With both the late-expansion doldrums kicking in and all of us being cooped up in our homes while a horrific virus spread across the world, Blizzard gave everyone a 100% bonus experience buff, which, while intended to be just until the end of April, is now going to last until the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More recently, they introduced a reputation buff for everything in Legion and BFA (except, sadly, the slow-going Rajani and Uldum Accord), likely to help people unlock Allied Races. The latter buff is going to be redundant when 9.0 comes out, though, as allied races will no longer require exalted reputations.
The thing is, I wonder if this experience buff is actually going to be similarly redundant.
Shadowlands will profoundly change leveling in WoW by squishing things down to a cap of 60 again, after the many expansions that came out since launch had doubled it to 120 by BFA.
120 characters will wake up on 9.0 day at level 50, with ten levels to go through Shadowlands (I wonder if they will plan more squishes, or if they're pretty happy to have bought themselves another 16 years). Characters who aren't at the cap yet, I believe, will be at a proportionate level. If you've got a character at level 60 now, they'll be (I think) level 25.
Next, level scaling is going to change.
Brand new players - as in a new account that hasn't played WoW before - will spend the first 10 levels in a new starting experience called Exile's Reach. Then, those brand-new players will be sent into BFA content to go from 10-50.
Veteran players will be able to choose whether to start in Exile's Reach or their old racial starting zone, and when they hit 10, they can choose any pre-Shadowlands path to take - such as Northrend or Draenor or Cataclysm's revamped vanilla zones, etc., which will take them to 50.
Allied races and hero classes will start at 10.
Here's the thing:
If we assume that the entire 10-50 climb can be achieved all in BFA leveling zones, that suggests strongly that leveling is going to be a hell of a lot faster. Consider that today, when you hit 110, you're expected to go to Zandalar/Kul Tiras for your last ten levels before hitting the cap. In 9.0, that will be the vast majority of your entire leveling experience pre-Shadowlands.
Playing through most of the quests in a zone, maybe hitting each of the level-up dungeons, is going to take less than 24 hours of play, I'd think. It can't take longer, because if it does, players will just run out of things to do in Kul Tiras/Zandalar. So my assumption is, instead, that you'll be dinging like crazy while going through Drustvar or Vol'dun.
I'd assume that the same will be true if you pick earlier expansions' content - I, for one, still love leveling in the Broken Isles, and I assume that if you can do all of 10-50 in BFA's continents, you should be able to do the same in Legion's.
Of course, I'd assume that Shadowlands' leveling zones will have roughly the same required time commitment to get through as previous expansions' 10-level range have had, which means, then, that a character who levels up entirely in Shadowlands will zoom from 10 to 50 (I assume 1-10 won't be super long either) and will then makes Shadowlands' zones feel like molasses in comparison.
Still: right now, with the buff, leveling feels really fast and fluid, but if Shadowlands leveling works like I think it's going to, it's going to make this buff feel like nothing.
I finally decided to take my Kul Tiran Druid up from 110-120 (establishing himself as my primary Druid!) and with just an hour or two of questing in Drustvar, if that, he's already 113 and halfway to 114 - with more than half the zone left to do.
Now, admittedly, with the buff, he's chopping through this content at twice the speed. We could assume that without the buff he'd finish Drustvar at around 113ish, forcing him to hit all three Kul Tiras zones.
But with a legion of allied race alts very gradually climbing the leveling latter (my Highmountain Tauren and Vulpera Rogue are now in the Pandaria/Cataclysm range, while my Mechagnome, Zandalari Troll, and Mag'har Orc are in the Northrend/Outland stretch, which I think is the slowest currently) I'm aware that even with this 100% XP buff and the 50% (I think) you get with a full set of heirlooms, it still takes a long time to level up. Even as scaling has allowed you to pick between the pairs of the game's first four expansions, it's still a ton of content to get through.
The whole point of the level squish is that Blizzard has recognized that as a problem. Yes, there's a ton to the World of Warcraft, and if Classic has taught us anything, it's that people want to be able to access that old stuff even when it is very old. But given that the life of the game really is at the level cap, it's a good idea to let players get there in a reasonable amount of time.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Build Your Castle: A Hypothetical D&D Campaign
One of the curses of D&D is that you'll always have more ideas than you can actually put into practice. If I could I'd be running like five different games and playing ten different characters. But absent that, I have a blog where I can write about what could be.
I got the following idea while reading the description of the Hallow spell. Like a lot of long-term defensive spells, the idea is generally for NPCs to use these and for the party to have to deal with them. However, that needn't always be the case.
Here's the pitch:
The entire campaign is built around defending a particular location. There is something profoundly important there that the villains want to get - maybe it's the last remnant of a dead god, a portal to an outer plane, or a weapon that could be used to unleash terrible devastation on all of creation. It's a McGuffin.
The point is that the party will need to defend it. They're going to be staying in that location and fighting monsters there.
So how do you keep it from getting dull?
Here's the thing: in tier 1, the party will get the funds perhaps to build some palisades, maybe a rough wooded wall, but with every assault, the walls and structures get damaged. The players might sojourn out occasionally to try to secure treasure, but the main use of that treasure is going to have to be securing the position.
As a DM, you'll need to come up with costs for building and maintaining the fortifications, each of which need to be destructible. To make sure that the party isn't just going to save that money for their own purposes, you need to also send bigger hordes of monsters than the party could typically handle. If you're going to do a campaign like this, you'll want to make sure your players are on board and understand how it will work.
What's fun, though, is that the players will essentially be designing the fort. Let them choose where walls, portcullises, moats, and towers stand. You can maintain a map that will evolve and change as the party alters the fort.
Then, you're going to send massive hordes of bad guys. Say the party is well-equipped to fight a single Balgura - send three at them, so they'll have to make use of their fortifications to keep the demons at range or at least bottleneck them so they only face one at a time (it might help here if monsters can't pass through their allies' spaces).
Every piece of fortification will have HP, and you can give it more as they upgrade from, say, wood to stone to enchanted dwarven masonry. Then, you start unleashing more complex hordes upon them with siege monsters sent specifically to destroy the fortifications.
Perhaps getting the more complex defensive features will require difficult challenges away from the fort. I really recommend checking out the special ship equipment in Ghosts of Saltmarsh for some inspiration.
Next, you could have a village that grows up around the fort. Maybe the party needs to help defend that as well. You needn't skimp on RP or NPCs in this type of game - indeed, you might have a great opportunity for recurring NPCs with their own problems. Maybe the stone mason they pay to build their walls is having trouble with her workers, or the woodsmen providing you lumber are being attacked by fey in the forest. Perhaps your powerful magical wards keep getting dispelled because there's a spy in town who has been telling your enemies about what wards you've been putting up.
Spells like Mighty Fortress might trivialize some of the fort-building when you get to later levels, but on the other hand, its 500g cost will add up, and as DM, you'll just need to send some nasty beasts that can chew through its walls with ease.
It might be tempting to make every creature that attacks a Siege Monster, but I think you'll have more interesting encounters if you vary it up. Having siege monsters that focus on the structures while the others attack the players will force the players to make tactical decisions - yes, that Sunder Shaman is dealing double-damage to our wall, but we might need to sacrifice the wall to buy us some time to take down this Death Knight - or alternatively, this Death Knight nasty, but if that wall goes down, a dozen Archers are going to pincushion us, so we need to kill the Sunder Shaman first.
Admittedly, running big siege battles can be very complicated - D&D is built around a party of fewer than 10 people fighting a handful of monsters, and so tracking all the mercenaries and allied cavalry the party might want to hire could get difficult. Using mass combat rules as found in the DMG (page 250) can help smooth this, or you could encourage the party to hire elite mercenaries (as in, a single CR 5ish stat block rather than 20 CR 1/4 ones) and likewise use tougher enemies, but fewer of them.
One key here is that if the party starts magically warding things, make the enemies smart - but not omniscient. Again, using your nearby village as a place for intrigue will let the bad guys make attempts to find out what they'll be facing in the siege. Hell, the party might then be encouraged to switch things up frequently as your big bad starts sending a bunch of mages to dispel magic only for the party to swap to spike traps and the like.
Now, where does the party get the funding to build their fortifications? One option is to basically have them slide backwards into nobility, charging taxes to the village that enjoys their protection. They can certainly take things off the enemies they slay, but you also might have the party have to seek out not only allies but financiers - securing a grant from a local noble or royal by convincing them that the place needs defending.
I have no idea if I'll ever have the time to run such a campaign, but I do have to say that it sounds like a lot of fun.
I got the following idea while reading the description of the Hallow spell. Like a lot of long-term defensive spells, the idea is generally for NPCs to use these and for the party to have to deal with them. However, that needn't always be the case.
Here's the pitch:
The entire campaign is built around defending a particular location. There is something profoundly important there that the villains want to get - maybe it's the last remnant of a dead god, a portal to an outer plane, or a weapon that could be used to unleash terrible devastation on all of creation. It's a McGuffin.
