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World of Warcraft Legion pre-patch

SargerusBR

I love Pokken!
This game runs like GARBAGE on my machine. Wondering if it's my install.

No matter the graphics setting, I don't go above 35fps in Stormwind. That's all the way from Low to Ultra.

I'm on a 4770K and a GTX970. Anyone else experiencing that?
Disable outdated addons. Also if you are using Borderless try switching to Fullscreen.
 

DJIzana

Member
After the failure of Titan, I don't think Blizzard will make an MMO ever again.

Well, they could always restructure WoW. Have that be the next main feature. Obviously that'd require a huuuge amount of work / man power, I'm sure... But they already have the other concepts taken care of. Obviously I'm speaking purely of redoing the zones and not npc/pc characters or mobs.
 
Having to actually make a decision about when to use an ability is definitely more fun than not. I went back to this game in August of last year and I was already surprised at how few abilities I had to play with. If they've pruned even more that's crazy to me.

It really makes it very hard to fuck up your rotation now they've taken most of the skill away from DPSing which is really disappointing.

Edit: I still think the continious ability prune is in order to eventually try and get the game on console.
 

lazygecko

Member
Having to actually make a decision about when to use an ability is definitely more fun than not. I went back to this game in August of last year and I was already surprised at how few abilities I had to play with. If they've pruned even more that's crazy to me.

I haven't really been a fan of the shift over from long term passive buffs to short duration abilities that you have to use repeatedly, which is related to this type of design. They seem to think that pressing buttons for buffs/shields more often means more fun and active gameplay, but personally I just find it to be frustrating.

In fact I don't even agree with the overarching design shift in the entire genre to make the combat more twitchy and action-like. Having more laid back, slower-paced combat has its own values and also gives you an opportunity to focus on other aspects.
 

Theandrin

Member
I love the new updated graphics that came with the patch. That being said I took a huge hit in performance when I got to the cities. I still have some more tweaking to do to get everything right.

I've also never been a big fan of WoW's pvp, but with the gear changes that has me seriously reconsidering. It might finally be something I can enjoy.

I started playing again a couple of months ago after being out for almost two years. I've been really happy with the changes and I'm actually pretty excited to jump in for Legion. This upcoming expansion brought me back.
 

shoreu

Member
It really makes it very hard to fuck up your rotation now they've taken most of the skill away from DPSing which is really disappointing.

Edit: I still think the continious ability prune is in order to eventually try and get the game on console.

more moves will come with artifact weapons

well like one or 2
 

Interfectum

Member
Having to actually make a decision about when to use an ability is definitely more fun than not. I went back to this game in August of last year and I was already surprised at how few abilities I had to play with. If they've pruned even more that's crazy to me.

I dunno, I think it's why I roll alts more than play end game content in WoW. I find more abilities on the actionbar more frustrating than fun. It says a lot when players need to download 3-4 different add-ons that tell them about cooldowns, what button to press next, etc...

I would rather them prune the abilities to where your eyes aren't always looking at cooldowns and you are looking at whats going on in the game and reacting to that. "Standing in the fire" exists because no one is actually looking at the game but the actionbar buttons and recount.
 

adversarial

Member
It really makes it very hard to fuck up your rotation now they've taken most of the skill away from DPSing which is really disappointing.

Edit: I still think the continious ability prune is in order to eventually try and get the game on console.

Regardless of whether or not a DPS has 5 or 7 abilities, you will still be able to tell the really good player from the more casual player. The latter of which knows the class inside & out, including the more subtle intricacies like swing timers, etc.

I don't understand some of their design decisions, though... keeping spells like "far sight" or "beast eyes" or whatever it's called but removing staples like Heroic Strike (Warrior) or Enraged Regen.

I can't see them ever bringing WoW to console.
 

Wavebossa

Member
Man everyone was hyping up enhance in Legion as finally being "fixed"

This still feels janky and stupid.

Maybe the level 110 talent will fix all that.
 

