This Week in MMOs

[Pattern Ghost]

It's possible to solo these days, given the right build. But it's one of those games you have to do some planning of  your build to get the most out of. My main is 19.5, and I've only soloed on her. (Arcane Archer pure Ranger build.) My only grouping was when I was in a permadeath guild, which is a fun way to play, believe it or not. I think that's dying out a bit now, due to some character power creep taking a lot of the danger out of it.

[Pattern Ghost]

I wonder how this will work out. Not too many MMOs pull off moves to console successfully. Given that STO is buggy as crap, this could be a good thing if it makes them revisit their code.

 

[Pattern Ghost]

Apparently, they'll let anyone into Legion Beta these days. I just noticed that it's active on my launcher.

 

Installing it now. I guess I can get an early start on being all fussy, judgmental and righteously outraged at the changes.

[CptPatriot]

Hi, gang. Sorry I haven't kept in the loop.

 

I still have my accts with Champions Online, Star Trek Online, DDO. While I have not played them in a while, I'm always willing to play with my fellow Herophiles.

[Pattern Ghost]

OK, I've done a bit of mucking around on the Legion beta. I don't like doing actual expansion content on beta, so I'm avoiding the leveling zones aside from hitting a few quests to test difficulty level and to poke my head into the zones and look at the art. I've created a few pre-made characters for classes/specs I play most; I'm primarily interested in the class changes. I've done the Broken Isles intro scenarios and their artifact quests, as well as a couple of quests in the leveling zones. I'll give a few brief, generalized notes on my experience so far, and try to keep them spoiler free as far as content is concerned:

 

General:

• The leveling content quality looks on par with WoD and uses scenarios, treasures and rares in the same way.
• People in general chat are saying there's a lot more content than WoD.
• The introductory quests, becoming  your class's leader and artifact quests are the first things you do. You can't hit the leveling zones until you do them.
• The difficulty level of the intro and artifact quests is much higher than the leveling content. Mobs have a ton of health and hit HARD. This seems to be intentional, to sell the badassery of the demonic invaders. You'll be fighting with major NPCs and faction leaders for the first bit, so if you're squishy, let them tank for you.
• The mobs in the leveling zone have higher health than normal, and you'll feel like you've taken a hit to your DPS, though it seems DPS for DPS specs is about on par. People transferring their live characters to the test realm report that their numbers are about the same, but the time to kill a normal mob is higher. Some of the mobs hit pretty hard (though not as hard as the initial event ones), so combined with the long kill time, you don't want to over pull.
• I haven't tested a tank spec yet, but tanks are reporting being practically unkillable, but taking an annoyingly long time to kill. Same for healers.
• The pre-gen characters are item level 680 to start with. You pick up some 685-699 quest rewards and drops pretty quickly. The artifact weapons are item level 750 to start. Casuals coming over from WoD will likely be around 680-700ish (at least my main and alts are), so the pre-gens are a pretty good indicator. Raiders will have a lot easier time starting out. I suspect higher level raid gear will last at least to 105 or 106, but that's just a guesstimate.
• Higher level crafting recipes require a BOP item from gathering professions, so my dual production profession characters may  be screwed unless that changes.

 

Retribution Paladin

 

• I was expecting to hate the Ret changes after reading about them. It turns out I only hate them a moderate amount.
• The rotation is clunky. With higher levels of Haste, it may smooth out.
• Overall performance is OK sucks compared to every other DPS spec I've tried. DPS and survivability both took a hit, but the class is still playable.
• One annoying mechanic is that Judgement now buffs your Holy Power spenders (Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm), making them hit about twice as hard. So now you have more dead time, as you have to hold on to your Judgement to align it with your spenders. I don't like this design.
• Another annoying mechanic is Greater Blessings. We can have three (Might, Kings, Wisdom, all different now and not too impressive really) going at once, for an hour, but they are only castable outside of combat. The fact that buffs were removed from every other class, but overhauled for Ret is disturbing. The developers seem to want to push Ret into a support/DPS hybrid role which just doesn't fit with the rest of the game.
• Overall, the class feels more dynamic and well-balanced on live. People have been ooh-ing an awe-ing at the new graphics for ret, but I prefer those on live as well.
• Out of the specs I've tested, I think Ret got hit hardest with the pruning.
• Overall, I'll still play Ret, but it won't be my main this time around unless some major changes are made. I think it'll be kind of like the change in Cata, where the new Holy Power mechanic just felt off at first, then improved a lot by MoP. So, maybe I'll play her more next expansion.

