I Ranked All WoW Systems

[@kschaufler11]

Timestamps: 00:00:49 Tier Explanation 00:01:49 Transmog 00:02:57 Reforging 00:04:10 Old Talent System 00:05:33 Tier Sets 00:07:36 Scenarios 00:09:05 World Quests 00:10:22 New Talent System 00:11:29 Shadowlands Legendaries 00:13:13 LFR 00:14:39 Azerite Armor 00:17:24 All Mission Tables 00:18:31 MoP Legendary Cloaks 00:19:39 PvP Vendors 00:19:58 Flexible Raiding 00:20:35 PvP Vendor Upgrades 00:21:01 Weapon Skills 00:21:09 Tertiary Stats 00:23:07 Shards of Domination 00:23:40 The Great Vault 00:25:09 M+ 00:26:44 Threads of Fate 00:27:48 Torghast 00:30:18 Hard Mode 00:31:51 (Reforging Adjustment) 00:32:42 Timewalking 00:33:53 PvP Cache 00:34:52 Legion Legendaries 00:37:06 Artifact Weapons 00:39:37 MoP Farm 00:41:07 Warfronts 00:42:08 Glyphs 00:43:34 Netherlight Crucible 00:44:34 Need vs. Greed 00:45:28 Benthic Gear 00:46:33 Creation Catalyst 00:47:41 Order Halls 00:48:27 Valor/Justice Vendors 00:49:24 Personal Loot 00:50:34 Horrific Visions of N'Zoth 00:51:25 Pathfinder 00:52:35 WoD Legendary Rings 00:53:02 Island Expeditions 00:53:41 Item Levels 00:53:56 Challenge Mode 00:54:56 Chromie Time 00:55:11 Conduits 00:55:53 25 Man Raiding 00:56:04 20 Man Mythic Raiding 00:57:16 40 Man Raiding 00:59:48 Mage Tower 01:00:50 Dragonflight Talent Trees 01:02:19 N'Zoth Legendary Cloaks 01:02:47 Corruptions 01:04:40 (Rich Campbell Corruption Rotation Clip) 01:06:43 Brawler's Guild 01:07:30 Battlegrounds 01:08:54 Paragon Reputations 01:09:10 Customer Support 01:10:12 Professions 01:10:49 Covenants 01:13:43 Essence Powers 01:14:23 LFD 01:15:00 (Max's New Haircut) 01:15:13 M+ Cache/Weekly Chest 01:15:32 Runeforging 01:15:43 Arena 01:16:00 Master Loot 01:16:12 Titanforging 01:17:04 Garrisons 01:17:39 10 Man Raiding 01:20:09 Pet Battles 01:21:19 Ashran 01:21:36 Daily Quests 01:22:15 (Max's New Haircut Adjustment) 01:22:33 Cypher of the First Ones 01:22:51 Dragonriding 01:24:10 Heirlooms 01:24:41 Artifact Power 01:27:35 Withered Training 01:28:07 Final List/Review Like for others to see please

[@GladiatorDude17]

Nice job

[@Nneoh1]

legend

[@alimuhammadnasir1571]

God's Work Sir

[@centurion7872]

what a legend

[@serenwest4638]

Ll

[@klosterdude]

Watching this made me realize how different the community feels about many of these systems.

[@VDA19]

At least everyone agrees that Mythic+ was a tremendous addition to the game

[@ronodon18]

@@VDA19 i think m+ is kinda a good content filler to invest time to world of warcraft but i think its dividing the community cause m+ is not about to having fun in the first place. most of the time you just grind it mindless or you join people that have the same skilllevel like you or you cant clear high keys. the fact that you have to filter out some of your friends just cause you would like to play the better content makes it not fun at all. i mean y ofc u dont have to filter them out but its like to offer someone a candy (high loot) and u cant reach it with your friends depending on class meta gear skill etc. also its not fun to be ~30 min conzentrated and avoid any fail cause keys are getting demoted. everyone gets sad if that happens and i dont like to invest my time and getting maybe upset just cause it failed at the end. i liked the challange mode from MoP cause it gave the same content like m+ but noone had to do this content to get any highneeded loot. also that you have to grind( as i said before) for that fking rng weekly chest is just a fking blackhole that eats all my time and dopamin if the weekly randomroll for items is sucking hard. transmog is kinda nice but it also sucks i remember the time from vanilla till wotlk as i did pvp and achieved higher ranks/ratings and could buy diff items. to see someone that wears a item is just a big feeling of prestige and achievement that made the time for invest worth it.

[@VDA19]

@@ronodon18 Competitive Game Modes aren't ''for fun'', they're for try harding. You don't go into a Ranked League game and play some dumb ass build like AP Master Yi, you're meant to try your hardest to win and improve. That's the fun.

[@ronodon18]

@@VDA19 its absolute clear that m+ has also upsites but it has to be reckonized that it also have huge downsides. the mmorpg effect is kinda lost within these runs. random leavers; everyone is anonymous and beside the skillcap expression there are no real benefits. most of the classic players are playing it because you have to deal with people and it makes fun to so why cant we have both in retail?

[@VDA19]

@@ronodon18 People who leave M+ runs leave because the players in their runs are terrible not to be dicks

[@yassimchenard243]

If thorgast wasnt tied with currency to make your legendary and instead just an extermal "challenging" things to do for transmog/mount etc. Would have been S tier easily

[@TheDool]

I dont think Thorgast was good at all. It was very poorly balanced, all of it. Roles(tanks were busted)/classes/specs, the upgrades themselves and the scaling of the enemies/final bosses. The combat was extremely repetitive and lacked good mechanics. It got old very quick and was very frustrating, if you havent gotten the good upgrades on 30min run (depends on spec, tho i guess).

[@hotpotato3311]

@@TheDool The beta version of Thorgast was really good. It was a place where you could take your character to crazy levels of strength and have fun. Then It turned into a bore fest.

