Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #379 - For Azeroth!: “Wind Chimes and Weak Auras"
Transcript
- 0:00It's just like, you know, if you use crutches for a long time,
- 0:02eventually you lose the muscles, the development of your muscles
- 0:06that are supposed to help you to walk on your own while they use
- 0:08the crutch of the add on community for a long time and
- 0:11now they don't have the muscles to properly develop and design
- 0:14these boss fights. Victory for the Forsaken.
- 0:18For Lauderon. For the Karen tour for.
- 0:23Pandaria. For calendar.
- 0:28To the burning region. For gilnaeus or has not died
- 0:34for. The Lich King for the.
- 0:37Sindora for the Alliance for the Horn for Azeroth.
- 0:46Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
- 0:50I am one of your hosts, The true man, Manny, or just Manny.
- 0:54And of course, I am joined by the two parts of the triumphant.
- 0:57We're introducing Rhea, who is saying hello to you right now.
- 1:02We have her coming all the way from the wonderful.
- 1:06Did I say North Carolina last time?
- 1:07We're gonna go with South Carolina this time.
- 1:10Hello, Rhea. And hello, Lex.
- 1:11How are you? I am good, I am living the
- 1:15dream. I posted about this in the
- 1:17discord, which you can join by the way at fit dot LY slash spaz
- 1:20discord. But I got the World of Warcraft
- 1:23cast iron today so I'm going to be making a little skillet cake
- 1:26after. This is my branded World of
- 1:28Warcraft cast iron. You can always get me with
- 1:30usable merch. I am so like with merch in
- 1:33general, I get so anxious about like, oh I don't know where
- 1:36would I put it? What would I do with it?
- 1:37I can. I only get World of Warcraft
- 1:39merch around like Christmas when I'm buying it for the Guild or
- 1:41for my friends and I just buy myself a little piece too for
- 1:44fun. But if the merch is usable
- 1:47immediate purchase I will spend when that cast iron.
- 1:50When I saw the link that there was a cast iron that was World
- 1:51of Warcraft branded, I had fully prepared myself to spend up to
- 1:55$100 on the cast iron and it was only 40, so I was very happy.
- 1:59Yeah, yeah, I, I was a little sketched out that it was only
- 2:0340. I was like, oh, but like, you
- 2:05know that stuff because it's got the branding is going to cost
- 2:08more and stuff, but the brand apparently is actually good is
- 2:11what people are telling me. Not just pretty, pretty
- 2:14standard, at least for for enameled cast.
- 2:16For not sorry, not enameled for preseason cast iron.
- 2:20OK, OK. I'll, I'll let you know if it
- 2:22sucks, I'll tell you, but I'm very excited.
- 2:24Yeah, I, I, I do want the full review on that.
- 2:26I don't think it's something that I would buy just because
- 2:29I'm kind of particular about my cookware.
- 2:32I'm like very much like a, oh, I've got to get like this and
- 2:34this because I have a bunch of friends that are that are
- 2:39trained chefs and we're like, you have to get this.
- 2:42And it's being like pushed it pushed into my head that like it
- 2:46is a particular thing. Anyways, we're now going to the
- 2:51East Coast of Canada. We have, of course, Sean.
- 2:56Hello, Sean. How are you and how's the World
- 2:58Warcraft treating you? Hi, Manny.
- 3:00Hi, Lex. I'm doing great.
- 3:02I can't wait for Lex's review of her cast iron skillet.
- 3:06On a scale of Richard Nack to Christie Golden.
- 3:08It's going to be fantastic. OK well yeah, Warcrafts went
- 3:13good. I I finally have some time to
- 3:17start dedicating to my EU character.
- 3:20So today I went and got my praise pushed up to nightmare
- 3:23tier. Did my did 4 delves, 4 bountiful
- 3:26tier, 11 delves. I'm 257 and will probably start
- 3:32filling my vault with 10's and twelves this week.
- 3:35And on NA, things are good. We're progressing through the
- 3:38raid at a really good pace. We are working on Mythic Light,
- 3:43Blinded Vanguard, and because Prot Warrior is incredibly good
- 3:48for that fight, I am in instead of calling it.
- 3:53So I get to be in for Prague on that.
- 3:55Yeah, OK, things are good, things are good.
- 3:58How about you? Well, the race is over.
- 4:01I'm done casting. I'm freed from my prison.
- 4:06Yeah, I'm I'm really happy to hear that.
- 4:11And we'll talk more about the race side and as we go through
- 4:13this episode, of course. But yeah, that is our first
- 4:17story. The race to world first is over.
- 4:22So at the end of everything, Liquid has taken or rather has
- 4:26retained the crown. They defeated the Midnight Fall
- 4:30encounter with 474 pulls. I mean just yeah, 474 pulls.
- 4:38Echo took second with 534 attempts and Method obtained 3rd
- 4:44place with 524 pulls. Even though they had less pulls,
- 4:49they were a day later so it was quite the intense race this
- 4:56tier. Method was more pulls, not less
- 4:59pulls. Less pulls?
- 4:59Did I switch all thumbs around? What's the switch to the
- 5:02background? I'm pretty sure you had the
- 5:04numbers right, but they were 500 plus and everybody else was sub
- 5:09500, right? I must have switched those
- 5:14numbers around. Of course, if you ever want to
- 5:17check this stuff, the the place that I was pulling numbers is of
- 5:21course Radar IO. You can check their global
- 5:24coverage and they will show you every every kill.
- 5:30You can check the that now you can see if any of them are
- 5:33currently streaming. So according to according to the
- 5:41tracker I'm seeing liquid at first with 474 echo, second with
- 5:49534 poles and method at 524 poles.
- 5:55So there might be an error on that, but that's where I'm.
- 5:59Pulling it from sorry I during the broadcast they use the
- 6:03Warcraft log pull counts, not the radar IO pull counts.
- 6:07Warcraft logs any pull that's under, I think it's 10 seconds.
- 6:11They don't count as a real pull, which is normally fine, but in
- 6:15this fight there is a hard wipe mechanic inside the 1st 10
- 6:19seconds, so not fine. So yeah, I apologize.
- 6:22Yes. No worries.
- 6:23But like, yeah, like, I mean, for those who aren't familiar
- 6:25with the fight, like how in the world does that Midnight Falls
- 6:29fight go down? It is like 3.5 phases.
- 6:34Walk us through this, Sean. Yeah, so the Phase 1, so in
- 6:37normal, heroic and mythic phase one is, is roughly the same.
- 6:42You're fighting. It's timed so you will.
- 6:47I just shocked myself 6 times. You will always fight all of
- 6:53phase one, no matter how much gear you have, no matter how far
- 6:56into the tier you are. So phase normal, heroic, mythic
- 6:59phase one is the same. You fight Laura.
- 7:01She shoots glades around the room, she shoots beams around
- 7:05the room, she does the memory game that everybody's familiar
- 7:07with, and she summons some crystals that you have to
- 7:10interrupt and then some ads you have to kill.
- 7:13Intermission is the same across all three difficulties as well.
- 7:16It's a bunch of star beams that you have to dodge and not get
- 7:20hit by. Phase 2 is the same in all of
- 7:23them as well. You get beams that you point to
- 7:26planets, then those planets get sucked into the Lura and you're
- 7:30moving in a circle at the same time.
- 7:32Mythic adds an extra mechanic and that where you have to
- 7:34spread phase three. Surprise surprise is the same
- 7:40across all three. There are like slight mechanics
- 7:42added on. Tops are a little more
- 7:43difficult, but you're fighting Lura again, but this time the
- 7:46room is filled with darkness and you have to stand in the light
- 7:49of the Don crystals that your party is carrying to be safe.
- 7:53And then this is where it differs.
- 7:55In Mythic there was a secret phase four.
- 7:58So on Sunday at Easter, Liquid brought the boss to 0.0% and
- 8:03started to celebrate because they thought they had won the
- 8:05race to world first. And Blizzard said not today,
- 8:09call an ambulance, but not for me.
