The other day when I made my “done-ish” post I had essentially missed one entire zone of Dragonflight content before properly wrapping up the Main Story Quest. I’ve now done this as well as finished all of the Zaralek Cavern MSQ and am a good deal of the way through the Emerald Dream MSQ content. I have to say across the board this is some of the best content World of Warcraft has ever released hands down. Had I actually played along through the first two “seasons” of Dragonflight, I think I would have been extremely pleased with the level of detail and the amount of content that came with each. Zaralek and Emerald Dream are both excellent expansion areas and far more detailed and fleshed out than most of the ones we have gotten in the past. I also dig that each of these areas has a full set of gear that you can earn through the quest chain, which essentially acts as a catch-up mechanic and takes you up to around the item level of the LFR Raid that proceeded it.
It was because of all of these gear upgrades that I was able to set foot into LFR and am now capable of running Heroic Dungeons. I bought a few upgrades off the Auction House but legitimately did not need to do this as I got plenty of gear just through questing to make up for the difference in item level. Essentially on all of my alts from this point forward I will simply knock out the Zaralek Cavern content and then start Emerald Dream in order to get them to reasonable gear levels. The one thing that I wish is that the Account Bound items were a bit more common. While leveling I found two pieces of “Dreambound” armor that turn into gear for specific classes. One of these was a pair of 415 plate boots, and the other that I have sitting in my inventory is for a set of 415 cloth shoulders. I guess I need to see where this drops and potentially farm some up for alting as they seem like a great option.
The other thing that I spent a lot of time on Saturday doing was tracking down Dragon Sigils. These are objectives out in the world that give points that you can then spend on the Dragon Riding talent tree. At this point I have gathered all of the sigils from the four main areas of Dragonflight as well as all of them from Zaralek Cavern, and I believe the only ones that I have not picked up are the ones in the Emerald Dream. Some of these were fairly awful to get… like this one way the hell up at the top of a mountain that I had to stop several times along the way and let my stamina regenerate. The other day when I complained about Dragon Flying, I was met with a chorus of comments that I really needed to get all of the Dragon Sigils before I judged it. So I did that.
At this point, I have collected 15 talents so I feel like I can reasonably judge this system. I still feel like this is a poor copy of the flight options from Guild Wars 2. Essentially Dragon Riding is this kitbash that jams together some traits of the Skyscale and some traits of the Griffon from GW2 and is somehow worse than either. Don’t get me wrong… for World of Warcraft having access to flying almost immediately in this expansion is revolutionary. Mechanically the system is fine and does what it is supposed to do… but the system it copied homework from just feels better. Mostly the thing that kills me the most is how long it takes to summon the mount, how long it takes for stamina to regenerate, and that there is no dismounting attack. All of this combines to make the system feel way more passive and fiddly than the mounts in Guild Wars 2 do. That is not to say that the experience did not significantly improve as I got more talents… just that the final version is still a poor copy of the original.
The other place where Dragonflight seems to have copied Guild Wars 2 homework is that there appear to be “zone metas” now. I am not sure how many of these exist but I have seen ones in Ohn’ahran Plains, The Azure Span, and Emerald Dream, and for the most part… these are at least as good as the most simplistic zone meta events from Guild Wars 2. For the most part, the WoW version feels like a World Quest that spawns periodically and progresses through a series of phases until it finally culminates in some sort of World Boss. The only one that I have actually managed to participate in was the one in The Emerald Dream and it was enjoyable enough. Essentially you seemed to follow around a giant Treant and killed a bajillion mobs as they spawned in to attack him… then eventually took out a Druid of the Flame boss for fun and prizes. The higher the zone participation, the better the rewards you ended up getting. This was no Dragon’s End or even Tequatl… but was at least as good as the Svanir Shaman Chief or Great Jungle Wurm.
I am not trying to be overly harsh in my viewpoint of Dragonflight. It seems to have done a really good job of moving the needle forward for World of Warcraft. From what I can tell content releases seem to have happened more reliably over the last few years, and Dragon Riding really does greatly improve the feel of the game. I think the zone metas are an interesting addition as well, and I would like to see them try something a bit more ambitious with them. The biggest problem I see with the Metas is unless they are brain-dead… it is somewhat hard to get players to participate in them. World of Warcraft is a game that has spent the last two decades training its community to see other players as competition and not as collaborators. The metas work in Guild Wars 2 because there is never a time when other players doing things with you is in any way a negative, and instead, the more players you have the better your experience tends to be. Hopefully, the current World of Warcraft team can start to turn back years of antisocial game design to make something more cooperative.
I am getting to the point with my Warrior where I am thinking it might be time to swap characters and work on an Alt. World Quests seem to have a weekly timer instead of semi-daily ones… meaning there are just way less of them to complete at any given time. It also appears to not really be as viable of a method for gearing characters as it used to be. Again this is less of a problem because the quests chains now reward you with full sets of decent item-level gear, but my MO previously was just to ignore most of the quests and focus entirely on World Quests to gear up alts. I think I am going to try leveling the Paladin without going through the campaign. Mostly I want to play something for a bit with more viable tradeskills so I can experience how those systems work. Since the Paladin is Mining and Blacksmithing, I think that will feel a bit more enjoyable because Belghast sadly harvests NOTHING. I’ve always enjoyed letting the mining nodes dictate my path through an area.