 

Fury Warrior

 

• Fury gets a lot of forum complaints, but I thought it played pretty well and had very decent survivability.
• I liked the artifact quests, probably my favorite so far and fitting for the class.
• The artifact swords look much cooler in game than I thought they would based on previous artwork.
• The way you get to and from the class hall from Dalaran is amusing.
• The only hitch I have with the rotation so far is an ability called Furious Slash. Its only purpose is to buff the crit chance of Blood Thirst by 15%. The extra crit on BT should have been left baked in to the ability. This makes for a clunky rotation. Again, Haste may help, but I dislike that design aesthetic.
• It seems likely that I'll play my Warrior a lot more this expansion.

 

Fire Mage

• I haven't played Fire since BC. Fire needs lots of crit, and if you don't raid, it's hard to get a lot of crit at lower gear levels.
• This isn't true in Legion! You can play a Fire Mage in crappy gear now. Yay! I'm kind of tired of Frost, and never liked Arcane for solo much.
• Fire has a lot more control over Pyroblast procs now. Very handy.
• Fire doesn't seem any more fragile than Frost does on live (Frost's survivability got gutted in WoD, probably appropriately, but still gutted.)
• Fire gets a badss one-handed sword (Felo'melorn), and I always liked sword/offhand better aesthetically.
• Overall, I'm pretty pleased with Fire and will probably play it in Legion.
• ETA: Apparently, the artifact tree for Fire is pretty bad. Hopefully they'll fix it at some point, because the core stuff seems pretty decent.

 

Feral Druid

• Feral's probably the least changed of what I've tested mechanically.
• It's not without issues, but for casual play and leveling seems to work fine.
• Savage Roar has become a talent. The up side is that I hated keeping track of reapplying it, so good riddance. The down side is that the other talents on its tier aren't nearly as large of a DPS gain, so you're stuck with it anyway if you're raiding. I'm not, so I took a different talent and that works well enough for casual play.
• My Feral is a dual gatherer, so will probably be the first thing I level.

 

Demon Hunters are cool, but I'm out of time for now, so I'll make it brief. I tried the DPS spec. They're highly mobile and have decent survivability through CC and stuns and a heal on kill ability (orbs like Monk ones drop on kill that give a significant health gain). They seem fairly well-balanced compared to other DPS classes, surprisingly enough.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I really wish they'd stop just abandoning everything that went before every expansion.  Why  not go back to your garrison, and have portals from there to the new content?  Why not have a portal to the farm in Pandaria from your garrison and grow herbs there?  It seems like they put so much work into an expansion then just pretend it never existed when the new one comes out.  Why not use previous metals in the new recipes, and add a few new things?  You could put follower missions into the garrison to let them go find you supplies.  Go get me iron, go get me dreamfoil...

[Pattern Ghost]

OK, I've played around with a few more specs. Some more observations:

 

Caveat: I'm only looking at what these specs can do at 100 and slightly above. Artifact advancement is important, and I'm not really taking it into account since I'm not really leveling. Some of the specs I like for casual leveling (like Fire) may have poorly-designed artifact trees (like Fire).

 

Havoc (DPS) Demon Hunter:

 

See above for general impressions. I'll just go over what you get with them and a bit about how they work. My DH is currently a hair shy of 102. I've been trying not to do too much of the Legion content, but the DH is a lot of fun.