- 8:13And he and Lura was risen and unlock the secret mythic 4th
- 8:20phase, which is super cool if you haven't seen it.
- 8:22It's visually beautiful. Lura resurrects into a dark
- 8:27Archangel format and she flies to the center of the dark well.
- 8:32And these hordes of void like Shaw are crawling their way out
- 8:38of the center and across the room.
- 8:39And you have to dodge them all while you're in the light of a
- 8:42single crystal and this beam chases you.
- 8:45It's very, very cool. It is a very cool effect.
- 8:47When it happened, it was like all over social media, everybody
- 8:51collectively was in, was involved in this moment.
- 8:53It was a really fun, fun reveal that that they managed to mostly
- 8:57keep it. And they had found some of the
- 8:58spells in data mining, but they just assumed it was stuff that
- 9:02was discarded from intermission that wasn't used.
- 9:04So they didn't, they weren't prepared for it.
- 9:07And then it took them, I think 2 more days.
- 9:10They killed on two. No, they killed on Monday.
- 9:12So yeah, one more day of Prague to get that kill.
- 9:16Echo killed it the same day, Well, the day after because they
- 9:22went to bed and got up, but I think it was the same.
- 9:26No, they killed it on Tuesday. Anyway, it was great.
- 9:29It was very exciting. Lure was a beautiful fight, very
- 9:32visually stunning and probably the biggest disappointment for
- 9:37me overall in the race, which we can talk about at some point.
- 9:41Can you imagine? Yeah, I mean, we, we can
- 9:44definitely talk about it. One thing I I want to talk about
- 9:48because you were there at the desk commentating and there for
- 9:55like several of the polls when you were doing your shift.
- 9:58And you, you've got to like feel what the, what these like
- 10:02players are doing where like you said, one team will go to bed
- 10:07and the other team will be working on it.
- 10:08And they'll be, there's a question of like, can you sleep
- 10:11well knowing that this might race might be over because
- 10:13you're only human. And that happened where Echo had
- 10:20to go was staying up super late. And then the secret mythic only
- 10:25phase got triggered and they're like, OK, well, there's no way
- 10:29we're going to be dealing with that.
- 10:30We've got to sleep. We can't do do any further extra
- 10:33hours And then liquid couldn't get the job done and they're
- 10:39like, we have to go to bed and now maybe echo's going to do
- 10:43that. So like, and during all of this,
- 10:46you've got method that is also progging at the boss percentages
- 10:49behind, but also progging at the boss.
- 10:51And they've got to feel like they they want to make up that
- 10:53time. But again, they can only do so
- 10:55many hours. And when I say hours, we're not
- 10:57talking about 2-3 hour raid days.
- 10:59We're talking about 14-16 hour raid days that get extended into
- 11:05these are long shifts where they are just hitting their head
- 11:09against the wall. That's how they get to 500 plus
- 11:12poles to to kill this thing in such a short time.
- 11:16So what is that like for the for the teams?
- 11:19Like how do they like make those calls to be like, OK, like we
- 11:24have to call it here? Liquid is very, very good about
- 11:29like this is our sleep schedule. We're not breaking it for
- 11:33anything. We're going to bed at bedtime if
- 11:35the boss dies while we're while we're asleep and the boss dies
- 11:38while we're asleep. And I actually think this is a
- 11:41strength for them because of the fact that it allows their
- 11:44players to get rest and to come back to the RIP fight strong in
- 11:49the morning. And I think it's, it's this is
- 11:54might be a hot take, but I think pushing the bedtime pushing,
- 11:59pushing that sleep time the way that Echo has done the last two
- 12:01tiers, I think it's contributed to why they've lost.
- 12:05Because I get it. It's, you know, this Herculean
- 12:10example of, look, we're pushing through rating until 2:00 AM to
- 12:13try to get this killed because we're going pole for pole.
- 12:17That's detrimental. If you just like in dementias,
- 12:20it wouldn't have made a difference because liquid killed
- 12:21it in that night time. But if they just go to bed when
- 12:24they're supposed to go to, if they had gone to bed on time the
- 12:30night on Sunday, if they're going to bed on time on Sunday
- 12:33before Liquid unlocked the heroic phase, they would have
- 12:35woken up to a heroic phase and been fresh and had a whole day
- 12:39to Prague. As opposed to going to bed late,
- 12:41getting up, being tired 'cause you're not going to sleep very
- 12:45well. It's just, I think it's a
- 12:46mistake. And then I I mean it.
- 12:49While Method played extremely consistently in getting to P3 in
- 12:54the fight for two days, there was some stumbling from them on
- 13:01fine on Bella Ren, Prague and early Prague on Laura and then
- 13:05again after the fact they played very poorly.
- 13:10They they were never in the like there was never in there was no
- 13:15opportunity that they were even close to either the other teams.
- 13:19So I don't think that they felt anything probably other than
- 13:22frustration of themselves. So their sleep schedule never
- 13:25changed because there was no reason to change it.
- 13:28Unfortunate. We're obviously playing at very,
- 13:30very different levels, but I do know there are frequently like
- 13:33final bosses where we will call the end of a rain night early
- 13:38because it's so obvious that we are just doing worse every
- 13:42single pull. And like, on the one hand, it
- 13:45feels like you kind of want to like white knuckle through,
- 13:47like, no, like we're just going, we just got to focus up.
- 13:50We just got to figure it out. We just got to go.
- 13:52But if you're just tired and frustrated and then like every
- 13:55mistake, you get more and more mad at yourself because you're
- 13:57exhausted. The number of times that we've,
- 14:00you know, ended a raid feeling like we're never going to get
- 14:03this boss down. And then the next raid night we
- 14:05get in two pulls, maybe like I, I again, very different levels,
- 14:09but if you're tired, you're not going to be working at the level
- 14:13you need to be. And so a couple extra hours I I
- 14:15totally believe that a couple extra hours playing at your most
- 14:18exhausted is much less worthwhile than a couple hours
- 14:23waking up earlier to to play at your most rested.
- 14:26Yep, even if it's different levels, like you're the, the the
- 14:32level on the total scale is different, but it it is one to
- 14:35one. You're you know, the rate that
- 14:37you're doing is as difficult to you as the the rate is to them
- 14:40for the skill level, right? They're at the level where
- 14:43they're they're playing a boss at their hardest level.
- 14:46They're doing their best. And so are you is just at a
- 14:48different difficulty level in the fight and that like I have
- 14:51100% I I'm with you. Like I couldn't possibly be more
- 14:55in support of what you just said.
- 14:57Like you need time to rest and sometimes just logging off and
- 15:01going to bed, you download the boss better like your your brain
- 15:04has a chance to process like, OK, hey, why?
- 15:07Then you wake up the next morning, you're like, I got it.
- 15:09I know it clicks while you're asleep sometimes.
- 15:12Yeah, in your asleep. That's like psychologically that
- 15:15when I was in college, I was a psych major and I very
- 15:17frequently if I was stressed about a test, I would study like
- 15:19immediately before bed because then it's running through your
- 15:22brain. Yep, yeah.
- 15:25OK, I mean this. I mean, the last two bosses were
- 15:29definitely exacting. They were fights where if
- 15:32somebody messed up something, it led to a wipe.
- 15:35It wasn't recovery thing. Especially since like with
- 15:39Midnight Falls, the first 3 phases are basically full DPS
- 15:44checks of like you've got to get that damage.
- 15:46You've got to make sure that when you're getting into phase
- 15:49three that you've got it to at least this point.
- 15:52And so there were like frequent times where they're like, oh,
- 15:55they're behind going into that first intermission, they're
- 15:58behind going into phase two, they're behind in phase three
- 16:03and how are they going to make it up?
- 16:04Where are they going to get this damage from?