[@backtrakk2121]

RIP Chorghast, combining the Alpha version with a larger variety of powers and endless floor climbing challenges (with appearance, achievements and bragging rights as well as milestone mounts) would of been the perfect way to make it work... making it mandatory killed it sooo fast

[@MeTakingAStand]

Making it mandatory killed it in a few ways: 1. People obviously do hate being forced to do anything, regardless of how easy or difficult it is. 2. It meant Blizzard could never truly get as wacky with it as they wanted. They had to place reins on it so that everyone COULD do it and they could do it relatively simply. Accessibility is a really important aspect of the game, but at the same time, accessibility can create incredibly stifling limitations on design. What Torghast really DESERVED to be was an outlet for the wackiest, weirdest, most broken abilities/interactions. To date, I do still think Torghast taken in context as a first iteration of its kind in WoW IS something incredible. It was something so outside of what we were used to doing, and the potential for it to be amazing still remains. I really do hope that they resurrect it for the future & give it the proper treatment it deserves: - Purely horizontal content -- only rewarding cosmetics/titles - Sandbox content for insanely strong stuff that's too hard to balance for other PvE stuff - continuously looping -- so you can literally climb as high as your abilities let you

[@koo1770]

Even if you had to do it once a week it wouldn't be that bad, but twice was way too much

[@fajarsetiawan8665]

Mythic+ single-handedly revived the gaming enthusiasm on WoW because it offers alternative access for non-raiding players to progress. The most important feature ever created.

[@Eliteh]

It ruined the game for a good 4 years for me. But now I'm finally getting into it.

[@exerceyo4405]

@@Eliteh How does it ruin the game for you? it's not like you're required to do it, just an option.

[@Strawberryscent_]

@@exerceyo4405 incorrect, you have to push +15 if you want to raid prog

[@exerceyo4405]

@@Strawberryscent_ Not true

[@Blezzle]

@@exerceyo4405 The issue is not the system. The issue is that some mid tier guilds force their players to run them so that they can over gear the raid content. Again not the system, but since the gear is better then what most mid tier raiders can get it becomes a constant peer pressure to force raiders to get the gear from mythic + or else they are not keeping up with the other raiders. In a perfect system for me the gear does not crossover to the other activities at 100% of stats. Kind of like how PVP gear is all verse which helps curb raiders from going into PVP and steamrolling people with full raid gear.

[@Tyberes]

IIRC the Mage Tower is the only time I've ever used the "Move To" button for my Frost Elemental. I used it to do some of the soaks while I was kiting.

[@agronnak]

Yep, I had a similar situation with scare beast which later translated into using it as a form of CC in m+

[@shokeya]

Not everybody uses wallets for leveling. There actually are lots of people who levels alts from lv1. And heirlooms were very relevant before. Maybe not powerful anymore, but still saves you from trouble looking for gear upgrades in most of the gear slots.

[@tgs5725]

I have over 20 max level characters and have never purchased a boost before. I definitely like heirlooms lol

[@billymays9296]

I never liked the concept of heirlooms, WoW is an RPG game, you're meant to get upgrades and feel stronger, whereas heirlooms lock out 85% of your items and make it so that you never replace them or get excited for upgrades. What Blizzard should have done is just give us an optional buff we can turn on/off which increases our exp gains by 100% (make it require achievements that take a little while to get, but aren't impossible for new players, like 3000 quests done, and exploration achievements to justify the insanely fast leveling). It could even also increase our damage done in non-PvP content by X amount so we feel stronger and level faster. Locking out items in an RPG and not allowing for upgrades is not a good idea.

[@katrose3749]

I think he more meant that he already has decently geared alts for every class he raids with, so he doesnt need heirlooms to level them come the new expansions.

[@lbontecou]

Really fun time to level right now with the new talent system. New talents are so overwhelming to have dumped on you all at once. Super fun to drip learn a champ with though.

[@gollese]

@@billymays9296 Heirlooms, the old versions atleast were nice.. Especially if you played 10-17 years, it's nice to level up a bit faster. And you can choose NOT to wear it. It has nothing to do if things are RPG or not. It's a great QoL

[@Drew71707]

Man it’s so sad seeing Torghast there because I loved it but I also agree with the analysis. It had the potential to grow into another entire facet of the game and they whiffed and fumbled and wasted so much time on it that it BOTH sucked during the expansion AND it scared them from using everything they learned to even continue a rogue like system in wow. What a goddamn failure :(

[@areed6961]

loved torghast said no one ever

[@JAERJAERJAERJAER]

He literally said it right there

[@serge2cool]

@@areed6961 I loved the idea of it, still kinda like testing classes out there sometimes, but fuck making it mandatory weekly.

[@iDeathSparky]

It was awesome in theory, but being forced to do it every single week for every toon you had, and then any time you wanted to make a new alt it was forced to be weaker for the first couple weeks simply because you had to wait to farm the soul ash from torg in season 1, it felt so fucking awful. Torghast combined with how terrible the covenant implementation was made season 1 just feel so shit, even though the raid was amazing.

[@Tygram17]

Maybe if they tied in some sort of mage towerish reward into torghast? Idk just thinking of what could of made it better besides not mandatory

[@joveonlightbringer9684]

I never minded having to use ground mounts to explore new expansion, but I would support Pathfinder being tied to completing the central campaign quests without a lot of extra stuff.

[@Swollen_Goat]

Druids can still actively use their order hall with Dreamwalk. It has portals all over the continents and is an easy way to get to legion content if you still farm things there.

[@Failedwizard1]

Mage hall too for the same two reasons, it also is the way for both Feral and Frost Mages to get their hidden artifact base appearances.

[@GladiatorDude17]

DK also

[@falcokid94]

Sometimes it's the fastest way out of an instance too. Double dreamwalk and you're back at the entrance.

