World of Warcraft: Legion (7.3.5 edition)

Hard to say at this point, there's not a whole lot to the alpha yet except for the intro to a few legendary weapon quests and the demon hunter starting zone.

The new PvP stuff they are talking about looks very interesting to me. If I wasn't actively PvPing when an expansion started I hated the grind necessary to catch up while being destroyed by everyone. WoD made it a lot quicker, but it still wasn't much fun. The feeling of leveling Call of Duty style with prestige and all actually makes me pretty interested in an area of the game I never really cared for much.

I've came back to the game recently from a long time away and finally got flying last night, I am actually going to level all my alts now as flying makes things so much more fun/easy/faster.

I agree. I'm interested to see if the changes are enough to make me enjoy PvP. I've usually enjoyed PvP in SWtoR, but there's a lot less gear grind there, and it sounds like WoW is heading that way. The one other major difference is that SWtoR doesn't really have any cc that lasts for more than a few seconds and there's a built in mechanism that eventually makes you invulnerable to cc for a short time after you get hit a few times. It helps you keep playing rather than sitting there staring at your screen as your health plummets. I noticed one PvP talent that nullified one cc longer than 5 sec every 1.5 min, and my response was "why do you have cc that lasts that long to begin with?". IMO, any loss of control that happens frequently or lasts for too long just kills fun, PvP or not (tanking is no fun when there are two or three mobs that continuously cause disorientation).

I'm not a big fan of PvP but the way they're changing it in Legion sounds intriguing and may bring me into the PvP fold a bit more, at least far enough to get some of the extra stuff like mounts and pets.

Looks like Blizzard locked down a release date: Aug. 30.

I've been playing WoW for what seems to be decades now. Plus I'm old. But there's a tiny part of me that saw the announcement and went squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Enix wrote:

Looks like Blizzard locked down a release date: Aug. 30.

I've been playing WoW for what seems to be decades now. Plus I'm old. But there's a tiny part of me that saw the announcement and went squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Just a tiny part? I'm fully hyped.

Demosthenes wrote:
Enix wrote:

Looks like Blizzard locked down a release date: Aug. 30.

I've been playing WoW for what seems to be decades now. Plus I'm old. But there's a tiny part of me that saw the announcement and went squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Just a tiny part? I'm fully hyped.

Yeah, I haven't been this excited for an expansion since Wrath. The refocus of the specs (and practically a reimplementation of so many) has my head spinning trying to figure out what I want to play. So many specs that have gotten bland for me look new and exciting.

robkid wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Enix wrote:

Looks like Blizzard locked down a release date: Aug. 30.

I've been playing WoW for what seems to be decades now. Plus I'm old. But there's a tiny part of me that saw the announcement and went squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Just a tiny part? I'm fully hyped.

Yeah, I haven't been this excited for an expansion since Wrath. The refocus of the specs (and practically a reimplementation of so many) has my head spinning trying to figure out what I want to play. So many specs that have gotten bland for me look new and exciting.

Yeah, I just went through and read some of the previews from last winter and the latest alpha build updates...survival hunters going melee? Disc priest damage output? Affiliction locks becoming more tanky/dot oriented? So many interesting changes.

And the pvp changes look amazing...separate pvp trees? Minimal gear impact in pvp? So awesome.

Well, they're technically hitting their "release before September" target.

If you haven't seen them yet, Preach (will post a link to his page later) has been doing some YouTube videos on all the various specs as they stand like RIGHT NOW in the Alpha. Most specs are past the iterations of trying to get the gameplay right now, and mostly are doing minor tweaks. So far two of my favorite specs have been done... Frost DK and Affliction Warlock and they both look cool as hell. Still trying to decide on what I'm going to do for my main for healing. Bouncing between Resto Druid and Shaman.

Sidenote, Preach is a pretty decent dude with an occasionally dirty mouth... so, as always, your mileage may vary based on whether or not you can stand him. I generally just stick to his class guide videos where he'll occasionally get crude, but mostly out of excitement for how badass something is. But he's also a guy who made a video on the whole Vanilla Servers/raid testing thread going complete meme straight into 4chan racism, homophobia/Something that kind of looks like Garrisons being in Legion and did so with wisdom and an attitude of stop freaking out and raging all the time so... he's basically one of the only guys on YouTube I've stuck with as a result (basically him, the Fat Boss guys for video guides, Nobbel for lore exploration, and occasionally Towlie when he has something to upload other than streamcaps).