- 16:07Same thing with Bellerin, where like there were particular
- 16:10things where like if you did not do it right, congratulations,
- 16:14pull again. And so when you have fights that
- 16:18are like the execution has to be at that level, aside from like
- 16:24some cheeses that the that the guys ended up doing, how does
- 16:30that weigh on the pull? Again, like there are times when
- 16:32you're like, OK, we're only doing a 2 minute break.
- 16:34We're only doing doing enough time off.
- 16:37So you can like run to the washroom and then get back and
- 16:40go at it again. But like that kind of
- 16:44requirement to consistently be excellent with so little margin
- 16:50of error, how does, how does that like weigh on those those
- 16:54teams? How does it weigh on like even
- 16:56the home teams when you're playing at that at a mythic
- 16:58level? I mean, they train for like they
- 17:02they're they're a lot of the players are used to this because
- 17:05they're the race world 1st pool, unfortunately is incredibly
- 17:08small. So if you were to look at the
- 17:10rosters of race world first, the top three race of the first
- 17:13teams this tier and go back 5 tiers, I'm willing to bet you
- 17:19have very few new faces, probably less than 25%.
- 17:23So they they've been there before they're used to this
- 17:25pressure they're used to playing that way.
- 17:27I think you see it more on so like a team like Liquid who's
- 17:32won the last now 4 races in a row.
- 17:35If you make a mistake, it's probably easier to forgive that,
- 17:37right? You're coming from a place of
- 17:39success like we've won four in a row.
- 17:42You made a mistake. OK, well we'll, we'll figure out
- 17:44the problem and then come up with a solution.
- 17:47On a team like Echo, when people are making mistakes, I think
- 17:49it's probably more intense on them mentally because they've
- 17:53lost four in a row, 2 incredibly close ones.
- 17:59So for them, mistakes probably feel more, they probably noticed
- 18:02that more and it it probably causes more pressure on them,
- 18:04which then leads to more mistakes because that's what
- 18:06will happen for a team like Method, I think.
- 18:10I think Method had more players who were new to the racer world
- 18:13first this year than either of the other two teams.
- 18:17And I think it showed just yeah, it showed.
- 18:23I don't like to use the terms locked in or focus up.
- 18:27That's those, those that means nothing, right?
- 18:30These players are all focused. They're all quote UN quote
- 18:32locked in. When you're watching a broadcast
- 18:35and the caster says the team, you know that the team wipes on
- 18:38something. If the caster says they just
- 18:40need to focus up and lock in, that caster doesn't have any
- 18:44idea what they're talking about and probably shouldn't be on a
- 18:46desk. Yeah.
- 18:50So it's they're, they're all, all these teams are focused so
- 18:52that those mistakes weigh on them.
- 18:54But you know, they're the best in the world for a reason.
- 18:56And hopefully the, hopefully the, the management around the
- 19:00team, the leadership around the team is able to, to coach them
- 19:02directly through that. But you do see it, you see, you
- 19:05see frustrations. You know, there was one day we
- 19:07had no Comm. We were told we can't cut the
- 19:08comms for the team. And it's because they were
- 19:10frustrated. So we weren't able to, to put
- 19:13them on comms for it. So it's, yeah.
- 19:16And it's also tough 'cause they're not just trying to win
- 19:18this race, they're not just trying to play at an extreme
- 19:20high level, but they're also putting on a show.
- 19:23There was over 300,000 people watching them.
- 19:26You know, when's the last time 300,000 people watch you do
- 19:28anything, you know, and and think about the pressure of
- 19:32like, you know, I mean, you know, the numbers of the
- 19:33downloads for the show does that.
- 19:35How much pressure do you feel just from that to put out a good
- 19:38product? You know, now imagine it's
- 19:40multiplied by whatever amount to get to 300,000.
- 19:45Spoiler alert, that downloads to the show or not 300,000, I
- 19:48guess. Yeah, like it's it's it could be
- 19:52though. I think it's products there, but
- 19:54yeah, it. Was let's get that pressure
- 19:55going. That's right.
- 19:56That's right. We just need more moms to
- 19:58listen. Yeah, but no, it's good.
- 20:01They put on a good show. They all played really well.
- 20:03And yeah, I think from a viewer's standpoint, it was
- 20:09probably a race that was a bit confusing, bit of a roller
- 20:12coaster from start to finish. But I like to believe that the
- 20:16ending was strong and that people will walk away happy,
- 20:21happy with the race overall. The vast, I think the vast
- 20:25majority will. I didn't, but I think I think
- 20:28others will have Sean. You've been hinting a lot.
- 20:31I really want to know what you're frustrated about.
- 20:34Tell me your feelings. Well, it's there's a couple of
- 20:37them, there's a couple of things.
- 20:38So and they're all intertwined. They all work together.
- 20:43Now we came into this tear being told, you know, we're further
- 20:50ahead along in the add on restrictions or further along
- 20:55further along in this add on list world, add on restriction
- 20:58world, API world than we want it to be.
- 21:00So we feel confident making this cut so that you won't have
- 21:03access to them because we don't think you'll need them.
- 21:05And we're going to design bosses and dungeons and raids going
- 21:10forward without them in mind. Cool, we all said.
- 21:16Well, some of us were skeptical, some of us were optimistic, and
- 21:20some of us said we can't judge them until we've seen the
- 21:23result. So let's see the result first.
- 21:25We've now seen the result. We've seen the first tier of the
- 21:28raid start. It started my my concerns
- 21:33started with the light blinded vanguard.
- 21:36So void Spire was being cleared very quickly.
- 21:40The community at large was concerned that the race was
- 21:45quote UN quote too easy. Oh, this race will be over by
- 21:48Thursday. And I mean for all intents and
- 21:51purposes, that first rate tier was over by Thursday.
- 21:54They cleared Chimeris, they cleared void Spire by Thursday.
- 21:58But in heading up to that, Blizzard did some reactionary
- 22:01buffs, which we talked about, yes, last week, reactionary
- 22:04buffs to the paladins, the the like blood of the vanguard
- 22:06fight. And I'm frustrated because one
- 22:11of the things they said they, you know, weak auras and
- 22:15computational weak auras restrict our design space and
- 22:19we're unable to be as creative as we want to be with those in
- 22:22place. And their first knee jerk
- 22:26reaction in how to buff the light blinded vanguard fight to
- 22:30make it more of a challenge was to include a dispel mechanic
- 22:35that required a weak aura to solve.
- 22:38They bumped the number from 4:00 to 8:00.
- 22:41The teams found a way around it, designed a weak horror for it,
- 22:46solved it that way, and anybody who didn't have access to it was
- 22:49hard stock and couldn't progress it.
- 22:52That's frustrating to me that there for now.
- 22:55So that being said, OK, it's their first tier.
- 22:59I say reactionary, but it was it was panic.
- 23:01That buff was panic. And we know it was because they
- 23:03removed it Tuesday after the kill.
- 23:07They completely reverted all those changes.
- 23:09OK, so you're you're in a panic. You're trying to say, you know,
- 23:12stop people from saying this race is too easy.
- 23:13You're trying to put up a wall that makes gives the team some
- 23:16kind of challenge. You go to the well that you
- 23:19know, which is make things harder by making them, you know,
- 23:23need require a weak or to solve because there wasn't really an
- 23:26effective human way to solve it without it.
- 23:30Cool. All right.
- 23:31So then they tell us. They told us, you know, the
- 23:34messaging was clear. Illyria is the penultimate boss.
- 23:37This raid tier even though it is 3 raids is not linear.
- 23:41It's not dream rift then void Spire then March uncleod and
- 23:44ass. We are weaving like they
- 23:46literally told me personally in an interview we are weaving the
- 23:50difficulty between the tiers so void Spire first one to three,
- 23:55then chimeras, then back to void Spire, then Bella Ren after like
- 23:59like blended vanguard, then a Larry is the penultimate boss
- 24:03and then Lura. Well, when Alaria died in 30
- 24:06pulse and everybody said that was too easy, they went back on
- 24:12that and increase the item level of the drops from Bellerin and
- 24:15increase the difficulty. And how did they increase the
- 24:18difficulty of Bellerin? They made every mechanic A1
- 24:22shot, which is a lesson that we learned 6 tiers ago. 5 tiers.
