Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #364 - For Azeroth!: “Midnight Preview: Enhancement Shaman"

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#364 - For Azeroth!: “Midnight Preview: Enhancement Shaman" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

0:00
If anyone asks about Stormbringer, you have to
0:03
clarify, have you played it on live?
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Because if they have that context, you completely change
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how you talk about it. Because if they know what it's
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like now, they have a really strong expectation of what it's
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going to feel like in the future if they haven't tried it.
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Victory for the Forsaken. For Lauderon for.
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The Karen tour for. Pandaria.
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For. Calendar to the burning region
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for Gilnaeus or has not died, for the Lich King, for the
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Sindora, for the Alliance, for the Horn for Azeroth.
0:48
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
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I am one of the hosts, the Truvilla.
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Manny or or just Manny and I am joined by a very special guest.
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Word up. Hello.
1:01
Word up. How are you?
1:03
Hello, I'm good getting in the swing of midnight so.
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Yeah. Slowly, sure.
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I I wish that it was slow, but sure.
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But it just feels like we're running out of track so quickly.
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It's just been since Dragon Flight they've had this faster
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development schedule and it is breakneck.
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I remember, I don't know, I think Legion was the first time
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I was really paying attention to development styles because all
1:31
of the classes were changing and the speed at which things
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developed and we would get updates in that testing cycle
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versus now is night and day. But for people who don't know
1:45
you, tell us a little bit about yourself.
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And of course, you're a De Shaman.
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How did you get into World of Warcraft?
1:55
I was, I was given the game by a friend in high school or college
2:00
actually at the time, and that was 19 years ago.
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They don't play anymore, but I still do so.
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And honestly the rest is history.
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From I I started rating and then I carried on rating the whole
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time. I didn't start as a shaman, but
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it didn't take very long and then I was just a shaman
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forever. I play all the other melee, but
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I'm still pretty heavily typecast as the shaman guy, so
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I'm happy to take that. And yeah, I, I, I write guides
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for enhancement. I have since wall odds of Drano
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and I also do a couple of guys further melee specs on icy veins
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and I do wildheads enhancement. I occasionally do videos.
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I've done quite a few more on midnight because there was very
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limited shaman testers for midnight, just tests in general
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during the alpha. So I sort of wanted to get the
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word out that it wasn't as disastrous as many were saying
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from the patch notes, and I otherwise bleeding as positive
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as I can with what Blizzard are doing in any other space that
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you may find me in, like Twitter or unwaved articles or so on.
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Of course, of course. And I, I know you from the Earth
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shrine doling out wisdom when you can or trying to like get
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calmer heads to prevail. And so with midnight, we're
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passing out for we're now in beta.
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We've had two weeks worth of ray testing with a week off in
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between to sort of digest some things.
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And so we've seen not only the changes that have come with the,
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I would want to call it streamlining more than pruning.
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I feel like they sort of merged a lot of things or crossed over
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a number of things to get to where we're at right now with
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shaman. But how has shaman been with
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this? Like pruning or streamlining?
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So there's two sides to that coin for me.
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The the first salvo that when I first saw it, my reaction was I
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saw it ever so slightly before the notes came out.
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So I didn't have the context of playing it.
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There were a few things that immediately I was anti and
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almost straight away sort of reconciled.
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It's actually fine after trying it.
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So that was sort of a great lesson in don't overreact to
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most people because everyone's guilty of it, myself included.
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The I would probably lean towards it being a mixed bag of
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a prune and a streamline. There's definitely depending on
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which thing you like of the current one or past ones, there
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is just some straight pruning that's gone and it's you can
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find like a hint of it, but it's not really there anymore.
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Things like all the frost spells and so on, they're mostly just
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dead, but the streamlining part they I think did.
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We were easily one of the specs that needed it the most by the
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end of War Within. I think it's quite easy to look
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through all of the specs and see some outliers of ones that
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really, really needed some genuine attention to just sort
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of get rid of all of the baggage or things that are cool, but
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they don't need to all be separate.
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And they did a really, really good job of I was picking out
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the things that they needed that needed to stay and the things
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that were kind of second fiddle things that you didn't need or
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you can roll them in. And I think it plays
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surprisingly similar. Considering the fact that it's
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had an enormous list of changes. I'd probably pitch it funnily
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enough, like really close to a wall of Drinore play style,
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which was one of my my all time favourites.
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It's very similar in cadence, but it's got all of the cool
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bells and whistles of like modern enhancement.
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But the other side of the coin is while they're opening set of
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patch notes were really good and they did a really good job.
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There was definitely some things that needed a second pass or
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someone to sort of take the feedback and think, should we
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really stick with this? Is it right, Is it wrong?
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Should we at least do something? And despite about, I think we're
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closing in on three months since Alva started, I haven't seen
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hide nor hair of anything changing for us since there's
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still quite a few bugs from week 1.
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So that's a little alarming. But that's also the kind of
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thing where if they do just sit down for a week or two and sort
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of hammer things out, none of them are like massive problems
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that are sort of world ending like pre War Within where you
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had things where you could clearly see that once it
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launched, if it launched like that, it was going to be
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horrible. I think we're far away from
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that. But it would be nice to have
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just a second, second little touch up of we do hear this,
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this is probably a good thing to do.
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One of the big changes I noticed, or rather that they
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referred to, was the effect of hero talents on the rotation and
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how when you're playing Totemic versus Stormbringer, you're
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playing very different rotations.
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And so they brought them closer together so that the rotation is
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similar. In my in my playthrough, it
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seems to favor leaning more towards a similar rotation of
7:24
1:00 than the other. What's your feelings of like,
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the way that they've changed it in regards to the hero talents?
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Oh, oh, this that that's a question.
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That sort of rolls. Not only does it link to the the
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streamlining, but it also rolls back to like Dragonfly because
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before hero talents came with the 2 split play styles
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announcement was basically like the progenitor of a spec that
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could do it. Because in Dragonfly we had two
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completely separate, completely rotationally isolated builds
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that you could play. And then in the War Within, that
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sort of is more common now because hero talents do that.
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But I was obviously had those same 2 play styles fractured off
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and given a hero talent each and they were still completely
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different. And what I think they've done
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here, it does a lot towards what they were intending to do, which
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is to make the spec at least a little bit more approachable.
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Because it is absolutely true from all so many conversations
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I've had both with like veteran players and from people who just
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vaguely interested. The the spec is incredibly
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intimidating when you're just handed the notes of, of how it
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does it and what you'd need to know and how it how it
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functions, what you need to learn to sort of get comfortable
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with it. Most people are given a small
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list enhancements given not only a long list, but then also a sub
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list of all the extra reading that you need to do and like a
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textbook list of all these extra chapters that you might need,
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but not right now. But at least keep them in mind.
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What they have done is definitely consolidated like a
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core block of if you know this rule, it applies to both of them
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all the time. And I think that's really
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important because what is biggest problem is they spend
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rules for resources completely changing on their head is a
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horrifying like consideration for a lot of people when we have
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a such an unusual resource to begin with.