The point is that the party will need to defend it. They're going to be staying in that location and fighting monsters there.
So how do you keep it from getting dull?
Here's the thing: in tier 1, the party will get the funds perhaps to build some palisades, maybe a rough wooded wall, but with every assault, the walls and structures get damaged. The players might sojourn out occasionally to try to secure treasure, but the main use of that treasure is going to have to be securing the position.
As a DM, you'll need to come up with costs for building and maintaining the fortifications, each of which need to be destructible. To make sure that the party isn't just going to save that money for their own purposes, you need to also send bigger hordes of monsters than the party could typically handle. If you're going to do a campaign like this, you'll want to make sure your players are on board and understand how it will work.
What's fun, though, is that the players will essentially be designing the fort. Let them choose where walls, portcullises, moats, and towers stand. You can maintain a map that will evolve and change as the party alters the fort.
Then, you're going to send massive hordes of bad guys. Say the party is well-equipped to fight a single Balgura - send three at them, so they'll have to make use of their fortifications to keep the demons at range or at least bottleneck them so they only face one at a time (it might help here if monsters can't pass through their allies' spaces).
Every piece of fortification will have HP, and you can give it more as they upgrade from, say, wood to stone to enchanted dwarven masonry. Then, you start unleashing more complex hordes upon them with siege monsters sent specifically to destroy the fortifications.
Perhaps getting the more complex defensive features will require difficult challenges away from the fort. I really recommend checking out the special ship equipment in Ghosts of Saltmarsh for some inspiration.
Next, you could have a village that grows up around the fort. Maybe the party needs to help defend that as well. You needn't skimp on RP or NPCs in this type of game - indeed, you might have a great opportunity for recurring NPCs with their own problems. Maybe the stone mason they pay to build their walls is having trouble with her workers, or the woodsmen providing you lumber are being attacked by fey in the forest. Perhaps your powerful magical wards keep getting dispelled because there's a spy in town who has been telling your enemies about what wards you've been putting up.
Spells like Mighty Fortress might trivialize some of the fort-building when you get to later levels, but on the other hand, its 500g cost will add up, and as DM, you'll just need to send some nasty beasts that can chew through its walls with ease.
It might be tempting to make every creature that attacks a Siege Monster, but I think you'll have more interesting encounters if you vary it up. Having siege monsters that focus on the structures while the others attack the players will force the players to make tactical decisions - yes, that Sunder Shaman is dealing double-damage to our wall, but we might need to sacrifice the wall to buy us some time to take down this Death Knight - or alternatively, this Death Knight nasty, but if that wall goes down, a dozen Archers are going to pincushion us, so we need to kill the Sunder Shaman first.
Admittedly, running big siege battles can be very complicated - D&D is built around a party of fewer than 10 people fighting a handful of monsters, and so tracking all the mercenaries and allied cavalry the party might want to hire could get difficult. Using mass combat rules as found in the DMG (page 250) can help smooth this, or you could encourage the party to hire elite mercenaries (as in, a single CR 5ish stat block rather than 20 CR 1/4 ones) and likewise use tougher enemies, but fewer of them.
One key here is that if the party starts magically warding things, make the enemies smart - but not omniscient. Again, using your nearby village as a place for intrigue will let the bad guys make attempts to find out what they'll be facing in the siege. Hell, the party might then be encouraged to switch things up frequently as your big bad starts sending a bunch of mages to dispel magic only for the party to swap to spike traps and the like.
Now, where does the party get the funding to build their fortifications? One option is to basically have them slide backwards into nobility, charging taxes to the village that enjoys their protection. They can certainly take things off the enemies they slay, but you also might have the party have to seek out not only allies but financiers - securing a grant from a local noble or royal by convincing them that the place needs defending.
I have no idea if I'll ever have the time to run such a campaign, but I do have to say that it sounds like a lot of fun.
Squeezing Every Drop from FFVII Remake
I haven't been into a sprawling RPG like this in a long time, which is funny, as FFVIIR is not actually all that sprawling. It's the first chapter (or, more like "Book One" in those books that are technically divided into separate books) of a much larger narrative.
The thing is, it's really fun to play.
I figured out which chapter to go to in order to do the VR challenges and finish up with Chadley's various research projects (it's the penultimate one - you can find Chadley, a VR room, and a bench with a vending machine all a little past Aerith's old room in the lab, with just a very quick fight and cutscene to go through).
The VR challenges very much seem to me like the Omega Dungeon from FFX - this is the super-hard stuff that is actually harder than the final challenges of the game. In X, I actually ground in there for a long time, to the point where I was one-shotting the enemies in the Omega Dungeon, which allowed me to two-shot the final boss of the game (hilariously, Yuna was actually hitting harder than Auron, to the point where I purposely started leaving her out of the party so I could get the other characters caught up).
I've been playing around with the various characters. One ability I'm growing to love is Counterstance, which is the one you get off the Twin Stinger for Cloud. While you can parry already while blocking in Punisher mode, this costs an ATB charge but then does an absolutely massive attack, and it can parry any attack or spell. The catch, though, is that there's a short window in which Cloud will take the stance, and then he'll unleash a pretty uninspiring attack in whatever direction he was facing unless he gets hit with an attack.
If he does, however, you can blast enemies for a massive amount of damage, and I think if you time his strikes while he's making his counterattack, it'll do even more damage.
However, even as I work on mastering this technique, the first of the "hard" VR challenges has been stumping me. I can get through the first four encounters pretty easily most times, but the final fight is a huge pain. The boss can do massive amounts of lightning damage and will shred you with rotating saws if you try to get into melee - which Cloud sort of has to.
My strategy will be to use Lightning and Elemental materia linked - which both grants you some lightning damage to your melee attacks (good, given that most of the fights here, including the final one, are mechs that are weak to lightning) and also reduces lightning damage taken. The first stage of Elemental materia halves the lightning (or whatever linked element you have) damage you take. Upgrading it will make you immune, and the final stage causes you to absorb it as healing. That latter part would be amazing for this fight, given that the abilities it uses late in the fight are massive bursts of lightning damage.
What's frustrating is that I've actually killed the thing twice, but died in doing so, which does not count as a success.
Anyway, until we get a part two to this thing, your options for additional gameplay are to either do these VR challenges or play through it on your New Game+. If you truly just want to play through the game again, select chapter one and enjoy - you'll have all your unlocked weapons, items, and abilities, and upgraded Materia. You can also go on Hard Mode, which prevents you from using items as well as upping the difficulty of the fights. I managed to die on the first boss this way, which I didn't the first time.
As far as I can tell, level 50 is the cap in this game (which I just hit,) but if you want to keep upgrading your weapons, you can find additional manuals, some of which are only in hard mode. (I think I only got them from the Moogle Merchant, and thus I think only the first ones. Meanwhile, the reward for this first hard-mode VR challenge is volume XIII, which suggests to me that there are many more of these to find.)
It's pretty rare that I play a game these days that makes me want to keep playing after the credits roll.
I have no idea if they plan to carry over save data between games - on one hand, that would make sense, but on the other hand, should we have spells like Firaga after just the first chapter of the game? There's not a ton of room to grow.
So I suspect there will be a power reset, and they might just treat it as more of a sequel than the next chapter in a single game.
Still, we have no idea what timeline to expect, and certainly current circumstances throw that much farther up in the air.
The thing is, it's really fun to play.
I figured out which chapter to go to in order to do the VR challenges and finish up with Chadley's various research projects (it's the penultimate one - you can find Chadley, a VR room, and a bench with a vending machine all a little past Aerith's old room in the lab, with just a very quick fight and cutscene to go through).
The VR challenges very much seem to me like the Omega Dungeon from FFX - this is the super-hard stuff that is actually harder than the final challenges of the game. In X, I actually ground in there for a long time, to the point where I was one-shotting the enemies in the Omega Dungeon, which allowed me to two-shot the final boss of the game (hilariously, Yuna was actually hitting harder than Auron, to the point where I purposely started leaving her out of the party so I could get the other characters caught up).
I've been playing around with the various characters. One ability I'm growing to love is Counterstance, which is the one you get off the Twin Stinger for Cloud. While you can parry already while blocking in Punisher mode, this costs an ATB charge but then does an absolutely massive attack, and it can parry any attack or spell. The catch, though, is that there's a short window in which Cloud will take the stance, and then he'll unleash a pretty uninspiring attack in whatever direction he was facing unless he gets hit with an attack.
If he does, however, you can blast enemies for a massive amount of damage, and I think if you time his strikes while he's making his counterattack, it'll do even more damage.
However, even as I work on mastering this technique, the first of the "hard" VR challenges has been stumping me. I can get through the first four encounters pretty easily most times, but the final fight is a huge pain. The boss can do massive amounts of lightning damage and will shred you with rotating saws if you try to get into melee - which Cloud sort of has to.