Farscry wrote:

Well, they're technically hitting their "release before September" target. ;)

The note on the trialer/retail page actually says on or before September 20th, so they're getting a whole three weeks ahead of schedule.

robkid wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Enix wrote:

Looks like Blizzard locked down a release date: Aug. 30.

I've been playing WoW for what seems to be decades now. Plus I'm old. But there's a tiny part of me that saw the announcement and went squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Just a tiny part? I'm fully hyped.

Yeah, I haven't been this excited for an expansion since Wrath. The refocus of the specs (and practically a reimplementation of so many) has my head spinning trying to figure out what I want to play. So many specs that have gotten bland for me look new and exciting.

Don't get me wrong: I'm thrilled that my ret paladin will get a chance to take Ashbringer out for a spin.

Buuuuuut I've been on board this hype train before and I know where it goes. It's not a bad thing - it's just more of the same scenery.

To play Legion, I'm finally going to have to spring for a new PC, which will let me play some games that I skipped along the way. So maybe a good break will ramp up my excitement a bit.

Demosthenes wrote:

If you haven't seen them yet, Preach (will post a link to his page later) has been doing some YouTube videos on all the various specs as they stand like RIGHT NOW in the Alpha. Most specs are past the iterations of trying to get the gameplay right now, and mostly are doing minor tweaks. So far two of my favorite specs have been done... Frost DK and Affliction Warlock and they both look cool as hell. Still trying to decide on what I'm going to do for my main for healing. Bouncing between Resto Druid and Shaman.

Sidenote, Preach is a pretty decent dude with an occasionally dirty mouth... so, as always, your mileage may vary based on whether or not you can stand him. I generally just stick to his class guide videos where he'll occasionally get crude, but mostly out of excitement for how badass something is. But he's also a guy who made a video on the whole Vanilla Servers/raid testing thread going complete meme straight into 4chan racism, homophobia/Something that kind of looks like Garrisons being in Legion and did so with wisdom and an attitude of stop freaking out and raging all the time so... he's basically one of the only guys on YouTube I've stuck with as a result (basically him, the Fat Boss guys for video guides, Nobbel for lore exploration, and occasionally Towlie when he has something to upload other than streamcaps).

Farscry wrote:

Well, they're technically hitting their "release before September" target. ;)

The note on the trialer/retail page actually says on or before September 20th, so they're getting a whole three weeks ahead of schedule. :lol:

I've been watching more of the BellularGaming and FinalBoss videos for spec overview. FinalBoss in particular has been rather thorough IMO. Somewhere he's got hours of his testing if you want the full detail, but 30 min per spec is about my limit right now.

I like Bell, but he's also been kind of half-heartedly cycling through the controversies lately too, which I'm just sick of hearing about. I kind of bounce back and forth on him depending on the day.

Final Boss, I dunno, I try, but they're getting like super in-depth with some numbers stuff too sometimes and Blizzard keeps saying "numbers aren't there yet, many haven't even had their first balance/tuning passes yet". They do occasionally have some interesting videos though. The Havoc Demon Hunter build that uses its mobility tools to do damage or buff damage is interesting though... and not something I would have thought of. Disengage out to get more Fury, spend that Fury, do a dash for some increased damage on a target at the same time and you've got quickly building Fury with an increased DPS window.

Just preordered and now my hard decision is whether to enjoy the leveling with my new Pandaren monk or just boost him to 100 so I can start accumulating gold and gear for Legion's kickoff.

Has Blizzard said when we'll get early access to Demon Hunter?

I'm very tempted to pre-order, but I have no idea what I'd use my 100 boost on.

EDIT: Nevermind, found it. 1-2 weeks before the expansion goes live.

I'm far enough removed from the min/max/whatever side of WoW since I no longer have a raiding-compatible schedule that I swear my eyes glaze over when I see posts or videos that dig into that stuff.

