curve, which means a mistake isn't as big a deal.
Having a tank not pull around specific 2 minute cooldowns or
minute and a half cooldowns isn't as big a deal because they
always have buttons to press. This change will be good for
those players who a don't perfectly execute a rotation
because now it'll be less punishing on them when they do.
People who pug into groups and don't always know what packs the
tank is going to pull and when, which is anybody who pugs.
And I think it'll be it'll overall make the, the mythic
plus, like the LFG mythic plus world more accessible in an
easier time and people will succeed in more keys because
there will be less swings for failure based on any of those
factors. So I, I think ultimately it's a
good thing. Now you're going to have people
say this is awful. Where's my skill expression?
I want those big damage numbers. I can play well, my tank pulls
around this, and for those individuals it might feel worse,
but this is better for the health of the game overall
because I would argue to say 95% of the population isn't properly
executing their rotation inside their cooldowns every time they
press those buttons. I would say 100% of the
population don't hit everything right 100% of the time.
But like I playing as an elemental shaman, whatever dumps
their tear you want to put me into Like you will have those
big burst windows which are three minutes without without a
talent. You have the talent so that you
get that 2 minute burst and caused one spec that like more
that worked better with that cooldown run hero talent that
worked better with that cooldown to basically dominate the other
one that didn't quite work with that as well.
That shift. Maybe we see the return of
Farseer. That would allow some people who
like Farseer versus versus the Stormbringer to like get back
into elemental. But also it means that like some
of the weird complexities go away.
Pulling Maelstrom for the next pole so that you get to use your
spenders early so that you can get your rotation moving is a
big thing because like without your ascendants, you are very
dry resource dry for for certain pools.
Being able to like, like you said, not have to worry about
like, oh geez, I guess I have to be garbage for this pack because
the big pool is coming up is is a big thing and like when to
start saving your cooldowns, when to start pulling your mana.
Yeah, those are those are skill expression stuff.
But those things still exist even when your cooldown isn't
90% of your damage. If it's just like a 30% boost
and they shift, they shift certain things so that you don't
have to lot line up everything into that one window.
Like then you can make a decision like, hey, is it better
to like split this up a bit? Like, as it stands right now, it
is live for 15 seconds every two minutes and then hope that Sean
doesn't bitch about your interrupts in the meantime.
That's it. That's right.
You'd think you would at least interrupt in that 2 minutes and
45 seconds when you're doing no damage, no?
No like I got a pool mails from for the next.
Poor Lex over here having to heal through all these bolt
casts. But it's OK because my taste is
going to increase a little. My worst fat.
But yeah, there are of course these tear sets that were also
introduced. Again, like I said before, the
tear sets are set up in a way so that they are not putting that
burst damage back into into cool downs.
They are things that will say that like after you use a cool
down, you will get a buff that will help you you outside of
that cooldown, maybe get you back into that cooldown.
We've seen things like this before Enhancement Shaw back at
the Galaggio, the liberation of undermine had a had one that it
extended or overlapped your your cool down to make you get a
generally flat damage profile. But you would have spiked
because certain times you get more overlaps, you'd get those
bursts and you have to react to those windows.
So there's many different ways that they can they go about
this. Of course, some of this might be
a little hard for people who don't have the exact knowledge
of like what their spec does. But of course, Bill guide
writers will come out and tell you how this all works going
from our current tier into our into the next tier.
How are you guys feeling in terms of like your spec for, I
guess protection warrior Sean, how are you feeling?
I feel pretty good. I mean, part warrior is is
steady, right? It's, it's, it, it require an
act of God, I think for prot Warrior not to feel the way prot
warrior has felt since like, I don't know, BFA.
It just feels steady. It's, there's not many changes
coming for prot Warrior. We might play Colossus instead
of mountain thing. That's the biggest change.
So we're all gonna be 5% bigger. But yeah, it feels pretty good.
The set bonuses for, for, I mean, I looked at a few of the
tanks, the ones that I know well, prot warrior, prot
Paladin, guardian Druid, and they're not like super
impactful. They're not changing my rotation
like Prot warriors. Revenges increases the damage of
shield slam. Well I'm already shield slamming
on cooldown so it's not like it's increasing a button I was
rarely pressing. Like I literally spam shield
slam so their set bonuses aren't as impactful.
They don't really change the rotation in any way.
Even guardian druid it's you know thrash can spawn thorns.