My strategy will be to use Lightning and Elemental materia linked - which both grants you some lightning damage to your melee attacks (good, given that most of the fights here, including the final one, are mechs that are weak to lightning) and also reduces lightning damage taken. The first stage of Elemental materia halves the lightning (or whatever linked element you have) damage you take. Upgrading it will make you immune, and the final stage causes you to absorb it as healing. That latter part would be amazing for this fight, given that the abilities it uses late in the fight are massive bursts of lightning damage.
What's frustrating is that I've actually killed the thing twice, but died in doing so, which does not count as a success.
Anyway, until we get a part two to this thing, your options for additional gameplay are to either do these VR challenges or play through it on your New Game+. If you truly just want to play through the game again, select chapter one and enjoy - you'll have all your unlocked weapons, items, and abilities, and upgraded Materia. You can also go on Hard Mode, which prevents you from using items as well as upping the difficulty of the fights. I managed to die on the first boss this way, which I didn't the first time.
As far as I can tell, level 50 is the cap in this game (which I just hit,) but if you want to keep upgrading your weapons, you can find additional manuals, some of which are only in hard mode. (I think I only got them from the Moogle Merchant, and thus I think only the first ones. Meanwhile, the reward for this first hard-mode VR challenge is volume XIII, which suggests to me that there are many more of these to find.)
It's pretty rare that I play a game these days that makes me want to keep playing after the credits roll.
I have no idea if they plan to carry over save data between games - on one hand, that would make sense, but on the other hand, should we have spells like Firaga after just the first chapter of the game? There's not a ton of room to grow.
So I suspect there will be a power reset, and they might just treat it as more of a sequel than the next chapter in a single game.
Still, we have no idea what timeline to expect, and certainly current circumstances throw that much farther up in the air.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
A Bad Day in the Horrific Vision of Stormwind
While a bit repetitive, I've really enjoyed the Horrific Visions as soloable content in patch 8.3. However, today, some combination of bad luck or just being off my game has made the horrific visions this week a real pain.
It's Stormwind, which is always a little tougher, thanks to boss mechanics that are harder to avoid or interrupt you, as well as the narrow paths that tend to make things like Split Personality (which I think has now been like 4 weeks running?) a real pain.
I'm at a point where 3-mask runs are the level I'm running on my best-geared characters, and that's fairly unforgiving anyway.
Typically, I consider Mask of the Burned Bridge the default easiest one to take, as it's not terribly hard to avoid it. Next, I usually go with Dark Imagination, as when you run fast enough, you can often keep ahead of the curve, holding your sanity above 50% and thus ignoring the side effects of the mask (aside from the damage and health boost your foes get). For the third mask, I started with the Pained this week, but upon discovering that this gave Lost areas both Split Personality and the one that sometimes fears you if you stand still, that became a total nightmare - especially given how narrow spaces are in Stormwind's Lost areas - sometimes you just have to wait out Split Personality as there's literally nowhere to go.
My first run, I hit Trade District and Mage Quarter first, then Dwarven District and Old Town, but I got unlucky and stun locked right before facing Shaw, losing the run.
The second time was far more frustrating. Clearing the whole thing, I was on Alleria, with her at 2 or 3%, and I didn't quite get behind the pillar when she did her big AoE sanity attack (I had been trying to LOS the eyes you get from Shaw) and failed with about one or two attacks left to take her down.
Having sunk about 40 minutes into each failed attempt, I decided I needed a break.
I do really like these visions, though there are some fights, particularly the Alleria one, that I wish weren't quite so punishing. Comparing her to Thrall, for example: with Thrall, other than occasionally dodging out of the way of his stun or moving away for his jump thing, you can basically always be on him. Between Chain of Servitude and her Void Nova thing, and the bombs she tosses, melee character need to line of sight her constantly to avoid standing in the nasty stuff. Also, I freaking hate those eyes from the Shaw fight, which are practically unavoidable.
Still, for scaling soloable content, I'm really excited to see them apply the lessons learned in this for Torghast, which sounds like it's been a hit on the Alpha so far.
It's Stormwind, which is always a little tougher, thanks to boss mechanics that are harder to avoid or interrupt you, as well as the narrow paths that tend to make things like Split Personality (which I think has now been like 4 weeks running?) a real pain.
I'm at a point where 3-mask runs are the level I'm running on my best-geared characters, and that's fairly unforgiving anyway.
Typically, I consider Mask of the Burned Bridge the default easiest one to take, as it's not terribly hard to avoid it. Next, I usually go with Dark Imagination, as when you run fast enough, you can often keep ahead of the curve, holding your sanity above 50% and thus ignoring the side effects of the mask (aside from the damage and health boost your foes get). For the third mask, I started with the Pained this week, but upon discovering that this gave Lost areas both Split Personality and the one that sometimes fears you if you stand still, that became a total nightmare - especially given how narrow spaces are in Stormwind's Lost areas - sometimes you just have to wait out Split Personality as there's literally nowhere to go.
My first run, I hit Trade District and Mage Quarter first, then Dwarven District and Old Town, but I got unlucky and stun locked right before facing Shaw, losing the run.
The second time was far more frustrating. Clearing the whole thing, I was on Alleria, with her at 2 or 3%, and I didn't quite get behind the pillar when she did her big AoE sanity attack (I had been trying to LOS the eyes you get from Shaw) and failed with about one or two attacks left to take her down.
Having sunk about 40 minutes into each failed attempt, I decided I needed a break.
I do really like these visions, though there are some fights, particularly the Alleria one, that I wish weren't quite so punishing. Comparing her to Thrall, for example: with Thrall, other than occasionally dodging out of the way of his stun or moving away for his jump thing, you can basically always be on him. Between Chain of Servitude and her Void Nova thing, and the bombs she tosses, melee character need to line of sight her constantly to avoid standing in the nasty stuff. Also, I freaking hate those eyes from the Shaw fight, which are practically unavoidable.
Still, for scaling soloable content, I'm really excited to see them apply the lessons learned in this for Torghast, which sounds like it's been a hit on the Alpha so far.
Weapon Choice in D&D
Some characters in D&D don't really care about weapons, Especially given the existence of Cantrips, a Wizard or Sorcerer isn't going to be really that concerned with whether they have a quarterstaff or a dagger.
But if you're one of the many martial classes in D&D, weapon choice will make a difference.
Classes come with their own weapon proficiencies. Some get all Simple Weapons, some get both Simple and Martial weapons (which means everything except improvised weapons) and some get a more curated list - like Rogues, who typically stick with simple weapons but can also use things like Rapiers.
Weapon choice can have a big impact on the kind of damage you're pouring out. So what weapon should you focus on?
Naturally, if you come across a super magic Pike that does an extra 3d8 psychic damage or something like that, you can probably choose to go with it even if you've typically been using a Greatsword, but when dealing with mundane items, there are considerations to be made:
Many weapons are one-handed, which means what it says - you can hold it in one hand. This leaves the off-hand open for a shield, to cast spells with, or to hold another weapon in the off hand.
Some one-handed weapons have finesse, which allows you to use Dexterity for attack and damage rolls, which is otherwise only used for ranged weapons. Note that a Monk will effectively turn the weapons that count as Monk weapons into finesse weapons even if they aren't - so you can use that quarterstaff with dexterity.
One-handed weapons cap out with 1d8 damage - which you'll get with Longswords, Battleaxes, Warhammers, Rapiers, and Flails (and I think maybe Morning Stars?) If you can take one of these, it's typically your best option for a one-handed weapon.
However, if you want to dual-wield, fighting with a weapon in each hand, you need to get weapons with the Light property. The highest damage these typically do is 1d6, including shortswords and handaxes. Absent the two-weapon-fighting fighting style, you don't get to add your modifier to the damage off the off-hand strike. Still, the existence of magic weapons and other on-hit effects does mean that you can wind up cranking out more damage this way, so it's a viable option even if you don't take this fighting style. The other big catch with dual-wielding is that your off-hand strike will take up your bonus action, so if you are a class that likes to use those frequently, this can gum up your personal action economy. Note that the Dual Wielder feat allows you to dual-wield non-light weapons, so if you take this, you can fight with a pair of battle-axes or warhammers.
Some weapons, including Longswords, Battleaxes, and Warhammers, are "Versatile," which means that you can switch to a two-handed grip and do a bit more damage with them, typically increasing the damage to the next higher die (these go to 1d10 from 1d8). This is a good option if you want the chance to pump out a little more damage, but I recommend that you instead commit to two-handed weapons if you want to really focus on that damage.
There are a fair number of two-handed weapons, and they come in a couple of categories:
Pikes, Glaives, Halberds, Staves and Spears all count as Polearms for the sake of the Polearm Master feat, and the first three have a special feature called Reach, which extends their melee range to 10 feet rather than 5. The pikes, glaives, and halberds also do 1d10 damage, which makes them equivalent to wielding those versatile weapons, but the added range and potential interaction with Polearm Master make them a solid choice for a weapon.
