Shadowlands Current State - A Casual Chat

[@Mr91Jmay]

Just make the conduits like glyphs, once you get one it is there to swap freely.

[@Athenox]

I think this would solve a lot of problems because that is the main issue or make it like the damned essences where you unlock it and its there. So you only have to source them out once instead of as many times as you have to swap.

[@Andarath69]

That makes too much sense for Blizz to do it. FeelsBadMan

[@lushbitstv7940]

I mean players wants to mess around with them and test different stuff. Let players just swap in and out freely - or have a conduit NPC that can remove them for a small cost or something. Destroying them is NOT the answer.

[@Magsh]

If I understood correctly that is how it's going to be? Ion said something like "you can swap freely between conduits based on what boss you are on and what activity you do. Something in the way you change talents" I may have heard that wrong. But it made sense to me

[@nathaneldridge157]

Shit just bring glyphs back at this point

[@corwindodd4129]

It really isn't just 1% of the player base that will be effected by this. Anyone who wants to use the same character in Raids that they use in PvP or M+ is going to feel punished by these systems. Anyone that wants to change Roles is going to feel punished by this. PvP is competitive no matter how casual the player, and if one Covenant gains a clear advantage it will become very apparent. The effect might only be small on paper, but a player dealing 90% as much damage as another player isn't going to feel good about it.

[@Urukior4]

What Preach was generally complaining about, which is definitely not only a 1% playerbase thing - Blizzard doesn't let us play the game's areas in the way we used to, they REQUIRE us to play ALL ASPECTS OF IT NOW. I USED to be able to just login and casually (in the sense of not as a chore) play PvP ONLY. Just like how Raiding guilds just raided. But now it's become do ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ CHORE to finally be able to do what I generally want to do.Of course there's definitely been some chores to do in the game outside of your main dish, but they were minor, unlike Legion and BfA's chores becoming second job level. Their whole thing with making us play all avenues of the game definitely showcases the big execs up top dictating things all for player engagement metrics. That mentality actually eventually make us all get off the treadmill entirely.

[@LPerro_]

Agreed. And the problem is, that most of these systems are so baked into the game right now, that changing oder taking stuff away right now would be really hard in order to get it right or at least better. Most of the stuff that Preach said won't matter for me since I am pretty casual at raiding nowadays and I don't feel compelled to go over anything than +15 M+, however: Even I see that, if I want to be comfortably prepared for the raids to come, I have to tackle a massive load of systems on top of systems to get to that point. And I really feel for the high end players, who really have to suffer over that. And I already see that, over the course of the addon, people will absolutely only take certain class/covenant choices with them in order to cheese certain parts of content. GG.

[@tomashruby9349]

Also guilds way lower allmost allways have few burned out mythic players who spread this sentiment.

[@szerated5505]

That's exactly right, well said. This cannot be painted with the 1% brush because it diminishes just how flawed the idea is, and how many people, hardcore and casual, it will effect. Blizzard has spent the last 15 years making it easier, and even incentivizing playing different activities, and playing different roles and specs. It seems so strange that this is completely the opposite direction, and massively so. A single choice that effects a large amount of the player power, which lasts the entire expansion.... When we saw this at blizzcon it was very obvious to me that this is a massive mistake, surely many of the game designers and developers saw the same problem. It's actually crazy that this idea got off the drawing board. They now have kinda screwed themselves (and all of us...) because Soulbinds are integrated with the active abilities, which poses a new problem, because you are tightly coupled between passives and active abilities for each covenant. You cant just simply completely decouple them. If I was the lead designer, I would scrap the soulbinds idea completely, preserving the conduits through some other mechanism (perhaps the legendaries as preach mentioned). The passive abilities that aren't tied to your class are not that interesting in the first place. Then you can decouple the active abilities from our covenant choice so that we can pick the one we want for the type of content we are doing. Despite sounding like scrapping a feature, I can say with 100% certainty that this would be a much better game experience for every single Wow Player. The opportunity to use all of the actives in different situations will far outweigh missing out on a few passives, most of which are now being massively scaled down already for balance reasons. We really need to continue to pressure blizzard on this, because this feels like a garrison level mistake.

[@gringgles2633]

if they don't change the system the only fix would be to disable covenant abilities in pvp. also we live in the day and age of cookie cutter build guides where people just look up a guide and build that exact thing so then the choice is only gunna be for the absolute casualls that their only raid experience is they did an LFR once

[@telkota1247]

Honestly, as someone who does curve with my guild and dabbles into mythic raids a little bit; I just want ONE expansion without any borrowed power again! No artifact or azerite bullshit, no essences, relics etc. Just our characters, the gear and our abilities. Sure they can toss in some legendary shit like legendary cloak or something by the end of the expansion (if there is some proper catch up mechanics and not a huge fucking grind). But please, for the love of all that's holy... No more borrowed powers!

[@DennisM168]

Agreed, especially if you consider that all those borrowed powers are completely ruining balancing.

[@jakubpelikan2393]

That expansion would kill wow becouse casual playerbase would have nothing to do after 1 week.

[@a40989d1]

So how it was back in vanilla, tbc, wrath, cata, mop, and wod( I think, as I barely played wod)?

[@prestonrasmussen4083]

I like borrowed power, I think it changes up the classes and dynamics from expansion to expansion without a complete redesign. I just don’t want to be punished for playing all of my specs and all of Blizzard’s content.

[@wmcarter6096]

Artifact weapons were the sole reason I quit Legion after 1 week. Heart of Azeroth is the main reason I never gave BFA a chance. I, too, want to play and level a character and systems upon systems.

[@dangahzone]

As a casual who has dropped in and out of playing competitively, the infinite list of chores turns me off it every time. The only reason someone should have to turn away from high end gameplay is that they just can't seem to get it right. Not because they don't have an extra 70-80 hours a week to farm bullshit. I came back with my friends for 8.3 and after a couple of weeks of catching up we all unsubbed. Essences(worst offender imo), corruptions, azerite gear, plus the normal stuff like trinkets/special items just make the game insufferable to play right now. That's on top of learning your class and the existing mechanics in the game. The high end people don't like this stuff and most casuals I talk to don't like it either. The moment I quit I was gearing and I had got all the traits I wanted, gotten pretty lucky on corruptions and all of it together made playing my character so much fun. Then over the course of that week I got a bunch of "upgrades" that broke the feeling I just had. That's when I realized I would have to spend hundreds of hours farming abilities I was just using a week prior. My tinfoil hat is telling me that these are direct influences from the marketing team. " We've read some new studies on animal behavior I think we could increase player engagement if you shape the systems in this way. Then we can talk about it with investors."

[@dangahzone]

Oh I almost forgot questing to unlock the cloak then spamming visions to upgrade the damn thing, but blizz has done little to nothing to let people catch up if they don't get boosted. I tried to do a 5 mask run with my friends and it was 10 times harder than if I had done it alone. At that point am I even playing a mmo anymore like wtf.

[@MrZriael]

I was considering returning when there was hype before 8.3, but after really looking into how Corruptions were going to work, looking into how Essences worked (as I left earlier in the expac, I'd not seen 'em before) and seeing they weren't really being changed for 8.3. I convinced myself it was going to be a complete clusterfuck and backed out of returning. What I'm saying is I fit somewhere between the high-end and casual players, I like challenging content almost exclusively, but I play WoW when it's good and simply leave when the systems break down or the content feels dry. I'm a "Seasonal Player" (I think is the term usually used), and we don't like this stuff either. Lastly, I'm sorry for your frustration. However, your story makes me feel hella vindicated about not returning to prep for SL, thanks for telling it.

[@Hoibz]

From a gameplay point of view, BFA has gotten worse and worse for every patch. I enjoyed BoD the most even though essences were a thing because Memory of Lucid dreams is actually an active ability you have agency over. Vision of Perfection is the biggest abomination in the games existence as a main Destro lock.

[@Hoibz]

And with power progression being so thoroughly unenjoyable and rewarding, I didn't play much in 8.2 and quit a couple weeks into 8.3. It is sad that Classic wow with all its massive flaws is a better game that retail.

[@GabrielFernandes-yy3wi]

Having to play hours everyday just to "keep up" with arbitrary things decided by the devs we have to do is really frustrating. I'm someone with limited free time, and it killed me that most of it is done doing bs stuff that I don't care about. There is a lot that had improved tho, Preach comparison to Legion is a good one, and if you compare, most of the pain points have been somewhat removed. Major potential red flags left for me are the soulbinds and the covenant progression. Why blizzard doesn't detach the skills and power from the covenants is beyond me, but if somehow there is not a major power gap between then (veeeery unlikely) then it should be a much better expansion (day-to-day wise) than legion was. Could - if I can stomach the covenants - see myself giving it a shot again, but it is such a shame to see blizzard throw away potentially awesome things just to stuck to their ideas...

[@stevenharkema5456]

#LongRant I used to love leveling alts and trying to get them raid ready and progressing them through content that was appropriate for that particular character. Maybe this week I want to play my shaman so I'd raid on it. Next week I'd dust off the mage and do some progression on it. It was fun doing a raid with 3-4 different characters and Pugging something on whichever alt I felt like playing that week. There was no punishing mechanic for not playing those characters, they were side characters I could progress at their own pace. That's changed in the last two expansions. Now every week of missed visions, missed mythic+, PVP caches, and missed invasions are basically a missed opportunity you'll never get back. I'm a raider in a Mythic Guild that has killed M NZoth raiding 6 hours a week. I have a kid, job, house, and all the fun stuff. I barely have enough time to do all the extra stuff with visions, mythic+, world quests, islands on 1 character. And to be honest I literally enjoy NONE of those things yet the majority of my WoW play time is chores I need to do to stay relevant in the things I love like raiding. I would much rather have the ability to unlock something and be done with it so I can enjoy that time outside of raid on other characters doing the things I do love about the game. This is why covenants might be the nail in the coffin. I will not have the time or will power to stay relevant on multiple characters with the time commitment that takes, no matter how much I love Mythic Raiding. Additions like PVP power are great - they add a resource relevant to that content for players that want to do that content. We don't have systems like that right now. To create the best character you can you literally have so many little chores to do every week. Time-gating content that isn't relevant to the content it is needed for to the extent it has been this expansion, sucks the fun out of the expansion for me. WoW is such a big sandbox of all these little systems, there's so many ways to enjoy the game. Please stop forcing me into sections of the game I don't enjoy so I can be relevant in what I do. I want to raid, and I want my power creep to come mostly from the raid itself. If you want to have people engage with the world, PVP, and your systems then instead of making them partially mandatory just make them good... Think of creative rewards that incentivise people to play those systems instead of adding an RNG cache with a general currency to everything. My character has cleared Nzoth and I'm literally using 4 pieces of gear from the raid (3 are azerite), 1 piece from PVP, and the rest is all RNG loot I "earned" from my mythic+ cache or visions caches. Of course it's all been gemmed and corrupted via endless hours of grinding the same content over and over and over again. I tried to play my warlock alt this patch and the sheer anxiety of having to do all that grinding again in addition to having to grind an additional 20k nyalotha currency for essences made me decide to just call it an expansion and call it a day. The thing is I want to play my alts, but knowing the amount of work I have to do to get them to be their best is too much. Surely they can find a happy medium that allows me to just be able to play the game the way I want to.