Well I'm already thrashing. The only change there is mango
can proc extra damage. So now I might press mango as
opposed to never pressing it. Well, I definitely will because
they're changing lunar beam anyway.
Yeah, it feels, they feel fine. Thanks.
I think tanks it's been it's been a while since tanks have
had like a big major rework and I'm OK with it.
I like comfy. We are an expansion away from
when they were like shifting threat issues again, going right
back to liberation of undermine. There were some threat issues
there. Do you find that, like with this
damage focus instead of survivability focus buffs, that
they're doing that the threat's going to be fine?
Do you feel like threat was going to be fine anyways?
I think it was the 90% increase threat modifier they gave us
that. Probably the threat was going to
be fine anyways. Yeah, yeah, I am glad.
Now don't get me wrong, I 100% Fasdev if you're listening 100%
of the time. Every tank that I know, every
single tank that I know. If our tier sets are proc based
things, we will always want that to be damaged.
No tank that is worth their weight in salt wants unreliable
RNG based defensive procs. We want to be able to plan our
defensives, control our defensives, and know when we
have defensives. A random proc of shield wall
might as well be like, it could happen at the end of a path like
those are so awful. So that it's a, it has been a
switch over to to damage procs and damage things.
And that's great. And that's, I think all tanks
would prefer that. If obviously there's going to be
a tank who's going to listen to this and be like, no, I like
random shield wall procs 'cause I think they're great.
That tank's probably a bad tank. So if you're writing that, I
just want you to know I think you're probably a bad tank, but
that's OK. You could be bad tanks.
I'm a bad DPS. So what happens?
OK. All right.
Lex, you were talking about some confusion with your tier set, so
maybe we go a little bit more into the weeds with this.
What? What exactly is this the tier
bonuses that you're getting? So for wholly, the two set bonus
is every target, like every person affected by my renew is
going to increase my haste by 2% up to 6%.
And the four set bonus is renew healing is going to be increased
by 10% and lights resurgence now has a 100% chance to leave a
renew on the first target. Prayer of bending heels.
I'm feeling very validated because when I was supposed to
be paying attention to this podcast, I was instead reading
forum comments and everyone. Agrees.
This makes no. Sense first of all, haste is the
like bottom of our staff priority, like for a holy
priest, almost all of our like our cooldowns come up real fast,
right? I mean then, then you know, like
there's my general vibe, right is the word.
We're essentially either like instant cast, like our flash
heel. We have the two.
I think that's I know the picture, the little blue hand,
the little blue hand. We have two stacks of those and
that comes up relatively quick, I guess, I guess, yeah, that
could be renewing faster. That would be sick.
But other than that, it's like we also have like our two-minute
cool downs, right? So yeah, if you cut that down
hot, but by and large, none of us care about haste.
Haste is our dump stat. So that doesn't really help.
Also, renew is not a spell we cast, right?
It's a, it's a thing that we, it's, it's going with our holy
word. It's going with other things,
which is why I got really confused when I read this
because I legitimately thought like, I, I, I knew that renew
would sometimes show up on people, but like, I don't really
know why, right? It's just, it's, oh, and
suddenly it's a little green. Cool.
Sick. So this isn't really a thing.
I mean, yeah, I guess that maybe would make me pay more attention
to the spells that make me cast renew.
But like, they're also assuming I'm remembering which spell is
which. Yeah, the, the spell that puts
the renew on people is one of the two little blue hands.
That's name I can't remember. So like I'm using those
essentially I'm cool down anyway, right?
Like I'm at least making sure I'm not over capping it.
So this doesn't really feel like much and what it's giving
doesn't really benefit me. And I mean, also, I guess I
don't really feel like like as a holy priest overall, healing
through renew isn't really helpful because if I'm going to
be healing people, I'm just gonna be like bumping them up,
right? Like that's kind of how holy
priest goes. We're not a, you know, put your
hots on people and call it a day, right?
If I see someone injured, I'm going to make them uninjured.
That it's my job. So I.
I, I just want to, I want to jump in a bit.
So some of the, some of the changes, especially with like
yours and with elemental shamans, I'm not going to give
the details of that. Some of them you can't analyze
exactly based on where we are right now because they are
adjusting mob damage and player health in the next tier to
further adjust things so that they're not doing spike damage
and that you're you're going to have to heal to keep to top
people off. If you're not yo yoing in
somebody's health right back to full in a single button press, a
short burst window of of haste to allow you to do that triage
faster can be useful in that moment.