For the maximum damage output options, you can go with a Greatsword, Maul, or Greataxe, though unlike their one-handed/versatile counterparts, these are not all equivalent in damage. Greatswords and Mauls both do 2d6 damage on a hit, while Greataxes do 1d12.
While these do have a the same maximum damage, the average is slightly higher for the 2d6 weapons, given that the minimum is 2, rather than 1. Also, if you have the Great Weapon Fighting fighting style, you get to re-roll 1s and 2s you roll with the weapon, which will happen more frequently for the 2d6 weapons and thus generally boost your average damage more. (2d6 winds up giving you about 8 and a third average damage with this fighting style, while 1d12 gets 7 and a third). So why would you ever take the Greataxe? Well, first off, you might just want to be able to roll that big chunky d12. But if you're playing a half-orc or Barbarian (or a half-orc barbarian,) you'll get to roll additional dice, with more as you level up, when you get critical hits, and adding a d12 rather than a d6 to your crit is obviously better. That being said, if you do some somewhat complex math, the total boost to damage here only kicks in once you're rolling a lot of extra d12s (meaning you'll have to be a very high level Barbarian) but it will, eventually, offset the lower damage for ordinary hits.
Still, this is super min-maxy, which means you should just go with what you want.
Now, mechanically, when does it not really matter what weapon you take? When is flavor really going to be the primary consideration?
Monks get to use their martial arts die in place of the weapon's typical die if they choose. While a Monk will be better off using their quarterstaff versatile-style (for 1d8 damage in two hands), once you hit tier 3, your martial arts die will already be a d8, meaning anything you fight with (including fists) will be doing that anyway.
Rogues will still use their weapon's typical damage die, but the vast majority of the Rogue's damage comes instead from Sneak Attack. By level 5, you're dealing 3d6 additional damage when you get your sneak attack in, which is roughly 10 damage. Comparing a dagger's average damage (about 2.5) with a Rapier's (4.5) means a difference between about 12.5 and 14.5 damage, which means only a 14% loss in average damage. Once at higher levels, say level 11, when your sneak attack is 6d6, or about 20 damage, that goes down to a 9% damage loss. (A rogue also might consider preferring light weapons, as your off-hand damage can also trigger sneak attack if you missed with the first attack, though this will mean not being able to use your bonus action to dodge, disengage, or hide).
Some oddball weapons can actually be very flavorful, even if they are strictly worse than others. For example, a Flail, like a Warhammer, does 1d8 bludgeoning damage, but it doesn't have the versatile property. Still, if you're committed to fighting with a shield, this winds up not making any difference, and flails are pretty cool (and historically very hard to fight effectively with!)
In fact, for DMs, I recommend giving the party the weirder weapons as magical items to force the party to consider the funkier options. Take the Lance, for example, which is a one-handed weapon that deals 1d12 damage, and has reach, but has the very odd downside of giving you disadvantage on attacks if the target is within 5 feet. I've literally never seen anyone ever use this weapon (even NPCs) but it could be really fun to make a powerfully magical one that forces your players to consider using it even though it has one very big downside.
I have a vampire-themed adventure that I'm theoretically in the middle of with my original campaign, though I've got a whole other campaign I'm running now, and in it, there's a Castlevania-inspired magic whip that deals additional damage to the Undead - compensating for the whip's typically low d4 of damage.
But if you're one of the many martial classes in D&D, weapon choice will make a difference.
Classes come with their own weapon proficiencies. Some get all Simple Weapons, some get both Simple and Martial weapons (which means everything except improvised weapons) and some get a more curated list - like Rogues, who typically stick with simple weapons but can also use things like Rapiers.
Weapon choice can have a big impact on the kind of damage you're pouring out. So what weapon should you focus on?
Naturally, if you come across a super magic Pike that does an extra 3d8 psychic damage or something like that, you can probably choose to go with it even if you've typically been using a Greatsword, but when dealing with mundane items, there are considerations to be made:
Many weapons are one-handed, which means what it says - you can hold it in one hand. This leaves the off-hand open for a shield, to cast spells with, or to hold another weapon in the off hand.
Some one-handed weapons have finesse, which allows you to use Dexterity for attack and damage rolls, which is otherwise only used for ranged weapons. Note that a Monk will effectively turn the weapons that count as Monk weapons into finesse weapons even if they aren't - so you can use that quarterstaff with dexterity.
One-handed weapons cap out with 1d8 damage - which you'll get with Longswords, Battleaxes, Warhammers, Rapiers, and Flails (and I think maybe Morning Stars?) If you can take one of these, it's typically your best option for a one-handed weapon.
However, if you want to dual-wield, fighting with a weapon in each hand, you need to get weapons with the Light property. The highest damage these typically do is 1d6, including shortswords and handaxes. Absent the two-weapon-fighting fighting style, you don't get to add your modifier to the damage off the off-hand strike. Still, the existence of magic weapons and other on-hit effects does mean that you can wind up cranking out more damage this way, so it's a viable option even if you don't take this fighting style. The other big catch with dual-wielding is that your off-hand strike will take up your bonus action, so if you are a class that likes to use those frequently, this can gum up your personal action economy. Note that the Dual Wielder feat allows you to dual-wield non-light weapons, so if you take this, you can fight with a pair of battle-axes or warhammers.
Some weapons, including Longswords, Battleaxes, and Warhammers, are "Versatile," which means that you can switch to a two-handed grip and do a bit more damage with them, typically increasing the damage to the next higher die (these go to 1d10 from 1d8). This is a good option if you want the chance to pump out a little more damage, but I recommend that you instead commit to two-handed weapons if you want to really focus on that damage.
There are a fair number of two-handed weapons, and they come in a couple of categories:
Pikes, Glaives, Halberds, Staves and Spears all count as Polearms for the sake of the Polearm Master feat, and the first three have a special feature called Reach, which extends their melee range to 10 feet rather than 5. The pikes, glaives, and halberds also do 1d10 damage, which makes them equivalent to wielding those versatile weapons, but the added range and potential interaction with Polearm Master make them a solid choice for a weapon.
For the maximum damage output options, you can go with a Greatsword, Maul, or Greataxe, though unlike their one-handed/versatile counterparts, these are not all equivalent in damage. Greatswords and Mauls both do 2d6 damage on a hit, while Greataxes do 1d12.
While these do have a the same maximum damage, the average is slightly higher for the 2d6 weapons, given that the minimum is 2, rather than 1. Also, if you have the Great Weapon Fighting fighting style, you get to re-roll 1s and 2s you roll with the weapon, which will happen more frequently for the 2d6 weapons and thus generally boost your average damage more. (2d6 winds up giving you about 8 and a third average damage with this fighting style, while 1d12 gets 7 and a third). So why would you ever take the Greataxe? Well, first off, you might just want to be able to roll that big chunky d12. But if you're playing a half-orc or Barbarian (or a half-orc barbarian,) you'll get to roll additional dice, with more as you level up, when you get critical hits, and adding a d12 rather than a d6 to your crit is obviously better. That being said, if you do some somewhat complex math, the total boost to damage here only kicks in once you're rolling a lot of extra d12s (meaning you'll have to be a very high level Barbarian) but it will, eventually, offset the lower damage for ordinary hits.
Still, this is super min-maxy, which means you should just go with what you want.
Now, mechanically, when does it not really matter what weapon you take? When is flavor really going to be the primary consideration?
Monks get to use their martial arts die in place of the weapon's typical die if they choose. While a Monk will be better off using their quarterstaff versatile-style (for 1d8 damage in two hands), once you hit tier 3, your martial arts die will already be a d8, meaning anything you fight with (including fists) will be doing that anyway.
Rogues will still use their weapon's typical damage die, but the vast majority of the Rogue's damage comes instead from Sneak Attack. By level 5, you're dealing 3d6 additional damage when you get your sneak attack in, which is roughly 10 damage. Comparing a dagger's average damage (about 2.5) with a Rapier's (4.5) means a difference between about 12.5 and 14.5 damage, which means only a 14% loss in average damage. Once at higher levels, say level 11, when your sneak attack is 6d6, or about 20 damage, that goes down to a 9% damage loss. (A rogue also might consider preferring light weapons, as your off-hand damage can also trigger sneak attack if you missed with the first attack, though this will mean not being able to use your bonus action to dodge, disengage, or hide).
Some oddball weapons can actually be very flavorful, even if they are strictly worse than others. For example, a Flail, like a Warhammer, does 1d8 bludgeoning damage, but it doesn't have the versatile property. Still, if you're committed to fighting with a shield, this winds up not making any difference, and flails are pretty cool (and historically very hard to fight effectively with!)
