Prepare to unlock the mysteries of Azeroth as we bring you a feast of weekly updates and class-specific insights from the ever-evolving realm of World of Warcraft. This episode is your ticket to mastering the latest strategies, whether you're braving mythic dungeons with their tricky affixes or clashing swords in the innovative Deep Hall Ravine battleground. From world bosses to the nitty-gritty of the alpha's newest content, we've got your back. Plus, we're tackling the game-changing shift to account-wide achievements and how it revolutionizes your Warband’s journey in the alpha.
Join us as we break down the Shadowlands class talent revamps with a keen eye on the Brewmasters, Rogues, and Destruction Warlocks – each facing a bevy of new abilities and altered talents to harness. Discover how these updates will reshape your combat strategy and adapt your gameplay in both PvE and PvP landscapes. Then, we segue into the tangled web of the gearing system, weighing the impact of multi-character gear management and the fluctuating "flavor of the month" metas. Hear our candid debate on the balance between honor and conquest gear in PvP, and find out why skill might just be your greatest weapon against gear level discrepancies. It's a conversation full of insights and tips you won't want to miss!
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
Prepare to unlock the mysteries of Azeroth as we bring you a feast of weekly updates and class-specific insights from the ever-evolving realm of World of Warcraft. This episode is your ticket to mastering the latest strategies, whether you're braving mythic dungeons with their tricky affixes or clashing swords in the innovative Deep Hall Ravine battleground. From world bosses to the nitty-gritty of the alpha's newest content, we've got your back. Plus, we're tackling the game-changing shift to account-wide achievements and how it revolutionizes your Warband’s journey in the alpha.
Join us as we break down the Shadowlands class talent revamps with a keen eye on the Brewmasters, Rogues, and Destruction Warlocks – each facing a bevy of new abilities and altered talents to harness. Discover how these updates will reshape your combat strategy and adapt your gameplay in both PvE and PvP landscapes. Then, we segue into the tangled web of the gearing system, weighing the impact of multi-character gear management and the fluctuating "flavor of the month" metas. Hear our candid debate on the balance between honor and conquest gear in PvP, and find out why skill might just be your greatest weapon against gear level discrepancies. It's a conversation full of insights and tips you won't want to miss!
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go through a variety of subjects With regards to World of Warcraft. Stick around for a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be looking at the latest iteration of the War of Alpha, as well as some forum bits and bobs mainly to do with PvP. And yeah, that's what we're doing, I guess, this week. But as always, we'll get started in the weekly news. We have Strewn Run Zirconi, elders and Aerostar as your weekly world bosses for the week, aerostar being the what is it called? Awakened world boss for the week. As well. As it's not Aborus, it's Amir Drasil, the Dream's Hope, is the raid that is awakened for the week. So if you want higher item level pieces of gear from raiding, you want to be doing that that raid rather than the other two. You also are looking at dragon flight to dungeons as your bonus event for the week. What this means is you get an extra piece of gear via doing mythic dungeons and or normal dungeons or heroic dungeons, anything like that, whilst doing dungeons this week. So make sure, if you are gearing something for PvE. You are definitely pushing as much as you can this week to get the items that you want. How have I spelled this? Deep6 is your. What is it? Brawl for the week. Essentially, this is a 6v6, and it's just a few of the battlegrounds that are in the game. So Wars of Gold, which being one of them, I think Arathi might be one, like Temple of Kotmogu, them sort of things, they are 6v6, only you don't have the extra four people, so everything that you do in them battlegrounds matters a bit more.
Speaker 1:
Incomporal, spiteful and tyrannical are your mythic affixes for the week. Incomporal, essentially, there are minions that spawn and you just have to cc them. Very simple, spiteful. When you kill a enemy minion, it summons these spiteful shades. You simply want to kite them, slow them, push them away. They'll die off on their own. But you can also use them as sort of uh numbers, or you can use that to pad the meters, the dps meters. Essentially, as it were, um, and get more astral power. If you're a boomkin, get more procs. If you're a mage, war warlock, whatever you are essentially. And Tyrannical is the final mythic affix, and this is where the bosses have more health and the minions that they spawn have more health and damage as well. They want to bring a talent build that can accommodate for that.