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But where they falter in it is that Totemic very clearly has
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that that core and a thing on top that you do.
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That's like the Totemic thing. That's really cool with the hot
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hand extending, which by the way, I think is an incredible
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design talent to go with the the tempo in the middle.
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I think those two are real highlights.
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Whoever designed those. While Stormbringer on the other
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hand, feels a lot like you doing the core of Totemic and then not
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really anything else. So that's really disappointing
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considering I think Storm Ring is really cool just on the face
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and it's definitely very complicated alive, but it does
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feel like that's the one that lost distinctly between the two
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of them. Yeah, just with the changes to
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wolves no longer being their own talent.
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And also the biggest thing that I felt that separated just Storm
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Bringer from like a base shaman was the fact that you had those
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wolves that fed into the kind of an ebb and flow of resource.
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Like you would suddenly get a bunch of it and be playing at a
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different pace. And then your wolves would fade
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and you you would slow down in pace trying to get those wolves
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again or get back to those wolves again.
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But now wolves are no longer an active talent.
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They are a passive talent. They no longer generate
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resources, so they're just a damage amp based on 2 windows.
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I think we've got fire and lightning wolves and nothing
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else anymore. Yeah, there's there's the one
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that comes from Doomens and the one that comes from Thundering
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and then Storm Ring has got its own extra 1 from Doomens as
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well. So there's, there's like those,
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those 3 avenues of getting them. That one I think is I, I found
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it really difficult to talk about this one in a, in an
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objective way because I've since I've played enhancement since,
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since TBC basically. I remember how cool it was that
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you were getting the Warcraft 3 spell as your big cooldown when
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you level 280 in Wrath. And I remember all of the times
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that they were really good and the even more times that they
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were really useless, but they were always there and they
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always really cool. They're like very visually,
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that's the shaman thing now, that's the enhancement thing
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when you see them. And now they're very not good.
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They're they're, I don't mind them being a passive.
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It is a bit weird the way that they were basically you press
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them every 20 seconds. They're not really a cool down
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anymore and the whole consolidating all of our Quill
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downs back into one or two buttons rather than 5 or 6
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launch sequence things that you need to know different orders
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for is obviously it's a broad thing they're doing to all specs
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and I think it was more than necessary in our case.
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But the way that Wolves got hit is just it stings a little bit
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more than it probably should. That's one of those ones where I
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think the devs did it with all the best intentions, but not
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realizing that there's a there's an extra layer to why that
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specific thing is really cool to people.
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So yeah, I think that's one that people will visually notice
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right out the gate. What would you say is more of a
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success story for like the consolidation of cooldowns, even
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if it is like rotational cooldowns versus the big
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two-minute 3 minute buttons? Oh, I think that the the
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integration of crash lightning into just being a a button that
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you press all the time was a really, really good idea because
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it covers it covers 5 or 6 different bases from 5 or 6
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different eras of how enhancement is played all in
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itself. Like it functions like a
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maintenance buff that we had in Legion that have basically been
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gone, but it also kind of functions like your mid range
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kind of very important, but sets of other things.
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But unlike unleash elements from from mop and what and then it
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also does the AOE. It does a bit of cleave.
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It's also a background resource generator.
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It it's one of those buttons that one, it looks really cool,
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but two it never really got used that much outside of just the
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AOE thing. It's tuning has always been a
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bit wonky. So we now will use it all the
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time. It still looks really cool and
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they're using it to plug a lot of gaps.
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That one's a really good one, although that's hard to say
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whether that's consolidating. I think the the whole Doom Winds
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ascendance thing was a good idea.
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Does need some massaging choice. So that's one of the ones that
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I'd like someone to to take a second look at.
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But that was a really good idea to give us the whole do you want
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one minute? Do you want 2 minute and varying
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degrees of strength and taking it off the GCD, which took me by
14:17
surprise was was quite interesting and something that I
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thought would have been in a good idea long ago before the
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War Within. I think just cutting primordial
14:29
wave, as cool as the button is, but it looks and all of the
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advanced stuff that you could do with it, just turning it into
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the thing that Sundering does instead, which is equally a
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little dated on the animation, but is it equally cool?
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Shaman button, but a lot simpler to just press and do was just a
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good idea It it stops thundering having that weird go between of
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what's this supposed to do in between the specs.
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It's very obvious it leads into a cool cool down chain.
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So broadly I think that the consolidation of near everything
15:06
that they did was the right direction to go.
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It's just how far along the path they reached in terms of getting
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it to the best spot it could be. But none of them were like
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things that I read and thought, Oh my God, what have you?
15:21
What have you been thinking? This is this is a terrible idea.
15:25
So I think that's a positive. Absolutely.
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OK. On the on the flip side, what
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are the shortfalls that you feel that need that second pass?
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It depends on how how granular it would be in terms of the
15:43
feedback that I gave and that we sort of echoed back to them a
15:46
few times. Like the top of the list is I
15:50
just don't think the tree has enough talents on it right now.
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There's there's virtually no tension, especially the
15:58
Stormbringer as to like what you pick.
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It's very obvious. There's maybe one or two points
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that are kind of like, well, I'll put it somewhere, but it
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doesn't really matter where I put them.
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I'll just throw it over here. And those would be the kind of
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things for like even just their passive talent or just something
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that would maybe be a bit more simple as well.
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This is obviously exactly this good rather than all of the
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esoteric ones like attack speed and crit conversion to crit
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damage. Like they're they read good, but
16:26
are they good at? I don't know, they're very
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mathy. I would say that Stormbringer, I
16:36
just have to be a bit more critical on all the good things
16:40
that happened with Totemic. Stormbringer had its key thing
16:43
with Tempest being a tracking thing that you had to tackle,
16:46
which is a kind of worms related to the UI that's been going
16:50
ongoing for quite a while. But turning that into just a
16:52
random proc isn't nearly as as fun or it's not as nearly as
17:00
engaging. It doesn't give it that sort of
17:02
Stormbringer feeling that you get when you play on live and
17:07
taking that out. The tree is fairly skinny to
17:10
begin with on live. If you take that and you take
17:13
the wolves that spawn from Tempest away, it's not it's not
17:18
really a tree that you could write home about.
17:21
As to doing anything like you can very clearly point out
17:25
Totemic does this and this and it's over going to other specs
17:29
across the game with classes like Farrell will do this.
17:34
You've got ravage proc so you've got your vines that you bite
17:37
with very much a tangent over Demon Hunter with their glaves
17:41
and fell scarred with metamorphosis.
17:43
But Stormbringer, if someone asked me what's the hook that
17:47
you need to know if you're going to play it?
17:50
What's like the important new thing?
17:53
I'd honestly struggle to tell someone something that very
17:56
distinctly changes in your gameplay.
17:57
I think you just play exactly the same as how you would if you
18:00
didn't have it. So that one's probably the
18:03
biggest failure. And I think that's just the tree
18:04
as a whole. Little, little more scathing.