[@belalhaifa821]

What’s a good plan of leveling alts with your main? I use to do it back in Cata with two but now it’s hard to play with more then two. Now I want to level with all covenants so meaning I’ll be playing four toons in this expac. I was gonna do main first of course and get it geared once I’m fine with where I’m at with my main I’ll start my second alt then repeat. But instead each alt will have two days then switch. I feel like it’ll be fine but I don’t want to fail with this plan. It’ll be easier now with the level squish. I use to just get bored or lose time. But since you loved leveling alts, what’s a great way?

[@jakubpelikan2393]

There was 1 big problem. Casual playerbase which is majority of this game had nothing to do and were quiting game.

[@rpemulis]

i'm not even close to a mythic raider and i agree with all of this. bfa felt so awful just doing medium level m+ on alts just because you know even if you get the ilvl to do the higher m+ levels you are still going to have to do the rest of this borrowed power shit and i'm flat out not going to do that over again for an alt.

[@Childishforlife]

But you only have to grind all those extra things for the first couple weeks of a tier.. I haven't done islands in so long, or visions. If you wana push that last 2-3%, go for it, but its not worth it imo.

[@stevenharkema5456]

@@Childishforlife That's fair, but that's not the mentality of what makes WoW fun for me nor the content I enjoy engaging with. It doesn't mean my mentality is right and yours is wrong. If I'm not bringing 100% to the raid it will make a difference and people will notice. On a personal level I get satisfaction from legendary parsing all the fights and being the best I can be. And unfortunately things like gem slots and getting pure BiS corruption is a massive DPS increase at the top end right now. That requires a lot of work. It's not to say everyone should agree with it, I'm probably part of the 1% Preach is referring to... it just makes me feel bad and I derive less enjoyment from the content I love about this game if I'm not dong it. For the record I did finish the grind on my main last week and have close to BiS gear in every sense of the word. I want to play alts, but am not going to subject myself to the grind I'd need to do to get enjoyment out of the game to play my character alt at the level I enjoy. It'd take me months to get there. All I really ask from Blizzard is that if I enjoy high end raiding stop forcing me into every single other path of the game to get it done through time-gated mechanisms and random caches.

[@barzai5419]

I think one thing to remember, is "this is something that will only affect the 1%" is mostly going to be factually incorrect. As soon as there is any kind of statistical or gameplay edge for a specific covenant or soulbind, majority (or at the very least a significant vocal minority) in the 99% will make it mandatory. This may not affect those running exclusively in a guild group, but those trying to pug or work on alts outside of guild content will suffer. Does that competitive edge matter to the 1%? Yes. Does it matter to the 99%? No. Will both be affected by it? Yes.

[@wullivieh]

Yeah, especially in more or less casual guilds there are usually some people who will jump through the hoops and others that won't. And if the gap this causes is pretty huge (holymoly, the 40% he mentioned are quite the number) this often leads to conflict sooner or later. I mean, they say they don't want to layer systems on top of each other throughout the expansions, and I thought "great!". But honestly it doesn't seem like this reduced the number of layers... we just have them all right from the start and this also doesn't feel that great to me.

[@VileVamp]

It also impacts those who WANT to be the 1%, who want to be the best and aspire to be a top level player.

[@LordAJ12345]

High requirements on easy content have always been a problem with this community. People believe they are cutting edge hardcore because they read a guide once and now expect everyone to be geared for mythic when doing normal. Reminds me of that old Crendor joke: "Looking for more VOA, 5.5k gearscore, link achievement"

[@Primecat854]

HE SAID IT!

[@rodoxx1888]

POG

[@truefalcon6884]

POG

[@Rrezze]

PogU

[@mysteryman2961]

HE SAID THE THING LOLW

[@Draethar]

Did I miss something?

[@skullisinsane]

You're the man Mike, thank you for putting in all the time you have to tell us about Shadowlands

[@helpmestepbroimstuck610hm6]

You always say "the one percent", but I think there is much more people that care about maximising their character potential, even people that are in heroic guild. I wonder why blizzard would use so much time and effort to create raid encouters if they don't care about all the players doing them.

[@Mad_Minds_Maddie]

Exactly this, I think there are a lot of people that are outside "the one percent" that enjoys optimizing. It's not like I personally farmed islands for days, but I still looked at what I would like to work towards and then have that as a goal to optimize my character the best as possible. But as one that also loves tmog stuff I would be super sad that I would have to choose a covenant where I did not at all enjoy the aesthetics but had to if I wanted to optimize my character for what I do. And since that is both mythic raids on a casual level and m+, it seems very possible I wont be able to have that one character I focus on with powers being tied to covenants this way. And god forbid if I wanted to play a character that can both tank, heal and dps, I will loose my mind if playing multiple of the same class is the only good way to optimize for what I want to do. For me personally I would probably end up choosing a class to get around as many of these weird walls they are putting up as possible.

[@trasor65]

Im a very casual player in all game i play but i love playing them right. Im no pro fighing game player but i love to learn the best combo and setups. I dont raid mythic but i like my character doing good without having to sell my soul and ruin a great experience

[@sparkystar8548]

You really don't think they care ? lol

[@LanceBowes]

It is a normal thing for “high end” players to say because it gives them a sense of “I am better than others because I am the one doing this”. If these players believe that more people like to min/max to the maximum regardless of only doing heroic, it makes them feel worse about themselves.

[@deleach18]

@@LanceBowes lolwut? the 1% bullshit came from casuals saying shit like "only 1% of the playerbase raids mythic" as a way to toss aside their argument, implying their opinion didn't matter because the majority of players don't participate in the same content. it is not an elitist term to slander casuals, it is in fact the opposite.

[@aureliabackup7313]

I disagree that these problems only affect the 1% Try pugging m+ as a warlock, shadow priest, or feral druid. It's a real nightmare. These classes are absolutely fine for any keys below 25. But they won't even get invited to 15 pugs. Now the same thing will happen to the 75% of people who didn't pick the best covenant. Having to grind 20 islands every week is not just a 1% problem. Underperforming in a rank 3000 guild because you don't have the right corruptions still gets you benched for someone with 30% more damage from corruptions alone. Same thing will happen with soulbinds and conduits.

[@garty1308]

I feel you, community perception is insane. I got to 2.2k as a disc priest with my guild months ago. Now I play a warlock. I'm 462, I get insta declined for 10s by people with 1.1k IO. I even got told once "lock is not for m+, go raid". By a guy with less than 1500 score.

[@aureliabackup7313]

@@DWlsh43 There are a lot of people who never do a key above a 15 or even a 10 so for those people it matters.

[@kish2810]

I'm not even close to the top 1% of players, or doing content that would demand me to pick a certain covenant ability. Knowing that my personal preference could make me less effective, even just by a few percent, bothers me. So I either choose the aesthetic and story I like and be less effective, or I get stuck with a covenant I don't like and feel good about performance. I never needed to do the hardcore island grind in bfa. Knowing that the weekly island cap was so ridiculously efficient made me feel like I was making a mistake if I didn't do it. I think it's fair to say there is a pressure to do these things. That pressure takes away from wow feeling like a world. Classic feels like you can log in and do whatever you want. I don't want the combat of classic, but I do want that feeling again. It's not just the top 1% that hates this stuff preach, lots of us that just get curve each tier hate this too even though it doesn't effect us nearly as badly.

[@Zerbraxi]

This is incredibly true. You don't have to be at the top end of the bell curve to be annoyed by some of these changes. Many of us just like to log in and raid and happily did so for years and years. Yet just knowing that I'm doing something sub optimally will bug me since I just like to test myself in raids. So, sometimes we have to make the choice. Do we suck it up and continue grinding more than we ever had to in TBC, Wrath, Cata? Or do we just stop playing and go do something else with our time? For me at least, it was do something else.

[@Urukior4]

@@Zerbraxi Glad to see someone else mention TBC/Wrath/Cata in their comment about the grind Blizz wants from you. I've played the game since TBC, and I was WAY MORE engaged in the game during those earlier expansions, and the grind did not require the insane unfun-ness that WoW makes you deal with now. I really enjoyed my time overall way back and played the game generally how I wanted. But now, almost never, which makes me get off the grind treadmill and not look back.

[@wmcarter6096]

I say "Holler Baller" to my wife so often that she's started saying it back and she has no idea where it originated from.

[@freddymeisner]

Lol that rules

[@veryontron4279]

That's how you know she's a keeper

[@legenisgaming]

I thought he says "hello ballas"

[@a40989d1]

You should add "and a bro fist to you!" Preach used to say that too.

[@jafeae]

@@legenisgaming hahha Everytime I think about watching a video from Preach I always say "Holler Baller" in my mind!!

[@NFPalladium]

Shallow gimmicks keep getting slapped on top of the game with the pretense of being content, but at the end of the day, the core of World of Warcraft hasn't moved an inch in 5 expansions. Time-gated progression is the name of the game and anything "new" is just a distraction from it. Daddy Activision will never let Blizzard reinvent themselves and take creative risks, they'll be left to rot as they implement more and more mobile "gaming" functions on their popular IPs. Full RIP.

[@flame6579]

100% they make the game in a way that takes least effort and passion for a proven result based on metrics and sale numbers data, they make the game for the shareholders not the players.

[@LilianOrchard]

The irony is that Blizzard was openly talking about wanting these power grinds for a long time. It was as early as Cataclysm with Path of the Titans, and even when that was scrapped they kept talking about wanting Max Level character progression. And they talked about it every chance they got. They wanted these systems for so fucking long that they never stopped to think if the players wanted it that way. And that's always been the problem. Blizzard never thinks about how dull this crap is for players. Especially top end players, who I'm really starting to feel bad for becaue their side of the game is fucking spoiled. They never want to accept that the players don't like some of their ideas, and they're insistent that if they just tweak it enough people will like it. But we only tolerated it in Legion because the artifact weapons were cool. The sheer amount of times Ion will argue with someone in interviews or Q&A's about how "No! The GCD is fine! RNG is more fun! Borrowed power is fun!" is like... just let it go Blizzard.

[@PCproffesorx]

I agree, but I also think the game would be trash if blizzard did everything the players wanted. Players mostly complain that they want things to be easier or less of a grind etc. If blizzard does all this those same players will complain and unsub because there isnt enough to do. Has to be some sort of a balance.

[@williamchristensen7354]

Oh, hey Lilly! Nice seeing you here and getting to hear you thoughts! Have a nice day.

[@levishaw9345]

Not a hardcore raider, just like doing m+ and some raiding when I have time and I couldn’t agree more. Don’t know why this has to affect organized group content, the power should come from the group and the content we’re doing, not some appendage gameplay we all have to do alone all week.

[@hvdiv17]

if you like m+ so much get ready for reader io soulbind edition..lol. you will play the meta if you want to m+

[@hvdiv17]

@@DWlsh43 i dont care for pve and which boss has the higher hp.all i can say is. ty blizzard for pvp vendors so i NEVER have to set foot in a m+ in shadowlands.