Speaker 1:
So let's get into the alpha. This week we obviously get the last zone'm gonna butcher this, ajkahet, I believe it is called. You have two new dungeons city of threads and arakara, city of echoes. Okay, a couple cities there, very nice. You have a new battleground that they are testing out.
Speaker 1:
This is the deep hall ravine. This is the mix between what I believe is either storm and the oh what's the minecart, one silver shard mines. It's a mix between that is what people have been saying and it is, uh, themed in the ringing deeps where the foreman us jacks, and architect Rufius have tasked with collecting as much valuable ore, gems and crystals for their retrospective priorities. Rufius, the unbound earthen, has big plans for the ore and gems found in the ravine, but the machine speakers of the earthenworks are quite possessive of such precious minerals of the earthen works are quite possessive of such precious minerals as jacks and his team plan to secure these minerals before rufius and his band of misfits get their hand on it. Okay, no idea who these characters are, but I'm guessing we'll figure that out when we do questing.
Speaker 1:
So mechanics of it it is an 8v8 and a 10v10 battleground that will be available in battleground modes. It's a hybrid map in which teams earn points by controlling either of the two active mine carts that move along the tracks on the map or capturing a lucrative gem, the deep pool crystal that is located in the middle of the map. Okay, so two carts and one capture point? Very nice. The deep pool crystal can be returned to either capture point located on the high ground on the opposite sides of the map. Additionally, there's a mine cart track that runs above the battlegrounds play space where players can hop in a cart vehicle to quickly traverse the map, allowing for quick engagements and repositioning how to play.
Speaker 1:
Test. Open the group finder default hotkey, then select random battleground and click join battle. Only the deep hole ravine map will be available as a random battleground map for the alpha. So you only have to do as what is instructing you there. You simply join a random battleground and you will only get that as the battleground. They have not included any of the older ones, such as Warsome Gulch, arathi, basin, eye of the Storm, etc. So if you want to playtest that, you can simply do that in the alpha.
Speaker 1:
War Bans. Roughly 2,000 achievements from Dragonflight and earlier have been switched from character-specific to account-wide in order to allow your entire Warband to make progress on them. Please note, based on the quirks of implementation, any incomplete achievements that were converted will lose all progress on alpha. With this change in the live game the achievements will go through a conversion process which will even merge, process across all characters in your warband together or take the furthest progress from each character in cases where merging wouldn't make sense, eg working the aisles obtain 100 skill points in a legion category of two primary professions. Okay, kind of makes sense. Um, character level you now may. You can now play, test a level 78 character template and get up to your maximum level, which is level 80. Um, and the irving characters have been temporarily disabled. Hmm, I wonder what bug has caused that. But please, whenever you are testing this, newer characters you remake your old ones. So you make a level 78 character template so that you can level, because there might be bugs with the previous ones. They do really suggest this strongly, so please do it.
Speaker 1:
Classes the following hero talents are available for playtesting Shaman, stormbringer, which is the elemental enhancement. So Stormbringer, shamans are all about harnessing the storms, increasing the power of their lightning spells and gaining access to a new lightning ability Tempest. Okay, nothing else on that, I guess. Yeah, that's it. Death Knights have got a lot of stuff. Death Knights have gotten a rework, it seems. So. New talent Subduing Grasp.
Speaker 1:
When you pull an enemy, the damage they deal to you is reduced by 4% for 6 seconds, located at Rune Mastery's previous location. New talent Osmosis. Anti-magic shell increases healing received by 15. 25, that's really good in pvp. Um, new talent null magic that's actually really good, because you can combo that with ams and then you, uh, death strike. That's going to be stupid. Uh, new talent, null magic. Magic damage taken is reduced by 15 and the duration of harmful magic effects against you are reduced by 35%. Wow, okay, it's on a capstone choice node with vestial shell replacing soul reaper. Okay, so this is vestial shell casting. Anti-magic shell. Grants two nearby allies a lesser anti-magic shell that absorbs magic damage and reduce the duration of harmful magic effects against them by 50 percent. Okay, so you get to either help out your team or you can make yourself very tanky against magical damage. That's fine.
