World of Warcraft: Legion (7.3.5 edition)

doogiemac wrote:

As someone who was loathe to (and afraid to) raid a month or two ago, I can say with confidence that most LFR stuff is pretty fun and easy. My only bad experience has been Antorus.

That's good to hear. I haven't raided since Blackwing lair so it's been awhile. Now that I have kids, also much less time but I am giving it a shot. Thanks for the info everyone!

LFR raids tend to be glorified 20man dungeons in terms of difficulty, don't let the term raid scare you off. It usually takes longer 15-20m to get a group in the LFR for each raid wing than it does to actually complete the wing once you start. It is also very forgiving in terms of mechanics. Tanking them usually is the only role that requires some basic knowledge of what you might need to do and when.

For your Xavius quest that fight lasts 2-3m and usually has a short wait time as a DPS. Very easy at this point in the xpac.

The LFR stuff is a good way to casually see each wing and get more of the story firsthand with minimal time investment. On my hour lunch breaks I would usually be able to get 1-2 wings done of LFR as DPS.

My experience so far with every dungeon (heroic, legion, lich king, classic) and raid (all 2 of them) has gone this way:
tank hugs wall to bypass unnecessary trash
tank lunges into a pack and drags stragglers to another pack of enemies
dps + tank AoE's the crap out of everything
healers top off the tank but typically throw down AoE heals as needed
occasionally the healer has to top off a DPS that takes an unlucky hit or crit
repeat until boss
the boss is like holding onto a firehose or just an angry sponge
bosses knock you around or fear you but that is the extent of the frustration they cause
repeat the trash/boss cycle 4-5 times when the dungeon is cleared

Aside from invasion points and greater invasion points I've only nearly died once in a dungeon
Invasion points just cheat sometimes where melee DPS can't really do much to a boss
Nobody groups in IPs so my rogue is reliant on self heals that aren't enough to prevent 3-4 deaths from an invasion point boss (roll of the dice whether its the boss I don't die to or always die to)

TLDR: dungeons are a lot of fun and nothing to be scared of; raids felt like 3 teams collaborating on a bigger dungeon; invasion points can be rough as melee dps (you may have to deal with cheap mechanics)

edit: for reference, I have done about 20 LFD dungeons split between heroic and normal, and 2 or maybe 3 LFR raids

whispa wrote:

I got exalted with Nightborne and now see that I have to raid in order to keep unlocking the new race. How ridiculous that as a mostly solo player, I am forced to join a raid to continue a quest chain. I haven't raided in years and have no desire to join one but yet, here we are.

I did this exact quest two nights ago on my shaman healer (iLvl 880 or so) in LFR. It was super easy.

LFR queue took about 5-ish minutes. DPS is a little longer, obviously. Maybe 20-30 mins tops.

Xavius encounter was 5 mins of trash and 5 mins of boss. I threw down some healing rain and a few totems when I got bored. Otherwise there was barely anything to heal.

Seriously, new folks: Don't sweat the LFR encounters. Most folks are rolling through there for the fourth or fifth (or eighth or 10th) time. They either know the encounters intimately and/or outgear the hell out of them. I'm pretty nervous about new content and used to take copious notes, watch vids, etc. This time around, I jumped into LFR with no advance prep and it's been (mostly*) just fine.

The exception (as doogiemac noted) is the Antorus raids. I don't think there's any rep grind that sends you into those raids. And if you do them, you need to be Argus geared (910 or so; higher is better). I rolled through the first three wings without any problems. Argus himself, though, was brutal. Mechanics aren't hard - it's mostly a gear check and a check of whether you stand in stuff or not.

* Guarm, aka the second boss of Trial of Valor. By now, everyone's geared, so it's fine. Before, folks just stood in front of him as he charged. The encounter usually came down to me (healer), a tank and the 1-2 clued-in DPSers.

Yeah there is a boss/eite charm mechanic that I got bit by in one fight until about the fifth time. Thankfully I didn't die or kill anyone of my squad. But when the screen says "so and so is casting charming gaze" you just have to turn way and turn back after its cast. The only difficult part is recognizing the message among all the spell effect chaos filling your screen.