The post Dragon Riding Still Mid appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! Happy New Year and Welcome to Season Eleven of AggroChat! We are back after the holiday break and are delaying our Games of the Year Show until a bit later in the month. This week we talk about the Dave the Diver Dredge Crossover, Super Mario RPG and Thalen’s child plotting an interesting course through the game, and a return to Monster Hunter World. With Bobby Kotick leaving ActiBlizz, Bel has stepped back into World of Warcraft and talks a bit about his thoughts so far and the inspirations taken from Guild Wars 2. From there we talk a bit about missing trade league despite how much of a capitalist nightmare it is and how it makes the players focus entirely on short-term gains. Bel talks a bit about how he has shifted his Chieftain into Righteous Fire and how it is a reasonable replacement for RF Juggernaut. Finally, some breaking news while we are recording… we talk a bit about the new FFXIV job Pictomancer, and the new limited job Beastmaster.
Topics Discussed:
Dave the Diver Dredge Crossover
Super Mario RPG Remake
Monster Hunter World
World of Warcraft after 3 Years Away
Influences from Guild Wars 2
Path of Exile
The line goes up, and the financialization of everything in another inflation league
Well friends with the help of my friend Eliyon, we figured out where I fell off the Main Story Quest. It does not in fact end at Valdrakken but instead spins off with a few quests inside of the city, that then lead out into what is the fourth zone of the game Thaldraszus. So I have a bit more questing to go before I can wrap things up and finish out the story… and then proceed onto gearing through World Quests. I remember having this issue as well with Shadowlands where I dinged the new level cap and still had one and a half zones to complete before I could join the open-world “reindeer games”. I remember it was during this chasm that my friend Ace bounced from Shadowlands never to return, so I can’t say this is a super great design decision. It would be nice if World Quests just unlocked whenever you hit level 70 no matter how far you were progressed in the story.
Feeling somewhat deflated I spent most of my evening in Path of Exile. I had converted my attempt at a Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain over to Righteous Fire and so far… I think this might be the closest to the glory that was Juggernaut Righteous Fire. If you are so inclined here is a POB of where I am currently. The thing is the Chieftain comes with a bunch of really nice perks for Righteous Fire, some of which I had overlooked or at least written off as less good than they actually are. Namely Ramako, Sun’s Light is something that I had skipped on my previous attempts at an RF Chieftain during the Blast from the Past league, and this was a mistake. You spend a surprising amount of time “stationary” as Righteous Fire and if you frostblink from pack to pack you can maintain this “stationary” state. All of that time everything just has -20 Fire Resistance which seems to override all other modifiers and while in theory you can get a resistance much lower than that… this just always works.
This allows me to run a curse that isn’t either Flammability or Elemental Weakness and have it feel like I am double cursing without needing to fiddle with the nonsense that is involved in making that happen. Of the other options, I went with Punishment which causes cursed enemies to take more damage when on low life… meaning that things die faster and hopefully proc Hinekora, Death’s Fury and clearing the entire damned screen. I went Primalist with the hope of eventually using charms to get more chance to explode but for the moment I am running two Percent Strength and Life Regeneration Rate modifier charms. In a perfect world, I would find something that gave me explode and life or regen but I will have to keep fishing in the forest to make that happen. I’ve also still never seen the ACTUAL King in the Mists fight so none of my characters have unlocked their final doodads.
My defenses are also extremely solid and quite honestly… now that I have equipped a Lightning Coil I don’t feel that much less tanky than the Juggernaut version did. What I bring to the table is roughly 25k armor, almost 5000 life, 2500 life regeneration, 90% to all elemental resistances, and 50% of all physical damage is taken as lightning damage… as well as 30% crit damage reduction and some things to limit damage over time which I don’t believe the Lightning Coil applies to. Now that I have the lightning coil I am going to try my hand at juicing some T16 maps and see how that goes. Essentially the gameplay is a bit odd in that you are trying to kill enough small stuff so that you proc an explosion and then the entire screen around you evaporates before moving on to the next big pack. It feels better than it sounds.
All told it is fun to map on albeit a bit slower than Lightning Arrow. Lately, I have been alternating between Cemetary and Tropical Island because both are fairly enjoyable maps and relatively open. I should run some of the crappier and less bow-friendly T16s that I have rotting in my bank and see how that goes. Mostly right now I need a good deal more levels. I am working on getting a Fan the Flames gem up and running while trying to roll a slightly better version. If this works like I think it will… my ignites will proliferate among the packs of things that I am killing, and then also “proliferate” again when one of those things dies thanks to Berek’s Respite. If nothing else this should be fun as hell to watch happening. If I could somehow manage to keep my resistance high enough… I would love to have a set of Maven’s boots as well to only further add to the nonsense explosions.