Speaker 1:
Um, new talent ice prison great chains of ice now also roots enemies for four seconds, but its cooldown is increased to 12 seconds. Available in gate one after blinding sleet this will not be taken. Uh, in pve, this will be taken. In pvp, this will not be taken. Uh, new talent rune protection your chance to be critically struck is reduced by 3% and your armour is increased by 3. Slash 6%. Replace icy talons or positioning within the tree okay, not bad. Chains of ice now granted. Baseline. Anti magic shower is now baseline. Rune of the stone skin gargoyle can now be reforged on one handed weapons. Rune of hysteria has been removed. Empower runeia has been removed. Empowered Rune weapon has been removed. Okay, a-bomb Limb no longer grants Bone Shield. Rune of Corruption and Rime-based on specialization Rune of the Apocalypse has been updated.
Speaker 1:
The war effect damage taken increased to 4% was 1. What damage taken? Why would it increase the damage that you take? That seems a bit weird. Oh wow, pestilence effect damage increased by 500%. That's kind of crazy. And in effect, damage dealt the caster reduced by five percent was two percent and death effect healing reduction increased it to five percent was one percent. So you have a 25 chance to get a really, really good sort of damage increase. That's not bad and the thing is like the other effects aren't even that much of a hindrance. You're just kind of going on.
Speaker 1:
Um, well, essentially rng, which isn't great. Um, everything else has been moved about and stuff like that. Um, but yeah, this is like baseline. By the way, this is baseline death knights, but, unholy, you have a few other bits and bobs. So, new talent doomed bidding, consuming. Sudden doom calls upon a magus of the dead to assist you for eight seconds. Now, a choice node with summon gargoyle. That seems very bad, I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 1:
New talent raise abomination Summons, an abomination to attack nearby enemies, applying festering wound with its melee attacks and inflicting all nearby enemies with plague. Essentially, 90 second cooldown replaces army of the dead. Um, I don't really know enough about unholy death knights to say if this will be good or not. I think it has potential. Potential like possibly, new talent foul infectious, your disease deals 10% more damage and have a 5% chance to critically strike straight up damage increase. Everyone kind of likes that menacing magus. Your magus of the dead shadow bolt now fires a volley at shadow bolts up to 4 nearby enemies. That's pve related. That is pve. I do not care.
Speaker 1:
With all due respect, like some of these need to be pvp changes. Some of these need to be looked at. For people changes, um, there is a lot of things that are obviously tweaked in terms of like numbers wise, though, cooldowns are a bit longer. Um, maybe they have a longer cooldown, maybe they're a bit shorter of a cooldown. All of that stuff.
Speaker 1:
Augmentation has a new talent. Looking at this arcane reach, the range of your helpful magical spells is increased by five yards. Okay, so they kind of kind. Are they going to address the range issues of evoker? But that's the problem with them, because they can cast while moving with the hover and stuff. I don't know how they're going to do that. Um, what's this? Living bomb? Damage increased by 100 does not increase in pvp combat. That's good, um, because people will just get one shot by living bomb then. That's kind there's nothing too crazy. You have brewmaster stuff now. Brewmaster I'm not very much aware of what they have, but there's new talents, so we're going to look at them.
Speaker 1:
Elixir of determination when you fall below 40, you gain an absorb for 100 recently purified damage, or a minimum of 20 of your maximum health of a fat shield, and this can occur every 15 seconds. That's kind of crazy. A strike at dawn, rising sun, kick ranks a stack of Elusive Brawler no idea what that is, new Talent, one with the Wind. You have a 10% chance to not reset your Elusive Brawler stacks on a successful dodge. I'm guessing this is something for like I don't know their dodge chance, from what I'm gathering, but who knows? New Talent, august Blessing from what I'm gathering, but who knows? New talent, august Blessing. When you would be healed above maximum health, you instead convert an amount healed to equal to 40% of your critical strike chance. You will heal over time. Effect Seems very weird like a critical strike chance, but okay, not bad.