Healers in general typically don't like specking haste.
You don't want to be casting your spells faster.
Normally you want your heels to be more potent when you do cast
them, but in a period of the damage, being able to like get a
short window of haste so that you can hit the people the heels
faster and that your heart will take those people up faster can
be beneficial. It could I mean, I guess I'm
maybe I'm I'm not being honest with my own play style, because
if the two that are giving me renew are gonna be prayer of
mending, which is like I don't, I don't even look when I'm
casting prayer of mending, right, like that is just
wherever my mouse happens to be. When I get the Ding, the prayer
of mending is up. They get prayer of mending
right. It's gonna jump around,
especially in raids or like any time that like like it's gonna
jump around. It doesn't matter, right.
So I'm not paying any attention to that.
And holy word, Serenity Blue hand, is that OK?
That actually is a little bit more of a fairpoint, right?
If that's putting a little bit of renew on people and also
increasing my haste, that is closer to an emergency heel
since it is a pretty chunky heel.
So that is an argument I would buy.
I don't know that I love tying it to a thing that's like 2
steps removed from my actual, I guess one step removed from my
actual spells, right? Like again, we don't think about
renew. It's not like I'm like I'm
casting this and renew will go on them.
I had to like go back into my, you know, talent list to try to
figure out where renew even comes from, which maybe is kind
of the point. I mean, if they're saying if
they're saying they want us to be interacting with them more,
like maybe what they want is they want me to think about
renew a little bit stronger. I don't want to, but I mean,
whatever. I'd already just whined about
the fact in they're making havoc demon hunters back into essence
break. So, like, I love whining.
Clearly. Yeah, I'm being kind of a
negative Nancy. I'm hearing that in my voice now
that I, now that I listen, I, I, I mean, honestly, I don't think
it's going to change my holy priest play style, right?
I, I, I think mostly it's just, I don't get it.
I don't understand why that's what they chose to do.
And so I'm being kind of a jerk about it.
If I'm gonna be a little a little mean, I do wanna make a,
a, a silly little joke that it's funny that they're saying they
don't want it to be bursty. And then Havoc, they were like,
So what we're gonna give you is the burst damage.
That's gonna be bigger, right? You're gonna burst so much
harder. You can burst a little longer,
sick, Which I'm being, I'm being kind of mean because like, yeah,
like I just said that Havoc is a really burst heavy speck.
And I think that it's fair for us to have some burst heavy
specks. I think it's super valid.
I think what else are you gonna buff, right?
And Havoc, you're gonna buff the burst.
We are a burst class sick. We love it.
We're all. What?
We could buff glide. You could if you buff vengeful
retreat and you made everyone I take it back.
They should force you to stack into things and they should
force everyone to stack into an inertia build and they should
make it so that you get so much better when you do your little
vengeful retreat and then fell rush back in.
That is the reason I love havoc Demon Hunter and I will do it.
I do it in mythic plus. I don't care.
I do not care how stressed my tank is.
I don't care that I make my tanks pull the entire pack.
It's so fun I I miss havoc A. Little I I also I also kinda
like your priest set bonus because it has a little bit of
versatility. Like yes, when you're doing that
healing, the haste may not be the top thing on your mind and
putting that renew is something that you have to look at, but
that haste can then turn into like faster smites.
You're like, OK, let me make sure that I'm keeping like the
the renews on three people. And then I'm just going to like
smite, smite, smite, smite, smite.
OK crap, I got to go back to healing so that like.
Taste like. It's only 6%, it's 2% per renew
and then when you have 3 renews it caps out at the 6% paste
bonus that you're getting. So it's not I.
Don't think anybody's even going to feel that difference in
casts. I don't that takes a 2 second
cast to a 1.9 second cast. I guess Basically, yeah.
It's. Like if you catch somebody about
to drop, you'll, you'll be thankful for it, right?
I feel like, so I mean just pretty specifically, if
somebody's in danger like that, you have like 100 instant cast
spells that you would send before you would think of
casting something hard casting, right?
What? Anyways, I don't know.
Priests all. About does prepares our self
heal I mean yeah we have like our guardian spirit we do like.
What is it? Power Word.
Serenity. Instant Cast.
It's instant cast. Yeah, we we have very few sit
and casts. And don't you get free casts of
flash flash heal? Isn't it instant cast of flash
heal? I.