18:09
But yeah, that's one of the ones that I'm really hung up on.
18:12
I wish that someone would go back and look at that.
18:15
Between now and midnight release I've been waiting every patch
18:18
week for something to show up and someone to just have said
18:21
anything about Storm Ringer. I'm not sure if you agree with
18:27
me, but I feel that shaman has this very weird class tree where
18:33
there are just sections that are not meant for enhancement.
18:37
They're just sort of like, we're going to put this here so you
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don't have to go through it, but there's no value in it.
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And so when you're talking about the skinny trees in the spec
18:45
tree, I look at the class tree and I, and I look at things like
18:49
Spirit Walker's grace and, and a number of different talents.
18:52
And I, I spec into it. And I wonder what I'm doing with
18:58
my points like this. There isn't that tension.
19:00
There isn't something that I'm like truly passing for.
19:03
It's like, I've got the point. So I guess I'm getting getting
19:05
this and throwing the rest here. The the class tree has been a
19:11
real point of contention for I think.
19:14
Every single feedback post or article I've done since
19:17
Dragonflight released with these trees, there has always been a
19:20
section that says the class tree isn't very good, especially for
19:25
us, and I don't like it. Basically, there's it's not Even
19:32
so much about the power in it. It is the exactly what you said.
19:37
There are sections of the tree that just do nothing for There's
19:40
no sort of conceptual point where you'd think I really need
19:43
this or this will do something. They're actually fundamentally
19:46
useless talents, and it's not to put this any blame on the other
19:52
two specs, but I will say that at one point in the past there
19:57
were talents like that that were our talents that we got on the
20:01
class tree and they would have been eternally useless for the
20:04
other two. And they were removed for
20:07
explicitly that reason. There is no reason for them to
20:09
have Maelstrom weapon or or Flurry.
20:12
Or for the reason Pharaoh Lunge showed up in our expect tree
20:16
against Yeah. And like, that's fine.
20:20
If we don't want them to have maelstrom and flurry because
20:22
they're useless to them, then why do we have spirit walks,
20:25
grace and nature swiftness? And why have we got talents like
20:29
healing stream totem that are tuned to such a degree that we
20:33
have no use for it? Why is there so many like open
20:37
spaces for things that you could do that are shaman related?
20:40
Like I'll throw throw something that'll probably come later, but
20:45
our self healing for a hybrid is pretty abominable and the spec
20:49
tree does nothing to help that. And the one thing that we did
20:52
have, as overpowered as it may have been in certain situations,
20:55
got caught very early in the war within with ancestral guidance
20:58
and still to this day, a bit of a shame, but I understand why.
21:02
But there's there's very little on that the class tree that when
21:06
I look at it for other specs, I'm very clearly I see the thing
21:08
at the bottom that I really want to get to that I'm going to if I
21:12
don't have this distinctly miss. And when I look at my shaman,
21:16
what I'll pick like a few things that I'll, I'd quite like to
21:20
have and I'll go towards the things that are sort of nice
21:25
benefits, but there's nothing that I'm sort of like really
21:27
excited. It's on the classroom.
21:28
I want to get this. It's sort of more of the, those
21:31
are the points. I'm going to go to the spectre
21:32
now at least I can pick something that I care about.
21:36
And that's a little bit sad, I think.
21:38
And we aren't. To make it clear, we definitely
21:40
aren't the only class like this, but there's a very clear divide
21:44
between classes that have a cool class tree and classes that have
21:49
a class tree. So we've now discussed of course
21:55
the hero tree and we've discussed the spec tree and now
21:59
the class tree. The one thing that we sort of
22:03
touched on a little bit, but I would love to to focus on a
22:06
little bit more is the new Apex talents because we're every spec
22:12
is getting the Apex talent. We just talked a little bit
22:16
about about that Crash Lightning is back in play and that's the
22:22
focus of our Apex talent. So like I guess they hit it out
22:26
of the park with these? I think our this one was one of
22:30
those ones where I saw so many people be really skeptical about
22:33
it because they were so skeptical about the idea of
22:36
Crash not being an AOE button. I think it is a very good,
22:43
they're very well designed. The 2 middle points, they are
22:49
tax, they're good tax buttons for numbers, but they are quite
22:53
uninteresting relative to some of the other ones.
22:55
But the opening especially is very, very good.
22:59
That's very similar to say for anyone who played in Legion
23:03
Storm Surge of previously Stormbringer, but they couldn't
23:07
keep it called that with the hero tree.
23:09
Those resets were really important all the time and they
23:12
felt really good to get a storm Ringer reset on storm strike.
23:16
And obviously as time went on, because if you don't give
23:21
enhancement enough buttons to press, they end up just sitting
23:23
there doing nothing. Storm Ringer or Storm search has
23:26
become so common or ways to press Storm Strike that it
23:29
doesn't really feel like that good.
23:31
No matter how many times you glow the screen with effects to
23:33
say you've got the proc, it doesn't make it any more
23:36
interesting that you got it. Whereas this one is is limited
23:40
enough and it's on a spell that's very clearly important
23:42
enough. And then it can stack itself up.
23:46
So you get like a a a sort of lingering pay off from doing
23:50
from getting the procs afterward for all your next buttons.
23:53
And you can really impactfully see how much more damage your
23:57
like ancillary proc effects are doing.
24:01
I think that's really, really good.
24:02
The the proc, the the stacking, the final point is really good.
24:09
It's very hard to talk about because half of it is bogged and
24:13
you just get it for the first point.
24:14
So you don't need to take the last point.
24:17
And it has been since the beginning, which is very
24:20
strange. And it does make it very hard to
24:23
like objectively assess how the bottom of the tree is because
24:26
you just don't take that point because you get it for free.
24:29
The AOE pool is, well, it looks like Lay Shen's thing.
24:35
So it's really cool because Lightning Whip was always really
24:37
cool. It does a lot of damage, it
24:40
ticks fast enough that you're not really irritated by tanks
24:43
moving things around. And it's also got sort of a dual
24:48
purpose of you've got the pool for your AOE and you've got the
24:51
attack speed for your single target.
24:53
Which now, thankfully, when they buffed attack speed a lot is
24:57
actually relevant again because the attack speed has been until
25:01
then effectively naked off the the face of the spec because it
25:06
really doesn't matter. When you take away storm surge
25:09
from imbues and just imbue damage in general now the autos
25:15
actually hit hard. That becomes a really well
25:17
designed talent that's dual function.
25:19
And so it's a universal. I can see those four points as a
25:24
locked in for like the foreseeable future in a lot of
25:27
cases, which is what they want visually.
25:30
Cool. So yeah, I'd, I'd rate that,
25:32
rate it really high. It's definitely not one of the
25:34
ones that I saw and thought, oh, I'm not going to be.
25:37
I'm not happy about having to take those.
25:41
Yeah, I think that the hidden gem is how it works with the
25:46
imbues increasing those and making them stronger.
25:50
I was, I wasn't quite sold on it.
25:55
I was like, Oh yeah, this is cool.