In fact, for DMs, I recommend giving the party the weirder weapons as magical items to force the party to consider the funkier options. Take the Lance, for example, which is a one-handed weapon that deals 1d12 damage, and has reach, but has the very odd downside of giving you disadvantage on attacks if the target is within 5 feet. I've literally never seen anyone ever use this weapon (even NPCs) but it could be really fun to make a powerfully magical one that forces your players to consider using it even though it has one very big downside.
I have a vampire-themed adventure that I'm theoretically in the middle of with my original campaign, though I've got a whole other campaign I'm running now, and in it, there's a Castlevania-inspired magic whip that deals additional damage to the Undead - compensating for the whip's typically low d4 of damage.
Armor Types in D&D 5E
In D&D 5th Edition, your "Armor Class" is a sort of generalized amalgamation of how hard it is to hit you. The reasons why it might be difficult vary - you could imagine that a dextrous rogue is just dodging out of the way of things, while a monk uses their dexterity in combination with a heightened awareness of their surroundings to dodge more effectively (hence why they add their wisdom to their armor class). A heavily-armored fighter isn't so much not getting hit by things as much as they are blocking blows with their shield or a monster's claws are glancing off their tough armor plates.
While some long-range casters might not care much about their AC, generally any character is going to want to try to build their character around ensuring that their armor is maximized.
Now, having come to D&D from World of Warcraft, there's a bit of a parallel - in WoW, the four types of armor are Cloth, Leather, Mail, and Plate, which corresponds decently with 5E's No armor, Light Armor, Medium Armor, and Heavy Armor.
There are only three classes in 5E that are not proficient in any armor: the Wizard, Sorcerer, and Monk. Barbarians are actually proficient in Light and Medium, but they, like the Monk, get a special "unarmored defense" feature that allows them to get their AC up to decent levels despite not wearing any protective gear, so you could count them in here.
A typical character's AC is calculated by adding 10 plus their Dexterity modifier. Because you have no protective gear, the only way you're avoiding getting hit is dodging out of the way. Wizards and Sorcerers can take the Mage Armor spell, which for a single 1st level spell slot bumps that 10 up to a 13, which actually makes for a better armor class than even the best non-magical Light Armor, lasting up to 8 hours with no concentration.
Monks get to add their Wisdom modifier on top of that, while Barbarians can add their Constitution modifier if they're not wearing any armor other than a shield. I like to think that while the Monk is using a powerfully honed awareness to know exactly when to dodge incoming attacks, the Barbarian is just so tough that weapons or spells kind of bounce off their insanely tough bodies sometimes.
For Rogues, Bards, most Warlocks, (and Druids, who start with just light armor even though they can use Medium, as long as it's not made of metal) the options expand to Light Armor. While there is cheap Padded Armor, you'll almost never start with that given that these classes start with Leather Armor. While wearing Leather, you calculate your armor as 11 + Dexterity, and you can upgrade to Studded Leather Armor to change that 11 to a 12. This armor works well for dexterous characters, as you'll be able to get up to 17 AC once you've maxed out at 20 dexterity (or 19 with a shield.)
Light armor, except for the "why would anyone use this" Padded variety, imposes no disadvantage on Stealth checks, which is good given that it's the armor Rogues tend to use. Still, it's not much of a boost compared to heavier forms of armor, and still relies on having high dexterity, which might not be as useful for Bards or Warlocks who want to focus on their Charisma.
Now we come to Medium Armor. This is the armor that about half of the Clerics, Druids who find some made of organic material, Rangers, and Artificers use. Medium armor is also the most mechanically tricky (not that it's very tricky) type.
Like Light armor, there's a low-grade version called Hide that you're probably not going to bother with. Instead, the three typical examples are Scale Mail, Breastplates, and Half-Plate. With Medium Armor, you start with a base number and add your Dexterity modifier, but the cap on the bonus that your Dexterity adds is 2. So if you have 16 Dexterity, you would only add 2 to the base, rather than 3.
What's nice about this is that you don't need very high dexterity, because the base number is pretty high. Scale Mail and Breastplates start at 14, allowing you to get up to 16 based on your Dexterity. Half-Plate starts at 15, for a max of 17. The downside here is that Scale Mail and Half-Plate imposes disadvantage on Dexterity-based Stealth checks (which is most Stealth checks,) so it's hard to be sneaky wearing this kind of armor. Still, if you don't care much about being sneaky, there's really no downside. Even if you're a pure Dex character (like a Ranger, say,) you'll still be getting just as much Armor Class with Half-Plate as you would with Studded Leather, and if you can get that before you've maxed out your Dexterity, you'll get it earlier.
There is a feat you can take, Medium Armor Master, which does some nice things: it raises the Dexterity contribution here to 3 and also prevents the armor from interfering with your Stealth. The upshot of this you actually wind up being just as well armored as someone in the heaviest of heavy armor, but with no stealth penalty - but it only works if you've got the Dexterity to burn (again, if you're a Dex-based ranger, or the Artificer I made that rolled really good stats, you'll be golden.)
Finally, we come to heavy armor. Fighters, Paladins, and about half of Clerics get this to start with. Is Dexterity your dump stat (my Paladin has a 7)? This is the armor for you, because it's entirely divorced from your Dexterity modifier, and is just a flat number. Heavy armor comes in four varieties: Chain Shirts (which are, like Padded and Hide, the cheapo stuff you'll typically only find on NPCs) Chain Mail, Splint, and Plate. And these each grant 15, 16, 17, and 18 armor, respectively. What's the downside?
Well, first off, all of them impose disadvantage on stealth checks, as you'll be clanking around in heavy metal. The other is that they do require a prerequisite amount of Strength. Chain Mail requires 13 Strength while Splint and Plate require 15. If you don't meet the requirement, your movement speed is reduced by 10 feet if you try to wear it.
For Fighters and Paladins, this is unlikely to be an issue, as you'll be pushing Strength as your primary stat (there are some Dex-based fighters, and even a few Paladins who go that way, and those who do might consider going with Medium or even Light armor instead.) Clerics, however, will need to consider if they want to commit that much to Strength. That being said, most Cleric domains that use heavy armor also get a bonus to their melee attacks (typically adding some kind of magic damage) at level 8, so if you'd like to whack things with a mace instead of only casting spells, you can pump Strength as your secondary ability after Wisdom and not have to worry about this potential downside.
The other major downside is that heavy armor is expensive. For top-of-the line armor, you've got Studded Leather, which costs just 45 gold, Half-Plate is a big jump to 750 gold, and Plate is 1,500 gold, which, unless you've got a very generous DM, means you probably won't be hitting that amount of gold until you're well into tier 2 at least.
Still, the benefit of heavy armor is that, if you get Plate, you actually get the highest possible AC that armor provides. Unless you find magical ways to boost a character's Dexterity beyond 20, the best you can get with (mundane) Studded Leather armor or Half Plate is 17, while Plate grants 18. Yes, a Monk or Barbarian who maxes Dexterity and Wisdom/Constitution (respectively) will get 20 AC, but unless they rolled god-stats, they are very unlikely to be able to do that until at very high levels.
So, breaking this down: what sort of armor should you take, and how should you build your character around that?
The first question to ask is whether you really care much about AC. If you're a caster who always stays at the back, you will sometimes have to worry about a melee fighter breaking through the lines or sneaking up on you, and there are ranged spell attacks, but if you're good at staying away form the fray, you will probably be ok not worrying too much. On the squishiest of casters I typically just favor Constitution over Dexterity to make sure that whatever hits me, I'm likely to survive it.
Most classes don't really have a choice. I do recommend, however, that if you can choose between Light or Medium armor, you should go with the latter unless you really need to be stealthy (like if you're a Rogue.) Even if you're a Dex-based character, Studded Leather only starts to outperform Scale Mail once you've maxed out your Dexterity.
If you want a sword-and-board melee fighter, you can go with Dex and take a Rapier, which is just as powerful as any other weapon wielded in one hand, along with having finesse. But I do recommend that if you want to max out your tankiness, you should probably go strength-based and take heavy armor to squeeze every drop of AC out of your gear. You'll also, naturally, want to do this if you're going for any of the heavy, two-handed weapons like a Greatsword or Maul.
Ultimately, the margins here aren't massive - one more AC just means the DM needs to roll one number higher on the die, and when you start fighting monsters with a +12 to hit or so, even having your AC way up at 21 (like my Fighter currently has,) they're still going to be hit sometimes (though he's an Eldritch Knight who has the spell Shield, so I make it very hard for the DM to hit me.) But in the long run, your AC will make you last longer in fights, and especially given that when those monsters with massive to hit bonuses start hitting you with attacks that do way more than typical weapon damage, you'll be very grateful when the attack does miss.
While some long-range casters might not care much about their AC, generally any character is going to want to try to build their character around ensuring that their armor is maximized.