I'm moderately excited for Legion; frankly, I just enjoy playing around with exploring, seeing new content and playing around with whatever changes they make to the classes. I need to get around to finishing leveling my priest to 100 before the expansion drops; I'm playing around with a goblin warlock to hit 20 and unlock the fancy paladin hero for Hearthstone too.

But WoW is firmly on the backburner lately while I focus more on spending my gaming time on my backlog and key single-player new titles that I'm excited about like Dark Souls 3.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Has Blizzard said when we'll get early access to Demon Hunter?

I'm very tempted to pre-order, but I have no idea what I'd use my 100 boost on.

EDIT: Nevermind, found it. 1-2 weeks before the expansion goes live.

Will gnome hunters go live at the same time

I imagine gnome hunters will be live with the 7.0 patch. Whether that's the same date as the early access to Demon Hunter or slightly earlier, hard to say.

robkid wrote:

I imagine gnome hunters will be live with the 7.0 patch. Whether that's the same date as the early access to Demon Hunter or slightly earlier, hard to say.

Confirmed on Gnome Hunters... they'll be available with the pre-patch.

Still no certain word on Demon Hunters, though it does sound like it's been confirmed that Demon Hunters can be taken out into the world after the intro in the early access. What would be worth doing is a question, seeing as how their starting quest line starts at 640 gear and ramps up pretty quick from there with upgrades going through the intro, but they'll be available, I guess, if you want to get in on killing all the demons in HFC with a Demon Hunter.

I'm still eager to play the new content, but man, I wish I had a schedule that allowed for consistent availability because I miss raiding with the crew.

Edit: just have that on the brain with thinking about my problems with MP gaming in general lately (posted in the "things you loathe in games" thread.

So, if you're interested, keep an eye on your inbox. Apparently Beta invites will start going out Tuesday around 2PMish Pacific time.

Legion Beta notes for the curious.

Direct link to class changes is here.

There are times where I'm thinking some of the WoW Devs have just lost the plot line all together with regards to QoL changes.

New to Legion, which they were advertising with originally, talent swaps no longer cost you tomes. You can switch freely.

By the way... your dual specialization system is going away and you have to pay to switch specs... wait what?

As of today, they've announced that that payment is going away (which... never made sense in the first place. if I'm standing out in the wild, who am I giving this 32 gold to?)... and now talents cannot be freely switched, and will, in fact, be MORE restrictive than they were previously. You have to either go to a rested area (inn/capital/Class Order Hall) or an Inscriptionist can drop an item for everyone in the raid to switch talents as needed.

So... you've redesigned some classes to rely on talent switching for the switches from AOE packs/fights to single target fights (looking at Ret Paladin for a huge example)... then make that talent switch impossible without a larger cost to the player. So you have to make the choice to gimp yourself on one or the other... and if you're doing a PUG and everyone made the same choice... just... bleh.

I imagine, with 3 months left, this will not last half as long as the gold given to myself to change specializations... but I have to wonder who at Blizzard thought this was a good idea. It's pretty clear, from the raid testing that's already been done and the instances open that this will be mandatory for raiding and dungeon runs. Too many different types of fights in a single encounter and you're never going to get folks who are like "oh, ok, I'll just suck for all the fights to make this fight easier".

So many awesome ideas for gameplay, questing, and dungeons/raids... and then they toss this in "so that class choices feel weighty". This doesn't feel weighty, it feels completely arbitrary and stupid.

Demosthenes wrote:

There are times where I'm thinking some of the WoW Devs have just lost the plot line all together with regards to QoL changes.

New to Legion, which they were advertising with originally, talent swaps no longer cost you tomes. You can switch freely.

By the way... your dual specialization system is going away and you have to pay to switch specs... wait what?

As of today, they've announced that that payment is going away (which... never made sense in the first place. if I'm standing out in the wild, who am I giving this 32 gold to?)... and now talents cannot be freely switched, and will, in fact, be MORE restrictive than they were previously. You have to either go to a rested area (inn/capital/Class Order Hall) or an Inscriptionist can drop an item for everyone in the raid to switch talents as needed.

you have a link for this?

Initial post.

Follow-up.