25:57
And I was still using it to like enable my AOE.
26:01
And then I believe it was your first video that you you put out
26:05
where you're like, Nope, you want to be pressing this on
26:06
cooldown and then seeing the change from that actually kind
26:12
of pulled the spec, this spec together for me.
26:17
Taking all of this and taking it into dungeons and into raids.
26:22
How is like the rotation feeling?
26:24
How are is enhancement feeling in in play?
26:34
With the UI issues aside, because it's impossible to talk
26:37
about midnight without mentioning it and it does make
26:39
the spec more much more difficult to sort of build a
26:43
muscle memory because you're fighting against that.
26:45
If you extract that out of it, the the gameplay flow that it
26:49
has is really, really strong in terms of like how I have fun.
26:54
I find it it's it's got a lot more active decision making than
27:00
sort of retailers ended up reaching because we've got so
27:02
much gear that the decision making really is just very one
27:06
note all the way down. Not like it was the sad
27:08
expansion is very good to be clear, but the especially things
27:13
like having to decide you want a one minute or a two-minute
27:16
cooldown. Both of the hero talents similar
27:19
but different in how they approach the damage, how
27:22
consistent they are. The 32nd burst window is still
27:26
there with thundering and basically power infusion
27:29
attached to it. The it's still got quite a few
27:33
like mix up moments. You've got your resets from
27:35
resources, you've still got hot hand with Totemic, you've got
27:38
your crash leash lightning resets and then your cool down
27:41
is still. Frankly I think I cooled down.
27:44
Design, as complex as it is, is one of the coolest in how it
27:49
works across any spec in the game, and it still is.
27:56
Oh, what else? Oh, and I also, I'm a huge fan
27:59
from a dungeon perspective of of Ride the Lightning.
28:02
I think that that that talents been sort of waiting there as a
28:05
hero, as a PvP talent for the better part of 10 years.
28:09
And I think it may have come up at least 10 times since then of
28:14
why don't we just make this a spec talent?
28:16
Because it would just work. And it does just work.
28:20
It's it's a really good way of making those strikes that we
28:22
inevitably have to press in AOE still do a thing that's AOE and
28:28
it's cool. The only downside is the the
28:32
crash change to make it not AOE now splits.
28:35
But that's sort of an aside. I would say that dungeon wise
28:39
from a damage perspective, assuming the tuning is like it
28:45
is now, it is better than it is in the wall.
28:48
Then from a fun factor perspective, the only thing that
28:53
I think will bounce people off is I think Totemic is quite
28:57
difficult to play properly, maybe harder than it is on live
29:03
even to get that right because you have to juggle hot hand and
29:08
extend it for such a long period.
29:10
And there is a not necessarily aggressive punishment for doing
29:15
that wrong. But you do get left in sort of
29:18
droughts of being effectively punished that you you let it
29:23
fall off and now you have to sit there and wait for it to come
29:26
back and then your AOE turns off.
29:29
Or if you get it right, it's really good.
29:32
But that's just the damage perspective because there's
29:34
definitely a second one. I'm sure you're about to mention
29:37
that one. Well, I mean, go right into it.
29:42
I, I, I feel like this is the natural flow.
29:44
Go ahead. On the, the other side of it is
29:47
the the defence side and we've never been the best at defence.
29:55
Well, we haven't been the best at defence since Legion when
29:58
they took away all of our really good defence and expansion sort
30:04
of go up and down in terms of how much I feel like it's a
30:09
disaster. But it's never been like I'm
30:11
really, we're definitely going to be really living this
30:14
expansion and this one in the dungeon testing that I've done
30:19
and the raids, it is excruciatingly obvious that we
30:23
have far less defence than everyone else that I've been
30:27
testing with. There's definitely a couple of
30:28
specific specs that I didn't play with, but from what I can
30:32
tell her. In the same boat as us.
30:34
But I can really tangibly feel how fragile I am on so many
30:40
encounters so far and in dungeons.
30:45
The change to maelstrom weapon so that the healers from after
30:50
we spend good from AI don't waste damage for it.
30:54
Damage resources bad from A we now have to spend an extra GCD
30:59
to get there and the stacks they sort of they change depending on
31:04
how much you spent last rather than just accumulating.
31:07
So if you spend 10 and then you spend 6, you know 6 of that
31:11
we've got the extra GCD there and it heals a lot less than on
31:14
live. So on live, if I'm in a panicked
31:16
situation and I spend 10 maelstrom on a healing surge,
31:20
I'm easily jumping 50% of my health and I'll feel a lot say
31:24
more stable in that moment. On the beta, if I deploy a
31:30
healing surge that with whatever rage emails from sex I have
31:34
because I'm panicking, it might bump my health bar like 15%,
31:38
which in the overwhelming majority of cases in especially
31:42
the end game in midnight, 15% sort of doesn't tickle the rot
31:48
damage that's going on all the time.
31:50
So you're immediately in the same danger that you were right
31:52
before you pressed it. And we've got one or so we've
31:56
got one higher than average defence tool and one much higher
32:01
than average, not that good defence tool.
32:04
And those are the only other things we can do.
32:07
So I definitely feel like when I when I look at the spread of
32:15
what happened to others and just the general landscape of how the
32:20
game is built, how the balance between classes going to be with
32:25
end game content effectively being dictated by who can not
32:29
only do the most damage, but also live the most incisive
32:33
lethal damage. It's really hard to see how we'd
32:38
be anything other than a burden the higher that you go.
32:41
And you'd need someone very specifically tailored towards
32:46
having the tools to keep you alive because you can't do it
32:49
yourself. And that really, really worries
32:53
me, more so than it it's ever worried me in the lead up to an
32:56
expansion. One of the big defensive changes
33:03
that we got, of course, was the stripping away of our one of our
33:07
defensive totems. It seems odd that they gave it
33:11
to us only to take it away so soon.
33:14
Do you do you have any insight into why that happened?
33:18
Oh, I couldn't, I couldn't say why they did it.
33:22
I, I the, the story of the term itself is it it got added as a
33:30
sort of last minute right at the end of development of the war
33:33
within testing. Mostly because I would say it
33:38
was a combination of one, people were saying the class tree is
33:41
really bad and I have nothing that I care about, especially at
33:44
the bottom and two, people sort of identifying that yes,
33:48
enhancement, sorry, not enhancement shaman in general
33:51
are very much lacking in things that they can use to live on
33:55
their own. When we compare it to other
33:58
specs, because obviously in the context of the war within, this
34:01
was before the prune that's happened now on defence that's
34:04
been unevenly applied. I have to say.
34:10
So back then, when you're competing with most specs that
34:12
have got either, two very low cooldown ones are for myriad
34:18
length cooldown ones where they've always got something.
34:20
You look at Shaman and you've got one that's higher than
34:23
average and one that's way higher than average cooldowns
34:27
and nothing in between. You will always look at an
34:30
encounter's cadence and see well, this, this and this.
34:36
We'll be able to cover it on this spec.
34:37
But for the shaman, what do they do about the middle one?