[@mforbes4318]

"Some people don't respec" Those people don't main a healer

[@Dantarn]

Or they play Havoc

[@mrowe6204]

TRUUUEEE

[@gordo6908]

I tanked, dpsd, and healed in cata as an hpal. Havent had that much fun in years

[@ipsyop]

I main a Hpal right now and I respec my ret talents more than my holy talents lmao

[@Thrist92]

@@Dantarn havoc respecs to fam. its just most rows have two dead talents

[@drakedbz]

Preach, you really need to stop apologizing for the 1%. The opinions you voiced in this video are relevant to far more than 1% of the playerbase. There is a huge portion of the playerbase that raids casually, and either has less time or just can't be bothered to put in the effort to be 100% optimal, but would absolutely optimize if they didn't have to do so much work to get there. Sure the mythic raiders feel like they have to do all these things just to play the game, but even heroic raiders either do a lot of that stuff too, or feel really bad that they aren't doing it. The fact that in 8.3 you do like twice as much dps as someone that doesn't have essences, azerite, corruptions, etc. excludes those players from meaningful endgame content. Certainly, a major part of this game is still skill-based (just run a few pug m+ and you'll see what I mean), but so much is locked behind a massive grind that just didn't exist prior to legion. The difference between Legion and BfA is that most of the power is largely frontloaded in legion (with a meaningful gain from legendaries), whereas nearly all of the power gain is locked behind months-long grinds in BfA. Prior to Legion, there were certainly gains to be had from content other than dungeons, raid, or pvp, but those gains were usually just catch-up gear or minor power gains. As far as I'm concerned, we need to go back to that, or we're going to keep having this problem. The multitude of systems is a huge part of what makes this all so toxic. With gear, the gains are mostly additive. Once you start tacking on systems, each one of those systems increases your output multiplicatively. As you mentioned, having a 3% dps increase from multiple systems, each magnify the others. Similarly, being 3% behind on everything magnifies to a much larger differential in total. Please understand that we're with you on this. Apologizing for the 1% will make blizz think that it's only a 1% problem, when it definitely isn't.

[@lamentz27]

Exactly my thought. Also, the Mythic raiders are the people who are going to stick with this game through thick and thin. If someone has been consistently pushing high-end raids since the beginning of Legion, then they have felt the pain of grinding AP/Legendaries and having to slog through mandatory questlines on alts for multiple hours a day just to enjoy the 3-12 hours of raiding per week that it allows them. These people can only take so much before they abandon ship. Imagine some of the most dedicated players of your game talking about quitting and playing something else before they've even played the new expansion. Expansions and major content patches should bring old players back for a few months, not scare the ones who have been shelling out $15 a month for the last twelve years away. Mythic raiders are NOT going to become casual players all of a sudden, no matter how much Blizzard wants them to. They'll go play FFXIV or something else that allows them to play how they want to with fewer hoops to jump through. What completely blows my mind is that Blizzard doesn't seem to care about the fact that not every player wants to experience all the content the game has to offer (I'm assuming they know this is the case, but maybe I'm giving them too much credit at this point). Sure, make the questline to find Azshara mandatory, but only the FIRST time. They already have a "I've seen this before [Skip Scenario]" button on a lot of the beginning stuff, so why can't they figure out how to put it on all the max-level questlines and catch your alts up to where your main is immediately? There are also a lot of examples of buffs and items that affect the open world but not raids, so why can't they extend this to all the borrowed power we get outside of raiding? If Covenant abilities and soulbinds were disabled in Mythic Raids and Mythic+ Dungeons, not only would that make a dedicated portion of the playerbase happier, but it would make balancing that content easier on the backend as well. They could even keep them active for lower-level content because honestly who cares about balance in a Heroic raid or dungeon? Grinding AP might actually be considered fun if it was for cool cosmetics and enabled soloing stuff like world bosses or normal dungeons.

[@Kongaii]

yeah it really isnt a 1% problem anymore at all

[@BPStyle89]

the diffrence is alot of Heroic raiders dont need to do it. or has alot more time to do so i agree with you its not just a 1% problem but it hits the 1% ALOT harder

[@alancode2147]

More importantly he doesn't need to remind us that he raids in a mythic guild. We get it, he raids in a mythic guild as does plenty of other people so I don't know why he acts like he's the cream of the crop top 0.01% or something. The opinions are valid and stem further than the 1% he thinks he belongs to as the OP said.

[@TonksDTank]

So we are expected to farm a bank full of conduits if we want to respec? I thought within covenants there would be freedom to choose what we want to do? Very discouraging.

[@RoboBongoCuckooCop]

they should make conduits like essences - once you unlock it, you have it forever and can put it in whenever

[@albert2006xp]

Tbh if you want to see how these will be, just imagine not being able to swap essences and that will cover it for you.

[@itskhro]

The acknowledgement of the dice video has been the best part about these reveals. That should gain you some +rep if anything.

[@grockey3]

I like how they say that Preach was right, then goes ahead and continues to add a bunch of weird procs.

[@pobopower]

Based on how well they handled corruptions in BFA and how they brought no game breaking issues what so ever, I have zero reason to believe that blizzard managing and balancing 5 different systems in SL will go anything else than swimmingly. I guess its all to far gone now anyway since beta is apparently around the corner so all we can do is sit back and watch bfa 2.0 unfold.

[@givemeyourshoes9721]

God... if this ends up being BFA 2.0 it’s the final nail in the coffin for me.

[@preds43]

@@givemeyourshoes9721 This feels more like Legion 2.0 imo. Idk why people think this is like BFA at all, outside of MAYBE the covenant balancing and shit, which will NOT be as fucked as corruption gear, trust me. Corruption gear has many more procs and shit that fuck up your day.

[@Matt-cv6on]

@@preds43 Legion at launch was as bad if not worse than bfa. The only difference is they managed to save legion after a few patches. This feels like more of the same.

[@Bacchetto]

There's a lot more than just 1% that feels the same as Preach does

[@TorAndreKongelf]

Ok. Maybe 2

[@Lindyn773]

Yeah I'd say that 1% is closer top 300 raiders or 2700rating pvpers, but this is shit felt by almost every mythic guild and pvpers above 1800

[@benp9793]

@@TorAndreKongelf More like 100% if you actually play the game

[@benp9793]

@@Lindyn773 It's closer to 30,000 players.

[@emmiarichardson4853]

Preach doesn't get nearly enough credit for how hard he works to give us this content. Change my mind.

[@InternalOptimal]

Louder with Crowder haha

[@RM-nf5eq]

Thank you so much for the "selfish rant". It was needing to be said and I hope you are a big enough personality for them to take notice.

[@albert2006xp]

That's the thing, these developers can't be idiots. They KNOW. They just don't care. Getting a cool looking system for their casual player base is all they care about and zero thought is put into what the optimal play pattern is.

[@karlzone2]

@@albert2006xp I just don't understand why they seem to always chose some arbitrary hill to die on. "We simply cannot make this system fun for the casuals and the hardcore players at once" - even though that is a complete lie.

[@wally4405]

Covenants should always have been cosmetic only imo. Even if they give us a new ability, make it the same ability for every covenant and just change the effect/wording. But thats just my opinion.

[@andrewshandle]

Changing some of the cool Covenant abilities (like Devine Toll or the Spear of Bastion) into Torghast powers would also mean they don't waste those cool abilities.

[@m1nayondaime]

I was thinking about that as well. Covenants should've given you an active / passive ability, but make it the same for every covenant, with the only change being how the ability looks. So instead of having some pulsing blood thing from Venthyr around you, it's a holy pulsing ability. It'd have saved them a lot of effort, and the players a lot of headache.

[@s0515033]

If it is cosmetic only, and you don't like any of the cosmetics, it makes then functionally nonexistent for you, though. To date, I have not seen any transmog or items from any of the covenants which are not hideous and something I would use. So the power boosting effects are so far the only appeal.

[@wheeloftimem8481]

I am spreading this msg as well. Give all abilities to all covenants, but give them each a cov specific aesthetic.

[@0JonBon0]

I totally agree with the borrowered power, especially dealing as a Spriest. I have to have this specific recipi of azerite traits, gear, corruption, essence, just to make my spec viable when other classes had it way easier.

[@AwesomeArgonanth]

15:00 I assume there are a huge chunk of players like me and my friends who get bored because of this. We find Heroic really easy and kinda boring after a few runs so the next step is mythic. The problem is none of us want to grind for all this garbage. When we realized the DPS requirements in mythic Nighthold pretty much required most of the raid having the 20% damage buff from the weapon or ilvl way above what the boss dropped most of us just quit mythic raiding. The fact that a few players can/want to spend a ton of hours grinding content that should take weeks/months shouldn't change the way they design/balance the game. So what if a guild want's to grind so much they can blow up the new raid the day it comes out, most of the players don't do that. The simple fix would be to just... not have a grind. What was wrong with just having gear drop from a raid/dungeon (Although the random ilvl titanforging stuff fucked that up too)?

[@MrZriael]

Ehh, I disagree a little here, it really does matter if a guild can _"grind so much they can blow up the new raid the day it comes out"._ That would make doing so a requirement for Mythic, and it would make Mythic worthless. If the raid isn't a challenge, then it isn't worthwhile.

[@Wodo900]

Preach. Thank you for the honesty and the "preaching" of the reality of the situation. My only hope is that Beta shows the non '1%" person how bad the situation is. Casual battlegrounds with the entire raid being able to teleport to the capture point or the flag. Heroic or low M+ with group leaders still going to be like you dont have teleport? sorry cant join. This is an issue on all/most levels of play in some degree, its just more obviously at higher levels of play. I dont see any issue what so ever locking all the Covenant stuff to Open World/Torghast only. There is no possible way Blizzard can balance this at all. Lets say things remain unchanged, everyone grabs Venthyr or Night Fae for Teleports and Blinks. But then Blizzard does a nerf two patches later cause these abilities are getting used and now you can only teleport out of combat or somthing. Now everyone who went those Covenants for THOSE specific abilities are pissed and the cycle continues just in reverse. The only other option I see to make this work aside from saying Covenant stuff is Open World only, is to just have it so you can swap between abilities/conduits/soulbinds freely no cost, no re grind, switch everything with a tome but the "meaningful choice" can just be the Transmogs/Mounts and the weekly event of Sexy Vampire Part, Playing Frankenstein etc...

[@s0515033]

They already do that, though. IF you pick the wrong class, wrong spec, don't have tier or bonuses, etc. If it is not one thing, it would just be something else.

[@PCproffesorx]

I dunno I personally like meaningful choices in games. And they have already said you can change covenants so... its going back to a covenant that you abandoned that will take some work but even that is dooable through some sort of quest line to prove you are worthy again. All of those things you listed as meaningful choice in quotes are completely meaningless. So if your covenant gets nerfed it should be fairly easy to switch to another , if you decide you want to switch back at some point to the one you abandoned then maybe there would be some issues. This seems like it would affect very few people unless blizzard is doing wild balance swings multiple times on covenants , if its nerfed badly once you can switch and its all good.