- 24:28Like I can't remember how many tiers ago it was when they were
- 24:30like, Hey, we we recognize that you guys don't like this
- 24:34punishing thing where everything is a one shot for the team.
- 24:38So we moved away from it and they have been to Blizzard's
- 24:41credit, they have been extremely good.
- 24:42I can't remember the exact here when they said they're moving
- 24:44away from that. It might have been newer bar
- 24:47palace. But anyway, they've been very,
- 24:48very good about moving away from that.
- 24:51But we reacted to the Bellerin to, to artificially making
- 24:56Bellerin the new penultimate boss by going back to the well
- 25:01and, and buffing her to a point that no other team could
- 25:04hopefully progress her outside of the top, you know, maybe top
- 25:10five teams because of the tight DPS check required.
- 25:15And we see this week they have reverted all of those buffs and,
- 25:20and brought her back to where she was, which is frustrating
- 25:23because teams that got there and had no hope of progressing,
- 25:26we're basically just told your raid, you don't get a raid week
- 25:28this week. You get to go do Mythic plus
- 25:30because you can't kill the boss you're on.
- 25:32So OK, that's fine. It was done for the spectacle,
- 25:36it was done for the race. It was done because people said
- 25:38this is too easy. So now we're on Louvre, Midnight
- 25:40Falls, the final boss of the raid tier and the, the, the,
- 25:45the, the, the biggest selling point in, in an interview with
- 25:50Paul Barker or with Dylan Barker and Paul Cuban, I asked them
- 25:55what are they most excited for the players to see the new
- 25:58mechanics that are coming. There's one in particular that
- 26:00we're really excited about that we couldn't have done if week or
- 26:03has existed. And we can't wait to see how
- 26:05players engage with it. And it's the memory game.
- 26:08It's 100% the memory game that he was talking about because it
- 26:11was the only mechanic that wasn't seen yet by anybody and
- 26:14it required a week or I have asked, I asked everybody I
- 26:20casted with at the time. I've asked people that I've seen
- 26:24that the raid is split into 3 phases.
- 26:28Each phase gets a couple of pieces.
- 26:30There's 5 icons that are shown. The phase with 10 people sees
- 26:34two of them. The other two phases sees the
- 26:37other three. But it would be so like it would
- 26:40be like phase one sees the first one, phase two sees the second
- 26:44one, phase three sees the third one, phase two sees the 4th one,
- 26:47phase one sees the fifth one. And I asked people how and then,
- 26:53and then in those five phases, 5 people in each phase are marked
- 26:56with the icons and they all have to line up in the exact same
- 26:58spot so that the beam hits them all at the same time in order.
- 27:03Incredibly difficult, Incredibly difficult.
- 27:07The teams wrote weak auras. One of the one of the core
- 27:13tenants they told us was that we don't weak or we don't want weak
- 27:15auras to be able to communicate to each other while in combat
- 27:18through chat these all the week or that was written communicates
- 27:25through chat to all the other players one person.
- 27:29Well, in that case three people enter what icon they see and it
- 27:33gets distributed to everybody else.
- 27:36It, it, it is flatly and boldly against what we were told over
- 27:41and over again for months that they didn't want to happen.
- 27:46And I'm frustrated this is, this was like, this was the straw.
- 27:49And I'm frustrated because a Blizzard designed this mechanic
- 27:53this way, knowing this was the only like I've had people say,
- 27:57oh, they just expect the people to call them out and then repeat
- 28:02them until people are lined up in the right order.
- 28:05It's you have like 7 seconds and the icons flash 1:00 every
- 28:09second. It's there is no human way that
- 28:12was the solution. Nobody's doing that.
- 28:16So I'm frustrated that this was designed this way.
- 28:20Obviously this boss was designed before the removal of
- 28:24Computational week or as before any of that stuff.
- 28:26It it obviously was, there's no question in my mind.
- 28:29But I'm also frustrated because this was the opportunity for the
- 28:33three teams at the top to not try to find a workaround, to not
- 28:39do everything they could to get a get around and to just say,
- 28:43OK, we're going to follow Blizzard's intent.
- 28:45We're going to do what they say they meant us to do and then
- 28:48fail and have it show so that then it had to be changed and
- 28:51they didn't. So Blizzard designed it, the
- 28:53teams found a workaround and now we're in a state where if you
- 28:57don't have this add on, you're not killing Mythoglura.
- 29:01And I'm, and I'm just like, well, if we're back to using
- 29:03weak ores, I'm going to use our 1F.
- 29:06Now what? What's it for?
- 29:10What did we do all of this anyway?
- 29:12That is OK, not to start drama on the podcast, but wasn't it
- 29:18Max who was saying like, Oh yeah, you guys might be freaking
- 29:22out by week or it's going away? We don't really need them.
- 29:24Like that's that's that's like middle of the pack sort of
- 29:27issue. We're going to be fine.
- 29:29Yeah. Yeah, I I know that's not a.
- 29:31Quote the middle of the pack don't have on staff coders to
- 29:34build their own their own stuff. The middle of the pack doesn't
- 29:37have like teams of like guilds that are going to funnel them
- 29:41the loot so they can like get ADPS check that.
- 29:44Even if I were to join one of those teams, I wouldn't be able
- 29:47to make right. Like it's just it is such a
- 29:51different world for race to world first.
- 29:54Even if I were to attempt those bosses, like my team shows up
- 30:00and gets 474 attempts at at this boss tomorrow.
- 30:04I'm never gonna do that. Never gonna I'm never gonna make
- 30:07that Like it's there's playing. They're almost playing a
- 30:11different game when, when, and like I say, almost because the
- 30:16race, the world first warps the game, even if you're not playing
- 30:21it in every region, like prices start shifting around.
- 30:26People start like be like I'm going to go do splits with blah
- 30:29blah blah and lose out loot. So other guilds start slowing
- 30:32down relative to their progress. Like it's just, it's such a
- 30:36weird thing because it's like the way that they inflate their
- 30:45item level, the way that they accumulate their power, the way
- 30:47that they tackle the, these, these things is so different
- 30:53from the way that you and I would do it at home.
- 30:56They, they've got people who have like 1010 alts and it's
- 31:03like, which one got the jackpot on loot?
- 31:05That's the one I'm running with. And then they've got people who
- 31:08are, who have like a backlog of alts that they decided to farm
- 31:12up, you know, in that space between Thursday and the reset.
- 31:15So they had even a deeper goal of characters to to go through
- 31:20and they look at it and they're like, yeah, we don't need the 3%
- 31:23Dr. from from rogues and the damage there isn't isn't really
- 31:27worth it. So they kick the rogue and they
- 31:28go get this thing they like the the what was it?
- 31:33The Aug. The Ogvoker Tech.
- 31:36So augmentation on So Bellerin. Bellerin got nerfed this week,
- 31:39but actually got stealth buffed. Augmentation of Ogres were
- 31:43brought to make sure that they were intentionally buffing the
- 31:46Wind Walker Monk and the March Bishop hunters for the egg phase
- 31:49augmentations. Eben Mite had a Max range of 100
- 31:52yards, so they would position themselves so that only the
- 31:54Windwalker Monk and the Marksmanship Hunters were
- 31:57guaranteed to get that Eben Mite buff going into the
- 31:59intermission. So they were forced funneling
- 32:02this buff on them, which was increasing their damage, which
- 32:04is allowing them to two phase bellerin on the egg.
- 32:07They increased. Blizzard didn't like that.
- 32:09They didn't want people to be doing that, so they increased
- 32:12the range of that ability to 500 yards.
- 32:16They said no, we don't want that 500 yards.