[@RealCecilion]

@@GladiatorDude17 well you used DK one before it made to order hall the same way you use it now, not rly changed because of legion

[@DestinyHeroDarkside]

The problem is that if you’re sticking exclusively to current content, which for some players is the only desirable content to engage with, the feature is still dead. Which is a bummer, because they were massively cool

[@Donnerbalken28]

I think the problem with Legendaries as they existed up the point to Cataclysm was less the items themselves, it was the community. You can see this in Wrath Classic. Blizzard intended these items to be rewards for people who were persistently raiding, but players turned them into highly desirable setpieces that amplified any given raids ability to clear content, so they only went to the best players in any guild.

[@brandonkruse6412]

I loved running that daily heroic scenario back in MoP. Trio content is so much fun and it was semi-difficult when you weren’t geared. When they launched in 5.3 alongside item level upgrades, I finally had a reason to log onto my alts and get them some easy gear that was a tiny step below normal Throne of Thunder as scenario gear didn’t have sockets. The problem was, there was only 3 scenarios worth running and you’d just re que if you got a bad one. But let’s be honest, scenarios were just used to get that quick valor cap. They took 5-7 minutes and awarded around 100-140 valor if you got the bonus and had the account-wide buff. It was so efficient that nobody even cared about doing old raids or dungeon finder anymore.

[@josephbrown9336]

They should add a quartermaster for each dungeon, probably by the summoning stones, where you could purchase items from said dungeon with a set amount of valor. Maybe obviously not at max level, and still upgradeable, but that would give you a deterministic way of targeting m+ gear instead of the single drop chance per dungeon, or waiting a week to roll the bones in the vault

[@audinionkundesu]

It's weird how we view past expansions differently after we've played them compared to when we are playing them. Today, when I look back to corruption and the end patch of BFA I view it more positively than what i did when i was concurrently playing it.

[@drekor884]

I was shocked when you put M+ initially in S and didnt immediately create it's own tier. Good to see a few minutes later you did. I personally think M+ has single handedly kept retail WoW alive, if legion didn't bring that I honestly think WoW would have pulled a new world and bled out 90% of it's playerbase.

[@martinw2235]

Certainly during the BFA+SL 4 year window.

[@andrewballard2783]

I do think it's parasitic on raiding but I consider the trade offs worth it for more casual turn and burn. I preferred greatly challenge modes personally. I could be skewed by class design heavily though.

[@martinw2235]

@@andrewballard2783 it can't really be parasitic on raiding if a significant number of people (myself included) only play pve through m+. unless i misunderstand what you mean by parasitic.

[@andrewballard2783]

@@martinw2235 You do misunderstand but in a fair way. I mean there's a set of people who would raid that mythic plus removes their incentive to do so. I 100% agree it's worth it but it does reduce the raiding population.

[@martinw2235]

@@andrewballard2783 ah, fair enough. I get that perspective. :)

[@AwesomeArgonanth]

AP is a thing on it's own tier for me. It actually made me straight up quit the game for the first time after playing since vanilla. I already hated dailies in TBC, but at least I could ignore them. AP forced me to either endlessly grind or completely screw over my guild so I just ended up quitting.

[@kasper1241]

Systems that kept you from playing multiple specs (like azerite armor or covenants/conduits) actively made the game worse. Why would you make systems that basically make players play the game less.

[@Chimeraiam]

You know when you're at the dinner table and you ask your brother to pass the salt, and instead of handing it to you he slides it half the way in your direction and makes you still reach to get it? That's what blizzard does when they finally "fix" systems after months and months

[@Monsux]

Artifact weapons… I came back to wow mid BFA and I just wanted to play Legion content. Took me like 3 weeks to realize that the whole artifact weapon system was turned off. I stopped playing Legion because of this and felt so bad for wasting my time (did all the dungeons and some raids). The worst kind of systems are those that breaks the game after the next expansion comes.

[@phulcq6716]

Man I feel like shards of domination were so bad that they deserve a tier of their own. I hold them responsible for killing my guild's appetite to raid for that whole season. Not only were they incredibly boring, but you had to loot both the piece with the socket and the gem to go in it separately, so you needed to get lucky six times to see any real benefit instead of the traditional two/four times with tier. We had people in our guild with the sockets but no gem and vice versa. We had people spending hundreds of thousands of gold to recraft legendaries into a slot that didn't conflict with the piece they happened to get. To top it all off they rebalanced the bonuses right in the middle of the tier so the incredibly expensive upgrades people had bought ended up being a rather large, unrectifiable mistake. Plus they clearly balanced the raid around the top few guilds in the world doing endless splits to farm them out in the first couple of weeks, so the whole raid was just way too hard for months, and then suddenly got embarrassingly easy. Oh and also the whole fiasco that they "partially" worked in other content so you were constantly switching gems around... So annoying. Azerite armour was pretty annoying but had its points of interest, really no contest with shards.

[@avian8714]

Blizzard I believe announced that they removed Reforge bc it caused several issues. Such as: People getting new piece then taking time from the raid to go reforge during raid, People claiming everything as an upgrade bc higher stat value to reforge out of meant high stat of what you want, among several other issues they claim which end up only impacting a small % of the population. All-in-all, I miss Reforging, it made every upgrade feel valuable to an extent, rather than a complete feels bad when you get a higher ilvl item that has your two worst stats by far.

[@scoops2]

I remember them also pointing out that most people literally just used an addon to auto-calculate it. Personally, I'm glad it's gone.

[@avian8714]

@@scoops2 yeah I have mixed feelings about it. Overall I'm glad but again it's a major feels bad when you get a big upgrade with really shitty stats

[@bepper66]

How are visions in A and Thorgast made the game worse? Thorgast and Jailers Gauntlet especially were actually new ways to play the game, while Visions were just you smashing your head against the very same "dungeon" without anything to make it more interesting for weeks and weeks. Not to mention that in the beginning of visions you could simply die by bad rng stuns into instakill abilities and you would then fall behind for the rest of the patch with no way to make up for it.