For reference, here is the Ret Paladin Talent line-up for Legion as it stands today:
-Level 15, you have a hybrid AOE/Single Target talent, a Single Target talent, and an AOE talent.
-Level 30, you have a Single Target talent, a 2 target cleave talent, and an AOE talent.
-Level 60, two Single Targets and an AOE talent.
-Level 100, you have two kind of hybrid-y talents that could work for either maybe, and one clearly AOE talent.

The problem being, if you're ST in an AOE fight/large trash pack, you're going to suffer on DPS. If you're AOE in a single target fight, you're also going to be missing a decent chunk of DPS. That switch is something that NEEDS to happen for anyone who is trying to provide the best DPS they can encounter to encounter... and boss fights in the same instance consistently require that switching. The "new karazhan" (Blackrook Hold) has some truly monstrous trash packs that require good AOE to get everything down fast because just about everything is a threat in some way or another. But each of the bosses is fairly single target with occasionally some cleave.

Encounters are clearly not designed around two people not providing great DPS for a DPS race because they were AOE specced for the trash packs that will destroy you before hand. I just don't get this change. The tomes and "are you sure you want to respec" every time before were bad enough. This change just seems so... bizarre.

Ret traditionally has been a hybrid role. Rets can do a lot of stuff OK (single, multi, heals, mitigation, stuns, interrupts, sheep, etc.) but nothing exceptionally well. It's usually in the top half of damage, mostly because the burst can be pretty good.

For ret, a 2-1-whocares-1 or 2-none-none-2 build looks pretty good on single target. Anything that lets me throw in more Crusader Strikes is a good thing.

Maybe the AOE builds are more for leveling or PvP?

AOE builds are for AOE fights. If you're raiding at any level above LFR, it's in your best interest to properly spec for the fight.

Take blood DK: http://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calcula...

T1, 2, and 7 are survivability choices between getting more resources/healing with multiple targets or single targets.

T3, 4, 5, and 6 are all situational talents where it all depends on the boss mechanics.

I can easily see changing specs for every single fight as all DK specs.

I imagine, with 3 months left, this will not last half as long as the gold given to myself to change specializations... but I have to wonder who at Blizzard thought this was a good idea. It's pretty clear, from the raid testing that's already been done and the instances open that this will be mandatory for raiding and dungeon runs. Too many different types of fights in a single encounter and you're never going to get folks who are like "oh, ok, I'll just suck for all the fights to make this fight easier".

The guy who thought it was a good idea? The one with only inscription characters.

For Mythic+ 5-man dungeons, you can't swap anything, so that's not an issue.

For raiding... it's a big one, though.

cube wrote:

AOE builds are for AOE fights. If you're raiding at any level above LFR, it's in your best interest to properly spec for the fight.

Take blood DK: http://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calcula...

T1, 2, and 7 are survivability choices between getting more resources/healing with multiple targets or single targets.

T3, 4, 5, and 6 are all situational talents where it all depends on the boss mechanics.

I can easily see changing specs for every single fight as all DK specs.

I imagine, with 3 months left, this will not last half as long as the gold given to myself to change specializations... but I have to wonder who at Blizzard thought this was a good idea. It's pretty clear, from the raid testing that's already been done and the instances open that this will be mandatory for raiding and dungeon runs. Too many different types of fights in a single encounter and you're never going to get folks who are like "oh, ok, I'll just suck for all the fights to make this fight easier".

The guy who thought it was a good idea? The one with only inscription characters.

For Mythic+ 5-man dungeons, you can't swap anything, so that's not an issue.

For raiding... it's a big one, though.

Yup, that was exactly my thought. Preach's videos on the various specs since he's started running them through dungeon PUGs alone show exactly why this system will not work as it stands.

The inscription needs something to sell argument/reasoning seems especially weird to me though. They have a couple relics, as I remember it, along with the "make the boss easier" runes for consumables to sell. Toss in a couple of toys, the gambling cards again, still minor runes, and a few other items that currently escape me (I think they have trinkets again... which with no crafted item limits anymore, should still be worth SOMETHING to folks just starting out or gearing an alt)... like they don't NEED this. Is it handy? Sure, but very few professions have anything quite this necessary.

It does sound like anyone can use the item, though, so it's just going be yet another "get a stack of 200 at the beginning of the expac, don't care again".