- 32:17And that was the range for Eben Mite, which is a stealth nerf to
- 32:21that egg now, because now you can't force your eben mite on
- 32:25those three classes that you needed to have to two phase.
- 32:29And now Bellerin will be harder to kill for a lot of teams
- 32:32because you won't be able to two phase, which means you're going
- 32:33to have to three phase it, which increases the healing
- 32:36requirement because in that second, in that third Phoenix
- 32:40phase, he has 20% healing reduction applied to the raid.
- 32:44Well, and also that's the line, like that's the thing.
- 32:46The Blizzard was like, oh, you that you guys can't do that.
- 32:49That's not what we want you to do.
- 32:53I'm doing that snap thing that young people do because I agree
- 32:55with length. It was frustrating.
- 32:59I wanted to love the race. I wanted to love it.
- 33:01I, I'm going to let you talk in a second because I know I
- 33:02bogutted the mic for this whole section and the spectacle of the
- 33:07race was great. And if you're somebody who just
- 33:09is tuning in to watch, it's exciting, it's pull for pull,
- 33:11it's percent for percent, it was great.
- 33:13But as somebody who's been tracking this for a long time
- 33:15and as somebody who loves this game and somebody who who was
- 33:18genuinely concerned about the removal of these tools that
- 33:21everybody whatever. But a lot of people use and
- 33:24being told, don't worry, we've got a plan.
- 33:26And then the plan being just kidding, we don't.
- 33:29It really puts it really put a damper on what should have been
- 33:33a great race for me. And I don't know.
- 33:38I don't know what this means for Atalu tech, but right now for
- 33:42Lura, if you're not using this week aura and you're fighting it
- 33:45on mythic, you're not killing it.
- 33:47Luckily, northern sky developed it.
- 33:49Relo over at northern sky. Shout out to relo the true hero
- 33:53of of of add-ons. He developed the same thing that
- 33:57these top teams had done. Hugo hero, hot pot hero got to
- 34:01Lura. They don't have a coder.
- 34:02They were literally offering to pay money to somebody to write
- 34:05them the add on so that they could fight the boss.
- 34:08They were the 4th place Guild in the world and they couldn't
- 34:11fight the boss because they didn't have the add on that
- 34:14Blizzard told them they wouldn't need.
- 34:18Sorry. OK, now I'm done and I'm going
- 34:19to drink my tea and I'm going to be happy about the next thing we
- 34:22talked about. I feel like the add on
- 34:31Apocalypse landed poorly in that if it had gone one way or the
- 34:41other in terms of direction of severity, it might have been
- 34:45better. But we saw, we kind of saw this
- 34:48coming and it's because these teams, they're in a kind of each
- 34:55having a gun to each other's heads where it's like if you do
- 34:59not do this, you are giving up the advantage and you're
- 35:02throwing the race. If Liquid did not do this method
- 35:06and method and Echo would have would have done it.
- 35:11To echo and methods credit, Liquid got to the boss and had
- 35:16this written. Oh yeah, neither of them did,
- 35:18and they didn't write it until they saw it on Echo's on Liquid
- 35:21stream. So the first, the first strike,
- 35:26so to speak, was from Liquid. And.
- 35:30But but then they immediately. And then they immediately wrote
- 35:33it right? I think if they had like liquid
- 35:36was pre emptive about it they went dark on fire.
- 35:38After 12 hours. Oh don't talk to me about cease
- 35:41fires today. Anyways, the pre emptive strike,
- 35:45they went dark on a heroic hole to test this thing.
- 35:49They were going in guns blazing to make sure that they had had
- 35:54this ready. Then of course, panic, right?
- 35:58Like Oh my goodness, this this needed or did it need?
- 36:03Like at this point we can only speculate that this was needed
- 36:09to do this. I'm not like based on like the
- 36:12speed at which it comes out. It really feels like it was I'd,
- 36:16I would have loved to have seen an alternate reality where they
- 36:20had done as you, you had said, Chon, they didn't do this.
- 36:24They had butted their heads against the wall.
- 36:25It had become mathematically impossible.
- 36:29And Blizzard would have had to have said, hey, we cannot do, we
- 36:34cannot do this anymore. But Blizzard was really trying
- 36:38like they put out like hot fixes against different ways for weak
- 36:45cores to communicate when they when they were seeing it like
- 36:48that was something happening in the race where they're like, OK,
- 36:51we're changing it so weak cores can't communicate to people
- 36:54outside of the race. Because originally there was
- 36:56some program that was like sending messages to like some
- 37:0021st person that was outside of the raid and therefore their
- 37:03computations could work and then bouncing it back into the raid.
- 37:06So this was a whack A mole game in some cases of them trying to
- 37:10be like, uh oh, people are people are trying to use those
- 37:14computational add-ons. Let's let's bring the hammer
- 37:17down on that. And they failed.
- 37:20They did not, they did not get it down.
- 37:23And that made me think that they had to go the cold Turkey route
- 37:29because if they hadn't done it in the way that they did it this
- 37:34time, they would not have seen it when they finally pulled the
- 37:38trigger. And we would be in the same
- 37:41situation just a Tier 2 later where team one team, regardless
- 37:47of whether that's licked, regardless of whether that's
- 37:49Echo, regardless of whether that's like some team in a
- 37:52different region. That's like, hey, this is how we
- 37:53get the advantage here. Would have found some clever way
- 37:59and probably still will. I don't think that this is the
- 38:02end of it, right? Probably still will find some
- 38:05creative way and and until Blizzard wants to start throwing
- 38:08out bands in the middle of race the world first because you're
- 38:12not adhering to the spirit of the law, not the written word of
- 38:17the law. Like it's gonna I feel like this
- 38:20is a trend that's gonna continue and that's a sad reality that
- 38:24I'm I'm thinking is where we're at.
- 38:26What what do you guys think of it?
- 38:28So not to play Sean's role, but one thing it sounds like in this
- 38:32Blizzard whack mole that they didn't try was extending the
- 38:35time, right. If if everyone universally is
- 38:38going to add-ons to fix this problem, including insane things
- 38:42like bouncing a message back and then they tell you back in, they
- 38:45could have just extended. I mean, I, I guess I don't we we
- 38:48don't know what would have happened.
- 38:50If they've been like, it seems like it's a little too hard and
- 38:52you guys are like fighting for your life to not have to do it,
- 38:57stop doing that. But also now you know, it's a 14
- 39:01second situation. I mean, I guess it's probably a
- 39:03more complicated fix, right, Like that changes more things
- 39:06about the boss that could make it messy.
- 39:08But I mean, that's what they said they they do right?
- 39:13They that was kind of the promise is we're taking away
- 39:15weak or as we're going to make things more human and and
- 39:17realistic versus. And the lie detector said that
- 39:22was a lie. Well, that I think that might
- 39:25have actually been the same interview where they said that
- 39:27weak horrors weren't going anywhere.
- 39:29So that was not a strong interview.
- 39:32OK, so then Lex, if they had changed the the fights.
- 39:39I just hold on. I just want to clarify the
- 39:41bouncing messages bringing information back in was not for
- 39:44the memory game. That was so that they could
- 39:45track other people's cooldowns and externals and stuff.
- 39:48Yeah, another, another functionality that was taken
- 39:50away from us that everybody's been asking to have returned it.
- 39:53Was also the fact that people would get buffs on them, right?
- 39:57So Lex, you as a Demon Hunter, you get like arcane brilliance
- 40:00and you're like, I don't need this buff.
- 40:02And So what people would do is they'd be like, hey, Lex macro.
- 40:07Remove Arcane Brilliance onto your cooldown so that and then
- 40:12my add on will see that you've lost Arcane Brilliance and say,
- 40:15oh, Lex has started your cooldown and then track it that
- 40:18way. That was another thing like
- 40:20people who were being very creative about like how they
- 40:23were getting around the restrictions that Blizzard was
- 40:26putting in. And I'm not arguing for
- 40:29Blizzard's restrictions as some sort of utopia, like, hey, there
- 40:32are lots of restrictions that they put in that I wish they
- 40:35would adjust so that like people can play and like track
- 40:39externals properly and all of this sort of stuff.