Speaker 1:
New talent, ox Stance Casting, purifying Brew grants charges slash stacks of ox stance based on stagger level. When you take damage that is greater than 60% of your current health, a charge is consumed to increase the amount you stagger. So stagger for brewmasters if people are unaware. You essentially, if you take 100 damage as a hit, instead you take 50 damage and you stagger 50 of it, and this stagger may be over the course of five seconds. You take the extra 50 damage, so 10 damage a second. That's what their passive is essentially. That's what makes them relatively decent at tanking, because not everything is a massive hit at once. They can stagger out the damage over the course of a certain like time period. Now, obviously, this stagger does like uh stack, so if you take another 100 damage, then suddenly you've taken 100 damage, just as burst damage, but you've got 100 damage to still go, so instead you're taking 20 damage per second. You know that kind of thing and that's what stagger is for brewmasters.
Speaker 1:
New talent black ox adept. Rising sun kick grants a stack of ox stance. Okay, uh. New talent heightened guard ox stance when I'll trigger when an attack is larger than 50 of your current health. I feel like there's never anything like that, but who knows? Um, then everything else is just a few bits and bobs that are like weaked a bit.
Speaker 1:
Rogue has a new talent, shadowheart Leech, increased by 3%, while stealth what. That seems really weird. Aerobic Strikes has been redesigned. Auto attacks increase auto attack damage and movement speed by 1% for 3 seconds. Stacking up ten percent. Uh is no longer increased the oh. So this is where they're like stopping the uh range increases of melees. So they did this with druids and feral druids. They took away their ranged uh abilities from them, so you have to be a melee to do your damage. The thing is, I find it funny that they're taking away the rogue ones and the feral droid ones, but paladins are still throwing hammers at me from like 20 to 30 yards, and, yeah, so are demon hunters, you know, it's that kind of thing. It seems a bit ridiculous. Hopefully they target that sort of range next. Uh, in my opinion. But this is something, this is something. This is something.
Speaker 1:
Assassination has a new talent Rapid injection. Envenom deals 10% increased damage while Envenom's effect is active. Nothing too crazy, to be honest. They no longer have sepsis. Okay, sepsis has been removed. That's interesting. Adrenaline rush has been updated. No longer increases global cooldown recovery rate by 25%, while active Now increases global cooldown recovery rate equal to your haste up to 25% Now. Increases energy regen by 50%. Was 60%? Okay, again, sepsis has been removed. A few bits and bobs have been nerfed, buffed and stuff, but nothing too crazy to go over.
Speaker 1:
Destruction Warlocks have new talents. The Destruction Warlock has new talents. Increase the critical strike chance of your destruction spells by 5% Nothing too crazy. Ember Storm. Increase the damage done by your fire spells by 5% nothing too crazy, ember storm. Increased the damage done by your fire spells by 2-4% and reduced the cast time of your incinerate spell by 10-20%. Not bad? No, no, they didn't. They brought back decimating bolt. Oh my god, decimating bolt hurls bolts of decimating magic at your target, dealing shadow damage and increase the damage of your next three incinerates. Uh, by 40. Decimating bolts damage and bonus to incinerating bolt as your target's health increases. And the bone. Okay, that seemed a bit weird.
Speaker 1:
Decimating bolt was the maldraxxus Covenant ability for Warlocks. It was an amazing ability. I thought it was very cool. I thought it was like a nice little combo piece. I'm glad that they're bringing it back. I'm glad that they are bringing some of these things back, which is really good.
Speaker 1:
New talent, summoners, embrace. Increase the damage dealt by your spells and your demon by 3%. Well, well, that's a must-have for pvp. I would have thought. Uh, ruin has been redesigned. Increased the critical strike damage of your destruction spells by five slash ten percent. That's rough. That's really, really rough. The way that destralox killed stuff in this current meta anyway, this is um dragonflight, but is through that ruin. So you fire a chaos bolt and what ruin does currently is when you get 15 stacks of it, like when you've spent 15 soul shards. Uh, the next chaos bolt that you uh, cast is half the cast time. It's half the cast time, that's it. That's all it does now. It's really, really good, but it's kind of rough.