[@QuintemTA]

​@@PCproffesorx ​ There are not many meaningful choices in a MMORPG. Its not a single player experience. Your decisions are shaped by those around you. Peer pressure is a wonderful thing. Those that don't conform to the standard are shunned. For whatever reason Blizzard have shown time and time again they can't balance this many systems. Azerite pieces have some traits that are wildly stronger than others. As Preach even said in this video a perfectly optimised character vs mediocre one is destroyed on the DPS meters. That flies in the face of Blizzard saying that want to close skill gaps over the years. In many cases the skill gap has only gotten wider.

[@PCproffesorx]

@@QuintemTA Your class is a fairly meaningful choice, and they said they want covenants to feel like sub classes. Im not confident they will implement it right like you said azerite pieces are terribly balanced. I also dont think everything implemented needs to be on exactly equal footing though. I think it would be kind of lame if every class performed the exact same.

[@Wodo900]

@@PCproffesorx How is two abilities and passives from Soulbinds a Sub class? I really dont understand how anyone things the current way Covenants are is a good idea or likes what it is. If Covenants were truly a sub class you should be able to switch freely between them like you can any spec/talent. Maybe as a player you like Healing in dungeons but not raids, or you tank in ones or not the other. Currently as it stands certain Covenants are better for healing and others for dps, but if you play a class that does everything, like druids, you get screwed over because you will never be able to switch from a good healing Covenant to a good dps or tank one. As it stands you wont be able to even try the ability for a week and then switch out to test another. No leveling in a zone is not enough time to decide if you like the ability or not, as you cant test it in every environment for a week.

[@lootto2635]

I'm right there with you!!! Sick of it at this point. We have to do so much more work and I like many of my friends are thinking about quitting raiding or have already quit because of the constant hoops that MUST be jumped threw to compete at a high level. Take me back to the time where you have 2-3 hoops then could just raid on multipal toons and be happy with the state of the game. Dont stop what your preaching preach your 1 of the very few voices that knows whats up left trying.

[@albert2006xp]

I don't understand how these developers can give so little care to the burden of optimal play in this game. It's ridiculous. Instead of designing for the optimal play, they design for the bad players. What the actual hell. It's like if LoL balance was decided on Iron/Bronze players instead of pro play.

[@tuckerstevens9689]

I think this is a good point. A lot of ppl like to be able to do a raid with multiple classes. Making the barrier to entry stop people from being able to play their alts in raids.

[@Marunius]

@@albert2006xp So true, how is farming 50000 islands a sign of a pro player? Yet it is required to compete at a higher level :/

[@BuzzCarrick70]

I really miss the "just raid" days. But I think it happened because players who don't raid wanted the access to the best stuff... so now raiders have to do everything else to get the best stuff.

[@RealnoMis]

In no way or form do you have to do "everything else" than raid to get the best stuff. Im a cutting edge mythic raider and 90% of the gear i wear is from mythic level in the current raid. If anything, Blizzard has given normal/heroic raiders more options to get gear IF THEY DONT LIKE raiding. Its not that people who raid has to do other stuff. And thats also where i disagree with Preacher. You dont have to jump through all the hoops. You have decided to be a top 100 raider, the game cant be designed around you and if you dont enjoy all the shit you need to do to stay competitive with other people who go out of their way to be miserable for a slight power increase - then dont do it. You can clear all the content in a "competetive" environment and still enjoy yourself. Getting top 400 is nothing to sneer at and you dont have to be miserable while doing it. The reason Blizzard adds stuff outside of "the main stuff" (raiding/battlegrounds/arenas/dungeons) is that some people enjoy doing stuff outside of that. And rewarding players for exploring the world and doing things out in the world gives the world a realistic feel. Why play an MMORPG if you are never going to run around in the open world and instead just sit in your main city/garrison/covenant sanctum queing for instanced content and then travelling to a raid a few times per week? If enough people thought that was appealing then there would be a raid-sized Warhammer: Vermintide for people to sit and play. Where there is no open world and all you do is instantly queue into a dungeon/raid.

[@kristiankristensen4340]

​@@RealnoMis I just still can't understand why blizzard wouldn't just try to make everyone happy. I know it is a hard task, but lately it seems like blizzard ALWAYS finds a worse system for the 1% top end raiders. Now of course if you choose to raid at that level, you should probably be understanding of the different requirements that will exist at that level, however, even as a top 300 raider myself this system is just fundamentally broken and simply just kills the way i like to play WoW. Currently there is so much stuff you have to do on a weekly basis to keep your character relevant, which for people who don't have a lot of time basically results in us not being able to have a decent alt. And before you say "Just don't do it then", realize that some of us find it enjoyable to have a strong main and optimizing that character. Lastly, i don't know which cutting edge raiding environment you live in, but MOST mythic raiders use quite a lot of gear from outside the raid :)

[@lamentz27]

@@RealnoMis Doesn't seem like there has been a need for a "like WoW raiding but not an open world RPG" game until the past few years. Until Legion started forcing heavy grinding outside of raid times, raiding was considered a crowning achievement of the game despite what the rest of the game was going through. "WoD was shit, but the raids were still good" is something I've heard many times. Sure, there were some raids that kind of sucked or drove the Cutting Edge guilds to doing some ridiculous class-stacking strategies, but WoW's raiding was so monolithic in its quality that you would likely be hard-pressed to find a game publisher willing to back a game designed around the most successful MMO's most highly regarded system. Raiding isn't something that people want to sample every version of, and the other MMOs that came and went with raids of their own are a warning sign to anyone who dares set foot in that territory. Only the ones that carved out their own niche (until FFXIV finally managed to get off the ground) were able to stick around. Now that WoW's RPG elements are making raiding less fun, it seems like a reasonable time for someone to develop a game built around large-group PvE content. FPS games like Vermintide or Left 4 Dead had their time to shine, but I could see something with combat and systems more akin to WoW's making it into the spotlight, even if it's a fairly small indie developer with a cult following that starts it.

[@BPStyle89]

@@RealnoMis But you do have to jump trough all the hops if you wanna stay competitive.. i agree wolrd 400 is a good spot to be. but there is a HUGE diffrence between the playerleve of world 400 and world 50. and you telling me you dont have to do this tuff tells me you never played anything above world 400

[@MrZriael]

@@BPStyle89 That actually begs the question... Is there? Is there a huge difference in the player level between top400 and top50? There's definitely some aspect of player skill there but it's impossible to tell how much due to the primary factors, such as how willing they are to play the game in a miserable fashion for minor throughput increases. It may well be that the performance gulf between top400'ers and top50'ers is considerably smaller in a world where the performance itself matters more than the raid-wide throughput enhancements granted by sacrificing the happiness of your group of 20 people for weeks on end. No one really likes this fact, top-end raiders mostly want to be top-end to actually *_be_* at or near the best at the game. Not to show they can sit, lie down, roll over, jump through hoops, and also raid decently.

[@sorcen9580]

I'm stunned how many people still disregard your takes as "the big bad mythic raider" when you've hit the nail on the head so consistently. Now we just wait for the video in a year or so where you get to say "I told you so."

[@albert2006xp]

I'm stunned he has to put a disclaimer in front like it's taboo to be good at the game? Like people in this game don't even try to be good, it's actually mind boggling. Personally as M+ is my primary focus, I will just have to settle for raiding with inferior setups I guess. What a wonderful system. Really feeling the CHOICE.

[@Athenox]

@@albert2006xp what is your choice? where else is the choice if not in character power. because if they just gave you everything then there is no point in having that choice. You get to choose your class, even spec you get to choose your race and gender and in shadowlands how you look to an even greater degree but that beyond that is your choice just limited to the character creation screen? Your gear has never really been a choice because you are always going to choose the most optimal especially if all you do is raid, you get to choose talents but not really because that will be dictated for you on every single boss pull. You might get to choose how you play or perform in the boss fight with what buttons you press but if it was up to the elitist raid leaders then that wouldn't be a choice either. GFG

[@MsChrois]

Athenox irony dude

[@albert2006xp]

@@Athenox There's no need for any choice. Your choice is what character will you play. Like if you were queuing up for a MOBA. That's it. That's all there needs to be to it. Just let me do content as the spec I want, you don't need to give me anything else.

[@MrInsanecicci]

Completely agree with your rant. And especially the little bit about meaningful choice when choosing covenants. They should at the very least make the covenant wide ability for world content only. Make it all movement and utility stuff and make it so that doing world quests and stuff are more fun.

[@dreadlord9257]

I agree with everything preach is saying except this affects all players, not just those in the top 1%. I like to play multiple alts (3-4) but these borrowed power grinds means you realistically only have 1 up to snuff while the others are just inherently weaker. It is almost impossible to keep all 4 up to par with the amount of chores you have to do daily/weekly (1 major assault, 2 minor assaults, 7 emissaries, 3 visions, 7 lesser vision dailies, 1 +15 (hopefully not pushing your own key), ~10 arena wins, etc.). This impacts you even in heroic/mythics ... at least pugs. The moment something goes sideways .... remove the "lowest" dps. Even if they handled mechanics fine. Who is lowest dps? Whoever isn't caught up on cloak/corruptions most likely. You have to do these chores. The only way you can effectively opt out is if you don't do any group content, which is ironic when you consider most of this "stuff to do" is supposed to be for the folks who complain there is nothing to do (i.e. non-raiders/pvp'ers).

[@Darkrainfall]

Please don't give up Preach, you are one of the top voices in the community and you help in so many ways with your voice, it would be a tragedy to see you leave after following you for so many years. I and many others, I'm sure, appreciate greatly what you do for the game

[@Lunethzero]

This is why I prefer FFXIV's approach to classes and power. All of the focus is put directly into the classes that build a strong foundation on the base level and build on top of that to make every ability and tool that class has that is useful in some shape or form. If you give choices to players at the end of the day they are most likely going to pick the best option, thus eliminating the purpose of it entirely.

[@freddymeisner]

The time sink of pathfinder legitimately makes no sense. We leveled through the zones, just make it max level.

[@m1nayondaime]

Making all the tedious grinding so much worse without flying. I hate it.

[@freddymeisner]

Nick I spent weeks when flying first came out grinding reps (was fresh on my alliance toons) and I burned out and quit playing the game by the time I finished pathfinder lol. I hated the zones from the time I was forced to grind in them

[@albert2006xp]

We're out here worrying about important issues like not being able to respec and your mind goes to god damn pathfinder? Who the hell cares. You can't fly in a dungeon or raid. It's a minor grind at best anyway.

[@ziggs123]

Pathfinder is fine. Flying should not be a thing from the get go

[@CosmicCleric]

@@albert2006xp the game is more than just raiding.

[@CartoreAOS]

Honestly I usually only raid heroic maybe dabble in mythic but I want to have the game balanced from the top down. The 1% teach us how to play our classes and if it is made simpler for you to do so. That helps us as well. Soulbinds should add flavor and a bit of power. Not the other way around

[@VileVamp]

The top 1% should be an aspiration, regardless. If a system can't function properly for those players, it's going to trickle down to others and punish them for wanting to be as good as possible.