Now, having come to D&D from World of Warcraft, there's a bit of a parallel - in WoW, the four types of armor are Cloth, Leather, Mail, and Plate, which corresponds decently with 5E's No armor, Light Armor, Medium Armor, and Heavy Armor.
There are only three classes in 5E that are not proficient in any armor: the Wizard, Sorcerer, and Monk. Barbarians are actually proficient in Light and Medium, but they, like the Monk, get a special "unarmored defense" feature that allows them to get their AC up to decent levels despite not wearing any protective gear, so you could count them in here.
A typical character's AC is calculated by adding 10 plus their Dexterity modifier. Because you have no protective gear, the only way you're avoiding getting hit is dodging out of the way. Wizards and Sorcerers can take the Mage Armor spell, which for a single 1st level spell slot bumps that 10 up to a 13, which actually makes for a better armor class than even the best non-magical Light Armor, lasting up to 8 hours with no concentration.
Monks get to add their Wisdom modifier on top of that, while Barbarians can add their Constitution modifier if they're not wearing any armor other than a shield. I like to think that while the Monk is using a powerfully honed awareness to know exactly when to dodge incoming attacks, the Barbarian is just so tough that weapons or spells kind of bounce off their insanely tough bodies sometimes.
For Rogues, Bards, most Warlocks, (and Druids, who start with just light armor even though they can use Medium, as long as it's not made of metal) the options expand to Light Armor. While there is cheap Padded Armor, you'll almost never start with that given that these classes start with Leather Armor. While wearing Leather, you calculate your armor as 11 + Dexterity, and you can upgrade to Studded Leather Armor to change that 11 to a 12. This armor works well for dexterous characters, as you'll be able to get up to 17 AC once you've maxed out at 20 dexterity (or 19 with a shield.)
Light armor, except for the "why would anyone use this" Padded variety, imposes no disadvantage on Stealth checks, which is good given that it's the armor Rogues tend to use. Still, it's not much of a boost compared to heavier forms of armor, and still relies on having high dexterity, which might not be as useful for Bards or Warlocks who want to focus on their Charisma.
Now we come to Medium Armor. This is the armor that about half of the Clerics, Druids who find some made of organic material, Rangers, and Artificers use. Medium armor is also the most mechanically tricky (not that it's very tricky) type.
Like Light armor, there's a low-grade version called Hide that you're probably not going to bother with. Instead, the three typical examples are Scale Mail, Breastplates, and Half-Plate. With Medium Armor, you start with a base number and add your Dexterity modifier, but the cap on the bonus that your Dexterity adds is 2. So if you have 16 Dexterity, you would only add 2 to the base, rather than 3.
What's nice about this is that you don't need very high dexterity, because the base number is pretty high. Scale Mail and Breastplates start at 14, allowing you to get up to 16 based on your Dexterity. Half-Plate starts at 15, for a max of 17. The downside here is that Scale Mail and Half-Plate imposes disadvantage on Dexterity-based Stealth checks (which is most Stealth checks,) so it's hard to be sneaky wearing this kind of armor. Still, if you don't care much about being sneaky, there's really no downside. Even if you're a pure Dex character (like a Ranger, say,) you'll still be getting just as much Armor Class with Half-Plate as you would with Studded Leather, and if you can get that before you've maxed out your Dexterity, you'll get it earlier.
There is a feat you can take, Medium Armor Master, which does some nice things: it raises the Dexterity contribution here to 3 and also prevents the armor from interfering with your Stealth. The upshot of this you actually wind up being just as well armored as someone in the heaviest of heavy armor, but with no stealth penalty - but it only works if you've got the Dexterity to burn (again, if you're a Dex-based ranger, or the Artificer I made that rolled really good stats, you'll be golden.)
Finally, we come to heavy armor. Fighters, Paladins, and about half of Clerics get this to start with. Is Dexterity your dump stat (my Paladin has a 7)? This is the armor for you, because it's entirely divorced from your Dexterity modifier, and is just a flat number. Heavy armor comes in four varieties: Chain Shirts (which are, like Padded and Hide, the cheapo stuff you'll typically only find on NPCs) Chain Mail, Splint, and Plate. And these each grant 15, 16, 17, and 18 armor, respectively. What's the downside?
Well, first off, all of them impose disadvantage on stealth checks, as you'll be clanking around in heavy metal. The other is that they do require a prerequisite amount of Strength. Chain Mail requires 13 Strength while Splint and Plate require 15. If you don't meet the requirement, your movement speed is reduced by 10 feet if you try to wear it.
For Fighters and Paladins, this is unlikely to be an issue, as you'll be pushing Strength as your primary stat (there are some Dex-based fighters, and even a few Paladins who go that way, and those who do might consider going with Medium or even Light armor instead.) Clerics, however, will need to consider if they want to commit that much to Strength. That being said, most Cleric domains that use heavy armor also get a bonus to their melee attacks (typically adding some kind of magic damage) at level 8, so if you'd like to whack things with a mace instead of only casting spells, you can pump Strength as your secondary ability after Wisdom and not have to worry about this potential downside.
The other major downside is that heavy armor is expensive. For top-of-the line armor, you've got Studded Leather, which costs just 45 gold, Half-Plate is a big jump to 750 gold, and Plate is 1,500 gold, which, unless you've got a very generous DM, means you probably won't be hitting that amount of gold until you're well into tier 2 at least.
Still, the benefit of heavy armor is that, if you get Plate, you actually get the highest possible AC that armor provides. Unless you find magical ways to boost a character's Dexterity beyond 20, the best you can get with (mundane) Studded Leather armor or Half Plate is 17, while Plate grants 18. Yes, a Monk or Barbarian who maxes Dexterity and Wisdom/Constitution (respectively) will get 20 AC, but unless they rolled god-stats, they are very unlikely to be able to do that until at very high levels.
So, breaking this down: what sort of armor should you take, and how should you build your character around that?
The first question to ask is whether you really care much about AC. If you're a caster who always stays at the back, you will sometimes have to worry about a melee fighter breaking through the lines or sneaking up on you, and there are ranged spell attacks, but if you're good at staying away form the fray, you will probably be ok not worrying too much. On the squishiest of casters I typically just favor Constitution over Dexterity to make sure that whatever hits me, I'm likely to survive it.
Most classes don't really have a choice. I do recommend, however, that if you can choose between Light or Medium armor, you should go with the latter unless you really need to be stealthy (like if you're a Rogue.) Even if you're a Dex-based character, Studded Leather only starts to outperform Scale Mail once you've maxed out your Dexterity.
If you want a sword-and-board melee fighter, you can go with Dex and take a Rapier, which is just as powerful as any other weapon wielded in one hand, along with having finesse. But I do recommend that if you want to max out your tankiness, you should probably go strength-based and take heavy armor to squeeze every drop of AC out of your gear. You'll also, naturally, want to do this if you're going for any of the heavy, two-handed weapons like a Greatsword or Maul.
Ultimately, the margins here aren't massive - one more AC just means the DM needs to roll one number higher on the die, and when you start fighting monsters with a +12 to hit or so, even having your AC way up at 21 (like my Fighter currently has,) they're still going to be hit sometimes (though he's an Eldritch Knight who has the spell Shield, so I make it very hard for the DM to hit me.) But in the long run, your AC will make you last longer in fights, and especially given that when those monsters with massive to hit bonuses start hitting you with attacks that do way more than typical weapon damage, you'll be very grateful when the attack does miss.
Phyrexian Negator and the DM's Sweet Spot
I've been running games of D&D for about four years... five years? Who knows what time is anymore.
Anyway, I've been running D&D games long enough that I've gotten a decent sense of what makes for good sessions, good fights, and an experience that players will enjoy. Mind you, I don't always hit that note - you can't always do it right.
But I think tonight hit what I like to think of as the sweet spot for combat difficulty.
The game I've been running is set in Ravnica, and while there surely is plenty of interesting stuff to do with just that setting, given that I've been a Magic fan since I was 8 (though I haven't actually played since college - dude, what's with these "planeswalker" cards?) I thought it would be fun to make this campaign an interplanar one. Also, given that I wanted my players to be able to go with whatever guild they wanted (we have one of every guild but the Gruul Clans, though our one Azorius member hasn't played yet) I wanted to get a good villain that members of any guild would oppose.
And because I'm a sucker for the classics, I chose the Phyrexians.
The challenge of this villain is that there aren't a ton of stat blocks that scream out Phyrexian. Sure, you can scoop your various Aberrations, Undead, and Constructs into a pile and sort through them, but I decided to do a bit of homebrewing.
Tonight was the first time the party actually fought some honest-to-Urza Phyrexians.
I brewed up a statblock for the Phyrexian Negator, and then modified it to give it legendary actions as well as maxing its health. Admittedly, I did do a sort of alternate interpretation of the monster - it's a beefy 5/5 with trample and I chose instead to make it more of a creeping assassin-type with sneak attack - but it worked out well.