 

Demon Hunters start at level 98 and level up to level 100 in their starting zone. Instead of getting all seven tiers of their talents in the starting zone, they get talents at 99 and 100, so they start out at a deficit of five talents compared to other level 100 classes. The progression is: 99, 100, then every two levels after: 102, 104, 106, 108, 110. I guess the question here is whether they'll be overpowered at 110 once all their talents are unlocked, since they're very much on par with other level 100 DPS specs out of the gate.

 

Double jump works by tapping the jump key a second time at the apex of a jump. Holding the jump key while falling lets you glide. You can glide from the apex of a double jump. I think it's a slightly lower jump than the double jump in Wildstar, but it's still pretty handy for getting around. (Side note: So far, the terrain doesn't seem to be as annoying as in WoD.)

 

Havoc's resource is Fury. It's pretty much a Rage mechanic, with builders and spenders and a decay rate, with a cap of 100.

 

Fury Builders:

 

Fel Rush (with Fel Mastery talent): This is a rush attack with a range similar to charge that damages everything in its path. If talented, it generates 25 Fury. (That's the talent I've been using.) It has a 10 second cooldown and two charges.

 

Demon's Bite: Instant melee attack that hits fairly hard and generates 20-30 Fury. No cooldown, so spammable.

 

Consume Magic: 20 yard range interrupt. Generates 50 Fury on a successful interrupt.

 

Vengeful Retreat (with Prepared talent): This is a Disengage type move on steroids. You damage nearby enemies and slow their movement while jumping backward. With the talent, it generates 75 Fury over 6 seconds if you damage at least one target.

 

Auto Attack (with Demon Blades talent, same tier as Prepared): Chance to generate Fury from auto attacks. Also gives auto attacks a chance to deal additional shadow damage. This turns your primary builder, Demon's Bite into a passive ability, Demon Blades. Just started playing around with this one. It may be a good option for someone looking to put even less abilities on the toolbar or who has issues with spamming a builder key constantly (like RSI).

 

Soul Fragments (with Demonic Appetite from same tier as Prepared and DB): Talent gives Chaos Strike (spender) a chance to spawn a lesser soul fragment. Consuming any soul fragment generates 30 Fury.

 

Arcane Torrent (for Blood Elves): Generates 15 Fury.

 

Fury Spenders:

 

Chaos Strike: Big damage single target attack. Crits don't consume Fury. Costs 40 Fury. No cooldown.

 

Eye Beam: Bigger damage narrow cone AOE. You pop into your demonic form and hover in the air with your wings flapping while spewing green fel enemy at your enemies while channeling it. Costs 50 Fury. 45 second cooldown.

 

Blade Dance: Zip around slicing up your enemies (similar to Rogue's Killing Spree) with an AOE that hits a little harder (but many times) than your single target builder, and gain 100% dodge for 1 second. Instant. Costs 35 Fury. I think it has a 10 second cooldown that's affected by Haste. I have some haste on my gear and it's showing as a green 8.85 sec. cooldown.

 

Chaos Nova: Instant PBAO that does about the same damage as the single target builder and stuns everything in its radius Costs 30 Fury. 1 minute cooldown.

 

Cooldowns (don't interact w/Fury):

 

Blur: Increases chance to Dodge by 50% and reduces damage taken by 35% for 10 seconds. 1 minute cooldown. The character sheet no longer shows Dodge chance, but from experience, this is a very effective defensive cooldown. I usually use it for

 

Fury of the Illidari: This is the first Gold Artifact ability. It's the only one that's an active ability. The remaining three are passives. Tosses whirling glaives with a 40 yard range that does AOE DOT damage for 3 seconds around the target. 1 minute cooldown. Handy. The animations add to the chaotic, fast-paced feel of the class. Could also live without it.

 

Throw Glaive: Generic 30 yard ranged attack on a 10 second cooldown. Useful for pulling.

 

Darkness: Defensive group cooldown that affect allies. Reduces chance to be hit by 20% for spells and melee abilities. 8 yard radius, 8 second duration. 3 minute cooldown. I haven't really used it much. Typically heals from orbs and Blur are sufficient while questing, even when over pulling.

 

Spectral Sight: See through walls sort of. It's kind of cool. I don't really use it for questing. It may have some PVP application? It has a 30 second cooldown.