[@RealnoMis]

Well its not the ability to make top 1% raiders to teach you how to play your class that is at stake. What Preach is talking about is that the top (less than) 1% of raiders are willing to go through extraordinary lenghts to get even the slightest power upgrade. Something that you or i would never even imagine doing. And he wants there to be less stuff that they can do that to. Essentially it boils down to "Other people who are pushing for top 100 are willing to do X, i dont want to do X so please put less than X things to do in the game so i can still be competitive for top 100. And im sure all the top 100 raiders would be fine with there being less stuff they could do to get stronger. But that would also mean there is less stuff for everyone else to do just to have fun.

[@scope1812]

thanks for all the work you’ve been putting in. shows how much you care about this one being good, and we do too. I really, really need it to be good.

[@barsonik3855]

I genuinely missed the HOLLA BALLERS. Thanks mike #TeamPeach

[@xDeathWish1]

Thank you preach i literally cant agree more

[@Kindarya]

People already called your take on the legendaries back in Legion "the big bad raiders taking away the casual fun" but it was already looking out for the health of the game back then. Some guys just want to see someone else as the bad guy and want to watch them suffer for enjoying the game in a different way to themselves

[@omarcomming722]

Tbh they play the game so differently that it causes lots of problems trying to balance and introduce sfuff that mythic min maxers wont exploit and ruin. Who was running hundreds of islands, hundreds of MoS runs non ston even tho they were hating every second? I don't think anything should scew up any particular group of players, but I don't think anything should be balanced around maniacs who play the game that way.

[@Darkclowd]

Most people really. I know people who hate others that exclusively pvp, or roleplay, farm mounts, do pet battles, level alts, make transmogs. I understand it's hard to like some parts of the game, but wow's playerbase is diverse in what they find enjoyment in. Some people JUST farm mounts and that's how they play. We need to let everyone play the game how they want to.

[@marcfleuren7691]

There is a serious amount of anti "elitism" culture in wow. Anyone who tries to be good at the game is a toxic narcissistic big bad raider apparently.

[@cookingwithhedonismbot8900]

I'll never understand why people see Preach as this big bad elitist asshole. The guy goes out of his way in virtually every video to put himself in the casual players shoes and do a separate evaluation for the average player.

[@Tanikaze2]

@@omarcomming722 "Who was running hundreds of islands, hundreds of MoS runs non ston even tho they were hating every second?" spergs.

[@FlesHBoX]

I'm really glad you made the point that this isn't just the super hardcore that these things affect. I only raid at a heroic level, but I've loved pushing m+ a lot, and you are so spot on that this "mythic tax" is just getting worse and worse. I just want to be able to get on and run some keys with my team and do some light raiding, but all of these systems mean that just to be even slightly competitive in pushing keys I have to devote a ton of time doing things that just aren't fun in the slightest for me. But you can really tell that the vast majority of players just don't get that. There is so much vitriol and toxicity against anyone who is even remotely non-worshiping of what Blizzard does. I've heard comments telling me I should just quit the game, and that I should stop expecting Blizzard to cater to "hardcore mythic raiders" like me, and I'm just like why can't I also have an enjoyable experience with this game too? Why do YOU get to have a game you're perfectly in love with and YOU get to complain about what a terrible person I am because I push some tiny bit of content harder, but I'm not allowed to say that x system makes playing the game seriously unfun?

[@Greycalibur]

I'm a pretty casual player and"it's fine" or "it not going to affect most of the player base" is not a good reason to have these systems in place just because it's targeted at the best players in the world, these systems affect everyone. When I first saw these systems, my first thought was this is going to be a gigantic ball ache, glad to see I was right. There are so many different reasons that could be the reason why Blizz keep doing this and they all suck and don't work and just pisses of everyone.

[@dustindutton5780]

I hope the Conduits works like Essences. You just unlock them and there are grades of them to unlock and boom slot them where ever you want. Easy fix. Gives you a sense of progression and doesn't make you feel bad about wanting to test something or do something different.

[@tylordobey7543]

I'm here for the high end opinion, if I wanted the general population stuff Bellular does a pretty good job. But if I want to know what shit is going to roll down hill I'll get it from preach!

[@WraithWTF]

There's a very easy solution to this for Blizzard...."is player inside ? if yes, disable if no, enable " (the actual code would be more complicated than this, the point is that it's a simple if-then statement that would fix the issue of power being attached to a Covenant and removing player choice/agency from those who play at a higher competitive level).

[@zyella277]

so basicly make them like the Wod outpost abilties.

[@WraithWTF]

@@zyella277 Essentially, yeah. Similar thing could also be done for timegating in old content (like Suramar in Legion) for people levelling alts and wanting to experience the story, "does account ID have achievement X unlocked? If yes, then auto-complete quest ID Y"....

[@Jovahkiiin]

I really hope they just accept that the covenant system is probably going to be bullshit and change it to be cosmetic and rpg flavour rather than player power...

[@katherinejanke7837]

It’s very interesting to hear this as someone who plays casually. I hate all the “crap” I have to do just to play current content. I don’t have the time to do all the extra stuff just to gear up enough to even try raiding if I wanted to. I literally can’t get into raiding or the higher end content because of the same issues that Mike is talking about. I’m not that amazing a player but I have fun when I do play. By making the higher end stuff so prohibitive to the rest of us who just can’t get there even though we may want to it makes the game feel bad. I haven’t logged in to play in two months because I hate all the hoops I have to jump through to get caught up. It’s exhausting. That you for saying this stuff Mike. I really appreciate it. You are very correct in what you are saying

[@baseballfan4877]

Hey preach. I'm a dk that wants to be an arcane mage and blizzard has finally let me get one step closer!

[@arthuriko17]

Thank you, Preach. They said they'd listen to us, we need to make sure that promise comes through. Hopefully don't won't do the "too early to tell -> too late to change" switcheroo.

[@WoWDontu]

Now imagine being a pvper who doesn’t want to raid. But has to grind reps, grind raids, and everything raiders do, just to PvP

[@mas7erslayer492]

That's the problem I ran into, been a pvper since Vanilla and only started mythic raiding in Legion because I had to and wanted to see if I was good enough and now I want to quit raiding but I can't because I need so much gear from raids to pvp and I can only play 2 characters instead of the 10 I used to upkeep with pvp gear

[@ziggs123]

That's why bfa is the absolute worst expansion for pvp. Fucking doing million stuff I dont care just to play arena. But the bigger problem is when we don't have all that borrowed power classes are so boring and slow to play. The pruning and gcds killed wow imo

[@RealnoMis]

There are a lot of games where you can PvP without having to grind reps, grind raids or other . Overwatch, CSGO, League, DOTA2, Valorant etc. If you hate doing 90% of all the stuff in WoW and only want to PvP, why even play the game? Its not balanced around PvP, its not focused around PvP, in fact PvP only gets a fraction of all the dev attention. But there are games out there where the PvP experience gets 110% of the dev attention.

[@gordo6908]

@@RealnoMis probably because they enjoy wows pvp combat

[@domwicketts2036]

@@RealnoMis Lmao, its not that we dont want to do 90% of the game, i like raiding but i dont do it every week, i like mythic+ but i don't want to have to spam it for the best gear for PvP. It is an MMO, the point is you can do whatever you want. It was good when you could do PvP and that was all you needed, because you would eventually want a break and then you might check out the raids, but right now all people do is have a check list of things to do in the game before they go and do the part of the game they want to do. You have commented on a few of these and I remember you saying your a mythic raider, well thats nice but frankly just because you mythic raid does not mean that someone else's opinion is lesser than yours, just pvp gets a small fraction of dev attention does not mean that people shouldn't be able to play just PvP in the game. People have loved PvP in this game for the longest time, and pvp is where the majority of the viewership for WoW on twitch comes from (if you dont include asmongold). Just because PvE gets more dev attention does not mean that PvP players should be made to do it. Its neckbeard logic to think that they should, just because you enjoy the grind does not mean that everyone should.

[@TheFlatbiscuit]

This is why I have said it multiple times the covenant signature abilities (venthyr teleport etc...) should just be set to only be usable outdoors/in torghast. If blizzard doesn't want you switching covenants so often you make this change then do your best to try and make the 4 class covenant abilities as close to each other as possible. This lowers the power gap you mentioned while simultaneously getting rid of the whole argument of well you need to be venthyr because the teleport is to strong for raids/m+

[@SycosenMerihem]

It takes an Eight Paladin Meta for Blizzard to act. They'll take every chance they get to shit on Ret.

[@christopherlally7601]

What did they do to ret this time? I main it atm and I haven't looked into much news about it besides the base changes going into shadowlands.

[@AdrasAdraki]

@@christopherlally7601 Some ppl are on about the tuning, others about gameplay and design choices/stste of talent tree. The cov abilities are also abit lackluster and basic.

[@tomashruby9349]

They will change it so you only need 4 Hpals. Also shitting on healers who wanted to nerf Hpals whole BFA.

[@Smrt927]

WoD had huge subscription loses because there was "nothing to do other than raid and be bored on your garrison" so they overcorrected in the other direction the way they overcorrect everything. And it worked (for subscriptions)! So don't expect it to go away any time soon.

[@NoobGamer-di1dw]

Smrt Anything we have now is still better than WoD though. WoD had very little content and what it had was awful besides.

[@deleach18]

I doubt it worked for subscriptions. With just the general age of the game I would be shocked if there were more people playing in BFA pre-classic launch than there were in WoD. If anything there are more subscriptions now because of classic. I still have half my friends list playing classic and not retail.

[@Smrt927]

@@deleach18 wq came about in Legion, not BfA. Legion subscriptions shot up and it's objectively one of the better expansions. BfA is a meandering mess with a handful of neat moments. WQ is not what made BfA meander and squander plot lines and staple power systems in top of power systems.

[@deleach18]

@@Smrt927 I agree WQ are not objectively bad. It's just 1 more chore you know? They are fun kinda at first, but nothing holds up when you are forced to repetitively farm it for years on end. Legion was better than BFA for a LOT of reasons. But I agree WQ was not the biggest offender, and apologize if my previous comment sounded like I was blaming WQs entirely for the fall of BFA.

[@Judiacator]

Blizzard likes the idea of slowing down mythic progression. Guilds packed full of talented players like yours that finish it within 1 to 3 weeks probably just aggravate them. From a designers pov. They want encounters that take time to beat. They have discovered they can't out mechanic the top mythic guilds. So they slow down progress by making the best available power come with a high price tag (time) that lowers over time

[@MrCleates]

Well WoW's an old game, so people have grown wise of its tricks. When you have people who play WoW EVERY DAY at a difficult level, and prioritise it over other things in their life, you'll never be able to "out-mechanic" them. Only way you can slow them down is by ladening the progression path with lots of numerical power gains that they need to kill the NPC FIRST, before everyone else.

[@sillyredsheep2421]

I think it makes things more interesting to have a slow progression through mythic. Like it's cool that there are players that can clear the top content that quickly, but I think it's awesome when thinking about how exclusive Naxx was. But like you said, Blizzard have kind of dug themselves a hole. They can't out mechanic the top guilds and they've also built the culture around Race to World First. It's a tough situation.

[@snarly7346]

as part of the 99%, i feel for you. Agree with everything you said.