Blizzard has gotten a LOT better about telegraphing boss moves and abilities. They'll even put the occasional warning in the middle of the screen when something really critical happens. This isn't like the old days when Deadly Boss Mods was necessary.

So close now.
I'm roughly 600 from Army of Light exalted and about 1300 from Argussian Reach exalted.
I do feel so behind the times when I have been earning rep surrounded by Void Elf warriors, hunters and locks. (110 already jeez!)
Now that I have unlocked most of the heirlooms I need, I have been looking into transmog sets. Holy cow that is a gold sink and a half! A lot of the sets are gawdy, too busily detailed or dated. Sometimes I wonder what were we thinking in 2006 when we though that look was the ultimate coolness. On that note, the Hellfire Citadel stuff has the most looks I'm drawn too with the least duds.

The other thing of note is that the transmog gallery makes me want to roll gnomes (an more than likely goblins) of every class. With a few exceptions of sets that are just too dated, (by and large An Qiraj, yuck) even the most gawdy sets are so damned adorable on gnomes.

The same goes for male tauren and worgen and to a lesser extent the females of those races. Stuff that looks way too gimp, S&M on most of the races, is deliciously vicious on tauren and worgen.

Just wanted to pop back in and say thanks for the feedback on raiding. I queued up LFR and found on in less than 15 min. The entire thing took 20 min between waiting for raid group and actual boss kill for the quest. Nowhere near as bad as I thought and now I am interested in some other raids due to time and ease.

WTG, nice! I felt the exact same way. Looking for Dungeon is the same. It seems like it errs on the side of caution where it won't queue you for something your group won't be able to constantly chain pull. So if LFD defaults to random heroic, then you are more than ready for the heroics it cycles you through.

whispa wrote:

Just wanted to pop back in and say thanks for the feedback on raiding. I queued up LFR and found on in less than 15 min. The entire thing took 20 min between waiting for raid group and actual boss kill for the quest. Nowhere near as bad as I thought and now I am interested in some other raids due to time and ease.

LFR is really my favorite recent feature, being the filthy casual that I am. It lets me experience the raid content without having to deal with guild drama, and to be honest I've had a lot fewer toxic experiences in LFR than I've had in guild raiding or normal/heroic PUG raiding.

whispa wrote:

Just wanted to pop back in and say thanks for the feedback on raiding. I queued up LFR and found on in less than 15 min. The entire thing took 20 min between waiting for raid group and actual boss kill for the quest. Nowhere near as bad as I thought and now I am interested in some other raids due to time and ease.

Yay!

If Whispa can do it, the rest of y'all can, too.

The Argus raid, however, remains for the stout of heart and the deep of pockets. Those repair bills ain't cheap!

Tada! Lightforge and Void Elf unlocked. *pants* *nearly faints*
And... TBH it feels underwhelming. I think it may just be that it took so much time and herculean effort that the payoff just couldn't match the journey.
Don't get me wrong, I am loving my LF retribution paladin and I can't help but feel like the VE racial (damage doesn't interrupt casting) will pay off big time for mages, locks and priests.
It is a good thing though because I have been playing WoW pretty much to the exclusivity of all else. And now most of that urge is gone. I still have remnants because my almost 75 DK is fun in every spec. My longest time /played character, my 62 druid, has been rejuvenated. She got a bunch of levels recently from questing in revamped level scaled zones. (BTW even if the zone sales to 60, you can still get fast leveling to at least 63 or until the monster con green) My 50ish enhance shaman is on the cusp of fun. My 54 hunter is poised to over take my 60's druid.
I really hope they revisit the level scaling caps. It would be nice to have some or all of the 40-60 zones scale to 70 or at least 65. Outland is so dated (in style of questing, quests and location) and Howling Fjord seems much better than Borean tundra (which has moments of clarity but suffers from disarray) . But there is a clear disparity in how you level between Broken Isles and Outland or Northrend.

Enix wrote:
whispa wrote:

Just wanted to pop back in and say thanks for the feedback on raiding. I queued up LFR and found on in less than 15 min. The entire thing took 20 min between waiting for raid group and actual boss kill for the quest. Nowhere near as bad as I thought and now I am interested in some other raids due to time and ease.

