I decided to take a break from the sea of endless quests in Nagrand to start running some dungeons. Amid the streamlining of this and that, and the confusing design elements which I’m pretty sure have even Blizzard confused right now, I see some things they’ve done that I really like.
I participated in this whole Time Walking event dealy they got going on every so often where you can queue for dungeons from past expansions but they drop loot that’s good for your characters today (iLvl 630’ish?). This time it’s Wrath of the Lich King. WotLK was the best expansion in WoW’s history for many reasons. I think they even had the most subscribers during those days so I bet I’m not alone in that opinion. The dungeons in WotLK are really, really good. For whatever reason, I’ve never been able to run dungeons ad nauseam quite like I can those WotLK.
Well I ran three of them last night in my 1.5 hours of play and I was able to upgrade 4 items right from dungeons. I started earning these tokens–I can’t even remember the name because WoW has so many stupid currencies–which turns out I can spend on even better gear than drops in the dungeon. Sure enough, I upgraded 6 items last night and skyrocketed my character’s potential. I’m now able to do half of the available raids in the raid finder and will start queueing for those here soon. Remember, my goal is only to see all of the content in WoD before Legion comes out.
Not only have they made old fun dungeons relevant and worth running again, but they’ve made getting gear for someone in my situation a lot easier. Those are both plusses. I’d like to see dungeons provide more opportunities for people to get gear more easily. Not only that, I’d like to see opportunities to get the gear I want more easily. But I’m also in the group that wants raids to be more about story and seeing the content rather than the challenge of grinding it out.
I found the raids extremely boring in the raidfinder, maybe it stems from the fact that they are faceroll easy and my hardcore raider is coming out from vanilla wow days.
From a game dev standpoint though, the environments are pretty nice, I also like the fact how easy it is to catch up with the baleful gear. I hate blackrock citadel though, snooze fest!
I really dislike the timewalking dungeons.
My gripe with them is the pacing; I think the picked the itemlevel wrong, it is too high to make em even remotely challenging, but too low to make em go fast, so for me they feel very slow and very easy.
I don’t mind slow and difficult, or fast and easy, but slow and easy is just a drag.
Slow as in they take a long time to complete? I’m clearing them with a random group in ~20 minutes. They are are definitely easy. What I’m shocked to see is that the item level dropping there is so much better than what drops in LFR. I’m talking like 60+ agility per item better. 640 vs. 660. I think perhaps the only LFR that will drop better gear will be a couple of pieces in the last raid.
The hellfire LFR drops 675 or 685 depending on the boss so much better than the timewalking stuff. Timewalking is great for gearing up new 100s and filling in gaps without spending a billion apexis but given when it came out I don’t think they could have made the gear worse than blackrock foundry LFR (660).
They aren’t terribly difficult but they are harder than draenor heroic dungeons. As a healer if people screw up pulls or purposely pull too much it gets pretty dicey.
I might be more geared than I thought then because the Timewalking heroics are incredibly easy. The groups I’m in haven’t appeared to be that special but we’re pulling tons and tons of trash, like 3-4 pulls worth at a time that would have killed us back in WotLK, and AoEing it all down.
Good to hear that Hellfire LFR is better, though. I haven’t even started my Tanaan apexis grinding or anything. I don’t even know how any of that works.
In timewalking all gear scales down to the same ilvl but there are few ways to still min/max. Procs and set bonuses on old items, enchanting literally everything, and then having a ton of gems can make a huge difference.
I haven’t done any of that and disc priest and mistweaver are notoriously bad in 5 mans so it could explain why i was having throughput issues on some tanks.
I guess that’s something to work towards right?
Gems are something I’ve neglected entirely. I’m pretty sure my gear doesn’t even have gem slots. 😆
Yeah they dont now but some pieces from past expansions had as many as 3 slots. Thats 30 extra agility while in timewalking which is like triple what the item has by itself.
Super easy 20 minute loot? Does anybody else remember where that always ends up?
@Sanz: Typically speaking, when it’s just something I’m doing as filler and for fun I prefer it to be a little more on the easy and quick side. It’s all a means to an end, and content I’ve done many times before. And I’m on this kick lately of wanting my themeparks to be extra themeparky. It’s like at Disneyland, I don’t want to wait in line for the rides. Let me get on them and ride them as many times as I want without a wait! That certainly wouldn’t diminish my experience any.
Spin that hamster wheel! Weeeeee! 😛