[@PaulRizzo504]

Love the video. One place I think you and Sloot are wayyyyyyy wrong. You assume this stuff affects the 1% or something. Asmongold did a poll and asked "what will you go with?" the highest ranking option at 50%+ was "whatever the top guild tells me does best". There are too many fucking systems. Noone in there right mind has the time that Ion think we have to sit here and dick around with Covenants plus Soubinds to figure out what works. I play a Prot Pally when I am subbed. 100% chance I am going to look at what Towliee says and that is my Shadowlands build. Most if not all casuals will look at what Icyveins says or some video and do exactly that BECAUSE LIKE YOU SAID borrowed power being set-up correctly is king. It is nuts to think that everyone will not be copying the top guilds.

[@Diavolo222]

If you follow Towlie's advice then you shouldn't have an opinion lol. Please stick to your nOrMaL pRoGrEsSiOn RaIdInG.

[@TheStrider9492]

I'd wager most people watching WoW streamers have a more than average interest in the game and of course will say they're going with what better plays say to go with. Almost a pointless poll. It's like the poll that players like Ninja make about fortnite. Of course the response reflects the more competitive and high end range of players. Your average player isn't watching this content. With that being said, I would agree that the need to reference these third party resources is becoming more prevalent, but I'd argue it's because they're being forced to play optimally in a way that the higher end players approve of otherwise they get benched for the guy who is spec'd for 5% more damage. Most content doesn't require that level of optimization but it's being treated like it does to shave off 10's of seconds in the dungeon or on a boss fight or to avoid a wipe or 2 before getting a handle on it mechanically.

[@noanxx1]

You might copy the best performing build but you will not level multiple paladins to have access to the most optimal covenant for every single boss fight. You will not level and gear all tank classes so that you can pick the best for every single boss fight. You will not run same m+ day after day after day to have enough AP in time. The list goes on... These are the things the top HAS to do. You don't HAVE to copy the top or in general you don't HAVE to anything. You can do the content you do even if you do 5% less damage. Just because you follow a guide some top guy has done doesn't mean you do all the things he has to do. So no... Sloot, Preach and so many others are not "wayyyyyyy wrong", you just misunderstand their point.

[@TheStrider9492]

The top doesn't HAVE to do them either though. They've accepted that their goal is to be world first (or somewhere in that echelon of players) and these are the requirements THEY THEMSELVES have set up to achieve that. Didn't Blizzard say they don't consider the world first race in any official capacity. I'd wager because of the absurd levels of work that these players put into it and they don't want other players to get the wrong impression and as you've stated feel like they have to. Because that WOULD actually lead down a path where this extra work legitimately becomes necessary because encounters are designed around assuming each player has done all of it. I don't want to dismiss the world first race. It's not my cup of tea, but props to the players who compete and put in that work. But I can't find the sympathy for these players when they complain about all this extra work they HAVE to do when it's a half truth. They don't have to do nearly as much work and could still successfully complete the content...they just don't get the consideration for world first because they'll need a few extra weeks to get some more gear and offset their difference in optimization. Lebron James doesn't HAVE to put in all those hours of practice...he just stops being considered one of the best. You say they're intentionally holding themselves and their team back. I say I've got more important things to do and value my time in other ways. Potato Pototo (not sure how to make that read right but I think everyone knows that saying hehe). And I DO NOT want that last statement to come off as "pft I have a life and don't feel like making wow a second job" because that's not my intention. I play this game a fair bit but tend to put it down when my interest wains. I mostly stick to pvp and don't have much experience in raids beyond lfr and normals here and there. If that invalidates my opinion on this matter than so be it. I'm happy to be corrected on this. I respect Preach and value his opinion. I'm always excited to see what he has to say on the game and for the most part I agree with him. But when it comes to this high end content I just don't get it. And it may well be that he and I simply have a difference of mentality when it comes to this stuff, which is fair enough.

[@CaptObvious22]

@Preach Gaming I was talking to some friends months ago that the soulbinds should have been cosmetic talent trees.

[@timothymartin5538]

Preach, this exasperation you have with covenants is exactly how people like me feel about the end game in general. I don't care about raiding, I despise mythic plus and I am too damn busy to play much PvP (though I won't lie, I've been playing the past few months and have really enjoyed it, even when competing against corruptions). I have a cloak level of 8, a neck level of 86, and no corruption effects, in short my highest geared character is 451 and I'm finished in BFA, I'm content. So why do I play an mmo, because I like the environmentals, by all logical reasoning I should be playing classic, where there's a ceiling, where there is a line at which I'm done. There isn't a single RPG going that is worth playing, we have no new elder Scrolls, and I do play ESO, I'm not gonna dust off my PS4 to play a remake of a game I played 20 odd years ago, the list goes on. So when I play wow and I see how miss matched I am with the community on so many aspects I wonder, why hasn't Ian done an interview with any of the content creators who will actually question him on their philosophies, and I mean grill him, why do we have to have catch up mechanics every few months, why did they abandon the vanilla method, have people doing a half dozen raids a week, leaving a couple of days downtime for the community to exist together and be spontaneous. I don't envy you, having to work so hard for so little must be demoralising and I recognise the drive it must take to do that, and for fun no less. But when the game is designed almost entirely around that level of play, and when blizzard seem so hell bent on micro managing play time to maximize 'engagement'. engagement in this context to see how many weeks it takes you to break a wall with your forehead. Blizz really need to be challenged, for all our sakes, their philosophy is the actual challenge in this game, and that isn't a good thing, atleast for me. My aim for BFA was simple, I have a bunch of alts from Legion, what with one of my goals getting all the Orderhall mounts, I intended to just craft things, sell them, whatever, I have barely been able to do any of that, I don't want to raid to get higher level mats, I don't want to run motherlode 50 billion times for a blueprint, I don't even want to run it twice but that's a separate issue. I don't want 2000 expulsom on a gathering alt, which I could really use on my crafting alts, these are issues with philosophy, and it's flawed. Both of us and I would wager more play the same game for fantastically different reasons, nothing I do would be meaningful to you and vice versa, but neither of us seem to get what we're looking for from the game and one of the reasons I watch you is implicitly because you recognise that people like me exist, you aren't derogatory and you are always happy to bring both points up, so let me ask you. If you by chance get another interview or contact with any part of blizz can you ask them, for all our sakes, to write a manifesto or an editorial of what they think, what they think we think and what they think we play this game for. Now I know, they'll say they've done this, or that they can't go into details, personally I think the time has come for them to suck it up and spill the beans because they've made such leaps and bounds in recent years to communicate with us, but it seems so hollow, it's time for the next level, the next iteration of this dynamic, I just want to know how they come to their conclusions and I know I'm not the only one. So please, if you ever get the chance, send them this message and hopefully through the poor structure and the grammatical errors they will see that some of us really need answers, not placating, just answers, and maybe just maybe their answers will give people more eloquent than myself points to take umbridge or give guidance with that could help the game, the community, blizzard. Many thanks if you've got this far, easy as you go.

[@Justaguywithglassesok]

finally someone like me who despises raiding and m+, i just wanna pvp tbh, not raid or m+, but im also an introvert so doing rated= bad for me sadly

[@timothymartin5538]

@@Justaguywithglassesok same, I don't do rated

[@HYPERPEACE]

This is one of the most honest discussions on Shadowlands I've seen yet. Also, Preach, you must not forget you're talking about a Triple A Developer/Publisher here. The reason they don't have catch up in BFA (And pay to win) is so you have to pay more money (Those with less time to play at least), so they can brag about their numbers of active players, and pretend the game is not dead. The power grind is absurd. I would rather they just don't have gear at all. It's always a waste of time, having to rely on an extra special drop, so I can raid at a high end. And artifact power too of course. I'd rather not log on each day to get Azerite. I'm raiding with a Heroic Raiding guild in BFA currently. Leaving soon because, my schedule just doesn't fit theirs (IRL stuff). But the biggest problem I've had as a new guild member (And a newish character), is getting the item level needed to raid. It takes weeks to even get to 455, let alone the right essences, which is optimal for the raid. This leads into another thing I always say around discussion of gear. They should remove it entirely. Or at least remove secondary stats. The biggest problems with gearing is the systems in place. I'm sure there's some class fantasy to it. But I know bad game design when I see it. If I'm being bombarded with these different stats, like leech, versatility, mastery, etc. How do I know which is best for me? It doesn't feel natural. It's getting to the point where I just wish they make gear stupid simple, like in Classic WoW. Also, get rid of seasonal gearing (I would accept RNG if they did that). This also fixes a class balancing issue, because there's no reliance on procs or systems to output good damage. I doubt classes would feel boring, in fact, it would be fun to be able to play multiple classes in an expansion or raid. For those who are no doubt going to say 'Then what's the point in playing?' or 'Then there's nothing to do'. You do realize the things you do for gear are repeating the content, OVER AND OVER AGAIN? Heroic Raiders may run the raid 5-8 times full, to get the gear they need/want. But running the same raid so many times, is going to get boring to most. On top of that, if there's a lack of content to do, that is really Blizzard's fault. They made RNG mounts a thing, which personally, I think is still stupid. Again, another controversial opinion. I think every RNG mount, toy, and pet in the game, needs to be changed. So it is a 100% drop, and it unlocks a lengthy quest chain in order to obtain said item. Otherwise, I just see RNG mounts as pure laziness. And inaccessible to the majority of players. Especially to those with less time to play, and not wanting to be subscribed for long due to financial issues or maybe just wanting to move on to another game. Blizzard has no respect. I'm also not keen on the removal of cosmetics from the game either. I really want to go back and get the Mage Tower appearances (I joined WoW in BFA). But it sucks because, now those are gone from the game. I'm not able to get the appearances anymore. The same can be said about Ahead of the Curve mounts. Locking all these items behind other content, where other players may not feel comfortable, is a little absurd. I'm more in favor of a grind that can be doable over say, as a casual player, one month maybe? I'd prefer that to unlock a higher end PVP mount, which can also be unlocked by being at the high end. It's just about how far you are into the game. I'm really not a fan of locking specific things behind very specific systems. Horrific Visions in Shadowlands are no doubt going to be confusing as fuck to new players. Especially when they just suddenly lose all their sanity (then have to grind a vessel). But they're only there for the Void Edge illusion for example, or the Mald Muncher. This lack of consideration and care from Blizzard, is why the game is dying. The fact this game could go from one of the most popular MMOs of all time, to this content rich, but ultimately confusing game, is evidence of that.

[@NoobGamer-di1dw]

Sylvee The game isn’t dead though at all. You can say it’s in a bad state, but saying it’s dead is completely false.

[@eliasrispling2945]

”Warlocks are going to be broken” a timeless statement

[@Valkerra]

Only reason to play the game

[@ShadowsOfThePast]

LOL. I kinda just dread the nerfs afterwards if we'll be OP from start.. Rather they just tune us to be "fine" during the Beta =P

[@PhoniexDB]

remember the statement that hunters was gonna be bad in 8.3

[@sik3xploit]

@@ShadowsOfThePast I still have resentment for the vanilla warrior nerf. I mean everyone thought the warrior class was terrible, and when one day when they are proven wrong what does Blizzard do? Nerfs them... Basically ruining the one thing warriors had going for them.