 

Imprison: Imprisons a Demon for 1 minute. Broken by damage. 10 second cooldown. Considering the theme of the expansion a pretty handy if extremely specific crowd control spell.

 

Metamorphosis: This is the BIG cooldown. You leap into the air and land at your target location, doing some AOE damage in a small radius (ala Heroic Leap) and transform into your demon form (this one isn't customizable, not sure if it varies based on hair color or anything like druid forms, but think not). It buffs your Chaos Strike and Blade Dance damage quite a bit. It has a 5 minute cooldown affected by haste. If you start with a full Fury bar, you can unleash serious burst with this ability.

 

Passive Abilities:

 

Double Jump: Covered above. Fun times.

 

Mastery: Demonic Presence: Increased Chaos Damage and Movement Speed. Your hardest hitting abilities all do Chaos Damage. Demon's Bite (builder) and Chaos Dance (AOE buffed by Meta) don't. Seems decent. Run speed boost is nice. I'm planning to stack mastery to the gills on my DHs. 

 

Shattered Souls: Generates orbs (soul fragments) on kill that heal for 25% of your health if you get near them. Very similar to Monk orbs. They also give you a 20% damage boost for 15 seconds if they came from a demon. Mmm, tasty souls. Yeah, I'm totally a good guy, honest. Pardon me while I consume this bit of leftover soul from that guy I just killed.

 

I'm not going to go over the Talent tree here, since I haven't really delved into it too deeply.

 

Overall impressions: Highly mobile, at least in a PVE environment. PVPers have commented that the spec lacks the tools to take full advantage of the mobility and is easy to control. Damage is very decent. Survivability is OK, with an aoe stun, a hyped-up evasion, a hyped-up disengage, a watered down banish and monk spheres (OK, so all of the DH's survival abilities were ripped from other classes and modified . . . but they still work.) Gameplay is pretty fluid. The basic rotation seems simple and intuitive.

 

Havoc is a pretty easy spec to pick up and will probably be appealing to a lot of more casual types. I'm not sure how it's going to pan out in higher end PVE or PVP settings, but I suspect we'll find out soon after launch from the usual theorycrafting sources. Do I like it enough to turn into my main for Legion? Hmm. I'm really liking Fury so far, and I'm more attached to that character, but it's tempting. One of my favorite specs so far.

 

I have to be up in a couple hours, so I'll just leave it at Demon Hunters for now. I'll try to give some impressions of other specs I've tried next time.

[Pattern Ghost]

One more thing: Demon Hunter class mount. It's a ground mount. Not sure if they get a flying one later like DKs do, but think not. Here's a pic:

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

When they built monks, they took a bunch of abilities away from other characters and gave them to the monk class.  Did they do that with Demon Hunters this time, too?

[Cygnia]

Yes.  They're taking away Metamorphosis from Demonlogy Warlocks and giving them to DHs...

 

(why yes, I do happen to have a Demolock)

[Pattern Ghost]

Yeah, and not just Demon Hunters. A lot of "new" abilities are just copied from other classes.

 

The pruning this time around was fairly brutal. Classes lost various utilities and mobility.  Execute abilities were removed from several classes/specs, sprint-type abilities (Speed of Light, Death's Advance) were removed from most, etc. I suppose de-homogyenization is good, but I'm going to miss some of the pruned stuff.

 

Most of the specs I've tried are playable, but clunky. I don't know if stats (like Haste) or Artifact abilities will help with those. I may shelve my Ret, as the beta version is about as bad as the classic/BC version.

 

I've been meaning to do a run down on the other specs I've tried. I'll do a brief one shortly. The changes are so extensive, that doing a detailed breakdown has been a daunting task, so I've put it off. I'll have to settle for the short version.