Just feel like. Yeah, I, I, this is, again, I'm
just kind of like scrolling on the forms.
This is very unpopular. I well, and the other thing is
Manny's like, oh, well, you could like, you know, gain this
system and like, here's what I need to haste.
But both of the spells put renew on people are just like, they're
just part of my core rotation, right?
Like, I, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna keep my prayer of
ending up. I'm gonna keep my holy word
serenity uncapped. I'm I I'm not gonna like I I I
don't know. I again, I really just kind of
think it's nothing right? Like I'm being a little bit like
mean about it. I don't, I don't think it's, I
mean. Then like that, that would be a
complaint about the numbers itself.
I don't think that they want you to get like 10% per person so
that you're like constantly powered and fused with 30%
running. Clearly that's not what they
want, so it's got to be downwards from there. 6% seems
like a small general boost to your throughput, both healing
and damage, but like it could go up from there.
Like do you do you like if it was 3% per then that caps at 99
Percent is like more than half a A.
Or just make it crit something they want.
Oh yeah man, give me credit. Love that.
I will also say, again, comparing the two that I know,
Havoc is getting a 12% increase damage of Blade Dance, Chaos
Strike and Essence Break, which are like the core spells, like
I'm not tripping out Blade Dance and Chaos Strike.
Those are just the two buttons you press, right?
So they're just getting essentially a flat 12% buff and
essence Brake increases like it is 2 seconds longer.
Essence Brake is like the entrance entrance to our big
burst damage. So we have two seconds longer of
burst damage. We have 25% increase initial
strike damage on top of that 12%.
Like I guess it just actually comparing these two, it also
just kind of feels sort of weak like the best I guess that is my
renew healing is increased by 10% and renew healing is just
like carry over healing. Like that's not really a like
can help me in emergencies. You've got a thing that if you
maintain it, you have a flat 6% buff the entirety of the time
versus particular things that give you windows of damage,
right. So the magnitude of a flat buff
versus like that window is obviously going to be different,
like elemental shamans getting 25% to its spenders.
So like the Earth shock, the earthquake, the elemental blast,
25% extra damage on your two set bonus, which is higher than a
6%. But it's only when I'm playing
those spenders. There's other complications,
aftershocks sort of stuff that that means that number is
different. But like, yeah, you're going to
see things that are particular windows of time versus like a
flat maintenance being different.
Maybe you just don't like the flat maintenance, 'cause then
it's like, yeah, I'm never gonna feel bad.
Yeah, well, I I would argue the play dance and chaos striker
flat maintenance, but no, I I hear what you're saying yeah, I
mean like again, I just don't to be honest, though like if you
like we're like, hey, we're actually doing a pop quiz.
What's your tier set bonus? This tier could not tell you to
save my damn life. So like, you know, I am I really
going to care about am I going to care about this in an hour?
No, right. Like it's, it's not that big of
a deal. I I don't think it's great, but
I haven't run the numbers right. I don't know how it actually
stems out. It's not going to change whether
or not I choose to play holy priest or what, like, you know,
whatever. I'm looking at our we have a Are
you holy? I know you're just like I was
trying to find, I was checking to see if it was if our priest
was playing holy to see what percentage of her heels were
renew, but she's playing discipline.
Somebody said in the forums who I'm just going to trust purely,
it's about 5 to 8% of our output.
OK. To be fair also well, I know we
just got a buff. I've been told holy is weak
right now. I just play whatever I want.
I don't play with enough people to like be able to cross
compare. I'm assuming that the reason
that I tend to be bottom of my healing meters is because
everyone else has been doing it for a lot longer than me in a
better gear. Could possible that it's you
know, like so I my understanding is that holy kind of is hurting
for help right now and but again, we did just get buffed or
we are getting buffed. I don't know we do is where
there's buffs coming or have occurred already.
The holy priest buffs will be in existence now or potentially
some other time, so who know? Again, I really like this is the
longest I've ever thought about any tier set bonus in my life,
so I'm nitpicking with numbers that I don't really know how to
like, you know, calculate out long term.
All right. Well sort of an aside, but a
complication is something we were talking about last week.
Care set bonuses in season 1 where something that people went
super fast to get their four set.
They would get a drop hopefully from the from the first week in
the raid. They would pull pull one from
their vault. People would go into LFR, they
would get their AOTC or Keystone Master to get a charge and they
would get their four set ASAP. But then we started talking
about make sure you grab your bonus rolls and stuff.