34:40
Because they've not got anything.
34:42
So I think that's why they added it.
34:44
And now when they're starting to prune, they think, well, what
34:48
does it really do that earth elemental doesn't?
34:51
And to someone who and now this. This isn't to say that the the
34:57
devs don't play the game, because I absolutely don't
34:59
believe that at all. But I think to someone who
35:02
hasn't experienced how enhancement or just shaman in
35:06
general plays in end game content, it would be very easy
35:10
to strip the two spells that look kind of similar as the long
35:13
cool down press to live button without realizing what function
35:17
it serves of having two of those.
35:19
When you go into an encounter relative, how will the specs
35:22
handle it? And I think that's like a
35:25
misstep generally. But I also would say losing
35:32
stone Bullock doesn't really move the needle.
35:35
Very. I don't think the stone Bullock
35:36
fixed the problem that we had, so removing it it makes it
35:40
worse. But even if it didn't still been
35:42
there, we'd still have the problem.
35:44
And changing earth elemental to now lose the 5% Dr. but not
35:50
taunt One, that's great, big fan of it not taunting and get
35:54
itself itself killed anymore. But two, it's now a little
35:58
weaker in defence, it's a lot shorter, but it's on a lower ish
36:04
cooldown. But the question is for three.
36:07
Minutes and then a minute duration to 30 seconds now,
36:11
Yeah. Yeah, it's basically it's sort
36:13
of like stepping in for Stumble Walk.
36:16
But the the thing with Earth Elemental is that 15% health is
36:20
nice, but is it 3 minute cooldown nice?
36:24
I don't know. And what are the situations
36:27
where you want 15% more health for 30 seconds and you have to
36:33
usually kind of stretch to find those.
36:36
You can find the situation where you want the health for a
36:39
minute, because then it'll overlap quite a lot of things
36:42
that people want. But 30 seconds, it's a that's a
36:44
pretty aggressive cadence for dangerous mechanics.
36:47
So if if that covers those, then there's a lot, much bigger
36:50
problem. Unity raid cooldowns for that
36:52
anyway. So our defensive took it in
36:56
general just feels like it's from a different game when I
36:59
compare it across the board. And like my extreme opinion is
37:05
that I don't think that the end game that we have is going to
37:08
work long term without frustrations for specific people
37:13
unless they just, and this is a the buzzword for people they
37:16
don't like. But I think they just need to
37:17
homogenize the fences a little bit where there's sort of like a
37:21
baseline expectation of what you can live if you play properly.
37:25
OK, I had had thought for a longest time since again we're
37:32
not blaming other specs. I just feel that when they
37:35
introduced Demon Hunter and Demon Hunter was a lot of Leech
37:38
and self healing that that's when they decided that shaman
37:42
could no longer do a lot of Leech and self healing.
37:45
Our dogs used to heal ourselves and I'm not entirely upset about
37:51
that because it it was when they started turning into genuine
37:54
offensive cooldowns instead of some hybrid defensive offensive
37:58
cooldown. But when you're looking at, like
38:01
you said, healing stream totem that just over I think the
38:08
entire duration does about as much healing as like if you had
38:11
just done a healing tied on yourself.
38:15
It I wonder where they feel like shaman defenses are supposed to
38:23
be strong with these duration things.
38:24
Are we supposed to be like the anti rots thing and then we need
38:29
spot healing? But with the, with the damage
38:33
that you're seeing out in, in dungeons and in, in raids, are
38:38
you, is rot healing really the issue or is it more that we're
38:41
dealing with, I don't want to say it's close to Dragonflight
38:45
spike levels, but are we dealing more with spiky damage?
38:51
Obviously with a with a grain of salt, because eventually
38:53
everything in keys becomes like lethal spike anyway.
38:57
So eventually you run into that problem.
39:00
So that's by the by the the like the raid and the dungeons in
39:04
general. Rot is definitely relevant.
39:07
That's going on. But you, you tie it into like
39:11
how the healers are, how having to deal with it right now,
39:13
because they've changed a lot of how healers cadence is with just
39:16
dealing with a fight in general. And you, you spend now this
39:23
maybe a slight on the healers that I played with, but I I'm
39:25
hoping it's not. I, I think this is just a
39:27
general across the board thing. You spend more time than you
39:31
would normally be comfortable with on live, not at full
39:35
health. And it's fine.
39:37
It's supposed to be fine. And when you're put in bad
39:43
situations, you can usually do something to help them out when
39:47
they're struggling because something's gone wrong or it's
39:48
particularly dangerous mechanic or so on.
39:52
In our case, we do spend more time at not Max health, but we
40:00
do so little self healing passively relative to every
40:05
other spec, 90% of other specs, just in case anyone wants to get
40:11
it on my case about that one. But we do so little there that
40:14
even though you've got that extra overhead to let self
40:16
healing be relevant and sort of trickle in to help the healer.
40:20
It doesn't matter because we just sit there getting lower and
40:23
lower and lower until we actively do something about it
40:26
and it will take us a while to recover that back.
40:30
And for respect that's so fast and built on momentum, that's a
40:36
really unpleasant thing to have. Be part of it because you don't
40:43
want the spec. In the case of say I'm going to
40:46
have to use comparisons with this like with Ferrell.
40:49
Ferrell self healing isn't great, but they do actively self
40:53
heal as well with instant regrowth.
40:55
It's not good, but Ferrell has got natural downtime where if
40:59
you spend something in that downtime it doesn't matter
41:01
because everything still kind of working in the background.
41:05
Whereas with enhancement, the way it's built is that when you
41:09
do anything other than your main things, everything stops because
41:14
it's all in the momentum of you keep rolling things over onto
41:18
each other. And you wouldn't want like a
41:21
Demon Hunter to when they want to heal, be like, OK, well,
41:25
you've just pressed i-beam, you've gone into meta, but you
41:27
need to heal. So why don't you stop and cast
41:30
this spell to make a soul that you run over and collect?
41:33
It's it wouldn't be fun. And that's why they're built in
41:36
the way that their healing comes from just being aggressive.
41:40
And it didn't, it just doesn't match.
41:42
It clashes against everything else that the spec is doing and
41:45
it's really jarring. This is a very strange sort of
41:50
feel topic, but it's definitely relevant for us.
41:54
And I don't, I don't like it. I don't like how they've been
41:57
doing it. I think that they really need to
41:59
just sort of address Shaman's defensives.
42:01
But I've been saying that for 10 years.
42:02
So it's sort of like banging a drum.
42:06
If you recall, Paladins in their halfway through dragon fight
42:12
makes they had nodes that were different for their different
42:16
specs. So protection versus retribution
42:18
versus holy had different talents in their in their class
42:23
tree. We were just talking earlier
42:26
about these dead ligaments in the our class tree.
42:30
I think there's there's space there.
42:32
I don't see why Ancestral guidance doesn't just fit so
42:37
easily in for in for enhancement if they are still allowing a
42:46
priest to vamp themselves it seems.