Here's why I think it went really well:
I know different DMs are different, but in the games I'm running, I want the players to succeed. I'm right there with them, hoping for them to beat the monsters and demonstrate their growing power, just as if I were playing a character amongst the party. The fantasy of RPGs is that notion of progression and conquering greater and greater threats.
But the thing is, victory also requires challenge. If the party were just cutting their way through pathetic, easy-to-kill creatures, it wouldn't be that exciting.
So, in my mind, the sweet spot of any combat encounter is when you scare the crap out of the players, nearly kill them, but then all the player characters walk away from it alive.
My Negator had a 6d6 sneak attack and arm-blades that did 2d6+4 damage as well as inflicting a terrible bleed effect for 3d6, with two attacks (but only one sneak attack per turn.) It also had a +12 to Stealth (getting expertise like a rogue.) So the party walked into a weird, occult room that seemed to be a meeting place for people working with the Phyrexians in each of Ravnica's guilds, and the Barbarian was ambushed by this thing, taking a fireball-plus-four out of the blue, followed by another slash that took him down (if there's one thing I regret about the fight, it's that the Barbarian only really got one solid round to dish damage out, as he spent most of it lying on the floor unconscious).
While the Negator did knock out the Bard and hit one of the Fighters for a bit of damage, the party did a good job protecting the Sorcerer and Artificer, and indeed, the actual damage output of the monsters wasn't so huge...
But the effect was terrifying, and given that this guy was meant to be a boss monster, that's exactly what you're looking for.
The Negator is actually a non-legendary creature that I altered for this fight, but I'm glad that I was able to make it this scary for their first meeting, as even if future Negators aren't as powerful, it'll strike a nerve.
Of course, much of this tier (using the Tiers of Play level ranges) and the next is going to be focused more on tracking down the Phyrexian collaborators within the guilds, which will mean fighting more mundane (relatively speaking) monsters. But I do have a few more homebrew creations based on existing Magic cards that the party will eventually face.
Still, the fight turned out fine - my favorite bit was when the Artificer used their Mizzium Apparatus to try to cure the Barbarian's wounds, but instead created a fog cloud that only helped the Negator (who was not remotely inconvenienced by the fog). The party walked away from it, and while the Sorcerer did scare me a little when she touched some of the glistening oil in the lab they'd just passed through, ultimately the party can chalk this up as a total win.
And a memorable one at that. This DM is happy about that.
Anyway, I've been running D&D games long enough that I've gotten a decent sense of what makes for good sessions, good fights, and an experience that players will enjoy. Mind you, I don't always hit that note - you can't always do it right.
But I think tonight hit what I like to think of as the sweet spot for combat difficulty.
The game I've been running is set in Ravnica, and while there surely is plenty of interesting stuff to do with just that setting, given that I've been a Magic fan since I was 8 (though I haven't actually played since college - dude, what's with these "planeswalker" cards?) I thought it would be fun to make this campaign an interplanar one. Also, given that I wanted my players to be able to go with whatever guild they wanted (we have one of every guild but the Gruul Clans, though our one Azorius member hasn't played yet) I wanted to get a good villain that members of any guild would oppose.
And because I'm a sucker for the classics, I chose the Phyrexians.
The challenge of this villain is that there aren't a ton of stat blocks that scream out Phyrexian. Sure, you can scoop your various Aberrations, Undead, and Constructs into a pile and sort through them, but I decided to do a bit of homebrewing.
Tonight was the first time the party actually fought some honest-to-Urza Phyrexians.
I brewed up a statblock for the Phyrexian Negator, and then modified it to give it legendary actions as well as maxing its health. Admittedly, I did do a sort of alternate interpretation of the monster - it's a beefy 5/5 with trample and I chose instead to make it more of a creeping assassin-type with sneak attack - but it worked out well.
Here's why I think it went really well:
I know different DMs are different, but in the games I'm running, I want the players to succeed. I'm right there with them, hoping for them to beat the monsters and demonstrate their growing power, just as if I were playing a character amongst the party. The fantasy of RPGs is that notion of progression and conquering greater and greater threats.
But the thing is, victory also requires challenge. If the party were just cutting their way through pathetic, easy-to-kill creatures, it wouldn't be that exciting.
So, in my mind, the sweet spot of any combat encounter is when you scare the crap out of the players, nearly kill them, but then all the player characters walk away from it alive.
My Negator had a 6d6 sneak attack and arm-blades that did 2d6+4 damage as well as inflicting a terrible bleed effect for 3d6, with two attacks (but only one sneak attack per turn.) It also had a +12 to Stealth (getting expertise like a rogue.) So the party walked into a weird, occult room that seemed to be a meeting place for people working with the Phyrexians in each of Ravnica's guilds, and the Barbarian was ambushed by this thing, taking a fireball-plus-four out of the blue, followed by another slash that took him down (if there's one thing I regret about the fight, it's that the Barbarian only really got one solid round to dish damage out, as he spent most of it lying on the floor unconscious).
While the Negator did knock out the Bard and hit one of the Fighters for a bit of damage, the party did a good job protecting the Sorcerer and Artificer, and indeed, the actual damage output of the monsters wasn't so huge...
But the effect was terrifying, and given that this guy was meant to be a boss monster, that's exactly what you're looking for.
The Negator is actually a non-legendary creature that I altered for this fight, but I'm glad that I was able to make it this scary for their first meeting, as even if future Negators aren't as powerful, it'll strike a nerve.
Of course, much of this tier (using the Tiers of Play level ranges) and the next is going to be focused more on tracking down the Phyrexian collaborators within the guilds, which will mean fighting more mundane (relatively speaking) monsters. But I do have a few more homebrew creations based on existing Magic cards that the party will eventually face.
Still, the fight turned out fine - my favorite bit was when the Artificer used their Mizzium Apparatus to try to cure the Barbarian's wounds, but instead created a fog cloud that only helped the Negator (who was not remotely inconvenienced by the fog). The party walked away from it, and while the Sorcerer did scare me a little when she touched some of the glistening oil in the lab they'd just passed through, ultimately the party can chalk this up as a total win.
And a memorable one at that. This DM is happy about that.
Monday, April 27, 2020
Sire Denathrius, Nathrezim, and the Origins of Demons
I'm not in the Shadowlands Alpha (hoping to maybe get an invite when it goes to beta, which I think is how things went down with BFA, though given my luck, I'll probably not get in at all like I didn't with Legion).
But I'm being my usual "I don't mind spoiler" self, and as such, I'm going to put most of this behind a spoiler cut, as there's stuff here that is spoilery, even if, being in alpha, things are bound to change (though what I've seen them show off has looked pretty damn polished for an alpha).
Ok: Spoiler time:
But I'm being my usual "I don't mind spoiler" self, and as such, I'm going to put most of this behind a spoiler cut, as there's stuff here that is spoilery, even if, being in alpha, things are bound to change (though what I've seen them show off has looked pretty damn polished for an alpha).
Ok: Spoiler time:
Sunday, April 26, 2020
With a Remake, What Does the Narrative Owe the Audience?
There are going to be big spoilers for Final Fantasy VII Remake.
It's true, the game is based on one that came out 23 years ago, but not everyone has played that. Indeed, a large number of gamers were not even alive yet when it came out. I, myself, was 11 (or 10 if it came out in the first half of the year) but given that I has only just gotten my first console (an SNES) and would have to save up a lot of weeks' worth of allowance to get an N64, the notion of getting a Playstation to play a game in a series that I had not yet even come to know about wasn't very likely.
FFVII was also oddly hard to come by - even when I went to college and picked up a cheap PS2, allowing me to play ports of old SNES games in bundles that came out for the original Playstation, FFVII copies were rare and going for over a hundred bucks.
So this was actually my first time experiencing the story of FFVII.
Spoilers to follow:
It's true, the game is based on one that came out 23 years ago, but not everyone has played that. Indeed, a large number of gamers were not even alive yet when it came out. I, myself, was 11 (or 10 if it came out in the first half of the year) but given that I has only just gotten my first console (an SNES) and would have to save up a lot of weeks' worth of allowance to get an N64, the notion of getting a Playstation to play a game in a series that I had not yet even come to know about wasn't very likely.
FFVII was also oddly hard to come by - even when I went to college and picked up a cheap PS2, allowing me to play ports of old SNES games in bundles that came out for the original Playstation, FFVII copies were rare and going for over a hundred bucks.
So this was actually my first time experiencing the story of FFVII.
Spoilers to follow:
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Smiting on a Crit Hasn't Gotten Old Yet
There's a wonderful moment that happens when you're playing a Paladin in 5th Edition D&D: When you roll a 20 on the die for an attack roll, like anyone else, you get a critical hit.