There's going to be again that math thing where it's like when
there always is when you break your, your tear set.
Is your, is it OK to go 2 and two or do you want to hold off
to get the four set? There's also going to be now a
math of how much do you delay milking those bonus rolls if the
tear set drops and tear sets this tear wow tear sets in 12.1
are going to be operating differently than they have in
the past. When you get the token, you'll
get a tier set with its bone, with its bonuses and so forth,
and the specific secondary stats.
If you roll a tertiary stat, so be it, but if you take a piece
of gear and put it in the catalyst, the tier set will
retain the secondary stats of the piece that you turned into
into the tear. So now there might be people who
are looking for particular pieces from that are off tear
pieces from like mythic plus or other things, or from other
bosses within the same raid. But if it gets from the boss in
the raid, I don't think you can catalyze it right?
You can catalyze, yeah, you can catalyze a ton of stuff.
Like I think you can catalyze robots drops, yes.
You can catalyze delve stuff. Yeah, you can.
You 100% catalyze from RAID. OK, the raid one was the the
only thing I was thinking about. But anyways, so there might be a
thing where we've now got a longer tail on people getting
their tears set where they take their token, they get their
token to like yeah, I'm happy for that.
Or it comes in the in the great vault.
But then there is a actual best in slot item that is only best
in slot when you take it, when you get it and then catalyze it.
So we might have a longer tail on itemization for tear sets.
Is this something that like you would be happy about or sad
about John? I don't understand the question.
Am I happy or sad about the stats not changing when I
catalyst? Stats.
The stats changing Yo you're happy about this change?
Yeah. So it's like 5050, right?
So I'm happy that if I have a piece that's good.
So let's say for example, I had the plate gloves from Seat of
the Travert that have the cantrip of extra shadow damage
on them and I needed a piece for tear.
I could catalyze those. They would keep their haze 1st
and I would keep my cantrip and that's nice.
That feels good. This will allow you to farm
pieces out of mythic plus or the vault or through bonus rules
that have a stat optimization that is more favorable to you so
that you can then catalyze them and use them.
And this doesn't work just for tier pieces.
This is bracers, boots, belt, cloak, all of that.
So the only problem is the way that it works now is I can
correct stats in a bad piece. So let's say I get a a chess
piece that's versatility of mastery.
But my tier set chest is haste mastery and that's a better
combo for me. I can convert it to haste
mastery. So I lose the ability to correct
poorly stated items, but I gain the ability to properly stat my
tier sets. And as we know, different specs
in different specs of each class want different stat priorities.
Fury warriors, I think it's mastery haste, whereas arms and
prot are crit haste. So now you're not locked into
one set of stats for tier set. You can customize it.
So I think that's a positive. But I do think losing the
ability to correct bad stats on an item is is kind of a bummer,
but there's one away the other. I think probably it makes it
better because now if you play multiple specs, you have that
option to do it. I don't think it's slow gearing.
I think if anything, that tier set acquisition is going to be
faster because the catalyst charges that you get from doing
content this season are starting to drop from day one next
season. So you don't have to complete
your four set before you can start earning those catalyst
charges. The achievement still exists
that when you complete your four set, but it doesn't unlock the
ability for me to drop. It increases the frequency of
them dropping. So if you're doing a lot of
content, which a lot of sweaty neck beards are at the beginning
of the season, you're going to be able to get 4 piece probably
in that first week anyway. So if you're if you're somebody
who was getting it in week 1 or Week 2 before, you might be able
to get it faster this time around.
Yeah. So I think it's, I mean, the
changes it's got a positive and a negative to it.
I don't feel either way about it because I really only play prod.
So I don't it'll just be nice to know that I can if let's say the
the shoulders are, you know, crit mastery and I don't really
care for that. I will just be able to find
better shoulders somewhere and and convert those.
So I think it's, I think it's, yeah, it's whatever.
All right, Lex, you and your team are going to be concerned
about this or just moving on with your lives.
I think just moving on with our lives, I think everyone is
already either like the type of pusher who's doing like high
level stat priorities or someone like me who's like number big,
great. OK, we're going to go with that.
So you know, like it's not going to fundamentally it it might
change things a little bit for me if I'm paying a little bit
more attention to what I'm catalyzing, but realistically
I'm going to be chasing four piece and whatever got to be 4
piece. What I'll do.
