WoW: Dragonflight

Vargen wrote:

I like how the Torghast powers stack with themselves. There's one that makes the Monk's filler Chi spender do more damage and hit 2 extra targets. At the end of one run it was cleaving 10k damage onto 7 targets and I just dropped every other spender out of my rotation.

So is Torghast basically turning WoW into Diablo with sets and modifiers being the key to enemy slaughtering fun?

Vargen wrote:

I asked my Threads of Fate question somewhere else and got a good answer. It turns out it gives you the option to skip the covenant intro if you want, but you don't have to. So you don't have to miss the play, but you can skip it if you've seen it already.

Awesome. Thank you for reporting back!

lunchbox12682 wrote:
Vargen wrote:

I like how the Torghast powers stack with themselves. There's one that makes the Monk's filler Chi spender do more damage and hit 2 extra targets. At the end of one run it was cleaving 10k damage onto 7 targets and I just dropped every other spender out of my rotation.

So is Torghast basically turning WoW into Diablo with sets and modifiers being the key to enemy slaughtering fun?

That one dungeon is basically an encapsulated roguelite; no permanent upgrades (that I've found, so far) - just massive temporary upgrades that last only for the duration of your one "run". Very soloable, at least for the lower difficulty tiers; given that you CAN bring a party in, I assume the upper tiers can be very difficult.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
Vargen wrote:

I like how the Torghast powers stack with themselves. There's one that makes the Monk's filler Chi spender do more damage and hit 2 extra targets. At the end of one run it was cleaving 10k damage onto 7 targets and I just dropped every other spender out of my rotation.

So is Torghast basically turning WoW into Diablo with sets and modifiers being the key to enemy slaughtering fun?

That one dungeon is basically an encapsulated roguelite; no permanent upgrades (that I've found, so far) - just massive temporary upgrades that last only for the duration of your one "run". Very soloable, at least for the lower difficulty tiers; given that you CAN bring a party in, I assume the upper tiers can be very difficult.[/quote]

So other than fun (ba humbug!), what's the purpose of it? Ladder chasing? I suppose I should just go look it up.

The higher you go, the better gear you get and the more insane your powers become. (and the greater the challenge to meet you)

Unlocking legendaries. Probably cosmetics too.

It is some much needed solo content for WoW, and pretty cool.
I fear that you will end up needing mythic dungeon or raid gear for the high tiers, since you cant gear up through torghast itself. So not completely a solo activity.

It feels a bit unbalanced so far, tanks with self heals supposedly dominates, as usual. Puny DPS'ers might require a bit of luck with the powers they get.

That is odd. I heard stories of shadow priests constantly spawning shadowfiends and the like...

fangblackbone wrote:

That is odd. I heard stories of shadow priests constantly spawning shadowfiends and the like...

Honestly, I think priest might be the weakest and least fun of the classes for Torghast. There's very little power synergy and very little spec specific stuff. It's bizarre to me that they managed to so thoroughly miss the mark there. Most of their potency powers are things like "Shadow Word: Pain (or its equivalent for your spec) lasts 4 more seconds" so.. two extra ticks. Wheeeeeeeee? Like there's nothing quite like for Feral Druids where each tick can proc crazy nonsense, no resets of shorter CDs, nothing like that. Like the "general" DPS powers are almost universally the best anyway (Corruption Antenna for instance)... but man does priest feel like 95% of your powers are support powers that will not help you kill anything.

fangblackbone wrote:

That is odd. I heard stories of shadow priests constantly spawning shadowfiends and the like...

Shadow priest is hardly a puny DPS class, since they got heals But I got no idea how they are perfoming.
On at least one of the bosses I have seen, mages seem to be 'stack enough dmg (or the rare healing) powers to burn down the boss before its unavoidable dmg kills you'. Sounds like rogues have it the same way.

Most of my info on Torghast is from weeks/months ago in beta. So I am sure things have changed.

I've hit max level and unlocked the covenant campaign stuff on my Fire Mage. It's not my usual character that I play, but it sure is fun playing a high DPS character again. I've only been in Torghast a couple of times, but the lower levels have been a lot of fun, and I've survived surprisingly well (I'm used to playing tank classes). I'm loving the roguelike aspects. It honestly gives the combat game a new life.
I've just started on my main, a feral/guardian druid, and I must say, it's really REALLY nice being able to mount up in travel form in the Maw.