ZangBa

Member
I don't think they could ever bring me back. The patch notes read like they are gutting things and simplifying everything even more than it already has. The more streamlined this game gets, the more boring it is for me.
 

adversarial

Member
Man everyone was hyping up enhance in Legion as finally being "fixed"

This still feels janky and stupid.

Maybe the level 110 talent will fix all that.

No Level 110 talent. Artifact ability is supposed to "act as it" from what I've heard, I'm 110 on Beta on 2 characters. Unless for some reason they haven't implemented the 110 talent into Beta yet, pretty sure the Artifact Tree counts towards that. Enh is super strong now, a lot of abilities, though. Feels bloated.
 
Wow, they really changed Enhancement. I'll have to play some more, but I'm not sure I like it anymore. Been my absolute favourite class/spec since TBC :(
 

diamount

Banned
Well, they could always restructure WoW. Have that be the next main feature. Obviously that'd require a huuuge amount of work / man power, I'm sure... But they already have the other concepts taken care of. Obviously I'm speaking purely of redoing the zones and not npc/pc characters or mobs.

You can remove that thought from your head man, there will not be a WoW 2.
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Wow, they really changed Enhancement. I'll have to play some more, but I'm not sure I like it anymore. Been my absolute favourite class/spec since TBC :(

It's the best it's ever been. Give it a shot.
 

Wavebossa

Member
No Level 110 talent. Artifact ability is supposed to "act as it" from what I've heard, I'm 110 on Beta on 2 characters. Unless for some reason they haven't implemented the 110 talent into Beta yet, pretty sure the Artifact Tree counts towards that. Enh is super strong now, a lot of abilities, though. Feels bloated.

Ah that's good to know.
And yes, it feels super bloated, lacking synergy and its not streamlined at all.

The only thing I like about it is that LB is now a 10-40y chase abaility.


But rockbiter/boulderfist being my only talent (outside of wolves) that actually generates malestrom feels wonky.

It's the best it's ever been. Give it a shot.

What makes you say that?'

You feel that this version of enhance makes more sense than TBC, Wotlk?
I'm reading wordups guides and other shaman guides just to make sure i'm doing it right.

I'm not saying its had, it just feels odd.

For comparison, ele felt as natural as anything when I used it in last nights raid.
 

Brokun

Member
I think they are pushing PVP so hard that they removed a lot of stuff from PVE in order to better balance. I mean at this point why not just give every class 3 abilities and an ultimate. Talents simplified, abilities simplified, glyphs removed.

No one asked for the changes

Some abilities can be added back to your bar through talents. Your artifact weapon can also add abilities to your bar. Major glyphs have been added to the base abilities and spells. Minor glyphs still exist and are consumable, showing up in your spellbook after they have been applied. What is simplified about talents?
 

StayDead

Member
I managed to push and get my legendary cape at the very end last expansion (I started MoP way late despite playing since TBC, quit after Cata).

I definately can't finish the ring in time. I want to, but I got too unlucky with the drop rate on the quests. :/
 

Entropia

No One Remembers
I really do the changes that have been made. I am for less button bloat.

I know there's only a month left, but they really fucked up the tuning for old raids and even current content.
 

Wavebossa

Member
How does it work now?

I never really liked how they structured it almost entirely around a bunch of 1-3 minute cooldowns like Feral Spirit and Shamanistic Rage.

All dps cooldowns for enhance are gone besides from Feral Spirit.

You have maelstrom, you need it to do most of your abilities.
You need to go read a guide on it, I suggest icy veins. Its too clunky to explain.

Basically SS on cd, make sure Crash Lightning is down, make sure rockbiter is up, make sure flametongue is up, if you end up with excess maelstrom, spam lavalash

Its pure resource management because if you are not careful, you can easily go OOM (out of maelstrom). And if you are not doing SS on cd, you're dps is completely ruined.
 

Brokun

Member
I managed to push and get my legendary cape at the very end last expansion (I started MoP way late despite playing since TBC, quit after Cata).

I definately can't finish the ring in time. I want to, but I got too unlucky with the drop rate on the quests. :/

They added speed up mechanics for the ring items. Are you using those?
 