Although actually that is a very interesting that that is
probably going to change the calculus of what I do catalyze.
So yeah, and I I think it could potentially I don't think it's
going to fundamentally change my mindset on anything too much.
I think it's, I think it, it might mean the gearing is a
little bit more relevant long term, which I know is one of the
bigger fears that my, like I've, I've heard some people say about
the bonus rules is that it makes the like gear that's being
dropped less meaningful. But if you are doing a little
bit more stat priority chasing, maybe that'll make it a little
bit more meaningful to get random loot.
But by and large, I don't I, I, I, I think it's an interesting
choice. I'd love to have been in the
room when they were making that decision because again, I'm I'm
just like not 100% for why that was the call they made.
But I don't think it's like a bad call, right?
I'm not like unhappy that that's what they ended up deciding to
do. I don't have strong feelings
about it either way. Are you worried about it, Manny?
I think that like, as Sean said, we're getting the catalyst
charges immediately from stuff. So like it.
I've never felt lacking for catalyst charges.
There's been times where I've been like, oh, I better put
something on because I've hit the cap.
It's to be almost the opposite way.
I just feel like I like the chase of particular gear.
I, I feel like the, the biggest issue I'm going to have is going
to be the something will drop in the vault that's got the exact
right stats and then going back to that bonus rule situation
where it's like. Oh, I wish I could freeze this
or am I going to like delay sort of thing?
I think it's just it's going to be that math that I was
complaining about last week, but that's that's about it.
Moving on from the gear and gearing woes, we've got
something that is new integration.
Discord is going to have an integration where you can have a
particular Discord channel that will be integrated with your
Guild chat if your Guild leaders decide that they're going to do
that. So this is going to be.
It feels like Blizzard's always just a little bit late to the
perfect answer because like back in the day, they're like, yeah,
we're going to have these communities and it's going to
be, it's going to be fine and you won't need Discord.
And it was like, you're going to need Discord.
Everybody's using Discord. And now there's everybody
complaining about like ID verifications and blah, blah,
blah. And now maybe Discord's not
going to be the thing. And here comes my, I'll be like,
we're doing Discord integration, but ignoring all of that.
I'd love this. I there are times where it's
like, oh, something's happening or I'm like, maybe I'm in in
game, or maybe I'm not in game and being able to connect with
those people is I love it. So I'm really glad for this.
Much better than selfie Cam. Thank you, Blizzard.
Lex, what about you? Is this something that the
Timbermal Tavern might take advantage of?
Oh yeah, I think this could be incredible.
I think we, we, we are a very like a Guild that is, is happy
to do things as people want to do things, but we're also all,
you know, busy. And so we're rarely like sitting
on the game doing content waiting for people to join a
mythic plus, right. So there's a lot of like like
switching between like, oh, I got to go message and discord
and then like while I'm saying, oh, we need another DPS, someone
else comes in and I'm like, oh, wait, like it just, it's not
that big of a deal, but it's a lot of coordination.
And so I think if we could make it so everyone is just chatting
in one channel and it, you know, you don't have to be online to
see that Channel. And you also so don't have to be
doing something off the game. Like, you know, often one person
will be the one who's coordinating in the Discord and
like trying to feed that back to the people who are doing stuff
and guilt chat. And I, yeah, I think it's a big
win. I do remember when they
introduced communities and we were like, oh, like we were so
excited about that. Maybe it was like me and like
three other people. We were like, yeah, we're
totally going to make communities happy.
And it happened. That's going to be so great.
It's going to be such a great way to connect.
So, you know, rest in peace to communities.
But yeah, no, I'm, I, I think this is going to be really good
for us. Go Blizzard.
Yeah, big positive, big positive.
It's it's time, right, We need it, It's time.
It's we're already just guilds already shifted to discord.
The Guild chat is essentially non existent in most places.
So any way to to tie that together is is a win.
Yeah, I do think it is odd that they didn't tie it to
communities because like there are definitely communities that
I think this would be great in. Secret finders.
If they're like in game doing something and they're like, oh,
and it goes right into their discord, that'd be awesome.
Though you would need to be in a Guild instead of a community
like a. That seems odd.
There are different key find key finding groups like the many
that we've talked about before. Similar thing.
Would be great to have those communities linked with their
discord. So the fact that it isn't linked
with community, she feels like a strange gap there.