[@nennorkiporkos]

Great vid Preach :) I'm in the top 10% myself so not as high end, but already really dislike the idea of losing a few % for choosing a certain covenant. I just want to be the strongest I can be but there is no way I have time to level/gear 4x my char to swap. I'd like to add that yes while it only REALLY REALLY matters for the 1% of players, it is these players that are the biggest streamers/youtubers. Therefore, if they say it matters, the community says/feels it matters. This creates so much resentment towards this system. In my opinion they should do it like this: make the covenant abilities free to switch but be the 'champion' of 1 specific covenant. This would make sense lore wise as well; the covenants all fight a common enemy and therefore have shared interest. If they can help players defeat this enemy by borrowing them some of their power, they don't mind. Just my 2 cents!

[@knifetoucher]

They need to make soulbinds change with specs.

[@PCproffesorx]

well you have 3 different soulbinds so presumably thats one for each spec if you play a class with 3 viable specs that you want to play if not you have even more variety. Youll also be able to change the conduits in each of those soul binds, they slot like gems.

[@oliversteidle5163]

Agree with you 100%. They should really just reskin the covenant abilities to match whatever covenant you choose. The Spear of Bastion could also be the "Axe of Maldraxxus" or the "Sword of Revendreath". Connecting the Covenant to Power will just result into people not going with the covenant they like aesthetically and thematically, wich would be a huge shame.

[@petersliwka8912]

I just want my class to work at 100% effectiveness based on my gear and my talent choices. Is that so much to ask for ?????

[@TheTotalripoff]

It won't be 100% because you aren't good enough to draw that.

[@MrZriael]

@@TheTotalripoff Well, he said he wanted his "class" to be at 100% effectiveness, not his numbers or performance... He wants his gear and talent choices to put him in the position where his skill is the defining variable deciding how well he performs.

[@petersliwka8912]

Yeah thats what I meant, I don't think that several strapped on systems should complete my character.

[@PregnantOrc]

Really hope they take the "mandatory" chores feedback to heart and scale it back. If you get stuck in doing all those things when you log in it easily turns what should be a catch up mechanic into a keep-up mechanic. I think they are on the right path with the weekly chest and having multiple ways to build up the rewards in it so you get to pick what to do and what to skip out on rather than have to do every single thing when you'd rather spend time doing more of the content you enjoy.

[@brandonspengel5727]

Love you Preach, really do - i just have such a hard time when it comes to the perspective pieces of the "high-end" players. I've gotten cutting edge with my guild every tier this season (except CoS, cause F' that), and going all the way back to the end of WoD when our guild joined. We're never "top 100" Horde side, but oh well - we get it done relatively quickly given our schedules. That being said, i've never been able to sympathize with the idea that having a system like covenants tied into the power gains being a negative aspect of the game. Yes, grinding islands sucked. That's why we didn't do it - we still got it done in a reasonable time. I understand that mentality doesn't work for the 1%...but so what? That's what it means to be the 1% in a game like this - you gotta deal with stuff that 99% of the player base doesn't have to/doesn't want to. No matter how i twist my brain around, i cannot see how this covenant/conduit/soulbind system is somehow WORSE than the AP Necklace/corruption system. Yes, there are a few outliers that need to be reigned in - but as far as the Venthyr teleport compares to the other abilities? Sooooo what? If it means that any other group comp can't kill it, then yes it's a problem - one that blizz needs to fix. If it means a mechanic is trivialized because all 20 of you are venthyr, and you all are miserable cause you were forced to go venthyr to do so...well that's on you. You sucked the fun out of it yourself - because people will STILL KILL IT without having to do what you all did, even if it means they did it 2 days later. I just can't imagine doing what some of these players do, forcing themselves into a corner of 1%ing, then blaming blizzard when they do it.

[@Dotoku14]

tl;dr "Don't ask questions. Just consume product and then get excited for next product."

[@brandonspengel5727]

@@Dotoku14 0o0o0 so edgy you are

[@Spacetauren]

The thing about how conduits work is that in not only sucks for the high-end players. I mean sure, it sucks *especially* for high-end players but... It also sucks for *everybody* , because no one would like to farm a specific dungeon to get back a talent-like effect after switching out of it. It's almost as if each time you changed talents, you needed to level up again to gain access back to the talent row. Conduits have to work similar to glyphs, or old spell tomes : *you get it once, you've earned it forever* !

[@Nigerianbucket]

Careful with the FFXIV statement. Ive heavily played that and WoW on and off for years and youre dealing with a game that swings heavily in the opposite direction. Gear is boring, the acquisition of it is boring. The only real difficulty you'll find is in the 2 Ultimate fights you get per expansion. Savage is cleared by the top 1% in 1 or 2 days. There is 0 reason to do anything outside of the raid and tomestone (badges) capping that helps your character. Just be careful with that suggestion if youre accustomed to WoWs type of raiding. You wont get that in FFXIV.

[@benoitrousseau4137]

Well the difference is that FFXIV is not meant to be a "raid game." Sure they have raid content but it's much smaller and it's just a bullet point in the patch notes, whereas the centerpiece of every major WoW patch (except maybe 8.2) is the raid. They don't even really make raiding guilds in FFXIV, they make "statics". (Basically a stupid name for a premade party.) Recalling my raiding days, the only thing we may have liked better in FF's raids is the 8-player party size and obviously the music and eye candy. WoW did (probably still does) everything else better. I actually think FFXIV is a better MMORPG than WoW these days, but not for the raids. Absolutely not. Wild Star probably had better raids than FFXIV if anything.

[@arthuriko17]

@@benoitrousseau4137 How funny that you'd point that out, because I really find the raids in FFXIV quite a bit better than WoW, and find WoW's strengths in its other systems (m+, mainly). FFXIV for me is basically just a raid game with a world that serves only as a wait room for entering raids, and that is exactly what brings me to WoW. The amount of personal responsibility in FFXIV's raids is something that I really haven't seen in WoW at all (at least at the highest level of both games, aka Ultimates for ff and last of the tier mythic bosses). I guess what I'm trying to say is that imo final fantasy is THE raid MMO atm, and I don't see how it's not meant to be that.

[@aureliabackup7313]

It's more like the 0.0001% of top players that clear savage in the first lockouts. Not even close to 1%. People have to play insanely well to make it past the DPS check in 1st week gear while learning the fight.

[@GrimMorningstar]

I know plenty of people who play the game solely to craft or build housing stuff, just because all you want out of a game makes you bored early does not make it true for everyone

[@Kiobao]

XIV is fun for the first year or 2 if you care to do a lot in the game. If you only care for 2-3 classes and not huge on crafting, A lot will generally get tired of the game within a year or less. It's why I've always gotten tired of people always saying "PLAY XIV!" to every WoW streamer. It's not for everyone. Playing an MMO to primarily craft seems odd to me though since you don't really gain much after each expansion and it's mostly macros, playing the AH, and gathering your own materials on a timer. I didn't mind doing it for a bit as a side thing when a new patch releases but after 2 weeks, I'm done. Gearing is really lackluster. They act like materia is so interesting sometimes. I've played XIV since late 1.x before ARR, didn't play too much until ARR, I've played XIV close to as much as WoW in the time frame. Didn't care much for MoP's or WoD's theme so largely didn't care for it. I came around for AotC and that's about it when there wasn't a lot to do in XIV or during filler patches in XIV. Legion I played a lot of. during BFA , I haven't really played either WoW or XIV TOO much. At least, not as much compared to previous expansions. I feel really drained with XIV in ShB with nothing interesting to do and too many boring elements. It's the same reused cycle.I was feeling the burn a lot in SB. I'm just able to farm tomes for classes I don't really even play anymore, get gear from savage for classes I won't really touch but slightly interested in, constantly changing alts since a lot of it gets boring but keeping my SMN main since RDM isn't fun to me anymore. MCH gave me carpal tunnel. Current alt is DRK. Ultimates are cool I guess, but personally I think they messed up on the alexander theme and abilities. Also, I personally don't find it to be that fun of a fight. The Savage fights can be a hit or miss because some dislike it's just reused primals and a lot of FF8 elements. They are still cool at least. The world is like a nice painting with absolutely VERY little to do in it and next to no depth. A lot is phased and only triggered by quests. You pretty much only go around for gathering professions and NM hunting for tomes and maps. Everything else is teleports and afk in hubs waiting for queues. XIV, once you caught up in the game is great as a SIDE Game. Overrated still. People praise it too highly. Also entirely variable on your preference, if you like nostalgia from the old ff games and if you like square cross overs or those IPs rather than them actually expanding their own games lore. As a main game? It fades fast. Unless you like to afk while showing off, chat to people while doing nothing, and stand around in cool clothes and mess with a house until you are bored with it or tired of spending money on it. Also, mannnn if you hate WoW's store, you will loathe the attention XIV's store gets. The mindset is entirely different and you will see a lot of people often using store bought mounts and dances.

[@m1nayondaime]

I agree with you regarding the ''mythic tax'' 100%. It didn't matter if I was top 100 in BFA or top 1000 in Legion, I always farmed to get the item upgrades / borrowed power upgrades to do as much DPS as I possibly could since that's my job in the raid. Making it harder and more time consuming to do that just to have my fun 2 - 3 nights a week is really awful and very off putting. I have to play the beta and judge if any of the classes I want to play are fun enough to even consider doing it. If that's not the case, like it was with BFA, I most likely won't even bother playing Shadowlands, and a lot of the people I talk to are the same way (and they aren't tryhard 1% top 100 raiders either.)

[@royalrepublican3480]

this is going to suck even more if you play all 4 specs of druid but you only have 3 followers

[@howldread]

Nice, Druids finally get a hybrid tax and for once won't be the best at everything.

[@prestonrasmussen4083]

Acher resto is the best at M+, that’s it

[@christydwyer3877]

Literally no druid spec is the best at anything except for Resto M+. And even then Hpally is just as good, if not situationally better.

[@azkendarken4403]

scrap feral. done

[@timothymartin5538]

@@azkendarken4403 don't do this, it's the only context in which I like cats, and I still hate it.

[@pax5376]

Preach, it's not just the 1%... many players agree with you! Borrowed power and required grinds are killing WoW. You should be able to progress through the content you like, without being forced to grind, or participate in other content. You can still have optional grinds/content. They actually did this pretty well with Pet Battles; there's content you can play, enjoy, and progress in, but if you're not interested, it has no effect on any other parts of the game. I feel like the new Mission Table could (might) be handled the same way. Blizzard needs to realize that improved gear is not just a reward, but rather a soft nerf to encounters and content. As you beat early Raid Bosses, you acquire enhanced gear that allows you to defeat more difficult bosses. Why should I have to grind World Quests and/or Island Expeditions, when all I want to do is a couple of raid nights per week? There's no need to develop these overly complex systems that just slow player progress, and confuse new/returning players. Interesting that they spend so much time lamenting how hard it is for new players to get into the game (although the new leveling system appears to be making a giant leap in this regard).

[@GyrotexGaming]

I think when Ion & Co. tell us they'll "get out of our way" and let us have fun, they don't really mean it. It's all a form of exercise in constraining us and funneling us into the content that's not made accessible to extend our playtime and subscriptions the most creative and concealed way. And they've become SO good at doing it - not many people even notice anymore.