42:50
It seems in a similar vein, but what would you say would be your
42:57
wish list for some enhancement changes?
43:03
Oh, do we mean defensive or offensive or both?
43:06
Let's say, let's say one offensive, one defensive.
43:09
Let's start with defensive because we're talking about that
43:11
right now. The the easiest, easiest one on
43:18
the list is that you need to give Astro Chef 2 charges
43:22
because you've been doing that to all of the specs that have
43:24
have got that sort of unusual defence.
43:27
And you've even given it to one of the ones that had the already
43:30
really good defensive to name no names of anything that double
43:35
jumps. So that would just be a complete
43:40
freebie you can get. There's so many different
43:43
thematic or law ways that you could make us more defending if
43:47
you really wanted to. And I could give a laundry list
43:50
of ideas that would be kind of cool that would work.
43:53
But the easiest, simplest fix would just be give it 2 charges
43:58
and and honestly, you drop it's cool down to a minute and you
44:01
make us like demon hunters and that would probably take off the
44:05
majority of the sting of us struggling to live.
44:11
You should go down healing stream told not being bad.
44:14
Give us ways to like heal passively when we generate X
44:18
like when we generate met raging whales.
44:20
So it just sort of naturally diffuses on us rather than
44:23
actively doing it. But yeah, the defence is just
44:26
such an enormous open space for them to do anything because
44:29
we've got so little right now that you you could make ank like
44:35
a 3 minute cooldown and it probably wouldn't improve the
44:39
situation. That's how far behind we are.
44:41
I feel so yeah. Oh man.
44:45
I'm hoping you're not getting taxed for Ankh.
44:47
It's like you can get up at any point, so you're going to be
44:51
more. Every 20 minutes, yeah, that's
44:55
that's an entire tangent that I could go on about for easily an
44:58
hour about how defenses for offense, it's really hard to
45:05
pick one. But the probably the easiest 1
45:10
is that I'd I'd really, really, really, really like them to do
45:14
something with Stormbringer to give any point of control on
45:18
Tempest. I can I can live with Totemic
45:21
the whole time like how it is. I think that could just ship and
45:24
be fine. There's a lot of things that
45:27
they could do to just improve the entire package, but
45:29
Stormbreaker anything has just got this one glaring issue that
45:32
what they removed wasn't replaced by anything and what
45:36
they removed wasn't overbearing to begin with.
45:41
So like simple things like the chance for it to trigger is
45:45
higher during Doom Winds or ascendance.
45:47
That would be really simple. And that would mean that your
45:49
cooldowns mean that you have a point of control where you know
45:51
it's more likely that you're going to hit Tempest during
45:58
this. There's there's one that's
46:00
basically copying Ferrell, which would be the like the first time
46:03
that you cast crash each time you're into combat, you get
46:05
Tempest. So you can guarantee in mythic
46:08
plus that you can front load a Tempest without having to do all
46:10
the stupid pooling and carrying charges that we've had to do.
46:13
That's still going to be relevant, which I don't like of
46:18
just the simple thing of make storm strike do anything the
46:20
storm bringer, because when they removed awakening storms, it's
46:24
just a kind of pointless button on the tree that's definitely
46:28
supposed to favorite. This is another one where I have
46:32
like my own personal list of. I could rattle these off and
46:35
just beg for them, but it will be along with.
46:38
Our number one fishing tool now it's how we I hate that it's
46:43
sorry. It's one of those things where
46:44
they've like really obviously thought, well, Totemic has Lava
46:47
Lash and it's so very obviously the Lava Lash tree.
46:49
We've been all these things that are related explicitly to Lava
46:52
Lash and it shines through where it makes the infrequent button
46:57
really frequent and really strong and really versatile.
47:01
And then you look at Stormbringer, which I'm not
47:05
going to say that it's namesake gives it away, but it's very
47:07
obviously supposed to use the storm strike or crash lightning
47:11
thing as it's like main leveraging tool to do the thing.
47:15
And then you look through the tree and the one talent that had
47:17
a mention of storm strike still kind of mentions it, but it's a
47:21
talent that's not to say worthless, but it's it's nowhere
47:27
near what it used to be. And that feels like it's pulled
47:32
away from its sort of identity. It doesn't doesn't feel like
47:36
it's got the oomph that Stormbringer had because I, when
47:41
I was reviewing these, these hero trees leading up to the
47:43
wall within, it was really easy to sell Stormbringer to anyone.
47:48
Because the name, the way that it looks, the way that it feels
47:52
when you're playing it, it's really, it really captured like
47:55
the idea of what it was trying to do.
47:57
And then you'd look at Totemic and selling that, especially a
48:00
launch was it was really difficult.
48:03
OK, wait, wait, wait, wait. We we have to put a disclaimer
48:06
here. Totonic at the launch of the War
48:08
Within wasn't a tree that was anywhere near what it was even
48:12
in the next patch. And I I would say wasn't even
48:15
actually fully developed on launch.
48:18
It was. That's being quite generous.
48:21
I would, I would tentatively say considering it was the middle of
48:24
the expansion, it was, it was a miracle how well they brought
48:28
together that from what they initially passed because their
48:32
first pass of that tree and even their second iteration was
48:37
dubious at best. And it was, it was really
48:41
fractured. It didn't have like an idea
48:43
behind it. It was just sort of throwing
48:44
everything at the wall. And I think they almost just
48:47
sort of use that as the way of, well, people kind of like this.
48:50
So let's just lead really heavy into this now, which is fine
48:53
because it worked out in the end.
48:55
That's great. Funny to see the situation's
48:57
reverse now. But we've now we've completely
49:00
inverted were you can sell Stormbringer on the the theme
49:03
and the name, but when you get to the gameplay part of it,
49:07
there's nothing that you can really sell people other than
49:10
Tempest sounds cool and it does a lot of damage.
49:12
But the way that it feels to play is my experience with it
49:20
has been if anyone asks about Stormbringer, you have to
49:24
clarify. Have you played it on Live?
49:27
Because if they have that context, you completely change
49:30
how you talk about it. Because if they know what it's
49:34
like now, they have a really strong expectation of what it's
49:37
going to feel like in the future if they haven't tried it.
49:40
Whereas if they haven't played it before, you can kind of
49:45
compare it to some of the more boring hero talents on other
49:47
specs and they'll get the idea. And it's not massively
49:51
disappointed or like disheartening, but it really is
49:55
for anyone who's experienced it because it's took such a massive
49:58
change. So yeah, that's that's the
50:02
easiest one where every patch now I'll be watching for a storm
50:05
ringer thing, even though there's other stuff that they
50:07
could do. That's that's my go to.
50:11
Based on where things are right now, like how do you feel that
50:15
Shaman's damage profile works in the raids and in the dungeons?
50:19
Do you feel like we're like we're too early to say numbers
50:23
wise, but in terms of like, hey, now that Totemic is at a minute
50:27
and instead of being a maintenance buff, are we going
50:30
to have the oomph as we go between packs?