I'm surprised they didn't block it or reduce speed to normal.
Perhaps my trailblazer hunter can zip around too!

Worgens' Running Wild ability works in the Maw and gives you full mount speed.

torgast is definitely soloable lower down, doesit scale for larger groups?

I have been loving it, and it was an absolute cakewalk for me not very optimized beast master hunter until level 3, then it started to get dicey, i'm nervous how level 4 will be without raid gear.

It really varies by class. I cleared it through the boss in my BM Hunter with iLvl 143 without breaking a sweat. My Vengeance DH OTH just can’t beat that guy with similar gear.

I'm finding the bosses require me to be pretty skilled in my movements and pretty demanding of keeping mend pet up but arn't super difficult. BM hunter also seems to have lost pretty much all of their ability to self heal (i think most of it was coming from azerite gear?) in the move to 9.0 so i'm always feeling health starved.

the worst encounters for me have been those groups with two elites, one fear guy and one caster, theres so much aoe flying around from me or from the torgast abilities it's hard to keep one of them trapped if the room is tight

I mained DH during BFA and man I’m struggling with it in SL. Am having way more fun on my Hunter. But queues are so long for DPS I think I’m finally going to dip my toe in as a tank while the expac is young and hopefully people are more forgiving.

Or if any of you fine folks want to run some dungeons I can tank for hit me up!

thrawn82 wrote:

I'm finding the bosses require me to be pretty skilled in my movements and pretty demanding of keeping mend pet up but arn't super difficult. BM hunter also seems to have lost pretty much all of their ability to self heal (i think most of it was coming from azerite gear?) in the move to 9.0 so i'm always feeling health starved.

the worst encounters for me have been those groups with two elites, one fear guy and one caster, theres so much aoe flying around from me or from the torgast abilities it's hard to keep one of them trapped if the room is tight

I have been able to solo pull most of those duo packs. They usually have 3 packs of skeles around them. If you shoot the furthest skele in the group then usually only 3 skels agro. One of the skele packs usually also then brings one of the elites leaving the other elite for later solo. I pull with pet on passive and kite em back a bit so pet aoe won't agro more.

Medmey wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

I'm finding the bosses require me to be pretty skilled in my movements and pretty demanding of keeping mend pet up but arn't super difficult. BM hunter also seems to have lost pretty much all of their ability to self heal (i think most of it was coming from azerite gear?) in the move to 9.0 so i'm always feeling health starved.

the worst encounters for me have been those groups with two elites, one fear guy and one caster, theres so much aoe flying around from me or from the torgast abilities it's hard to keep one of them trapped if the room is tight

I have been able to solo pull most of those duo packs. They usually have 3 packs of skeles around them. If you shoot the furthest skele in the group then usually only 3 skels agro. One of the skele packs usually also then brings one of the elites leaving the other elite for later solo. I pull with pet on passive and kite em back a bit so pet aoe won't agro more.

oh thats a good idea, I'll try that. It uisually been a struggle to ice one of the two (usually the caster) and then burn down the other while interrupting that fear as often as possible.

also I HATE the torment for the fractured halls. the others just increase damaghe, but the fractured halls spawning mobs really amps up the stress for me because i can't stop and asses the situation, or step away and grab a drink or bio or whatever.

Last night I did a Torghast run where I got 5 stacks of "Touch of Death's cooldown is reduced by 36 seconds." Which means it had no cooldown. It was more awesome than good, but man was it awesome.

It probably wouldn't have worked well while soloing, given that it didn't do anything to help me get mobs' health down to where Touch of Death would actually work. It was still fun to pull off the build once.

So I hit 60. Leveling seemed weird. I wasn't able to run some dungeons cause I wasn't high enough of ilvl to run them. Then by the time I had the right ilvl I couldnt LFG for them cause I was over leveled. So now my first experience with them will be heroic. Yet I am not ilvl'ed enough for heroic. It certainly doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

WoW may always have had this, but this expansion in particular has seemed like there were different persons or teams in charge of itemization for questing, events, treasure, dungeons and perhaps raids.

If you had mythic gear going in to the expansion, you wouldn't find even moderate upgrades until 56. And you were also put in a spot because corruption went away and disrupted your accustomed play style.

If you did the prepatch event, you either had a mish mash of gear that would be replaced immediately and some that wouldn't be replaced until 56. Or you had gear that you wouldn't replace until 56 but it was more comfortable because you weren't used to a corruption based play style.