DJIzana

Member
You can remove that thought from your head man, there will not be a WoW 2.

Hahaha yeah, I know. It's nice to want things. :p

I'm actually fine as long as they keep making some cool class changes and overall changes. I haven't played since Cata. I really like the class changes and also looking forward to trying a Monk, playing my Warrior again, Shaman, Hunter and Paladin. Also want to PVP and explore. If anything, I'll get my fix then come back to FFXIV if I don't like the new changes.
 
This is such a good patch, honestly. Tried a handful of classes and can honestly say I'm happy with all of the changes. Especially with melee animation overhauls. I actually enjoy playing my warrior now!

New appearance system is fantastic, free talent swaps and spec changes in rested areas is also awesome, etc. I can't wait to get home and play, it's been a while since I've felt this way. :p
 

DJIzana

Member
This is such a good patch, honestly. Tried a handful of classes and can honestly say I'm happy with all of the changes. Especially with melee animation overhauls. I actually enjoy playing my warrior now!

New appearance system is fantastic, free talent swaps and spec changes in rested areas is also awesome, etc. I can't wait to get home and play, it's been a while since I've felt this way. :p

Oh man... now THIS is what I like to hear and why I want to come back! :D
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
What makes you say that?'

You feel that this version of enhance makes more sense than TBC, Wotlk?

Absolutely, yes. I feel like Enhance never really delivered on what it was supposed to be from both a mechanic and thematic standpoint in the past, and was always at least partially hamstrung by rotational or resource issues. Whether it was being mana-constrained or ignoring mana entirely and just using abilities on cooldown, it never felt as compelling as I wanted it to. I also was never a big fan of the way maelstrom weapons used to just be a way to shoehorn lightning bolt into the spec, and the juggling of a shared shock CD. The new version is fast-paced and has a good mix of physical and elemental abilities, and effectively combines short cooldowns with an actual resource to manage.

How does it work now?

Most abilities cost the new resource, Malestrom, which is similar to rage for warriors. It is built on auto attacks, windfury procs, and by using Rockbiter (or Boulderfirst if you use that talent). You generally want to keep enough maelstrom to Stormstrike on cooldown, and everything other than that largely depends on your talents.
 

diamount

Banned
Hahaha yeah, I know. It's nice to want things. :p

I'm actually fine as long as they keep making some cool class changes and overall changes. I haven't played since Cata. I really like the class changes and also looking forward to trying a Monk, playing my Warrior again, Shaman, Hunter and Paladin. Also want to PVP and explore. If anything, I'll get my fix then come back to FFXIV if I don't like the new changes.

Yeah, Cata showed that even an expansion that revamps old content simply detracts from the rest of the experience. Think they have resigned to the fact that they are never really going to bring new people in to experience it, and have to rely on returning subscribers.
 

piratethingy

Self professed bad raider
Having to actually make a decision about when to use an ability is definitely more fun than not. I went back to this game in August of last year and I was already surprised at how few abilities I had to play with. If they've pruned even more that's crazy to me.

i'm so glad blizzard has never let this opinion slow down the improvement of the game.

combat is around 500 times better now than vanilla in my very personal and subjective opinion, better than it's ever been and getting better.
 
Honestly that patch note lost just reads like a series of "thing is no longer in the game" over and over.

That has been a trend for a long time, essentially since Cataclysm (the beginning of the downward slope for WoW).

They essentially work on broken features for a long time, then make everyone happy just because of backpedaling.

It happens when the few good game designers you had don't work anymore on the game.

Can't believe all the hate in this thread.. game is probably the best it's ever been.

...no.

Opinions, of course. But WoW is a headless chicken that goes on just because Blizzard has enough money to throw at it. Game design being clueless since Cataclysm is an understatement. (an example, disclaimer it's my blog post: http://cesspit.net/drupal/node/2356/ )

WoW was head, shoulders and then more above every single other MMO out there (beside PvP being crap and never matching DAoC). It was essentially impossible to lose that much advantage over everything else. It managed.