[@rudimcpherson]

I agree with the overall statement about worldbosses at 58:00 but I would argue that Gw2 has pulled off fufilling worldbosses like the dragons end meta event. I'd say the key to success there was making content that needs some players to organise and direct things but to make sure that its all simple enough and telegraphed for new players to get the jist.

[@danh8804]

The only knock on flex raiding from my raid experience was that every participant had a quantifiable effect on the difficulty of a boss, and their presence could actually make it harder. For the target audience, mostly casual guilds that have more than 10 people, that could make some very tense and awkward situations when you're trying to progress and that 13th/18th raider *being there at all* is making the boss *harder*. Say what you will about 10 man, but if you only had 9 people, bringing any 10th, no matter how sub-optimal, still gave you a better chance numerically of winning.

[@Tyberes]

I think Tier sets were fine as a borrowed power mechanic because they were consistent. It was borrowing power yes but it was borrowed and returned the exact same way every tier for like a decade straight or something. Problem with all the other systems is that it's a new mechanic every few months and just kinda drowns you in it. IMO if they want to do borrowed power again they NEED to do it in talent trees. Just every system is it's own talent tree that works identically to the class/spec ones and the only difference is how you earn points.

[@justinmarzan8599]

28:28 this all the time when using relatively undergeared toons for rares that are perhaps extra challenging. one thing i can think of is Arachnoid Harvester in mechagon (nearly 800 kills before mount dropped btw). When i first started farming in back in 8.3 i used several toons that struggled to solo it and i also found w/e ways i could to get out of the web ability it uses. For some that was easier then others; monk initially was rushing jade wind, then i figured out tiger's lust broke the pre-stun root, dh i used blade dance at just the right time (probably the easiest one that i figured out), shaman had to be the hardest because i never did find a consistent way to break the root or kill the web stun, so i just had to heal as much as possible. But no matter what class i used i had to figure out a way to stay alive and kill it quickly.

[@keeperatoli]

Artifact power actively made the game worse and any arguement for it not are brain rot. As a reason to play every day it was just pressure to get better not actually fun or rewarding in a meaningful way. In fact that arguement works against it because instead of a system or game mode that would be a fun reason to login they put in artifact power, something that DESTROYED MIDCORE GUILDS.

[@OneOfTheLoveless]

Mid core lul.

[@greenxintet1651]

51:15 The only problem with visions were really annoying mechanics like fears, stuns, and depending on your class you simply couldnt do anything about some of them ie the mage boss in Stormwind and Alleria in Stormwind.

[@RandomCarrot2806]

I feel like Transmog should have had it's own separate category for all the things it does and interacts with without ever impacting player power making it completely optional. It allows for player self-expression, it interacts with the economy by making old greens/blues/epics valuable, it gives reason for players to go back and (re)visit old content so it doesn't lay dead as soon as an expansion/patch is over, it allows for status symbols through appearances like the MoP challenge mode weapons and for collect-a-thon lunatics it's a near endless well of engagement.

[@NiceSteeZe]

Very well said and agreed. Should def be in DDDD tier with M+.

[@h3rbaholic]

cool video , i'd add War Effort for opening of AQ in S tier

[@valkirje]

Hey Max, I've been enjoying your content more and more - thanks for the cool videos. One note on this tierlist, from a gamedev perspective (almost 10 years worth of experience on my end): funneling dev time into one feature doesn't necessarily mean a different feature will be underdeveloped, especially at a huge studio like Blizzard. Sometimes we have good ideas on paper, but then after months of implementation, when it comes to playtesting, it turns out we missed some crucial points here and there and... it's usually too late to devote more dev time to make amends. Then a decision needs to be made - is the feature good enough to go live "as is", or do we cut it. In Torghast's example, I personally think it was good enough to go live.

[@karadinx]

Your point about one aspect being developed doesn't necessarily take time from other aspects falls flat for Torhgast. One of the problems with Shadowlands was that there were several different parts of the game that required the attention of the devs who balanced and developed power for classes, and basically none of them were ever in a fully finished state. Of all these systems Torhgast had the most tied into it, from creating new powers to number tweaks, that pulled focus away from the rest of the game. On top of all the balance issues, the mode was also supposed to be something to get the casual crowd to log in consistently so any issues with it were seen by more players than something like Shards of Domination, which mostly effected raiders and M+ runners. This meant that as long as there were problems with it the devs would need to spend extra time working through those issues.

[@valkirje]

@@karadinx I'm afraid you misunderstood my point. I'm not defending other features of Shadowlands; I'm just saying the development of Torghast didn't necessarily happen to the detriment of these other features. If a majority of players notice, for instance, an imbalance in class design, then it's not Torghast's - or any feature's - fault: it'll usually be too tight deadlines, which is out of devs' jurisdiction.

[@karadinx]

@@valkirje I understood your point. My point was that, while you are normally correct, in the specific problems of Shadowlands the devs who were constantly needing to rework Torghast powers are the same personnel that also do class balancing *and* the class powers for other systems. This isn't the normal case of "Game balance sucks but people are blaming the art team for working on new Tmog/mounts/whatever". Those are two separate teams. Torghast, as the singular most forward facing and complicated class power system Directly caused other Class Power Balance and creation problems for the expansion. This is one team (and for many classes a singular person).

[@H41030v3rki110ny0u]

43:20 There are big differences between conduits and glyphs i think.. glyphs were a huge chunk of the new profession's "gamplay" loop. Inscription (glyphs hugely) helped fuel the economy, serving as a dump skill for herbs. Imagine how useless and cheap herbs would be in wrath if only alchemists, generally, used them. I don't think they're awesome.. but definitely way better than conduits. I think glyph's affected the game in better ways.

[@joseluisgonzalez2846]

I miss Proving Grounds in that list. In my opinion it was a nice feature in its basic part for helping people to learn basic features of the game. The infinite mode became really hard and the titles it provided were quite a challenge. Obviously Blizzard did a good job making us forget about it [so they don't need to update it], because nobody talks about that anymore...