- 40:41But every single restriction that they've put in, somebody
- 40:46has attempted to find a way and in some, in many cases found
- 40:49some creative way of breaking those restrictions.
- 40:53And I'm, and what I'm saying is not that like, hey, like I'm not
- 40:57being in a Blizzard, apologies. I'm just saying that like
- 41:00regardless of when they said, OK, this is it, no more add-ons,
- 41:05people were going to start doing those those workarounds.
- 41:08The the examples that we gave are the same examples that would
- 41:12have come up next tier if that was the tier that they decided
- 41:15to throw the switch. Whenever they throw the switch
- 41:18there was going to be a tier of people doing weirdness.
- 41:22That's I I misunderstood your argument and that I do agree
- 41:25with. I mean, I think there's an
- 41:27argument to be made that if people are doing all of this to
- 41:32get add on functionality back, do the players really want to
- 41:35not have add-ons? That said, I have had a lot of
- 41:37conversations with people, arguably myself included, the do
- 41:41kind of feel like, I mean, it's not really that I want an add on
- 41:44to like, you know, tell me. So stack over here, do this.
- 41:47Like it's just I I know I'm going to because it's easier,
- 41:50I'm going to play better. And so I kind of feel like I
- 41:52have to like, otherwise I'm tanking the raid and I'm looking
- 41:56like kind of an idiot. So it's that one's it's, it's a
- 42:00hard thing to kind of parse out like, but but yeah, I, I, I do
- 42:05kind of agree. And I think the more I'm in this
- 42:08as well. I, I really do think that it
- 42:10was, they were going to have to pull the Band-Aid off.
- 42:12I don't think this is the right time.
- 42:13I think that they hadn't perhaps enough Like I, I, I, but I, I,
- 42:19yeah, I think, I think this. Is just.
- 42:23I think the concept of a slow rollout was never really
- 42:25feasible. Yeah, I agree with that.
- 42:29I agree with that. The this is just what we've
- 42:32seen. There are workarounds that have
- 42:34not that weren't aired to 300,000 people on Twitch, that
- 42:37people are using today that get around things in other ways and
- 42:41that you'll never see. And so now you're left
- 42:44wondering, was that plus 20 key times because the players really
- 42:48gained hard, or do they have some tech that they've not
- 42:51released? Anybody else they've kept to
- 42:52themselves? Which does also kind of defeat
- 42:55the point of the like this was one of the things that was
- 42:57frustrating me a lot with the race to world first and the
- 43:00like, you know, Oh, well, they have people who are coding in
- 43:03their you know, like on their team.
- 43:05Is that that just means like it used to be.
- 43:10Oh, it sucks. The people you feel like you
- 43:13have to like know what add-ons to go download.
- 43:16But you can find that on a Reddit post.
- 43:18You can find most Google like you can Google like what add-ons
- 43:20for your team will probably yell at you or nicely tell you what
- 43:24you need. It was it was yes, it did mean
- 43:27that like solo players maybe had a little bit more of a
- 43:31difficulty curve, but it was a very accessible information.
- 43:36And now it just feels like it's it's so much more, you know, the
- 43:44elite and the plebs, right. And I, I think one of one of the
- 43:47reasons I don't really watch the race world first is because I
- 43:49think it sucks that it's three teams.
- 43:51I think that's boring, right? I would love it.
- 43:53I, I think, I mean, yeah, yeah, like 3 teams technically.
- 43:57But like, I, I think the base would be really fun if there was
- 44:02actual competition. And I understand 99% of that.
- 44:05If there's not enough players, there's not enough interest,
- 44:07there's not enough money. Like there's a million reasons
- 44:09why it's a super limited pool. That's not little things that
- 44:13make it harder. But yeah, if you can only
- 44:16realistically compete in the raced world first, if you have a
- 44:18dedicated coder on staff, it's a two team race.
- 44:23Like there's there's really that's not a there'll never be
- 44:25an underdog. Not that there really was any
- 44:27way, but like baby, right, Like it was on the table and now it's
- 44:32completely off the table. There will never be a surprise.
- 44:35Like I mean, maybe not never there'll I'm sure they'll get
- 44:37better at doing these over time, but like it just it just
- 44:40increase again. It feels like there's the
- 44:43special people that get their cool week auras made, hand
- 44:45picked for them and then all of you losers got to figure it out
- 44:48otherwise. I, I feel like that I don't like
- 44:56that argument. I feel that there's so many
- 44:58different things that are contributing to like the
- 45:01stratification, right? Like I already talked about the
- 45:05splits and, and that like the amount of people that are
- 45:10funneling loot to these guys, so their item level suddenly
- 45:12balloons way higher. The fact that like last week one
- 45:16guy had the top 2 geared play things.
- 45:20And that's, that's not because he really like, I mean, he
- 45:23worked hard. Let me let me stop myself there.
- 45:25It's not it's not just because he worked hard, it's that he had
- 45:29like 40 additional people that were also working hard and gave
- 45:34up their loot to give to him to to like stratosphere his an item
- 45:39level. It's the fact that like, hey, I
- 45:44wish I could take off like that much time to spend making that
- 45:50many attempts at a boss. I wish that I had a personal
- 45:53chef that was on on hand so that I could get meals and not have
- 45:56to worry about cooking. I wish that I had a team of
- 46:00people being like, hey, Manny looks like in phase three, this
- 46:04happens and that and this happens so that I didn't have to
- 46:08rely on John being like, Manny, you're doing it wrong. 2 weeks
- 46:11later after he sees the stuff because he was born and said,
- 46:13Manny, you're being an idiot. Like it's there's like so many
- 46:16things that like make this such a stratification.
- 46:19Like yes, the this does add to it and is no less an of a
- 46:28contributor to that. But all of the other things are
- 46:33stuff that we have yet to like to like really note.
- 46:39And I don't want to note this one thing alone.
- 46:41Like it's some special case. It is a new contributor and
- 46:45equally as as like separating is everything else but is not
- 46:49standing on its own. That's fair, I guess.
- 46:51Maybe more so. What I should say is if
- 46:54Blizzard's making changes in the game that are meant to affect
- 46:58the Race to world first team, I think that movement should be an
- 47:02attempt to make it more like like accessible, not an attempt.
- 47:08An attempt, OK, is not the word that I'm trying to say.
- 47:10I think the focus should be on how can we make this something
- 47:14that more people can access? And I think that if it it
- 47:19increases the difficulty of of smaller teams breaking in, I
- 47:26think that should be considered a strike against.
- 47:30But I hear you that like, yeah, right.
- 47:33Like, unless they're going to start pumping, you know,
- 47:35Blizzard money into E sports to make it so that more people can,
- 47:38you know, have the type of job or like can take time off and
- 47:41then be gamers full time or like, then by and large, none of
- 47:47this really matters, right? I, I, I, I hear that.
- 47:49And I think that's fair. And that's also probably why
- 47:51they don't care, right? That's also probably why that's
- 47:53not really on Blizzard's radar, because the number of things
- 47:56that have to change to try to make the race world first more
- 47:59open to more people is so like, you know, they'd have to change
- 48:04the concept of capitalism in America, right?
- 48:07Like, I get it. It's it's complicated and it's
- 48:09difficult and they've tried. My understanding is that
- 48:12Blizzard has played with like attempting to do E sports is a
- 48:16Blizzard thing and it's kind of always fallen on his face.
- 48:19So I. I think that's why you have like
- 48:22the AWC and you have like the Arena World Championship and you
- 48:26have like the MDI, which is basically just the great push,
- 48:30but they decided to go with the more popular name.
- 48:32Not anymore, no. They changed it back.
- 48:34It's back to speed running. Back to speed running.
- 48:36Oh, I'm happy to about that news.
- 48:39I was unaware of that. Thank you, Sean.