Yay!

If Whispa can do it, the rest of y'all can, too.

The Argus raid, however, remains for the stout of heart and the deep of pockets. Those repair bills ain't cheap!

Yeah, Argus remains unconquered for me. I tried once again yesterday, but it became clear the group just couldn't get coordinated enough to take him down. Every other raid I've done in LFR has been between easy and "just challenging enough." Argus amps the difficulty up considerably by requiring tight coordination among the raid, particularly with movement and positioning.

Everything in Antorus up to Argus is, I feel, appropriately challenging. The Argus mechanics are just too unforgiving and should be made easier / less punishing for LFR. It bums me out that if they don't lower the difficulty I may never see the "end" of Legion.

All of that said, aside from Argus, I've found LFR to be a really great way to experience content that I never would have otherwise run.

Kind of funny, from a raiding normal/heroic perspective, because Argus is a pretty easy fight in that realm. The tricky bit comes two bosses before with Coven, which, based on last night, my guild's going to spend another week banging our head against in Heroic. Third tank has definitely helped, but something inevitably goes wrong eventually (not to mention I hate it because it means that the mobs inevitably drift apart so multi-dotting as feral because basically impossible)... so far best pull has been 20%.

I thought Coven was easily the hardest fight in the raid on heroic. Once you are over that hump the last two are not too bad

Yeah, Heroic Coven was our big roadblock. I think it's one of those fights that you've just got to practice, practice, practice until everyone can reliably do the right thing on all the different add types, and even then people can be screwed by things like bad storm locations on the Norgannon adds.

Sonicator wrote:

Yeah, Heroic Coven was our big roadblock. I think it's one of those fights that you've just got to practice, practice, practice until everyone can reliably do the right thing on all the different add types, and even then people can be screwed by things like bad storm locations on the Norgannon adds.

My favorite /s death last night was 1.5 seconds of stun from the ice lady on me, with a fire blades knocking me into rooted old men. No chance to respond.

So there is a style event going on until the 9th.
You can transmog for free and there is a fashion contest for prizes.
I hope the transmogs last beyond the event because I am really enjoying replacing the hideous heirloom looks
For instance, all of the heirloom plate is shimmery and silver which is not exactly a favorable look for a Death Knight.
I felt this was much more appropriate for what I have available:
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...
And here is my newb VE priest and hunter:
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...
My boosted rogue that did all the rep work:
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...
And my demon hunter that ground out Suramar:
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...

Demosthenes wrote:

Kind of funny, from a raiding normal/heroic perspective, because Argus is a pretty easy fight in that realm. The tricky bit comes two bosses before with Coven, which, based on last night, my guild's going to spend another week banging our head against in Heroic. Third tank has definitely helped, but something inevitably goes wrong eventually (not to mention I hate it because it means that the mobs inevitably drift apart so multi-dotting as feral because basically impossible)... so far best pull has been 20%.

I think LFR was just a matter of splitting up the bosses and burning them each down. It didn't seem hard, which is kind of the point of the raid finder.

Argus on LFR is essentially a gear check. The one time I ran it, we handled positioning and mechanics just fine, but 2 or 3 (or 4 or 5) folks would die right off the bat from standing in stuff, and we didn't have enough DPS to make up for their loss. At one point my holy pal was creeping up the meters because I was DPSing (wasn't much to heal, tbh) and because some of the other group members were baaaaaad (or dead). #context

I suspect in a real raid Argus *would* be easier because presumably everyone would (a) be geared and (b) know better than to stand in the bad.

To be fair, (and not that I don't believe you) I don't feel like WoW does a good job of educating basic raid mechanics. I am sure a lot of people understand "don't stand in bad" but WoW "trains" you on chain pulling chaos. (it is probably also a side effect of WoW's longevity: they forget that newbs still join and play)

Or perhaps I should say it lures you into a false sense of confidence where up until some point you:
can pull at will, rarely need heals
can kill the boss before they get another chance to use their big bad attack
get healed before big bad comes again
the rest of the team can finish the fight if 1-2 die

With so much happening on screen the tells are easy to miss. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, it took 5 times to figure out the charm skill turn around counter. And I know there have to be dozens more like skills that I haven't encountered or I am blissfully ignorant that someone is swearing into their mic at me for. The great news is nobody has voted to kick me in 30+ runs. (though I admit I self kicked once on my hunter because i was survival spec and didn't have gear for a better dungeon spec) . I think the groups I have been in have kicked 3-4 people. It was for good reason but man was the kick initiator nasty every time. Good to know toxicity is alive and well...