[@RealCecilion]

New players didn’t even know it existed unless actively searching for it. Speaking with experience because I started when this was in the game

[@joseluisgonzalez2846]

@@RealCecilion You needed silver achievement in order to get into LFR, if I'm not wrong.

[@RealCecilion]

@@joseluisgonzalez2846 not for me, i never did it with any character besides one (because a friend showed me) while it was in the game and neverr saw any restrictions

[@ajshdhenskaka]

@@joseluisgonzalez2846 That was only for MoP and was a requirement for heroic dungeons, but it definitely needs to come back.

[@durango3063]

Reforging was such a good quality of life to get hit rating cap etc. I loved it, now it would be still good please make it back

[@KBThogers]

Torghast could have been so cool, if they used it to bring back old dungeon and raid bosses. Isn't it supposed to be the Warcraft version of Hell? so finding big evils we have defeated before, wouldn't be that weird? and gameplay/coding wise the fights is already made.

[@Hephera]

the ending of the 9.2 questline says noone is going to get sent to the maw ever again, so theyve kinda closed off that opportunity.

[@viva3401]

So glad to see a content creator agree that Reforging as a system was one of the best things they've ever put in the game, I miss it so much

[@raidwipe]

I hated it, just ran my char through a bot and then did what the bot told me to do based on what stats i want.

[@mistakai4226]

Order halls were the only thing that kept me playing during Legion.

[@andybanan1992]

flying and paprthfinder is one of the things DDXIV does sooo much better, with the atunements in new areas, it gives you an actuall reason for not being able to fly, and its not a massively daunting task to unlock.

[@dianauwu1312]

Aether currents are such a banger, you play through the story in the zone on foot and then the game rewards you with flying after maybe 20 minutes of side quests and exploration. Also why'd you call it DDXIV? Am I out of the loop on something

[@andybanan1992]

@@dianauwu1312 nope, just a typo and i never proof read xD but yea, aether currents is just a much better way, it achieves what blizzard wants, wich is to have players enjoy the content on foot, but then gives players quick access to flying without waiting a year, and with a staggering amount of wasted time, i still to this day have not unlocked pathfinder on most content since its been out, as its just to much of a hassle

[@wowxleahyrain]

as a tank i actually really loved corruptions for twilight dev lol

[@tigera9]

This 100%, I think tanks liked it best

[@Schrei205]

As a tank, I realized I actually loathed Twilight Dev more than anything else. At some point in a solo vision I realized that *none of the buttons I was pushing mattered.* All I was doing was waiting for Twilight Dev to proc. And when it didn't proc, it felt stupid and wasteful. If it procced too late into a pull, it felt stupid and wasteful. If it procced as I was gathering mobs, it felt stupid and wasteful. Miserable goddamn system. Might've been better remembered if it hadn't burnt me out before the vendor.

[@wowxleahyrain]

@@Schrei205 yeah i get that for sure. It was just really entertaining on a fight like hivemind sometimes being top damage lol

[@DreadPages]

@@Schrei205 I have to disagree with this take. You still play efficiently and get your buttons in. If you got a proc you melted everything. If not, well you still played properly. You still dodged, used cds, kicked, stunned like normal.

[@ZeroX252]

RE: Momentum (the blink glyph) it was originally added to the Mage Trainer as a dialogue option to toggle between blinking in the direction you were moving and the direction you were facing. When it was very first added, it actually counted as a movement speed modifier, similar to the ghost wolf talent that was bugged on dragonflight beta. It was also bugged in a similar way. You could snowfall and blink in wsg off the alliance tunnel and it would basically telepprt you into the horde base. It was hot fixed VERY quickly.

[@FruitSmax]

1:16:37 the only relevant titanforging story of mine was that i pugged normal ToS and ended up with a 955 helmet (a titanforge of FORTY FIVE) from sassz'ine

[@DaveyJones59]

Me and the other hunter in our M raid team spent 6ish hours spamming +2 MoS for KP and AP every day. We both got sephuz, blasting cap, pyraz(Neck shield item), and roots of shaldrassil in that order and both of us would get our legendaries on the same day. My buddy starts a boomkin shortly before nighthold and he got 5 legendaries within 3 days of hitting lvl cap lol. You reminding me of this brought back like my one negative memory of legion.

[@Bepples]

What Max is missing about glyphs is that initially they did affect throughput e.g. Explosive Shot crit chance increased by 4%, but later in Cata had a glyph tier exclusively for utility and then MoP and WoD got rid of the throughput glyphs so all of them were about utility. In that time it actually was a cool system because you would swap glyphs around depending on the fight just like talents. For example I could glyph Explosive Trap to be a knockback instead of doing damage, or I could glyph Disengage to go further, or Camouflage to be a stealth (originally it was only a stealth when standing still), all depending on the fight. It was a nice level of customisation on top of talents and generally worked well.

[@Scruffed]

Personally I would've put the Legion Legendaries at the "actively made the game worse" tier, it's probably the most infuriating system they ever made as far as I'm concerned because of the way they were acquired. Artifact weapons would be D or A tier for me depending on the patch, I liked the effects and the depth they gave to the class design, loved the transmogs, hated it as a progression system (having to do world quests or farming Maw of Souls for artifact power, not sure why Artifact Power is being rated separately). BfA corruptions would also be A tier or "actively made the game worse" tier depending on whether it's pre-vendor or post-vendor.

[@NeshieTheKingSlayer]

18:40 Legendary cloak on my ret pally with the higher threat aura on was really good for tanking heroics in lfd.

[@NeshieTheKingSlayer]

Corruption was absolute dog shit. The level of fucked it was doesn't make up for how good it could have been in my opinion. Literally quit the game until they added the weekly rotation dumb shit. Had my dk fully geared with shit corruptions and a full mastery corruption mage that just got better rng or had more time to play the game just had like 80% mastery and his ignite dot 3 shot me.

[@SondreGrneng]

I would argue that the WoD mission table actively made the game worse. it introduced so much gold into the economy and made so many people so rich that anyone that missed out on that was kinda fucked.