If you were a fresh 50 going into the expansion, you experience depended on how well you geared up during the quests where you had npc helpers and whether you paid attention to chests tucked a little out of your way. But at least there was a progression path for ilvl 67 to 80 to 90 to 100 to 120.

This has to be the most linear expansion we've had in a while. I did the Bastion quest line and am now about done (I think) with Maldraxxus. I've seen no options to peel off and do anything else except some random side quests that pop up as you're going from one place to the other.

No complaints; just an observation. I'm enjoying the story and the notion that Blizzard pulled a completely different world out of its you-know-what. It's been, what, at least three or four expansions since the game wasn't tethered to Azeroth? (I'm thinking of Pandaria; Draenor wasn't set in Azeroth either, but it was B.C. 2.0 but with player housing.)

PS: Thanks for all y'all for not posting spoilers. I'm poking along at lvl 57 because work and the holidays have conspired to exhaust me to the point that I'm still playing a lot of BFA because I'm too pooped and busy to enjoy the new stuff.

Enix wrote:

This has to be the most linear expansion we've had in a while. I did the Bastion quest line and am now about done (I think) with Maldraxxus. I've seen no options to peel off and do anything else except some random side quests that pop up as you're going from one place to the other.

Once you level your first character through the first chapter of level 60 content you can take the "Threads of Fate" option on subsequent characters. That basically assumes that your first character did all the urgent story stuff and you're coming along afterwards to help out. That lets you go wherever you want and hit up all the side quests and bonus objectives, or not, in whatever order you want. WoW hasn't felt this freeform since before Cataclysm. And there's basically an entire second expansion's worth of leveling content in there. That in and of itself isn't new; they just layered them both over the same zones rather than asking you if you wanted to start in Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra.

By splitting the two experiences apart, Shadowlands has managed some of the best linear story and some of the best freeform questing that the game has ever seen.

Igneus wrote:

So I hit 60. Leveling seemed weird. I wasn't able to run some dungeons cause I wasn't high enough of ilvl to run them. Then by the time I had the right ilvl I couldnt LFG for them cause I was over leveled. So now my first experience with them will be heroic. Yet I am not ilvl'ed enough for heroic. It certainly doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

U can check the auction house for ilvl 151crafted gear. It may be cheap enough now since people are leveling crafts and tend to flood the market. This will help you gear up to heroics quickly if willing to spend some money.

For money your daily covenant help quest usually gives min 1.5k - 2k max gold every day, they basically work same as emissary quests from previous xpacs.

Any advice on picking a covenant? My main (BM hunter) has just reached that decision point. I'm leaning toward Night Fae, but they all have good and bad points.

Hey lore nerds,
Has Blizzard connected the afterlife stuff from Legion with Shadowlands?
The Viking Valhalla and Hel stuff?

CaptainCrowbar wrote:

Any advice on picking a covenant? My main (BM hunter) has just reached that decision point. I'm leaning toward Night Fae, but they all have good and bad points.

Wowhead recommends Night Fae for BM Hunter. I have no personal experience though.

Igneus wrote:

So I hit 60. Leveling seemed weird. I wasn't able to run some dungeons cause I wasn't high enough of ilvl to run them. Then by the time I had the right ilvl I couldnt LFG for them cause I was over leveled. So now my first experience with them will be heroic. Yet I am not ilvl'ed enough for heroic. It certainly doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

This is exactly the behavior I was complaining about on the previous page. Then something changed (I think I finished the fourth zone's main quest line?) and suddenly I got access to a bunch of Normal dungeons.

lunchbox12682 wrote:

Hey lore nerds,
Has Blizzard connected the afterlife stuff from Legion with Shadowlands?
The Viking Valhalla and Hel stuff?

Beyond the Cosmology Chart and the fact that so far we've been dealing with the pantheons of Order vs Disorder, and Light Vs. Shadow, and now we're going into the Death Pantheon, not much. This is based on pure memory and without me googling. Spoiling what I do remember just in case

Spoiler:

All the Viking and Hel stuff are aspects of Order and Death IIRC, but I don't want to go too much into it, Old Gods are Shadow, and Naaru are Light. No one except Blizz is sure who Elune is. Just because they're on the same layer does not mean same strength, Naaru are not necessarily as strong or weaker than the Titan Pantheon, that's just where they are on the hierarchy.

I figure the image is fine because it doesn't really say anything, but please let me know if that's not the case.IMAGE(https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/944052.jpg?maxWidth=1200)