The genre in general is full of shit, so WoW could still survive and prosper among a multitude of mediocre titles. But at least today there are valid options (FF14, Black Desert) that are FAR, FAR from perfect but that at least do things in a more interesting way than the headless chicken WoW has become.
 
The new combat animations are great.

And holy shit do I love how many passives there are in the talent tree. The fewer abilities to actively deal with, the better.
 

lazygecko

Member
The concept of the maelstrom resource system never really sounded all that appealing to me. Based on the descriptions so far, it seems like the homogenization of class gameplay is just getting worse. They talked about wanting to reinstate unique class identities ith legion, but to me this just seems to apply in a superficial manner via the artifacts and class halls.

I think I enjoyed enhancement the most as it was designed during Cataclysm.
 

Planeswalker

Neo Member
I agree with not liking the reduction in abilities.

It's not just reduction in types of interesting stuff you can do abilities but laziness too IMO.

Symbiosis was a good concept IMO but had some problems, so they just removed it.

They've been doing that a lot with interesting abilities like that.

Sure some people may not like Symbiosis but I've played plenty of games with that type of mechanic that worked fine.

it's crazy fun stuff you can experiment on and see work well that makes the game fun.

That's actually why I don't like ARR as much. The classes/jobs all play too similarly IMO and there's not many interesting abilities that could or could not change how an encounter or raid is done compared to WoW or even FFXI (FFXI may have a simple battle system but at least the class/job system offers decent customization).

Another thing with having more abilities is that it does allow classes to have gimmicks that make them play differently from others.

A thing I like about RPGs is the preparation aspect. Reading up on rotations or trying to experiment with a few abilities or playing a class that isn't as popular but doing well on it is one of the aspects WoW did well with. Monk was a really interesting class all around but they really simplified a lot of Monk (for example) since MoP.

It's actually why I still play FFXI (occasionally) still. The game hasn't really change since release but instead have more stuff added. FFXI has a simplified battle system but ever since like WotG, FFXI team never really cared about balance and just said screwed it and just tried whatever they thought it was fun without any care for balance at all.

Which may be why FFXI is still alive even though they said they were going to stop updates altogether.

When shifting service over to the Windows platform only, a great number of users moved from their previous platforms, which exceed our expected numbers. While this showed us good prospects, in order to ensure we can continue service for a long time to come we would like to do everything that we can.

Now arguably, it's hard to say whether FFXI would still be alive or not but the fact they went for the extreme update route ever since WotG and just started randomly add whatever content they can think of without regard to balance at all (same with class changes) and more and more ridiculous item upgrading scheme (there's like 7 different end game armor sets in FFXI right now you can collect with all different upgrade methods) is possibly why the game still has a fanbase that seems to not move away.

The game has 4 different ultimate weapons currently (relic, mythic, empyrean, and aeonic) alongside various other end game weapons that all comparable with each other.

Anyway, the point is, FFXI has the most options out of any MMO I played and IMO, I think it's worth it over balance.

ARR is too safe and WoW is going that route too it seems. The problem I have with what Blizzard is doing is whether it actually would increase or decrease the fanbase. There's plenty of people that do welcome the changes though but there's also plenty of people against it. I'd argue it'd be fine to have simple rotations if it was a choice alongside more interesting rotations (or interesting abilities).

Take Symbiosis for example, they could made it a talent that competes with two other abilities that offer similar strengths. People that want a crazy ability can pick Symbiosis but if someone else wants another play style, they'll pick another ability.

Right now, just removing abilities outright is kind of a lazy move IMO. I think giving players options to pick various abilities to customize their own play style (while attempting to keep balance between all play styles) is something they should have went for instead.
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
The new combat animations are great.

And holy shit do I love how many passives there are in the talent tree. The fewer abilities to actively deal with, the better.

I like that there is choice, at least. Some specs feel too bare-bones without a couple extra buttons from the talent trees.
 

loki0wn

Member
Really excited to check out the new Shadow Priest and the Deathknight. Simplifying the rune mechanic leaves a lot more options.
 