[@bill7302]

Name a more iconic duo than max and tier lists. I'll wait.

[@jaketanner2454]

Blink glyph had its uses! For The Butcher in Highmaul I was the dps responsible for stepping out to adjust which half the raid the soak targeted. Blinking backwards out of melee for a couple GCD’s then blinking back to exactly where I was before was very nice IMO

[@whyismyhandleshown]

I don't get how covenants aren't "actively made game worse" just because they were swappable. If I step into shit my day doesn't get better just because I have a tissue to kinda wipe it off...

[@uzairqarni7782]

I’d put heirlooms and battlegrounds in the top category with arenas and lfd. Those are the elements that make the game for me.

[@SHSscorp82]

9:39 Even scared the dog! 😂

[@SirNarax]

Pet Battles are a strong contender for "who cares" but in that case so is the likes of the Mage Tower, Brawler's Guild or Transmog. Who can just as easily be a "who cares" it just depends on who you ask.3

[@scoops2]

This is a fine example of how not forcing people to do things is the way to go. Lots of people hate pet battles and yet there's no drama, those who like them do them, those who don't, don't. Also if you dig around on KZbin you'll find there's a community who love collecting and battling pets, I'm super happy for them.

[@ExtraHecticana]

I hadn't played since MoP. I came back to try dragonflight and the SINGLE reason I'm hooked on the game again is mythic+. If it didn't exist I would have played for a week or 2 and bounced. But I'm having so much fun getting ksm and currently working on ksh. It's great

[@donut_s]

Corruptions were the most fun thing ever introduced when you got your full set. Change my mind

[@Jadinass]

Pet battles are weird because unless you really want to figure out a pet battle, which you only ever do once, then the act of pet battling is trivial and you don't even think about it. The only you can do to get good at pet battles is to collect more pets and leveling them and that's really the content.

[@arc-sd8sk]

the "problem" with transmog is that is made it alot less cool to show off your endgame gear walking around in vanilla/tbc/wrath will full biscuit felt dope because anyone who saw you would immediately know "that guy f*cks" with xmog, everyone looks the same in greens as they do in the best gear in the game playing dressup is fun tho so imo it's a fine tradeoff

[@Zenaur]

so many people straight up quick because of the AP grind. Loved raiding/Mythic+ but count keep up with the time commitment of mindless grinding

[@NeillBS]

How do you feel about/rate Bonus Rolls? did you like the extra chance at loot for bosses each week, as well as being able to stack them?

[@scoops2]

I always thought it was nice to be able to selectively choose where to improve your RNG that week. However, I didn't like the daily quest grind that came along with it when it was first introduced in MoP. Also there are better ways to do bad luck protection.

[@kashug.]

20man vs 10man is a hard question. Going 10 man means raiding would be more accessible, so more people could be able to try our mythic raiding. (Its much easier to get 10 people together than 20). But on the other side 20 man raids has the advantages max mentions. For me, the 20 man requirement is what stops me from doing mythic raiding. Trying to find 20 people that can raid at the same time often enough to make good progress requires a lot of work. For 10 man it is much easier.

[@fozgoth]

Yeah I fully understand why Mythic *needs* to be 20 man in WoW... But it's the only reason I'm not doing it. I don't think that people who currently Mythic raid can appreciate just how difficult it is to add 10 new random people to an existing group of 10 friends playing the game. It feels impossible to make that cohesion happen. Not to mention trying to find 10 random people that aren't terrible and/or annoying...

[@billymays9296]

You can easily find people using websites that are recruiting though, and set your specific times in those sites. 10 man doesn't work anymore with 13 classes, 14 in DF. That means that at least 4 classes are just never brought to raids, and with tuning and balance being what it is, it's probably more like 7 classes that never get brought.

[@kashug.]

@@billymays9296 its not easy. Guilds die all the time because it is not easy to keep a group of 20 people that can raid regularly enough to make good progress. This is even worse of you are not a top end guild, but spend maybe 3 months clearing a raid. That's about 12 weeks where you ask 20 people to be online for maybe 4 hours 2-3 days a week. And each time you need to replace someone you need to wait for them to learn all the the things the rest of the group learned last time. These logistics are not fun and the sole reason i stopped doing mythic raiding and now just do a HC full clear and focus on m+. If raids where 10 man i would start doing mythic raiding again.

[@orangesliceverno1906]

Great watch, thanks for making this one.

[@liangdar9675]

To be honest simply the fact that if I fail a vault I can now get 2 sockets instead of just 1 if I had 3 choices completely salvaged the vault for me.

[@VeryNiceAshe]

Fun fact about the mage glyph you’re talking about (even tho it’s just a toggle now) : Not only it’s psycho to play with it, but for some people (me), when I play with it it breaks my shimmer and I effectively can’t cast spells while blinking anymore, rending a huge part of the talent Shimmer completely useless, so yeah guys don’t play with that

[@jewishjojo]

I don't see the issue with using it. A lot of the time I'm moving my character in a different direction from the camera, and being able to blink that way is very valuable. The most important part of arcane momentum is that you can blink side to side while holding right click down to turn your character. As for the shimmer bug, that's probably a you issue.

[@andrewburdick7416]

Yeah playing that way feels cleaner to me, but there are certain platforms that are always bugged (blinks you in the wrong direction). Elevators and other similar elevated platforms to be specific. As an example, it was bugged on the upper floating part of necrotic wake and really messed up my movement when I forgot about it.

[@NoOne4k]

I think if things are very cool to play with but have extremly bad acquisitions like legion legendarys and corruptions that should make it worse, because it actively excludes unlucky players from fun and even from their raid spot.

[@him7487]

Dude MoP challenge modes and the brawlers guild were some of the best content ever added. I really hate that people still shit on MoP cause imo it's easily top 3 expacs of all time. Incredible expansion with plenty of content for casuals and hard-core players.