- 48:41You're welcome. So MDI, that's actually going to
- 48:44be high. MDI is going to be worse though.
- 48:47The add on changes were meant to.
- 48:49To quote Blizzard, the at the the at the new add on changes
- 48:53and the changes of the API are meant to.
- 48:54I think this is the phrasing Lex was looking for.
- 48:57Narrow the gap from the top end to the bottom end.
- 49:01And in fact, it has widened that gap instead.
- 49:05So A-Team like mandatory who has access to their own coders is
- 49:10going to be able to use all of their tools as they speed run
- 49:13dungeons and they're going to be going up.
- 49:15It's because teams like Ducks can fly who I can almost
- 49:18guarantee you do not have an on staff coder.
- 49:23So MDI is going to be, yeah, it's if we thought the race to
- 49:29world First was egregious in the level of, you know, and
- 49:34everything that many mentioned is, is all part of that.
- 49:36The cooks, the splits, the they have entire organizations
- 49:39designed to make them the best. That's what they do.
- 49:42But the MDI is a team of five, and some of those teams of five
- 49:45have access to those same coders because they're all parts of
- 49:48those organizations. So if you're not on one of
- 49:51those, you better hope Northern Sky put something out for you
- 49:54from Ethic Plus. Spoiler they won't.
- 49:57My my hope is actually that Blizzard sees all these work
- 50:02rounds, sees what failed or did not go according to the plan
- 50:08might be the better the better way to phrase it for their
- 50:12benefit. But like everything that didn't
- 50:14go according to plan and they adjust it for one point O 7,
- 50:20which is an X rate that's going to open up, right.
- 50:23And for sorry, 12 point O 7. And then for 12.1, they again
- 50:30address it for the Mythic plus and for and for everybody.
- 50:36Because while this has become an additional stratification
- 50:42because some people are pushing with those weak ORS and some
- 50:47people are not, generally I feel like the accessibility of most
- 50:53of rating has increased because heroic is not that same beast.
- 51:00In fact, I think people who are able to push relatively far in
- 51:04Mythic aren't laughing at her. They're like, this is this is
- 51:07nowhere near the challenge it used to be.
- 51:11People who are wading into the waters of Mythic plus find it
- 51:18more accessible. People who are cutting their
- 51:21teeth in in the PvP or finding it more, more understandable,
- 51:30more readable, because that's something that was always
- 51:35daunting with PvP was that I was like, I can't even follow what's
- 51:39happening as a spectator, let alone in the midst of it.
- 51:43And so if they can continue to do that, yes, the the current
- 51:48pitfall is that mythic rating where the stratification is 100%
- 51:53expanding. And as you are prophesizing,
- 51:56it's going to be that much worse at these cutting edge level
- 52:00competitions. But for the people at home, has
- 52:04this been the same failure in your mind, Sean, in your mind,
- 52:10Lex? Well, I I.
- 52:12Was going to say I think we just need to separate.
- 52:14Separate out accessible and easy, right?
- 52:16If I, I think if the mythic people are like, Oh my God,
- 52:19heroic is the face rule, nothing ha ha, ha, that doesn't
- 52:22necessarily mean that heroic is more accessible, which means
- 52:24it's easier and I guess it's a little bit of a square
- 52:28rectangle, right. Like on the one hand, yes, if
- 52:32something is easier to do, it's more accessible to more people,
- 52:36but I, I don't think that should be the goal.
- 52:38At least it's not that I want heroic rating to be boring.
- 52:41And I, I will say, I mean, again, my team has unique
- 52:44struggles this year. So we might be having more
- 52:46difficulty than other people, but like, we're all on DBM,
- 52:49right? We very quickly realized that
- 52:50the functionality of World of Warcraft internal UI and alerts
- 52:56and stuff was not doing it. And we learned the DBM actually
- 52:59is doing a lot of the stuff that DBM allegedly not supposed to be
- 53:02able to do. And we all went back on DBM.
- 53:05So I, I, I guess it just feels honestly I not much different
- 53:14except kind of uglier is my take right now.
- 53:20So one of the one of the struggles that I've that I've
- 53:25seen teams having is with the Dragons, the breath.
- 53:30That is, that is when we went back on TPM.
- 53:33OK, right. And so Blizzard's default for
- 53:39when that breath is on you and targeting you is laughable.
- 53:45It's just it does not point it out.
- 53:47Sean has also pointed out that on Crown there is a mechanic
- 53:51that just flat out is not signposted at all, right?
- 53:57Do you consider that gaps in their in their setup or are you
- 54:04saying that every fight in general is less accessible
- 54:09because of the the gap between DBM and the default?
- 54:14Are there no fights like you went through three of them
- 54:19without without hitting it? You found like definitely one
- 54:22that I point to and go like, Oh my God, like that is AII call it
- 54:27a gap, right? That's a fairpoint that it might
- 54:31be more like there's individual. I, I personally have not loved
- 54:37this tear. It's felt very messy.
- 54:39I it has not felt like there's a, a clear ramp of difficulty
- 54:43like I, I and I, I personally also really do not like the
- 54:48split raids. I thought that was really
- 54:49exciting when it came out. And I especially like what they
- 54:52originally were saying of like, you're going to go here and then
- 54:54you're going to do this. Like I no, I'm sorry that's
- 54:57confusing and annoying and I do not want to spend my great
- 54:59nights running around to different locations.
- 55:02So I may be being a little bit of a downer in general, but that
- 55:07that is AI guess The thing is that the gaps when when gaps do
- 55:17come up now it feels I guess worse like a lot of these gaps
- 55:25wouldn't. And again, they are usually just
- 55:28solved by by downloading an add on again, which I guess you
- 55:32know, to what I said a few minutes ago.
- 55:35Like it kind of means nothing changed.
- 55:37It's ugly, right? And maybe that's not terrible.
- 55:39Like maybe status quo isn't the end of the world.
- 55:42It kind of makes me wonder what we did this for, as we love to
- 55:45say on this show. I already used the F bomb lux,
- 55:49you don't get to use it. I already used this show.
- 55:54Yeah, I mean, I I guess I don't I don't think we're in like a
- 55:58crisis. But also I was on record saying
- 56:02I thought it was going to be really fun to not have add-ons
- 56:05and to get to experience this all in real time.
- 56:07And I'm not finding myself enjoying rating significantly
- 56:10more now. And it just kind of feels like,
- 56:13oh, Jesus Christ, you guys also couldn't figure out how to like
- 56:15alert that one properly sick. I love that I can't change the
- 56:18like. I love that I can't decide what
- 56:20we're going to show up when this is fun.
- 56:23I guess I'll go back to TBM, which is the thing I wasn't
- 56:25supposed to do. So it, I guess I'm just, I, I, I
- 56:30was expecting this to be like a really fun, creative, exciting
- 56:32tier where they're getting to experiment with stuff and
- 56:35instead it's just feeling like, damn it, you know?
- 56:41OK. And then feel X.
- 56:43You should have AT and be happy. That's what I did.
- 56:45I had AT and now I'm happy. There you go.
- 56:50Yeah. You want my thoughts, Manny?
- 56:51You want me to tell you what I think?
- 56:52Yeah, Yeah. I think it is something that's
- 56:56always been there. There have always been gaps in
- 56:58what Blizzard has designed and put into the bosses and what
- 57:01information they give us and how they presented to us and the add
- 57:04on community. We're the heroes we needed.
- 57:06They took it on themselves, they put it on their shoulders and
- 57:09they carried all of those things.
- 57:11If there was a if there was a mechanic in a fight that
- 57:14Blizzard didn't clearly define to let you know, hey, this
- 57:17ability is on you. add-ons did it for us.
- 57:19Somebody designed a week or for it and we use that.
- 57:22Blizzard said, hey, we don't like that.