Speaker 1:
Inferno has been redesigned. Rain of fire damage is increased by 20 and its soul shard cost is reduced by one. I don't remember if inferno is the talent where it can generate soul shards. I'm pretty sure it is, so warlocks in pve will have to figure something out other than spam. Rain of fire.
Speaker 1:
Decimation has been redesigned. Your incinerate and conflag casts on the target have a 35% or less health. Cast on targets that are 35% or less health. Reduce the cooldown of soul fire by five seconds. That's useless. I'm not going to lie. Chaos Incarnate has been redesigned. Chaos Bolt, rain of Fire and Shadowbound always gain 70% of the maximum benefit of your mastery. That's the one at the very bottom of the talent tree. That's the one on the same thing as the portals, the same choice node as portals. It's all right, but it's not great. Chaos Bolt has been removed from destruction specialization tree and is now baseline. Okay, good, some flag has been moved to row one. That's fine. All of that is fine. Um yeah, nothing too crazy there.
Speaker 1:
You have a few user and like accessibility, like uh things in the next alpha patch as well. So improve clarity when enchanting items, um items or updates to many world map icons, including rare, rare elites, cave entrances, all of that stuff. Check boxes for tracking uh, you've been added to the quest log for easier management. Characters on the character select screen are now directly clickable within the screen. Oh, that's amazing. You can just so with the warbands. You have your four characters, like on the screen, you can just click on them. Oh, that's amazing. That's a small change that I think a lot of people actually really enjoy. I, that's one that I'm actually quite excited for. I'm not gonna lie, it only took them 20 years, but you know it's there now.
Speaker 1:
The group manager has been upgraded with new art and feature improvements, including additional options to restrict groupings. Easier access to both world and unit raid markers. Ui panel reorganized so related options are together in sections. Added instance options previously only found in the character portrait. Drop down Health bars have been updated with visualizations that show the percentage of temporary max health that is depleted. That's really cool. So what this means is, if you use a rallying cry from a warrior, you will be able to see how much health it will drop you when it fades. That's the same with uh battle masters for pvp. Um, that's really good. I think that is a very positive change, in my honest opinion. So that actually took a lot longer than I thought it would.
Speaker 1:
So let's get on to a couple of forum things. These are very small ones, aren't crazy, but these are ones that I want to pull out or actually say this is a good forum. The first one is this, and I think a lot of people will have their own thoughts on this Shadowlands Gearing was not as bad as people think. Yeah, let that title sink in for a second. Firstly, I don't even need to read this to know that he's wrong, but let's see what he says.
Speaker 1:
One of the reasons it was better was because it substantially hindered people's abilities to re-roll to flavor. They would need to spend days, if not weeks, getting farmed by people to fully gear an overpowered spec. They re-rolled to, probably making it less popular, and then many times, by the time that they geared it, nerfs came in so they would go back to uh. So they would be back to getting farmed to try and chase the meta again. Another was because it gave you an actual player power to work towards rather than just a cosmetic reward. Another reason it was good was because it increased participation, benefiting mmr, among many others. Firstly, having a system that takes weeks to gear up new characters when you have let's see how many races are there? Now there's, they're in the 20s, if not 30s now, um, you have how many classes? I think it's in the teens now. You have evoker, that came out, demon hunter that came out, death knight that came out, monk that came out these are just from the expansions like newer classes that came out like. If people want to test out like a class during an expansion, why aren't they allowed to?
Speaker 1:
Everyone's problem with the World of Warcraft in the previous expansions has been ulting and that is all the way back in Legion. That's when the problem arose, because artifact weapons were a thing. So you had to keep on top of your artifact power or ults as well if you wanted to do anything on your ults. If you wanted to do anything in BFA, you had to keep on top of your artifact power or alts as well if you wanted to do anything on your alts. If you wanted to do anything in bfa, you had to keep on top of your azurite power. You know your little heart of azeroth, your necklace. If you wanted to do anything in shadowlands you had to keep on top of your covenants, your renown, and that was a ball ache, to say the least. And all of these expansions had one theme that everyone hated and and that was it was nowhere near alt-friendly, I think.