[@Warwipf]

MoP was so fucking good but the setting sucked dick

[@elayldasoloing4781]

Brawlers guild back in the day having the invite system was so cool

[@patrickbryananonuevo8271]

Hyped for the tier list video ranking all thr tier list videos.

[@Tidbit0123]

One thing I don't like about the new Great vault is that as someone who enjoys both pvp and pve, I have to actively decide between which type of content I will limit myself for that week by only choosing one piece of gear.

[@Mayhemzz]

It's quite funny listening to this now and hearing Max talk about the skill jump from everything before Ulduar to after it and knowing that the wrath classic population tanked hard when Ulduar launched because it was too hard for a lot of the casual dad guilds out there.

[@colinlenhoff3625]

When you are the mage that uses the momentum glyph... and remembering your terrible decision every time you ran NW trying to blink to get the Meat Hook aimed and screwing it up because your momentum is actually wherever the ziggurat is moving.

[@shanatan00]

The Customer support used to be good. Now it just like half-ass working people. For LFR people hate it for like - if you are dps the queue time can take up to 2-3 hour - then you join a group that have 10 stack of determination - even LFR difficulty that cut some mechenic and lower damage plus high stack of buff you still see half of the raid dead - also you have a chance to join other region server that higher you ms a lot

[@Stutterstep77]

13:44 quite honestly, in my opinion, LFR is totally fine. What they need to do with it though, is basically have it just be a free loot instance. Should remove any mechanics that can out right wipe the raid. So many times in LFR groups people just try to zerg everything anyway, and if there are actual mechanics it just ends up wasting everyone's time because you just wipe to either 1 shot mechanics, or things that to recover from would require healers to be A. Paying Attention and B. To be Competent enough to be able to react and heal up the group accordingly. I feel its far too volatile of a difficulty. It's easily accessible since you just queue for it, which means you can and will get people that are either new and trying a new class or have literally no addons to tell them what to do or anything, or are just going through the motions while watching something on their other monitor or third option, tunnel vision players who just try to nuke or "parse" in fucking LFR and not actually do what needs to be done to beat the fight.

[@peterr3890]

Agree with the logic with SL legendaries, but they made the game worse. They forced you to only place one character or one spec based off of how much gold you had to buy them. Upgrading them was awful. I have the gold and I don't want to drop tens of thousands just to try something out. It is a system that made me play fewer characters and play the game less. Actively made the game worse.

[@tgs5725]

Yeah in reality I think once you unlocked a leggo you should be able to swap it for free st the runecarver. If you have a 291 leggo belt you should be able to change the power for free and it keeps its 291 iLvl.

[@Senen33]

The thing that's always forgottent about 10HM is that it wouldn't work as well nowadays anyway. The one thing Mythic completely broke is the ability for small AOTC guilds to jump into Mythic to kill a few bosses there before the next patch hits. You could easily go from 10NM to 10HM. Now if you're an AOTC guild, even if 10-man mythic was a thing, that'd require to change all your habits and start benching people that have not seen a bench in 3 expansions. The one thing that would allow AOTC guild to dip their toes in the Mythic raiding would be flex Mythic, and that's never happening. As someone who's been in an AOTC level guild since Cataclysm, it sucks, we used to have fun killing early 10HM bosses at the end of each tier (or even full clearing 10HM at the end of long tiers like Dragon Soul and SoO) and now we just stop raiding after AOTC and take a break until the next patch. It's less fun. But there's no good way to fix it that wouldn't break Mythic for the guilds dedicated to Mythic raiding.

[@joveonlightbringer9684]

Battlegrounds: I enjoyed Wintergrasp when it controlled access to the raid, so there was high investment but players of all skill levels queued. People cared and coordinated (as much as you could in chat), but it reset often enough it wasn't end of world if you lost. So many close finishes, the only time I've really enjoyed PvP.

[@Kylora2112]

I'd rather Blizz make bad stats better than bring back reforging. Scenarios weren't great, but the scenario TECH used for questing is one of the best things out there for storytelling.

[@Fr33mx]

reforging makes your not so good items be kinda decent. and decent items a bit better. The system has no downsides with hit and expertise gone. It's an overall a great feature that was gutted for no reason. Especially considering the reason it was removed was also removed the same expansion...

[@kevinvaldez5163]

Arena absolutely made the game worse, not because it's a terrible idea, but because it fractured the identity of the game. Suddenly you are trying to balance a "competitive esport pvp game" and an actual MMORPG at the same time. WoW Arena should have been a separate game with cross game progression/unlocks like Hearthstone. They could have had free reign to really fine tune it, while not being forced to give up the original feel of WoW PVP and item progression. The fact that they've tried so many different iterations on pvp gear/stats and talents is evidence that the two systems are at their core incompatible.

[@joshuakruger4851]

Man, glad to hear your take on horrific visions. I've always thought they were so good and everyone I've talked to thought I was nuts for thinking that.

[@Fandrir]

Exactly the same for me. Although i have to agree it kinda sucked once you were just grinding them for corruption gear in the end. But as long as you were progressing on it until you did them with 5 masks, they were very fun.

[@dungeonmasterdave1617]

I think one idea to make 40-man raids fun is have an optional boss that has two or three phases that transition as soon as the number of living players drops from 40 to 25 then to 10. The ten gain a special loot for surviving. It would need tone tuned so you can bring in 40 only for this special wing obviously and also in a way that guilds will find it difficult to just sacrifice specific players to determine the final ground.

[@XenTheHunter]

How would this be fun for the remaining players? If you spend 2/3, half or even 1/3 of a fight just spectating the fight and not playing how is that going to be engaging for them? Especially knowing only the surviving players get the 'special loot'.

[@dungeonmasterdave1617]

@@XenTheHunter simple. Have them be more than spectators. Dead players will enter the spirit realm and engage in fight where they can obtain loot based on victory conditions. I think the trick will be to make players want to get loot from both the dead and the living parts. But the living part rewards would be special. Or maybe it doesn't have to be. Or another idea is to have the spectators be able to vote on the player they think will survive the longest. I'm also thinking this could be a limited run algalon-style boss where you only get one shot a week or one hour to try.