- 57:24And to their credit, they shouldn't have been just relying
- 57:28heavily on that. It's just like, you know, if you
- 57:31use crutches for a long time, eventually you lose the muscles,
- 57:34the development of your muscles that is supposed to help you to
- 57:36walk on your own while they use the crutch of the add on
- 57:40community for a long time. And now they don't have the
- 57:42muscles to properly develop and design these boss fights.
- 57:45I get it. It's OK, that's what happens and
- 57:48everybody has said there's going to be growing pains.
- 57:50Let's talk about the cooldown manager which came out in 11
- 57:54point 1.5. So what's that 3 1/2 patches
- 57:58going out? There are still abilities that
- 58:01can't be tracked. There's a hunter ability that
- 58:04increases your damage by 30% that there's no way to track it
- 58:07other than your buffs to the top of your by your mini map.
- 58:09No way to know when you have this buff active or not.
- 58:15Death Knights still can't track all their abilities, So, you
- 58:18know, you still can't track racials, you still can't track
- 58:20potions without using an add on, still can't track trinkets.
- 58:24Nobody uses trinkets, do they? It's not like they put a 2
- 58:28minute trinket in this raid or a minute and a half drinking in
- 58:31the puzzle box in this season that everybody literally is
- 58:34running. It was a 2 minutes that
- 58:35everybody is running. Yeah.
- 58:39And you know what? And here's the thing, I have my
- 58:41team happy now. We said there's going to be
- 58:43growing pains in this transition, expected it to be
- 58:45worse than it is now and and you know the state that it is, you
- 58:50know, can we overlook it because it's normal and heroic or easy?
- 58:53Sure. Yeah, I guess, I guess so for a
- 58:55mythic team, Heroic is easy. I get that, you know, it's not
- 58:58accessible. It's easy for teams that are
- 59:01progging heroic. I know some teams that are
- 59:03progging heroic, much like Les Experience until they installed
- 59:07Bigwigs or DBMI think Bigwigs is superior, but Bigwigs or DBM and
- 59:12like the northern sky week or or the northern sky pack that gives
- 59:15you warnings. It they struggled, you know,
- 59:18there was more tank deaths than we'd ever seen before because
- 59:22tanks weren't being told when it's on because the if you track
- 59:25the Blizzard, the Blizzard timeline, not only is it not
- 59:28always accurate, but it gets to the bottom.
- 59:30And they intentionally said, well, when it gets to the
- 59:31bottom, that doesn't mean it's casting.
- 59:32That means it's next in line. That means it's spell queuing.
- 59:35So like, well, what? No information is better than
- 59:38bad information. So, but we knew we knew it was
- 59:41going to take a tier. This is their tier.
- 59:43If a tall utec 12.1, the troll tier launches like this, that'll
- 59:47be my last tier. I'll be done.
- 59:48I'll be I'll I'll leave the show.
- 59:50I'll be done with Warcraft. You'll all never see me again
- 59:53because I'm not. They get one.
- 59:55They get one tier. I'm not going to go through this
- 59:58again next year. If next year launches and it's
- 1:00:00the same state and we're all in the same spot and we're having
- 1:00:02the same conversations over and over again.
- 1:00:04This is one of the reasons I left the Navy.
- 1:00:06I couldn't have the same conversation every single day.
- 1:00:08And that's what the Navy was. It was the same conversation
- 1:00:10with the same people every day. Every we had a saying in the
- 1:00:14Navy, every time is like the first time.
- 1:00:17No matter what the Navy did, it had been done dozens and dozens
- 1:00:21of times in the past. There were standard operating
- 1:00:23procedures for everything, but that didn't matter.
- 1:00:26Every single time we did anything, it was like the first
- 1:00:29time it had ever been done in the history of mankind.
- 1:00:33Did anybody ask what happened when the last ship did this?
- 1:00:36No, no. Oh, 'cause this is probably,
- 1:00:38this is probably some growing pains that we could have
- 1:00:40avoided, you know. Did they come into these?
- 1:00:43Oh, we don't know. We didn't ask them.
- 1:00:44You didn't. You didn't ask them.
- 1:00:45This is an incredibly complex thing we're doing.
- 1:00:47Well, you didn't think to ask the people who did it like 6
- 1:00:50months ago? Yeah, you'll be.
- 1:00:54You guys will be looking for. You'll be looking for a new host
- 1:00:56Manny, if it comes out like this.
- 1:00:57So let me ask you, do you think Blizzard will have it figured
- 1:01:00out by 12.1 in August? So here's my here's my.
- 1:01:06I guess I'm going to consider this the closing thought.
- 1:01:08Here I am. By the way, I am happy.
- 1:01:11My tea was amazing. And I can see light at the end
- 1:01:16of the tunnel. I'm about to be free.
- 1:01:20Blizzard did not have proper. Conversations with add on
- 1:01:25authors at the outset of this, there was hope that maybe they
- 1:01:31would get they get things together and have less
- 1:01:35disruptions than they have had. I did not expect it to go
- 1:01:41perfectly, but I think that they need to refocus.
- 1:01:45They need to lock in like the cast who say and callback.
- 1:01:50Good callbacks. I love you guys.
- 1:01:53I'm going to miss you in August and they need to focus.
- 1:02:00On making sure that this that the issues that came up this
- 1:02:05time are solved so that we aren't having the same
- 1:02:09conversations again. I think that there will still be
- 1:02:11problems, but if there are new problems, if they are, if there
- 1:02:14are new workarounds, at least then we could say it's progress.
- 1:02:19I think that they need to start handling this with a Red Hat
- 1:02:24program. Find the holes in our in our
- 1:02:29logic, find the workarounds, hire people that they're just
- 1:02:31going to looking to break the system.
- 1:02:33Be like, oh, I can just recreate this doing this way, right and
- 1:02:37just have them going at it because clearly the teams and
- 1:02:41the community is already going going at it.
- 1:02:44And then if that is the case, that will still be a different
- 1:02:49conversation where Lex goes, this isn't signposted well
- 1:02:55enough and I need an add on. And if that's the same
- 1:02:59conversation they're having at the top end, that's way better,
- 1:03:03way more uniform than, oh, I've got to go to to this Guild to
- 1:03:10hopefully get them to release it.
- 1:03:12And I'm sure that number of the Guild will do that method,
- 1:03:17method liquid echo, because that gets more eyes on their their
- 1:03:21website and and so forth. So like now that the race is
- 1:03:23over, guaranteed you that's a suite of add-ons will be out
- 1:03:28there that give all of that, that sort of stuff just like it
- 1:03:31has been in many different times.
- 1:03:32But at least the working plebs had their versions of those
- 1:03:36atoms that came out from the community at large.
- 1:03:41I think this was also partially compounded because the weaker
- 1:03:47dev packed packed up said, I'm not doing a compromised version
- 1:03:51of this where somebody picked up that forked it and said I'll do
- 1:03:56a compromised version of this. And other people did not think
- 1:03:59to to do that. So they all have their forks
- 1:04:02that are out there. That stuff will be obviously
- 1:04:06picked up and analyzed. And I think that they just need
- 1:04:09to really work on the solution because I think the hubris was
- 1:04:16that they thought that they would fix it one way and that
- 1:04:18would be good for all time. And the community has shown that
- 1:04:22they are way smarter than that. I agree in.
- 1:04:28Other news, there was no midrade wall boss for the first year
- 1:04:31since Chattelands. So we did it.
- 1:04:34That's a win. That's a win.
- 1:04:36Yeah, that's a win. The wall is actually flying to
- 1:04:39the other box. That is no.
- 1:04:45One was able to see that one anyways, now that.
- 1:04:47The race the world First has concluded.
- 1:04:49We have seen a number of hot fixes.
- 1:04:51We have seen a number of changes, both class balances and
- 1:04:55rate changes and item changes as well as PvP changes.
- 1:04:59So the doors are open. We're seeing a new flush of
- 1:05:02changes as well. Make sure you are looking at the
- 1:05:05various websites to see what those changes are.
- 1:05:09But until next time guys, may all your hits be grits.