Enix wrote:

I suspect in a real raid Argus *would* be easier because presumably everyone would (a) be geared and (b) know better than to stand in the bad.

Argus P1 is a minor DPS and positioning check.

Argus P2 is basically whether or not you survive the 2nd big bomb, because that happens right after your tanks swap for cleaves, and the debuffless tank will now have the big buff, and there's not that much time to soak the bomb.

P3 is an interruptfest on normal/only interrupt the wipe cast in heroic, and the tanks will get their face kicked in but they don't want to blow big cooldowns because of the next phase.

Then you die.

P4 is a clusterf*ck of tanks doing the same thing as P1 and P2 in normal or just taking stacks until they die in heroic and one healer dying over and over and over because they're the chosen bomb.

Woo MM Hunter changes are on the BfA alpha build. I like how they pulled the good old Blizzard kneejerk and made it super mobile again. Aimed shot is now instant with 2 charges.

TBH I just fired up a VE MM hunter and I am surprised they felt they needed to do anything with it. You smoke things from range with or without your pet. This is even without the lone wolf talent which I think they should change.

I am fine leveling without my pet but I want to be able to "gotta catch em all" animals I come across while adventuring. Not being able to summon the pet to dismiss or abandon or stable is a big inconvenience.

I also wish they would make pets like the collection system and I want ranged attack pets or familiars or buff pets. And I want them to bring back pet uniqueness...

fangblackbone wrote:

I also wish they would make pets like the collection system and I want ranged attack pets or familiars or buff pets. And I want them to bring back pet uniqueness...

You have that already... just with BM

My qualms with MM huntering aren't really for leveling. I leveled MM mostly because it was overpowered with the movement speed buff from the artifact and the decreased CD on Exhilaration from getting killing blows. MM in a raid setting never really 'clicked' with me. I did decent damage once I got the right leggos, but that was when the expansion was 90% over. Even with good damage, it doesn't feel good to stand still for two back to back Aimed Shots. I'm glad that they're bringing back mobility.

Gaine wrote:

it doesn't feel good to stand still for two back to back Aimed Shots. I'm glad that they're bringing back mobility.

or healthy depending on the fight!

ranalin wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

I also wish they would make pets like the collection system and I want ranged attack pets or familiars or buff pets. And I want them to bring back pet uniqueness...

You have that already... just with BM

Beast Master for liiiiiife.

Ran into some weird bugs in Antorus last night:

Kingaroth's ruiner was killing people who weren't anywhere close to the beam, and the balls were sometimes passing through people without going off.

The norgannon adds on coven were killing people who were well outside the purple zones.

We were able to fix the coven bug by resetting the instance, but we didn't have time to go back to kin.

fangblackbone wrote:

I also wish they would make pets like the collection system and I want ranged attack pets or familiars or buff pets. And I want them to bring back pet uniqueness...

It looks like you'll get some degree of increased pet uniqueness at least: in BfA they're going back to fixed specialisations based on animal family.

It looks like you'll get some degree of increased pet uniqueness at least: in BfA they're going back to fixed specializations based on animal family.

Yahoo! And hopefully they can develop that further such that a tenacity bear is subtly different than a tenacity crab or ape. And a cunning owl is different than a cunning spider or a ferocity cat is different than a ferocity wolf.
I would much rather have that because I don't feel we needed owl tanks or crab dps. There is enough variety in the animal types if you don't want a bear tank then go with ape or crab or gator or turtle.
(Yes I was one of those die hards that walked his newb draenei hunter over to Ghostlands/Silvermoon just to tame the dragonhawk. I also took a newb dwarf to Darnassus to tame an owl)