One of the things that has gotten me down in Path of Exile lately is the frustration of trying to link things. Essentially I had a 900 DPS bow that I was working on getting linked, a Lightning Coil in RF colors, and more recently I finally got a Fourth Vow to drop which I am trying to link for my Boneshatter build. After spending about 1000 fusings trying to get the Bow linked, this morning I had gathered up another hundred or so and managed to get both the bow and lightning coil to six links. That alone has helped increase my enjoyment of the league. I still do not love being isolated from the trade environment, but finally getting some of the things I needed up and running is a significant improvement.
The post Chieftain Go Boom appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Whelp friends… I have finished the main story campaign in Dragonflight and for the most part, I enjoyed it. I think it might be one of the better World of Warcraft expansions as a whole, but I also think that maybe my tastes in games have shifted a bit. I ran into this a bit when trying to ease into Final Fantasy XIV as well… my brainwaves seem not to flow along the traditional MMORPG patterns as much these days. Guild Wars 2 scratches the ARPG itch so that I can flow seamlessly between it and something like Path of Exile. World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV are so much slower-paced than I am used to now that I had to keep trying to make the combat more active than it was to stay engaged. I think the design pattern of the MMORPG feels a bit dated, and I still wish that someone would come along and create the Destiny of MMORPGs with tight action combat with really enjoyable feedback. I am looking for Arcade gameplay, whereas too many people seem to be leaning into the more slow and prodding Dark Souls feel.
I think what makes Dragonflight really stand out is the world design. The Waking Isles are phenomenal and have these nostalgic ties to so many other “favorite” World of Warcraft zones. There are also just some really cool visual setpieces like this cave full of spiders that were frozen in the state of descending. The team that created the flow of these zones deserves some massive credit because leveling through each area felt extremely enjoyable. So much is focused on the narrative story… but the mechanical flow through zones is super important and often treated as an afterthought in games. Dragonflight created this enjoyable ride from the moment you set foot on the docks of your capital city, to the moment you arrive in Valdrakken for the first time. Technically the expansion had three zones, but it feels like each zone is multiple zones at once with a lot of regional biome shifts and cultures.
Every time I have complained about Shadowlands, I get some diatribe about playing it at launch… I did play it at launch. I still did not really enjoy the experience at launch. The Shadowlands feels like a number of disconnected content islands that have radically different themes to them. Dragonflight instead feels like a place you could actually visit with a natural feeling flow to the transitions between zone boundaries. Shadowlands instead felt like a bunch of post-launch patch zones where narratively they did what they needed to do… but structurally were a bit of a mess. I am hoping that this same cohesion flows through to Dragonflight’s post-expansion zones because I know at a minimum at some point I will be stepping foot into the Emerald Dream. Now I just need to figure out what I need to do in order to get some starter gear. The transition from leveling to endgame has never been as smooth as it was during Legion, and I’ve not really seen much in the way of world events yet so I am wondering what I need to do in order to unlock those.
I think I am going to spend some time burning down the backlog of quests that I have sitting in assorted zones. I’ve reached the point where I can no longer accept quests and exclamation points are screaming in my face everywhere I go. I need to reconcile all of the junk that is in my bank as well so that I can figure out what I want to do with it. I should probably just Auction House the bulk of what is saleable. I kinda hate the WoW Auction House system and wish it was something more akin to FFXIV or GW2 where you could list an item and forget about it. I always sell items in those games because it is so painless… but I really hate managing failed auctions and the fees that rack up with them. I get that this is a flippers game and for “financial pvpers” but it sort of feels miserable for someone who wants nothing to do with that nonsense and just wants to convert “bag bloat” to liquid currency. I mean it is better than it used to be, but it is still pretty far off from what I would consider ideal.
Last night I bounced though after dinging 100. There was just too much to do and no real sense of purpose where I needed to start. Instead, I finished out the evening doing Delve in Path of Exile. I’ve gotten my Righteous Fire Chieftain to the point of comfort down in the mines. I still need levels so that I can socket in a bunch of jewels into my tree but I have managed to gather up three or four that will work beautifully. This is a far cry from how comfy RF Juggernaut felt, but it isn’t half bad. I’ve got two items that I have been trying to get linked… a Lightning Coil that I am going to swap to for this character and a new Lightning Arrow bow that should almost double my damage output. For now, I have been trying to link the bow because it will help me farm Sulphite more efficiently, but in either case, I just need a bajillion fusings to make this happen.
I am still shocked at just how fast the leveling goes in Dragonflight because I started on the 30th and now on the 4th I have effectively gone through two expansions. I just need to sort out how best to gear my character. I might throw myself at the LFG system and try and knock out some dungeons for gear. I am not sure if this is the case… but the community of begging for private loot gear really turned me off during Shadowlands so I am hoping that is less of a thing than it was then.
The post Dragonflight Done-ish appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