[@Asin24]

Take out the covenant abilities, give a skim through and get rid of the weaker ones for each class and refine ones that might need to be touched up (maybe even nerfing them). Make it so the player can chose the skill independently of covenant. The covenant is 100% cosmetic in what unique things it can give the player. People can pick the covenant they want based off cosmetics/lore/covenent activity/ect giving people actual choice.

[@SniperZim]

i would love to see no timegating on the grinding stuff. make me grind 100h of whatever you want but let me do the 100h when i want them to do. not force me to do 10h a week and cap me there so i have to do it over 10 weeks. and after ive done the 100h let me be done with it for good and not give me some open end. that way everyone can reach their goal at their own pace.

[@s0515033]

That's not profitable, though, because the poop sock population will just burn through everything too fast and then complain anyway how there's nothing to do.

[@MrZriael]

@@s0515033 I'd argue that worrying about whether or not a small minority might whine if you made a change that greatly benefits the majority is worse for profits... The way people blame every change they think should be made on the company being greedy is getting really quite toxic. Yes, some choices will be made directly around statistics which can be drawn and shown to investors, the vast majority, however, are not. If the small population is very influential, like the raiding population where everyone gets their news and their builds from, then sure, worry about it. But you're talking specifically about people who have tonnes of time to put into the game but don't compete at any of the high-level activities. No one cares if they whine.

[@panda.kaizoku]

It amazes me how blizz have pushed most of the players to be casuals and now when they design the game the excuse is "well most people are casual so we design it for them". This didn't necessarily used to be the case in the older expansions when people were actually actively engaged in their guilds and with their raiding experience, pvp and so on.

[@mellowsunset7730]

I had zero problems with legion relics. Clearly I’m not the min-maxer that many people are.

[@fatmamacow8455]

One big difference is that legion relics went into separate weapons for each spec. In shadow lands, if you put in a relic for ret and then want to swap to holy, you have to destroy that ret relic to use a holy relic.

[@kelptea]

I agree with you, my biggest problem with this is the guilds (like the one I'm in) that try to follow the 1% when we don't need to at all, since our progress through mythic is so much slower than that 1%, but somehow we are imposed these BIS choices. I'm not in the 1% and I've been dreading these systems from day one.

[@PayamTavakoli]

I don't think you're advocating for just the 1%, I think it's way more, stand up for us.

[@AkTheArne]

I agree. I'm not hardcore by any means (casual hc raids, m+, bgs with friends), but find myself agreeing with virtually all points Preach makes. Honest and humble criticism is the best you can get, and that's what you get from Mike

[@virlomientreri6970]

If i were to lose my corruptions right now, I'd drop from 95k to about 65k dps. Other classes are hit worse than mine without their corruption.

[@noobpie]

Finally, someone says it. I think we all came out of the Shadowlands update with a severe sense of wtf. Instead of focusing on the core gameplay and making classes more interesting and fun, Blizzard somehow thinks it's a great idea to shove all these different systems down our throats. Which is just insane because the community is so vocal about what they want. A lot of us who play WoW regularly have full-time jobs/responsibilities. I love this game but the reality is that I simply don't have as much time as I would like to play. Now you're telling me I need to set aside 20 minutes to play event planner on top of all these random systems I don't want to bother with but because of design choice, I feel like I have to if I want to enjoy my WoW experience? I wish this were just a 1 % issue Preach because these feelings are a lot more widespread than you think.

[@aandrenery]

I'm not a mythic raider but please, Blizzard, listen to Preach!

[@trumanteduits1088]

I just honestly don’t know if I even want to play shadowlands. It just sounds like more of BFA in disguise

[@ZeroKOR1]

I skipped bfa, I might skip shadowlqnds as well. Filled the whole with FF

[@billf7912]

So you "have" to do this extra stuff to beat boss X on Mythic. So if they tune it down so it's not required and the high enders do it anyway and finish the raid day 1. Will you approve? I think Mythic is supposed to be super hard, and how it becomes super hard is making it where you need that extra buff to beat it.... I guess I don't understand why you don't like it being hard.

[@TrueCasualYT]

SL is the very final chance i give to Blizzard, if it's shit, then i'll just RMT my account, maybe buy TBC when they release it.

[@modernkennnern]

The irony of this is that it doesn't matter for 99% of the playerbase - So it might as well not exist, but for the 1% of players that it *does* matter for, it's entirely a negative.

[@Mikoshi700]

I like most of your content, but trying to get blizzard to remove new design choices because you apparently can't physically stop yourself from consuming content if it gives a power up, even if you hate the content. That's kind of scummy. If anything, the rant drives home how out of place mythic raiding actually is in WoW. It will never be able to coexist with the other 99%. Because you demand things like this. There is a certain irony that you follow "too many hurdles to enter" with "we won't like it, if it's not hard enough".

[@bryton1920]

low-key this is actually a pretty good take. I agree with Preach on a lot of stuff and I can understand his frustration. But this comment rings kind of true as well. +1

[@DthklOwns]

I don't understand how any top end players have a choice, that's kind of what the entire rant was getting at, the thing they enjoy most is raiding at the hardest level. In order to do that you now you are forced to jump through these 8 million hoops and do shit that you hate because blizzard is designing the content you want to do as if you have already done all of that. Seems like you kind of just didn't listen and only heard what he was saying.

[@prestonrasmussen4083]

A huge grind and difficult content are different things. Also, how is the other 99% losing out by letting you choose which covenant ability you want, and just changing the cosmetics depending on your covenant?

[@Mikoshi700]

@@DthklOwns I did listen, and I heard exactly what I heard. Its pretty clear that he doesn't want any source of player power that doesn't flow from raiding. I understand why he would want that, the nature of esport raiding, is that you remain competitive, and to remain competitive means taking advantage of every power up possible. I don't however think blizzard should be designing around that particularly unhealthy way to play the game. Especially not if it means denying everyone else access to interesting game design because it might make you do unhealthy things like roll 4 of the same class. I legitimately think Mythic needs to be rethought to better mesh it with the rest of the game. Esport stuff should be templates, no gear drops, no big impact from player power. Just player skill. It solves a lot of the problems that esport raiding introduces to WoW, but let's them keep their little subculture.

[@alyishiking]

I absolutely agree. WoW is still an RPG, right? The Covenants and their systems provide a massive opportunity to enhance this aspect of the game. I'm really looking forward to playing around with all of the Covenants and their abilities. I'm excited to see how they will mesh with different classes. Torghast looks incredibly fun, especially now that they'v ungated it. Honestly, Preach's opinions are usually fine, but not this time. I enjoy watching his content and he always has well thought out responses to things---but he is WAY too caught up in his idea of min maxing as though it's the only way to play WoW. And lots of people parrot his opinions because they aren't capable of their own individual thoughts, and Blizzard listens to the vocal minority, and suddenly everything is nerfed into the ground rather than built upon and improved.

[@xspireddreams]

Seen as you mentioned Final Fantasy, I've been playing since BFA 8.3 and it's awesome

[@cullenasaro2229]

Preach... I was trialing to get into my first mythic guild. I did great, I never messed up a serious mechanic, I didn’t die during my trial, and I was doing ok damage, though I was the lowest ilvl in the raid since everyone had been raiding mythic for weeks now and this was my first and second week in a mythic instance. When I talked to the GM during my trial review, it was brought to my attention that I need to get the correct corruption on my gear if I was going to get into a raiding spot. Keep in mind this was BEFORE THE VENDOR WAS ADDED. I actually got benched because I couldn’t get lucky on my corruption.

[@cullenasaro2229]

I just stopped trying to get a spot after that point and basically quit for the time being because it was week after week of not getting any of my BiS corruptions. I just couldn’t be bothered to keep running 15s to just never see the random rng procs I needed.

[@peeralis6707]

Your comment on people thinking ilvl was so spot on. Had a guy in my guild who constantly had 5-10ilvls above me the whole expansion yet he had just a mix and match stats while I tried to only have the best stats and he got so annoyed every week when I'd beat him on the dps meters.

[@larrypope1057]

Haha love the opening there. Good content lately bro keep it up!

[@Besaw54]

You say you're fighting for the 1% of people but to be honest with you that percent is a lot bigger than you think Preach. Every point you have is so spot on. And blizzard really needs to rethink these covenant abilities. I'm tired of borrowed power. Just make fun things to do that are not required to grind through and just let us play our classes. It's such a simple fix but blizzard really wants there to be some sort of theme ability with the last 3 expansions now. Don't get it.

[@scoops2]

Preach, it's not just the top 1%, it's the whole raiding community or at least most of it. Take people like myself in only the top 50% of guilds (meaning we'll barely get cutting edge if even before a tier ends). Me and all my guildies still want our characters to be the best they can be. We still want our performance to really represent our skill and not be held back by some obvious poor choice or character flaw such as the wrong covenant for the content type. Also, on top of just being RPG players and wanting our characters to be the best the can be, we need them to be. We don't have the same skill as the top end. To finish the tier we need all the help we can get so the grind effects us too!

[@Whalebelly2239]

Thank you for saying it like it is. Wanting to maximise your character in an MMO shouldn't be a punishment, nor should not picking the "right" covenant. I really hope Blizzard will do something, anything, to make covenants be either entirely cosmetic, only have the abilities be open-world stuff, or let us swap between them kinda like the essences.

[@snuzzy4984]

The last 3 or 4 minutes is some real talk right there chief. Appreciate it,

[@Monkstrman425]

Hey one more comment as I just finished the video, I don’t think you are even being biased at this point. I consider myself casual as I only dabble in mythic dungeons from time to time and even I am very concerned on how this whole covenant system is playing out. People can toss around “meaningful decisions” all they want but in reality the covenant abilities are already so unbalanced that even slightly casual people who want to just do some casual raiding/mythic dungeons will have to min max. When one ability is so massively superior to the others it really removes the player choice and this is true for both extreme casuals and top mythic raiders. I think you are saying what many many people are thinking, appreciate the videos and looking forward to future updates.

[@carebearcarebear8185]

What Preach wants is a WoW where people can log in for the raid and stay offline for the rest of the week. Not quite sure he understands how WoW works. Btw, same thing with being happy about titanforging gone. You think Blizzard lets people just hop into the raids, get their non forging gear and be done? That's not how the game works. Blizzard will make sure you're gonna spend time. Which is fine.

[@deesul4134]

My 2 day a week CE guild is extremely worried. our chat is filled with "oh shit, this is going to be bad" lots of concerning negative talk amongst my 60 member mythic raiding guild

[@robertrozanski1206]

I never thought I'd say that, but give us WoD systems (and classes/specs, but that's a bit of a different story) - go into Ashran for a few hours, get basic gear, go climb the endgame progression. Heck, even craftable weapons were more than perfectly fine for casual playerbase (just a bit below HC Archi, iirc). Add more content on top of that and there's recipe for success.

[@zyella277]

for hfc the gear was 715 which is 5under hc archimonde, the weapons where 705 or equal to normal archimonde/lower part of heroic

[@FrozzenK]

1:39 Hate to be that guy but I looked all over after I heard him say that and I can't find this particular interview where they talk about the paladin skill being removed. Can anyone lend a hand?