[@Taylor-bw4zg]

4:35 nah it wasnt the illusion of choice lol in WoW classic you could fury tank, do hybrid builds and stuff liek that. The only way you think the old talents gave "the illusion of choice" is if youre someone who only wants to min/max the shit out of the game. And even then getting smaller changes that lead to big ones felt more meaningful than waiting 5 levels to get a talent that i have less that 0 interest in.

[@TheNitram8]

Could you rank your tierlists next?

[@grit1]

Boreghast, Snoreghast, Choregast, Poorghast, Soreghast, Deploreghast, Revolving Doorghast, Aborhghast, Hit the Floorghast (cause I fell asleep)

[@AkromaStrategy]

imagine if you could use great vault tokens to add a tertiary stat to something in your vault.

[@Scruffed]

Pet Battles could be A tier if they made a pet battle mobile game linked to your WoW account, with cosmetic rewards for your WoW character if you're good at them.

[@CoversIncorporated]

I want to see Torghast come back reskinned as caverns of time in Dolly tier, so many good ideas squandered

[@Daniel-ut6lc]

I had the title for auchidoun challenge mode realm best for a while. Super cool to rock that title

[@nilsp9426]

9:04 S-tier editing!

[@nilsp9426]

Old talent system: you get a talent point with every level up. That alone is a big selling point for me! It also gave a lot of meaningful choice while leveling, because you need to select which part of the build you want first. I returned to classic wotlk recently and think this just feels better for an MMO than the MoP one. The MoP one was also much more restrictive and also had a lot of dead talents (good PvP choices in PvE). The sheer amount of talent points also helped to build in all the stuff, so your character was somewhat complete at max level without having to farm certain legendaries or progress through borrowed power. In Shadowlands, most classes feel broken without their legendaries. On the other hand, the new talent system coincided with the introduction of a lot of great abilities (class design in MoP was overall extremely good). A lot of these great abilities were talents. So the revamp I think was a good creativity booster.

[@billymays9296]

Again, this is the illusion of choice, just like Max pointed out. There were hard cookie-cutter builds that EVERYONE follows, so you weren't choosing talents, so much as you were selecting the one the guide told you to take.

[@Iomtuu]

@@billymays9296 Still its a better system for the majority of players and MOP talents style didnt change this anyway

[@ajshdhenskaka]

@@billymays9296 Stop acting like MoP through SL don't have hard cookie-cutter builds as well. If I'm stuck using the same build with both the old and new talent trees then I'll take the ones that at least give me some kind of reward every time I level instead of one every 10-15 levels.

[@trysephiroth007]

All I remember from the old talent system was seeing +2% Holy Light healing as a point or something like that.

[@corysteiner1218]

Lol loved the opening clip. Thanks for the laugh max. 👍

[@kasper1241]

When it comes to tier sets people continuously forget to mention how they often revive dead talents and also change the meta between seasons. In BFA we really missed this (because the azerite traits basically stayed the same the entire expansion) and some talents were dead the entire expansion. When they reintroduced, tier sets in Shadowlands it instantly revived some talents that were never used, and it also changed the meta. Survival Hunters and Destrolocks would never have been meta if it wasn't for tier sets. And even though people started to hate these to specs it's still better than always having it be Fire mages, Rogues, BM/MM hunters etc.

[@Ph3onixKing]

Integrate Challenge mode into M+...i hate the "here's a mount for spending less than 3 weeks getting to 2k" i missed out on challenge mode back in Warlords and mists, but it would make the grind more enticing because it gives another incentive to keep going for armor pieces/cosmetic stuff. Tie things like...getting a stype of currency to spend on those cosmetic pieces, and the higher the keys the higher chance there is to get that token/coin or w/e to go after those pieces.

[@madmulk9]

Coming to this video late and seeing order halls. They should give warbands an equivalent! "Player hall" or something and you can use it for various things

[@joveonlightbringer9684]

I loved the Order Halls. I wish we had reason to go back. We should have dedicated Order Hall hearth stones, like we do for Garrisons.

[@PartScottish]

Came for artefact element, stayed for artefact elephant.

[@menecross]

Because LFR doesn't count for the story quests. 13:29 The SL mission table was the best.

[@cadencenavigator958]

I actually didn't get a single Legiondary until the end of the expansion, but I'm also a solo player who tends to go long stretches without logging in, so take that anecdote with a salt lick.

[@crbrearley]

Max: 10m raiding was one of the worst things in the history of WoW. You had thriving 25m raid teams in Wrath and then the leaders of those guilds said, "well, raiding 10 is easier" so they tossed fifteen players out on their asses. It was a demographic nightmare. No, the difficulty of heroic dungeons did not help but I think 10m giving equal gear to 25m was the greatest disaster to the raiding scene in wow history. *Shrug* Of course, the numbers either back me up or they don't. Never seen formal numbers from that period. It's my take on the ground though.

[@billymays9296]

10/25 didn't give the same iLvl though. That's one of the main reasons 25 man Guilds were also always first in 10 man, because they overgeared it lol.

[@avian8714]

Anyone else notice that tier list calls it THORgast instead ot TORGHAST?

[@Spyger9]

Lol. Max says it's psycho to change Blink to go in the direction you're moving, but that's exactly how Roll works for Monk.

[@ryuranzou]

I haven't played retail in a bit, but I think it'd be cool if they had older raids and dungeons be playable at max level. They could throw in titles or transmogs for people to earn for beating them to make them relevant and people want to do them again. Yeah it would take a lot more work for them to balance, but it would be a great way to add so much content for players. I really hate the combat in ffxiv, but being able to go into older content at max level and it still be as challenging as when it came out makes that content so much more valuable.

[@elonpuffenstuff8851]

this dude is a legion baby for sure