WoW: Battle for Azeroth (8.3)

Sydhart wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

well i don;t tank or heal other than some leveling experience as a bear, so grain of salt, but my understanding is that tank self healing is essentially 0 new.

Is this only in the TW dungeons or something? I can switch to tank spec on my DH and pretty much self-heal through any elite I've come across yet. It takes 2 days to kill anything but I can keep myself pretty much topped off and/or utilize cooldowns sufficiently to stay alive.

Like I said I don;t have any experience actually doing it, probably what I've heard is exaggeration, or maybe accurate re: the amounts of damage bosses lay out but not elite trash mobs?

Tank self-healing is lower than it was across the board, except for Brewmasters who never had a lot of it to begin with.

I wonder how much of that is offset by Azerite abilities? The one I have found the most useful is the heal on taking damage that can occur once every 6 seconds. On my demon hunter it seemed to heal 20% of my hp.

fangblackbone wrote:

I wonder how much of that is offset by Azerite abilities? The one I have found the most useful is the heal on taking damage that can occur once every 6 seconds. On my demon hunter it seemed to heal 20% of my hp.

The amount of damage tanks take in outdoor environments is trivial compared to dungeons and raids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niO6...

Who wants to farm some rares in expeditions?

Sydhart wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niO6...

Who wants to farm some rares in expeditions?

Y'know, after winning a couple of expeditions, I was starting to think, hey, maybe I'm pretty good at this WoW thing! And then I realized that the Horde teams were probably rare-farming and not actually trying to win.

Enix wrote:
Sydhart wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niO6...

Who wants to farm some rares in expeditions?

Y'know, after winning a couple of expeditions, I was starting to think, hey, maybe I'm pretty good at this WoW thing! And then I realized that the Horde teams were probably rare-farming and not actually trying to win.

Island Expeditions have 4 levels of difficulty: Normal, Heroic, Mythic, and PvP (Player vs. Player). So unless you queue'd specifically for the PvP one the Horde is AI characters. I didn't realize this until...a few days ago. I thought I was awesome at PvP for a couple of weeks until my friend informed me otherwise. lol

Ok so I really want a sky golem now. Leveling an engineer and making one will take.....forever?

Docjoe wrote:

Ok so I really want a sky golem now. Leveling an engineer and making one will take.....forever?

I did it back in Warlords in a couple weeks of just playing around. I don't know what the changes to tradeskills have affected that though.

It takes a minimum of 30days to make once you learn the skill. it requires 30 Jard's something which you create 1 a day for 30 days.

You just need panda lvl eng so will be faster than lvlin from 1 to 600.. but will still take a bit. the Jard's are BOP as well so you have to make them.

Ok good to know. Well guess I better get started then.....

Also takes 12 Living Steel which an Alchemist can xmute 1 a day. Those take a good amount of white and black trillium to farm which is a rare spawn ore node in panda. Easier to purchase the mats but it is expensive. Can also use motes of harmony (drops from mobs) to by the trillium ore 5 at a time from a vendor.

How expensive are sky golems now? You could probably buy one faster by selling herbs and ore on the AH.

This thread has kinda died, like a lot of folks' interest in BfA lol. I guess I'm ok with having another month left on my sub so I can finally finish the Horde story, but other than that my interest has waned. Four 120's all right around 340 ilvl, which is of course where progress really slows down and I don't find much reason to log in anymore. Can't really complain, got a good amount of enjoyable time out of this xpac, and I'm sure I'll be back sometime next year to check things out after a few content drops.

Yeah, not really logging in much the last few weeks. Part of that is being stuck in other games - which is a good thing - but certainly also BfA being one of the worst expansions so far imo. Leveling was enjoyable enough, and I got 'my moneys worth', but the systems surrounding this expansion all seems like step downs from Legion.
I'm sure Ill keep playing, especially whenever 8.1 hits. But Blizzard got quite a task ahead of them, if they want to turn things around before a new expansion can do a complete reset again.

AcidCat wrote:

This thread has kinda died, like a lot of folks' interest in BfA lol.

Guild numbers reflect it. When 8.0 dropped, we usually had 10-20 folks on. Now, it's about all we can do to muster 5 or so.

I still have plenty that I want to do, and I'm having fun with it, but I can see why others want to take a break. The whole thing feels like Legion 2.0, except without the class halls (which are really great in retrospect, imo).

It's far from the worst WoW expansion, but it's not as compelling as the one that came right before it.

I’m planning to come back, had been playing nothing but WOW for months so just cleansing the palate a bit. But agree, it’s not quite Legion.

I'm still enjoying it but I'm not one that rushes through leveling. I've finished all of the quests and rares in Kul Tiras and working on tradeskills, reputation, farming for mounts, and some PvP on my Alliance toon. I'm currently at 350 iLevel and hold my own in PvP so I'm not too worried about trying to push through Mythic+ or higher level raids.

I've now started working on my horde rogue as well and working through Zandalar so figure that will give me a couple of weeks of enjoyment at my pace.

I even still have my 120 boost to use and need to figure out what character I want to work on. Is it still the case where if you level a toon past a certain level when you use the boost you get a boost on tradeskills too?

They improved on a lot of things from Legion but they left out key components:
The pre-legion leveling invasions (available to all levels you f*ckers!)
But the biggest omission: Demon Hunters
Legion wouldn't have been half as successful without DH's

There is a really simple solution to reinvigorating BFA. You don't even have to lower the level requirement to 1. You could get a lot of traction lowering the requirement to 60 for Island Expeditions, Incursions and Warfronts. I mean if the plan is to convert 50% of the zones to Warfronts, then by all means go for it. Just don't lock out our sub level 100 alts...

Sydhart wrote:

Is it still the case where if you level a toon past a certain level when you use the boost you get a boost on tradeskills too?