[Nolgroth]

As much as I promised myself not to play an MMO ever again, I had the insatiable urge to play something Star Wars. Since my planned Force and Destiny tabletop game folded, literally, before it ever got started, I jumped into The Old Republic again. The horrible bug that nerfed my characters a couple years back seems to have been fixed and possible overcompensated for. The battles were almost too easy. I'm already starting to get bored with the Story-to-Repetitive Combat ratio being roughly 1-to-50. When there is story, competent voice acting delivers it. The rest of the time is TAB (to Target) - 3 (for Force Leap) - 6 (some sort of Saber slash) - 9 (Blade Dance) - 7 (some sort of Saber flurry that rebuilds focus) - 1, 2, or 5 to keep up momentum between the big hitting combo stuff. Sometimes throw in 0 (Force Push) followed by 3. As you can see, quite formulaic. 

 

I'm probably not long for it, but I want to see the end of the Jedi Knight story arc. I suppose I could also try to work on the other classes, since they all have their own story. I just don't have that much investment in it.

 

I guess I am not really built for extended MMO play.

[Pattern Ghost]

The repetitive nature of MMO gameplay often gets to me too. On the other hand, sometimes it's like washing dishes. Just a repetitive thing you can do with your hands and let your mind work on other things and relax. For example, I never usually have a lot of gold in games, because I find grinding gold by whatever method to be too boring to do on a regular basis. I usually play through the actual questing content to the level cap, then do a few activities as the mood hits me. Right now, on WoW, I just log in to check my Garrison table missions (you send followers to do things, and they bring back gold and other stuff, very Facebook gamey), and sometimes do a quest to get some resources for that, or a little crafting or something, or level an alt a little.

[Christopher R Taylor]

All the story arcs are worth completing in Star Wars, plus most of the follower story arcs, even the romantic ones.  They're well done and interesting, and each one is different.  But yeah, you have to wade through oceans of combat to get there.

[Pattern Ghost]

OK, quick run down on the rest of the specs:

 

Arms Warrior: Shares one major complaint with Fury: The Execute portion of the rotation is clunky. Well, there's a lot of clunk going around with the rehashes of everything, so that's par for the course. There are also complaints that the spec plays slow, but that's a matter of taste.

 

I haven't played it much, but I like it so far. It hasn't got quite the survivability that Fury does, but it's not bad. And Fury's self heals may be toned down at some point. The Second Wind talent heals 6% health back per second when you haven't taken damage in 5 seconds. The spec has Victory Rush baseline (Fury doesn't have it available.) So, it's very similar to Havoc DH in that the heals are contingent on killing stuff or at least not taking damage, meaning less downtime between fights but less in combat healing (though available through SW if in a group.)

 

Rotation is pretty cut and dry, and it feels like it hits hard (it does). Seems superior to Fury for AOE, and the AOE rotation has a lot more going on with Cleave buffing Whirlwind, and the Bladestorm (talent), Sweeping Strikes (talent, now makes MS and Execute hit a second target), and the first artifact ability, Warbreaker, thrown in. The basic rotation consists of Mortal Strike (short cooldown, costs rage), Slam (no cooldown filler, costs rage), and Colossus Smash (says it's hard-hitting, doesn't feel like it, 45 second cooldown that can be reset by other rotational abilities at random, and debuffs target to take 87% more damage for 8 seconds. The Warbreaker AOE applies that effect to all targets it hits.)

 

Here's a list of what's on my action bars:

 

Damage: Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, Slam, Execute, Whirlwind, Cleave, Bladestorm (talent), Warbreaker (artifact), Victory Rush

Mobility: Charge, Heroic Leap

Soft Crowd Control: Intimidating Shout, Hamstring

Self Buffs: Avatar (talent), Berserker Rage  (immunity to Fear, Sap and Incapacitate, can be talented to cause Enrage, but no longer baseline), Battle Cry (100% crit chance buff for 5 secs on 1 min cd), Die by the Sword (defensive cd)

Utility: Pummel, Heroic Throw

 

Some more active abilities can be gained through talents, though I'm not using those talents. They've cut quite a few things and spread them out among the specs, but it's still playable.

 

Update on Fury: I just took Furious Slash off my action bars. Don't miss it.

 

Lunch time! More to come.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Sometimes I think they change specs just to change things out of boredom or something.