Lenardo

Banned
Patch went ok for me and the wife- just took a while to apply (took my computer 3 reboots and 45 minutes to just START the patching)

i use arkinventory for my bags and it was borked beyond belief- then when i found the work around (install it MANUALLY) all my bags were locked and i couldn't do jack until i figured out how to...control the settings that allow the bags to be assigned. an hr later i got that figured out. took 10 minutes to do all my characters once i figured it out (doing wife's char tonite now that i know what to do) fiddled with talents etc.

tonite i have to relearn my rotations for restoration and enhance since i delibrately avoided most legion talk and research- (did find a talent that is in enhance that was restore last patch and i was like wtf why is THAT enhance, i never cast that spell as an enhance player (well besides doing 10 man heroic dragon soul on the spine since, well the spine SUCKS-9 months of doing 2-3 times a week with my wife- no mount drops in that time- she just needs 1 mount to get the achievement, i need them all)

My son - changed to outlaw spec for rogue and loves it.
 

Aeana

Member
i'm so glad blizzard has never let this opinion slow down the improvement of the game.

combat is around 500 times better now than vanilla in my very personal and subjective opinion, better than it's ever been and getting better.

I'm not personally concerned with DPS classes and how they play. I play healers. And healing is definitely not better now than it used to be. I used to feel much more engaged in the game when I had to make decisions about how best to use my mana. We're nearing "just press this one button and people will live" territory, although we're not quite there yet thankfully.

I just don't know how making it more braindead is considered improvement unless your goal is to expend as little effort as possible and reap the rewards.
 
Man, I haven't played since the tail end of MOP. I'm fighting the urge to play with the new class. I'm already playing ffxiv.
 

Almyn

Member
I haven't been following Legion news at all. But, Melee hunters? Rogues with pistols? I am tempted to give it another go. I thought I was done with this game. Dammit
 

Gnomist

Member
Planeswalker said:
I think giving players options to pick various abilities to customize their own play style (while attempting to keep balance between all play style) is something they should have went for instead.

This reads almost like a bullet point on the back of the Legion box from what I understand. A lot of classes can choose talents that add complexity to their usual rotation or opt out of it if they prefer something more simple. Perhaps the execution is where people are having issues, but the goals of the talent system seem to align with that statement. I have to imagine that having parity between various rotations for every single spec for every single class is a monumental (and probably unreasonable) task.

I'd love to have Blizzard take everything they've learned through this experience and put that towards a new MMO that can be a blank slate. There are limits to what they can and will do with WoW and honestly I don't see them wanting to enter the market again given the success much more simple online games are having.
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
I dunno, I think it's why I roll alts more than play end game content in WoW. I find more abilities on the actionbar more frustrating than fun. It says a lot when players need to download 3-4 different add-ons that tell them about cooldowns, what button to press next, etc...

I would rather them prune the abilities to where your eyes aren't always looking at cooldowns and you are looking at whats going on in the game and reacting to that. "Standing in the fire" exists because no one is actually looking at the game but the actionbar buttons and recount.

The only mods you have only ever needed (except for that brief patch during wotlk where rogues needed 3 daggers and a mod to juggle them) are the ones that help track buffs and debuffs.

DPS in WoW has always been a rather simple task if you understand how your skills synergies work. It was mastering them and adapting to various scenarios where things became difficult. The job is made easier with some buff and cool down tracking mods so you know when to reapply stuff for maximum uptime.

However despite me not liking the direction of the game I think blizz has taken DPS in a good direction. They are making the core combat more active and reactive which is great and a far cry from warlocks in TBC and arcane mages / assassination rogues in late wotlk where you spammed 2 buttons for maximum effect.

The philosophy behind class design has changed from getting players to figure out how to build their characters properly to how to play them properly without worrying about the build as much. This makes sense since information on builds gets propagated really quickly now.
 
I like that there is choice, at least. Some specs feel too bare-bones without a couple extra buttons from the talent trees.

Yeah, retribution especially seems to need some abilities from talent trees to be effective. I have noticed that they make most talents appealing in each bracket. I was having trouble choosing between a few on my toons because they were all good.
 
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