50:33
Are we going to have the right damage profile for the bosses
50:36
that we've tested? I I think that right now our
50:43
damage profile is very, very good from a dungeon point of
50:48
view when you've got a one minute huge burst, because I the
50:54
spec can play just do wins and do a lot of damage immediately
50:59
when a pack starts, no matter how big it is.
51:01
And it's it's really, really satisfying to do it.
51:05
That's just good. And then you've got the in
51:07
between 30 seconds, which primordial storm not as good as
51:10
it used to be by a lot, which is kind of sad, but that one is I
51:14
think they can just reach in that the the in between of the
51:17
thundering plus haste is great too.
51:20
And you also are doing quite a lot of priority damage because a
51:23
lot of your AOE stuff is coming off the fact that you're
51:25
pressing single target buttons on the thing that's important,
51:28
which naturally is like a really high value profile to be built
51:32
around. It's not quite as good as
51:35
funnel, which we've had in the past as well.
51:39
It's kind of stupid to say that an enhancement had anything in
51:41
the past because it has literally gone through every
51:43
single different iteration of what type of damage profile spec
51:46
and has have. But it's it's sort of the it's
51:50
only just behind funnel in terms of if you do all of your AOE
51:53
from hitting a one thing really hard, then you're kind of funnel
51:57
in anyway because you're just doing a single target thing.
52:00
So that part is really good too. The rate on the other hand is a
52:07
complicated discussion because it's down to how the fights are
52:11
built, where some of them it's really good.
52:15
It's really good to have a one minute or two-minute and you can
52:18
ship between them and you can see how the fight would be like
52:21
where the pain points would be solved by you changing these
52:24
around the size of the arenas. When it comes to Totemic, you
52:31
are still dragging at home around and it can be a little
52:35
bit irritating. You can lose Hot hand just by
52:39
things running away or you having to leave and not being
52:41
able to to roll it over. I think we'll eventually be able
52:46
to play around it. But the bigger one of all of it
52:50
is that there's there's more than one encounter where the the
52:54
cooldown timers seem almost intentionally built to get under
52:59
the skin of one minute or two-minute people.
53:03
Salvador is the easiest example of this in the universe.
53:05
He has a damage amp and it comes at 1:48 and last for like 15
53:12
seconds. So if at 1:48 you want a 2
53:15
minute class, you want them to hold virtually their entire
53:18
thing to get there versus like a one minute 1, they're going to
53:21
hold for all of that too. And it keeps having this ever so
53:25
slight desicc. But if you just so happen to be
53:27
one of the unique ones is a 1.5 minute call down, well, that's
53:31
perfect. That's exactly what you want for
53:33
the damage amp guy. So that part I think is that
53:38
that's not just another problem. That's just the there's going to
53:41
be that camp of people who think why, why would you do this
53:44
intentionally? But I I still think that our
53:50
profile in general, it works. We do a lot of cleave.
53:54
It's impossible to not be cleaving with the spec, which
53:58
given the Raiders has exactly 0 pure single target fights so
54:02
far, the disclaimer because two of them haven't been seen.
54:07
That's obviously good as well because you never want to be the
54:10
spec that has to give something up to do it's AOE and we just
54:12
don't give anything up. You still just just do the thing
54:15
for free. So I I think across the board
54:19
you you'd be hard pressed to not see a reason for enhancement to
54:24
work, assuming it's tuned right in the whole raid, whether it
54:28
can lift those encounters and whether or not you'll enjoy some
54:31
of them for a few reasons. Because there's quite a lot of,
54:36
let's say, not so melee friendly design decisions that have been
54:40
made and not just the usual. This raid hates melee doom
54:44
posting genuinely. This is really not built for a
54:48
melee to be able to handle exist in not half, but not far of half
54:56
of the encounters so far. So that remains to be seen, but
55:03
I, I, it's, it's in a better state than we've launched before
55:07
in expansions where we've ended up doing really well.
55:09
So I I'm relatively hopeful. Yeah, I'm really glad to hear
55:14
that. Obviously, the last thing that I
55:18
want to talk about and like I thought we would get to the
55:20
sooner, but with the UI, with the cooldown manager and they've
55:28
made of course some changes like we were talking about with
55:30
accumulating storms for good or for I'll, you no longer need the
55:34
cooldown manager to track that. But is Shaman Enhancement Shaman
55:42
supported well enough in the cooldown manager?
55:45
And what are the things that it's succeeding in?
55:47
What are the things that it needs improvement for?
55:53
It's show me to be really honest or just kind of.
55:56
I think, I think we have to be honest at this point.
55:59
Like I, I know, I know there's a lot of doom and gloom, but I
56:03
think that being honest about it, I guess just as I phrase the
56:09
question like they're what, what's the parts that they've
56:11
improved on? What are the parts that still
56:13
have the gaps? So there's definitely things
56:18
that they've removed that for better or worse, I think we're
56:22
exclusively so that they didn't have to worry about it in the
56:26
cooldown manager. And that's fine.
56:29
The the the whole Tempest spending 40 to get there.
56:33
I understand that. That's not that complicated.
56:36
Even like for the most like very casual player, it's not
56:41
complicated to understand. The more I spend I eventually
56:43
get the thing, but representing that on the cooldown manager is
56:48
difficult to do and also blockading anyone from finding
56:54
some elaborate work around that definitely doesn't exist right
56:58
now. Honest.
57:01
To work out how you would have like calculated the the rate to
57:05
the next one would have been a massive advantage over somebody
57:09
who didn't have it. So that's fair.
57:11
I understand them removing those things, but, and it's quite a
57:16
large but the cooldown manager is, but it's the only word that
57:24
I can use for it. Is is not up to standard for
57:26
what enhancement needs? Because enhancement is almost
57:29
entirely built around you keeping the extreme control over
57:34
knowing the state of multiple buttons that overlap with each
57:38
other and you need to make decisions based on that.
57:41
There's not like a resource bar that can dictate how you do
57:44
everything. You have multiple plates
57:46
spinning and the cool down manager doesn't sufficiently let
57:50
you customize the layout or display the information well
57:55
enough that I think that the average person could build
57:58
something that's comfortable for them on a case by case.
58:01
And I think that enhancement is one of those specs were it is
58:03
case by case. The how you process information
58:07
when you're playing from the very, very, very top end players
58:11
to the most casual person is completely different.
58:14
And anything that you need to restrict that level of
58:17
customization will hurt someone. So I would say that we
58:23
definitely got hurt by that. And then the the biggest
58:27
elephant in the room is that no matter what, I would personally
58:33
recommend that everyone will need at least one add on to play
58:38
enhancement in midnight. And you will require an add on
58:43
to do Maelstrom because Blizzard aren't going to get that in
58:46
before the expansion. I can, I can't guarantee it, but
58:50
I can give a very heavy promise that there will not be a
58:54
conversion to a resource that they very clearly intend to do
58:58
between now and launch. It'll come later, at which point
59:02
you need an add on to confirm, convert that buff that's been
59:04
made on secret into a bar, combo points, whatever.