[DasBroot]

All the story arcs are worth completing in Star Wars, plus most of the follower story arcs, even the romantic ones.  They're well done and interesting, and each one is different.  But yeah, you have to wade through oceans of combat to get there.

 

I don't know if 'all' the story arcs are worth completing - I've earned my Legendary status but some of the stories were just brutal. Sith Sorcerer, Jedi Consular, and Smuggler I wouldn't repeat.  Probably not Bounty Hunter either.  

 

Voice acting quality plays a factor - I'd know in the first hour or two if I could stand the gender I chose's voice to the end.  I basically only made it through Consular because of the female voice actor - she sounds a lot like my wife. Which is funny because the male Consular is Nolan North, who I usually like as a voice actor, but couldn't stand him in TOR and deleted 3 poor Jedi trying to.

 

The current expansion and current monthly mini-chapters are pretty well done, though (though I disliked one) - IF you're a Force User. Very clever sub retention ploy - my friend is being smart about it and coming back after this 'season' is complete to play them all in a weekend instead of paying $15 month by month if it's the only thing he's interested in doing.

[Pattern Ghost]

Sometimes I think they change specs just to change things out of boredom or something.

 

I think it's the problem of having to maintain an illusion of character growth. They keep adding levels, and creating new abilities and eventually end up with a mess, so rebalancing then pruning comes into play, then shuffling things around to thin out the button bloat. If they'd just pick a level cap from the outset, and balance around that, then simply release new content without level cap raises, it'd solve the problem, but then a lot of players would complain about character advancement, because you can only introduce so much power gain through gear alone.

[Nolgroth]

Voice acting quality plays a factor - I'd know in the first hour or two if I could stand the gender I chose's voice to the end.  I basically only made it through Consular because of the female voice actor - she sounds a lot like my wife. Which is funny because the male Consular is Nolan North, who I usually like as a voice actor, but couldn't stand him in TOR and deleted 3 poor Jedi trying to.

 

Voice acting is where I found my happy spot with this game. It is a trivial detail to some, but Jennifer Hale is the voice actress for the female Republic Trooper. Hands down, she is my favorite video game voice actress ever. Her highlights include the female Commander Shepherd from Mass Effect and Bastila Shan from Knights of the Old Republic. I absolutely love how much venom she can inflect in an insult. I ended up deleting all of my characters from my pre-absence period, save for my first Jedi Knight (Guardian). While I was testing out character gender, I discovered Jennifer Hale's voice and knew where I was going to be putting all of my effort at. I started her less than 48 hours ago and got her up to level 22. I've killed a lot of time crafting, now that I've figured out the process. So, for the moment, I am happily grinding through levels.

 

I just wish I could have less "-420-Darth Butterballz-69-" and more lore friendly (or at least neutral) names running past me.

[DasBroot]

My 'endgame' non-Force user is a female Trooper and hearing Jennifer Hale say "If you stab me in the back I'll shoot you in the face."  for several of the 'I don't trust you but have no choice' style dialogue options plays a factor.

 

The expansion made my Sorcerer feel a little better about himself, I guess - he still arrogantly bumbles headfirst into obvious traps a first grader should avoid - but since it's the same story for everyone so does everyone else.

 

Not sure that's an improvement....

 

I actually don't see a lot of 'xxx-Sephiroth1994-xxx' running past me on Ebon Hawk - but I do tend to avoid Fleet and the capital worlds when I play.

[Pattern Ghost]

Blizz had a "Legion Summit" which I guess is a big press conference. Here's some info from it:

 

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/5756-Legion-Summit-Dev-Interviews

[Pattern Ghost]

The PTR for 7.0 is up. Can make level 100 premades at the moment, character copy not working. So, no need for me to get back to going over the rest of the classes.

[Pattern Ghost]

Looks like character copy is working now.

[Greywind]

Protector's Jubilee begins today in Neverwinter

[Nolgroth]

The Fifth Anniversary event for Star Wars the Old Republic begins tomorrow. For those interested.