Speaker 1:
Dragonflight, yes, people re-roll, people re-roll. That's fine. Like they can do what they want. If they want to do a flavour of the month thing, let them. I'm by all means happy just playing what my class is. This guy's a Retribution Paladin, I believe. Like, or he's a paladin at the very least. This person is in one of the best classes in the game in my opinion at the moment, or most versatile classes, because you don't really get hard countered by a lot of things.
Speaker 1:
There is a decent matchup for a lot of rep paladins out there, depending on what you're running with, especially if it's rep warrior, whether it's rep dk rep like mage, who knows. Whatever you're running rep with, like all of it is a decent matchup. There is no like we're gonna get absolutely smoked. You can maybe get smoked by certain comps, but every comp has that you. You know it is what it is. But paladins are very versatile in Blessing of Sank, freedom, bubbles, bops, hand of Sacrifice, lay on Hands. You know you have many different things to utilize. But if people want to re-roll for like flavor of the month, by all means let them re-roll. It doesn't matter. I think that if anything it allows people to enjoy the game more, you're allowed to re-roll as well. There's nothing stopping you from re-rolling. You are in the same boat as everyone else. Everyone's in the same boat here. So you can re-roll to a class that you know is flavor of the month. Nothing's stopping you. But you know some people just want to complain about it.
Speaker 1:
Now, the reason people hated dragon or shadowlands was because of the gearing. First of all, you needed about 15k honor to even get honor gear and then you could go into arenas. Now, honor isn't easy to farm. Really, you farm it relatively quick in dragonflight because you can just get honor gear very easily now in comparison. Or you can buy some like shittier gear off the auction house. That translates into pvp gear, um, and then you do arenas and you know, eventually you'll just get honor gear, conquest gear etc. But you needed honor gear to even stand a chance, um, and then what you did was you went into arenas.
Speaker 1:
Now, depending on your rating, you might be going up against people who are 50 item levels higher than you. How is that fair in any way at all? I get that there should be some discrepancy between um, conquest and, uh, you know, honor gear. But when it is that much of a gap, even if you're a lot more skilled than the other team, you are going to get decimated and that's the shit thing. Now people who are in Honor Gear should have an uphill battle against Conquest players. That's not what I'm not saying. I do believe that like thoroughly. But if you are skilled enough, you should be able to overcome that disadvantage.
Speaker 1:
But even with 50 item levels, you could be rank one players and you could put rank one players against myself and who I play with, and it would be very, very tough for the rank one players to actually beat us like in shadowland sort of gearing. If they were in honor gear and we were in the full like upgraded pvp conquest gear, I just don't think that it would be possible for them to do what they usually would be able to do, which is probably decimate us. To be honest, um, the ranking system just didn't help with the like ranking up of gear as well. So when you hit a specific bracket in shadowlands, you were able to level up your gear, and what this meant was you had to spend more honor to level up your gear, and this usually meant it was about 10 to 15k honor that you spent to level it up. And if you didn't have that honor, you would have to either do battlegrounds to get the honor or you'd have to risk going into arenas again to get that honor as well. But the thing is, if you drop below that threshold, that rating threshold, you wouldn't be able to upgrade the gear and then you would have to make that rating back again.
Speaker 1:
So do you see where the problem is? There was so many fundamental flaws in Shadowlands gearing. It's unreal. You cannot defend it. There's no way you can defend it at all. It is ridiculous. But again, nothing is stopping you from re-rolling. If you want the flavour of the month class, you know. Just do it yourself. It's that simple. This is one of the worst takes I think I've seen on the forums, because you cannot defend like the Shunlands gearing system for PvP at all. In my honest opinion, there's no chance at all. But that is where I will end it today. Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff happening over there. Thank you all very much for listening. And go aval a friend, goodbye. All do do, thank you.