59:07
Like bells and whistles you want because an aura with a stack
59:10
counter or an inaccurate Blizzard overlay isn't nearly as
59:16
useful as having the thing that's accurate showing that.
59:19
So that is a minimum requirement that is completely separate to
59:24
any other spec. No other spec is going to be in
59:26
this situation where you require an add on to do a function that
59:29
the CDM will never do and then the CDM itself.
59:37
This is a much broader criticism of it, but I am incredibly
59:42
worried about the fact that there has to be someone curating
59:45
what spells are in those track lists and need to make sure it
59:48
works. Because right now there are at
59:53
least 80,000 entries in the call down manager across all the
59:58
classes and specs because every single one of them's got an ID
1:00:01
and so each one of those IDs is something that has had someone
1:00:04
going to call the manager and configure it and.
1:00:08
Having one person, because this is important enough that you
1:00:11
would need someone always looking at these each patch.
1:00:14
Having one person go through all of those and make sure that it
1:00:17
works is a pretty, pretty daunting task to assume they're
1:00:21
going to get it right every time.
1:00:22
Because if it's not right on live, if something's not
1:00:25
working, you can make a weak car and you can fix it.
1:00:27
You can you can make up for any mistake or slip up and it'll be
1:00:30
fine. You can carry on playing and
1:00:31
then it'll eventually fix it. You won't need any more.
1:00:33
That's fine. But in this case, like we've got
1:00:37
some prime examples, forceful wins is in the cooldown manager
1:00:40
that doesn't do anything anymore.
1:00:42
It's just leftover from the War Within.
1:00:44
Crash Lightning doesn't work anymore if you take the Apex
1:00:47
talent because it changes the spell ID and no one's going to
1:00:49
change the spell ID to make it work with both hot hands.
1:00:52
If you don't have the talent, but you play Totemic when you
1:00:55
proc it from the totem doesn't track it because it doesn't work
1:00:57
because it doesn't think you have it.
1:01:00
There's a it's a lot of like little minor things that will
1:01:03
get under the skin of people who want to make it work.
1:01:06
I'll like want to work with it because it's not working with
1:01:10
us. And then because every add on
1:01:13
has to draw from the cooldown manager, you're preventing
1:01:17
anybody from being able to rectify it until they get around
1:01:20
to it. Yeah, like the the situation
1:01:25
with the add-ons is that if if we were in a world where I could
1:01:29
100% trust the cooldown manager and I think that it had covered
1:01:33
everything, you can reskin it to some degree and get a extremely
1:01:41
deep level of customization that is not far removed from most non
1:01:47
computational live setups. But the cooldown manager is very
1:01:53
fragile. It can break itself.
1:01:57
It's not wholly trustworthy and some parts of it just don't work
1:02:01
like in in enhancements case, no one's got into add sound alerts
1:02:05
because you so you can't do sound alerts if you want to play
1:02:07
enhancement right now. Obviously that will be fixed,
1:02:10
but it's sort of a sign of how easily something can slip
1:02:14
through and impact the call down manager and then by extension
1:02:18
your entire gameplay experience. And because the call down
1:02:23
manager is the be all end all source of calibrating your own
1:02:28
add-ons to be incorrect. Not to say that there aren't
1:02:32
other ways of doing it for certain things, like there are
1:02:34
other UI methods of getting certain spells, but there are a
1:02:38
few where it explicitly has to come from the call down manager.
1:02:42
So if that's not working, if it breaks the like link between
1:02:47
whatever add on container yours is doing with the call down
1:02:51
manager, it completely breaks and it shuts down entirely.
1:02:55
And the call down manager breaks your add on breaks and so on.
1:02:57
Because there's like 1 hiccup in it.
1:03:00
These are all things that Adam developers will probably
1:03:02
eventually get right, but it would be a whole lot easier if
1:03:05
it wasn't. There wasn't this much friction
1:03:08
on something that they're very obviously trying to indicate
1:03:13
should be skinned if you want it to look a different way.
1:03:15
Because they said and in most cases have followed through with
1:03:21
letting you customize the entire UI.
1:03:24
Anything not related to combat in my opinion sounds a few
1:03:30
things that are going to be fixed eventually.
1:03:32
I think as they iterate is wholly customized.
1:03:36
You can make it look exactly like LVUI or your own UI or
1:03:39
anything you do everything with like a chat, your damage meter,
1:03:43
almost their damage meter, your buffs, buff frame in the corner.
1:03:47
You can make them look a certain way a new unit frames, but you
1:03:52
can't do it effectively and consistently would be single
1:03:56
most important part of the UI for anyone who's doing combat
1:04:00
content, which is your information display.
1:04:07
And I think that's come down to the restrictions they put in.
1:04:09
Some of its philosophical, but some of it is just a case of I
1:04:14
can't quite reconcile why they're being so stubborn on
1:04:16
certain specific things and it and it hurts enhancement more so
1:04:20
than not all but some specs. And when you've got a design for
1:04:28
Midnight, that's I would say a distinct improvement for getting
1:04:32
people to give it a try. It's a crying shame that they're
1:04:37
almost definitely going to bounce into the UI and be
1:04:40
playing in spite of it, not alongside it.
1:04:44
And that's really sad because there's, there's definitely been
1:04:46
some really serious work that's gone into making the spec
1:04:50
approachable but still feel like the same and fun and good.
1:04:55
And they're going to be indirectly impacted by the UI
1:04:58
work making it less coherent and less smooth.
1:05:04
So yeah, that's my soapbox on the UII don't think it's as bad
1:05:07
as everyone says it is, but I, I, I do distinctly feel for for
1:05:12
our spec on this one. OK.
1:05:15
No, I think that that is a great, great place to leave
1:05:19
this. Thank you so much for taking the
1:05:22
time to talk with me here. This has been our amazing
1:05:24
conversation when people want to hear more about Enhancement
1:05:28
Shaman. Where can we find your work?
1:05:32
The best place to find mine is is I do the wild hedge
1:05:35
enhancement guides and I do the ice veins and enhancement guide
1:05:37
too. And I've also been doing video
1:05:41
at which I intend to at least at least do right up until midnight
1:05:44
launch. We'll see how it goes after
1:05:45
because guide work becomes very time consuming, but that's on a
1:05:49
word. Wow on YouTube.
1:05:51
Now it's changed over. Thankfully, I've not got a bunch
1:05:52
of numbers anymore and that's the best place to find me.
1:05:55
Or you can find me on Earth shrine.
1:05:56
It's very easy to go in there and ping me and most of the time
1:05:59
I'll see it or I'll I'll respond to it.
1:06:01
Sometimes I forget or on Twitter I'll I'll probably like
1:06:05
commented something innocuous or complaining on them.
1:06:09
But it's it's not difficult to find me if you go searching.
1:06:13
OK, I will try all of those spots.
1:06:15
Thank you again so much. Word up and we will talk to all
1:06:20
of you later for the prime episode, which will be out
1:06:23
Thursday. Till next time guys, may all
1:06:26
your hits be crit.