Oh, this does also have the weird issue where it's like
administrator and GM LED would you mean, I guess how else would
you do it, right? But I can't imagine a world
where like there's bad blood and a Guild master gets removed or
like the one person has administrator, one person has
Guild lead, one of the two people you know, gets kicked out
of the Guild. And then all of a sudden there's
a like huge like, Oh, I gotta like message this person hates
me to try to figure out to like hand this over, which almost
certainly wouldn't happen. And that is much more of a like
as an XRP or like that's the type of drama that we would have
been having much love to to my RP friends.
So I I can imagine drama coming up, but like, also, what else do
you do? Right, Like you can't just make
it so that the Guild makes its own discord channel or
something. Like there's always ways that
people can cause low masses. I honestly I think that mutual
consent from Guild leader or officer that has permissions
with admin and or mod that has permissions on discord to make
it link but any party on either side can disconnect it soon as
it's like we want out breaks the link and that's it.
That way you can't be forced to continue a link that one side
that has the controls doesn't want.
But yeah, John, you said this is good all around, so I'm happy,
happy for that. Any thoughts of what else they
could do in terms of socials? I feel like, wow, sort of like
doing everything that really needs to do.
This is great, but I hadn't even thought of it.
I can't even think of what else I would want them to do.
Guild hulls I guess would make things social for the people
that are in the housing but yeah, I don't know Warcraft I I
I think that the decline in the quality of the Warcraft
community as a whole is strongly tied to like in the way we treat
each other the way we talk about each other.
You know the way we don't allow parents to do our mythic plus
keys because people have abducted my family and if we
don't time the 17, they're going to kill them like it's or
whatever reason anyway that that went.
A little far, but OK. Yeah, but I, I tie, I tie that
directly to the failure of the American family.
No, I, I tie it directly to the the breakdown in guilts and how
like predominant guilds were early on and it and it and it
necessarily didn't make the game a better spot because there's
lots of bad actors at that time too.
But as we moved away from that, as people were able to become
more anonymous in game like they are online, a lot of that
negativity crept into our LFGS, crept into our pugs, crept into
the way we treat each other. And, and even now in some Guild,
you're in a Guild and it's like, you know, you're sending
whispers back and forth with your buddy talking about how
shitty your tanks are. Like, Oh my God, these guys, We
would have killed this already if our tanks weren't such dog
shit. And I, I think the breakdown of
the Guild and, and of the game as a social construct has led to
that. So I hope Discord bring some of
that back. But I do think that finding a
way to make guilds matter again, finding a way to drive more
people to be part of A to join a community and be part of a
community and feel like they belong somewhere can only be
beneficial for the game. So hopefully discord helps.
The discord helps, but I also desperately hope it's not the
only step downside. I'm also not a dev and I have no
idea how to fix this. I'm neither a dev nor a
psychologist nor a what's the people that study people.
Sociologist. You know, is it anthropologist?
What's the one that like studies, like societies?
Sociologist. Or anthropologist.
OK, yeah, I'm not that either gang surprise.
So I don't know what the answer is other than blocking everyone
who's awful, which probably also is not helpful.
Yeah, I think there's a, a really tragic, sort of like self
fulfilling prophecy to where we have such a like reputation of
like World of Warcraft's kind of assholes.
And so people A, feel like they can be more assholes in World of
Warcraft and B, like, you know, people who are a little more
sensitive and a little more gentle won't even start playing
until the game gets more and more filled with assholes.
And like, you know, to be fair, we all have stories of bad
experiences, but overwhelmingly, right.
I've been fine. I've met nice people and had
good experiences and I, I love World of Warcraft and part of
that, like I will say many times over that an MMO is just a
community, right? That, that overwhelmingly what
makes an MMO and MMO and, and worth playing are the people in
it. That's why so many people start
and they're like, this is going to be the Wow killer.
And then it doesn't. And it's, it's usually not
because the gameplay sucks. It usually is not because the
story sucks. It's usually they just don't
have enough people to make it worth continuing.
And so people don't, and they go back to the biggest communities
they can find for the Final Fantasy in World of Warcraft.
Yeah, I mean, I think that you're both right.
There is, there is something about the autumnization, the
anonymity, the fact that people become far more replaceable when
you can just jump back into an LFGQ instead of form the group
and March out to the the stone both ways uphill or whatever
that they want to say. But bringing community together
I hopefully will be a good thing.
We will see soon, see. With that said though, if you
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Until next time though guys, may all your hit be crits.