No they separated the tradeskills by expansion, so you can start BfA trades regardless of what your character had before.

Im still playing when i can, interested in the story and such. I even managed to wrangle a Mythic Siege group to get my progression done... but i just got a new townhome, so i havn't even had time to reassemble my PC much less play anything

I'm very much enjoying the story this time around

The BfA features that launced have been a huge miss imo. The Azerite armor is annoying and worse than the legion weapons with the gating behind the necklace levels. Also the one warfront, so far, was ok a few times but repeatability is nonexistent specially since it is gated behind 120 and 320 ilvl. The story on both sides have been enjoyable but there just was not enough content/story at launch to keep the game fresh for as long as it has been out.

Now the next patch 8.1 with the new warfront and Saurfang/Tyrande story arcs are enough to keep me somewhat interested, though I wish they would already be here.

The Azerite powers is a major issue compared to Legion for me. Artifacts and legendaries made classes and progression more interesting in Legion.
In BfA Blizzard said Azerite armors were a replacement for artifacts, ledengaries and set bonusses ALL at the same time. A fairly ambitious goal. But they are way too boring to even replace one of those. A bit hard to understand how they ended here.
They might have been criticized for being unimaginative, but if they had merely copied the artifact/legendary powers from Legion, it would still have been immensely better than the current situation.

War campaign has so far been really weak compared to class campaigns.

Then island expeditions felt half-baked at best, and likewise for warfronts. Both seemed like good concepts, but they feel so similar each time. Both need major redesigns to work, if it is even possible.

Horde leveling story was pretty good though,

Spoiler:

Bwonsamdi (in particular), the King, the Princess and Zul characters are interesting, especially considering they are all completely new and had to work from the very beginning.

Alliance story felt a bit weak. Not much focus on their main characters outside of the very beginning. And they didn't get anywhere enough out of the

Spoiler:

Old God part of their story.

Presumably because it is saved for later, but that isn't so useful now.

Shadout wrote:

The Azerite powers is a major issue compared to Legion for me. Artifacts and legendaries made classes and progression more interesting in Legion.
In BfA Blizzard said Azerite armors were a replacement for artifacts, ledengaries and set bonusses ALL at the same time. A fairly ambitious goal. But they are way too boring to even replace one of those. A bit hard to understand how they ended here.
They might have been criticized for being unimaginative, but if they had merely copied the artifact/legendary powers from Legion, it would still have been immensely better than the current situation.

War campaign has so far been really weak compared to class campaigns.

Then island expeditions felt half-baked at best, and likewise for warfronts. Both seemed like good concepts, but they feel so similar each time. Both need major redesigns to work, if it is even possible.

Horde leveling story was pretty good though,

Spoiler:

Bwonsamdi (in particular), the King, the Princess and Zul characters are interesting, especially considering they are all completely new and had to work from the very beginning.

Alliance story felt a bit weak. Not much focus on their main characters outside of the very beginning. And they didn't get anywhere enough out of the

Spoiler:

Old God part of their story.

Presumably because it is saved for later, but that isn't so useful now.

Drustavar or whatever was the best part of the Ally storyline. Storm was ok.

Agreed. Didn't mention Drustvar because it was not a weak part. Quite separated from the main threads of BfA however, whereas the strongest pat of the Horde story was its main story imo.

I read some rumor that Stormsong’s b-plot was changed significantly at some point.

(Apparently the random Horde invasion of Brendendam was more quillboar stuff but play tests of the quillboar were so negative they changed it.)

And yeah, the present Azerite powers are a complete flop. The talents are either boring and ineffective OR boring and super-effective (therefore mandatory).

Island expeditions are kind of pointless content and the warfront is cool once or twice.

It is very WoD-y in that the main system (Azerite) is a complete bust.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the Azerite gear. I have no problem with the Azerite necklace, which gets power based on how many points you grind out. It's not thrilling, but it's fine, and I'm OK with the concept behind it.

That said, it's not nearly as fun as the artifact weapon, and I just hate tinkering with all that Azerite gear. Yay I got an upgrade. Boo there's no haste talent. And, oh, it really only works for one spec. Blargh.

I embrace the grind so I'm down with most of BfA. I do miss the class halls, which means I'll probably end up leveling all the classes I didn't last time just so I can see the ones I missed in Legion.

I have pretty much gotten into the routine of logging in, clearing the emissary quest, checking the AH, and logging off. Slowly I am grinding my way to exalted. I occasionally play more, but that 340 item level cap is brutal. Also, the gold has been much more constrained, and so my (very unlikely) dream of getting a longneck has dwindled to nothing.

Honestly, there are other games taking my time as well. My wife still plays, but it has become more casual for her too (although, she has recently become exalted with all BfA factions and has already leveled up a void elf to 120). I'm currently trying to decide if I will keep the subscription going at this low energy, or come back later.

I've more or less tuned out of the new features, but I'm still enjoying the core raiding and M+ game. Good week for pushing M+!

Reaper81 wrote:

I read some rumor that Stormsong’s b-plot was changed significantly at some point.

(Apparently the random Horde invasion of Brendendam was more quillboar stuff but play tests of the quillboar were so negative they changed it.)

That would have flowed better as a story, but I can definitely see that being too much quillboar.

Sonicator wrote:

I've more or less tuned out of the new features, but I'm still enjoying the core raiding and M+ game. Good week for pushing M+!

Reaper81 wrote:

I read some rumor that Stormsong’s b-plot was changed significantly at some point.

(Apparently the random Horde invasion of Brendendam was more quillboar stuff but play tests of the quillboar were so negative they changed it.)

That would have flowed better as a story, but I can definitely see that being too much quillboar.

Insert variation on cowbell meme here.

As in "I've got a fever and it can only be cured by more quillboar"