Paladins have a key class feature (though Warlocks can get an Invocation that gives them the equivalent if they are Pact of the Blade) called Divine Smite. What this does is that when you hit with a melee weapon attack (I don't think it counts on thrown weapons or any ranged weapons,) you can expend a spell slot to make the attack do additional radiant damage. You get, effectively, 1d8 for free, 1d8 if it's undead or a fiend, and then an additional d8 for the spell slot's level (I think it caps at 5d8, or 6d8 for a Fiend or Undead, so you won't get any more out of a 5th level slot than you do for a 4th level.)
Here's what's so great about it:
Unlike the various Smite Spells, which require you to declare it before you make the attack, and if you miss, you risk losing concentration before it goes of, with the class feature Divine Smite, you get to wait to see if you've hit before you choose.
So why does a crit look so amazing when you roll one on a Paladin? Because, since the Smite is considered part of the damage of the attack, it gets doubled as well.
Let's look at a fight that we had tonight during Curse of Strahd: at level 2, while doing the intro-dungeon, Death House, we were fighting some ghouls - pretty tough monsters for a level 2 party, especially when there are multiple (I think we had 3.)
My very first smite on this character was on a crit. A Ghoul is undead, and thus I get the extra d8.
So: I hit this thing, drop a 1st level smite (I only have 1st level slots, and will until we hit level 5) while wielding my Maul.
So that's 2d6 for the weapon and 3d8 for the smite (the free d8, the bonus because it's undead, and the one for the spell slot.) But because it's a crit, I get 4d6 plus 6d8 (and, of course, my Strength bonus, which is 4).
On average, that's 14 bludgeoning damage and 27 radiant damage (I don't recall exactly how much I got, as this was a while ago) for a total of 41 (and a bit more, given that Great Weapon Fighting bumps up that average damage by a bit.) Oh, and make that 45 because of the Strength bonus.
You can smite on a regular hit, and in fact, when we fought a Vampire Spawn tonight, I did to make sure that we could prevent it from recuperating hit points (we also had a cleric doing a bit of Sacred Flame, which helped, and allowed me to conserve spell slots when it worked.) But the fact that you get to choose after the roll whether you want to smite really pours on the power of this ability - by definition, it cannot miss, and while waiting around for a crit isn't very fun if you aren't rolling them, instead you can treat a critical strike like an invitation to pour out massive damage unless you know the thing would die anyway.
Of course, the feature only scales with spell level, which means that in an adventure like Curse of Strahd, you're only going to get it maxed out right at the end. In fact, I think the main "scaling" of the spell is how many spell slots you have to work with. We've just hit level 4 in the adventure, and as such I'm still stuck at just 3 spell slots per day. At level 5, though, I'll have 4 1st level slots and 2 second levels, which means I can afford to be more liberal with smites. Having two attacks per turn also means more opportunities to crit (and also more chances to smite, as the feature requires to additional action - you can smite on any hit, be it an opportunity attack or both in a turn, or even on a bonus action attack if you're dual-wielding or a polearm master).
Paladins get a lot of useful tools (I'm really looking forward to Aura of Protection, which will cushion my -2 to Dex with my +3 to Charisma - I rolled some really good stats and one very terrible one) but Divine Smite is one that is just a delight - getting a real handful of dice to roll feels great.
Paladins have a key class feature (though Warlocks can get an Invocation that gives them the equivalent if they are Pact of the Blade) called Divine Smite. What this does is that when you hit with a melee weapon attack (I don't think it counts on thrown weapons or any ranged weapons,) you can expend a spell slot to make the attack do additional radiant damage. You get, effectively, 1d8 for free, 1d8 if it's undead or a fiend, and then an additional d8 for the spell slot's level (I think it caps at 5d8, or 6d8 for a Fiend or Undead, so you won't get any more out of a 5th level slot than you do for a 4th level.)
Here's what's so great about it:
Unlike the various Smite Spells, which require you to declare it before you make the attack, and if you miss, you risk losing concentration before it goes of, with the class feature Divine Smite, you get to wait to see if you've hit before you choose.
So why does a crit look so amazing when you roll one on a Paladin? Because, since the Smite is considered part of the damage of the attack, it gets doubled as well.
Let's look at a fight that we had tonight during Curse of Strahd: at level 2, while doing the intro-dungeon, Death House, we were fighting some ghouls - pretty tough monsters for a level 2 party, especially when there are multiple (I think we had 3.)
My very first smite on this character was on a crit. A Ghoul is undead, and thus I get the extra d8.
So: I hit this thing, drop a 1st level smite (I only have 1st level slots, and will until we hit level 5) while wielding my Maul.
So that's 2d6 for the weapon and 3d8 for the smite (the free d8, the bonus because it's undead, and the one for the spell slot.) But because it's a crit, I get 4d6 plus 6d8 (and, of course, my Strength bonus, which is 4).
On average, that's 14 bludgeoning damage and 27 radiant damage (I don't recall exactly how much I got, as this was a while ago) for a total of 41 (and a bit more, given that Great Weapon Fighting bumps up that average damage by a bit.) Oh, and make that 45 because of the Strength bonus.
You can smite on a regular hit, and in fact, when we fought a Vampire Spawn tonight, I did to make sure that we could prevent it from recuperating hit points (we also had a cleric doing a bit of Sacred Flame, which helped, and allowed me to conserve spell slots when it worked.) But the fact that you get to choose after the roll whether you want to smite really pours on the power of this ability - by definition, it cannot miss, and while waiting around for a crit isn't very fun if you aren't rolling them, instead you can treat a critical strike like an invitation to pour out massive damage unless you know the thing would die anyway.
Of course, the feature only scales with spell level, which means that in an adventure like Curse of Strahd, you're only going to get it maxed out right at the end. In fact, I think the main "scaling" of the spell is how many spell slots you have to work with. We've just hit level 4 in the adventure, and as such I'm still stuck at just 3 spell slots per day. At level 5, though, I'll have 4 1st level slots and 2 second levels, which means I can afford to be more liberal with smites. Having two attacks per turn also means more opportunities to crit (and also more chances to smite, as the feature requires to additional action - you can smite on any hit, be it an opportunity attack or both in a turn, or even on a bonus action attack if you're dual-wielding or a polearm master).
Paladins get a lot of useful tools (I'm really looking forward to Aura of Protection, which will cushion my -2 to Dex with my +3 to Charisma - I rolled some really good stats and one very terrible one) but Divine Smite is one that is just a delight - getting a real handful of dice to roll feels great.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
FFVII Remake is Fantastic. When Will There Be More?
When you hear about games getting remastered, updated, and so forth, usually the result is something a little underwhelming. For example, last year I downloaded the remaster of Shadow of the Colossus. Mind you, the game is still the breathtaking and beautiful piece of art that it was originally. But it's almost precisely the exact same game. The graphics are updated, but just as we tend to sort of retroactively imagine old games we used to play as looking better than they did, it means such updates don't really add much to our memories (though if you go back and play, say, GTA San Andreas, holy shit does that thing look TERRIBLE by modern standards, and don't get me started on about 98% of the N64 Era.)
I imagine there are some people who wanted Final Fantasy VII Remake to just be the same game but with new graphics, and given that I didn't play that game back in the day, I'm not sure that would have been such a bad thing.
However, what Square Enix chose to do was instead to take the story of Final Fantasy and some of the RPG mechanics created for it (Materia, for example,) and just completely construct a new game.
It is, honestly, how a lot of us nerdy fans tend to imagine a cool remake of an old game we love would work. But doing so requires a fundamentally massive amount of effort - probably just as much as if you were creating a brand new game (maybe more, given the need to adhere to fan-favorite elements of the original.) Basically, it's a silly pipe dream, but they've made it happen.
After I sort of checked out of the Final Fantasy series after the transition away from turn-based combat, I was a little wary to get into this one, but I've found the combat system really engaging (though it can be a little tough when you're on a melee character and have to keep your distance, given that you can't charge your ATB gauge unless you're attacking) and fun.
I am, however, I believe getting close to the end of the first part of the game. The first game?
See, by breaking up FFVII into different episodes, it is, I'm sure, more manageable for Squenix to put the game out, but it does create some anxieties - when I get to the end of this part, how long am I going to have to wait for the next to come out? Given that a new console generation is on its way, I'm also concerned that I'd have to buy a new console to continue this story.
Still, I have some left to play in the game, and I intend to enjoy it!
I imagine there are some people who wanted Final Fantasy VII Remake to just be the same game but with new graphics, and given that I didn't play that game back in the day, I'm not sure that would have been such a bad thing.
However, what Square Enix chose to do was instead to take the story of Final Fantasy and some of the RPG mechanics created for it (Materia, for example,) and just completely construct a new game.
It is, honestly, how a lot of us nerdy fans tend to imagine a cool remake of an old game we love would work. But doing so requires a fundamentally massive amount of effort - probably just as much as if you were creating a brand new game (maybe more, given the need to adhere to fan-favorite elements of the original.) Basically, it's a silly pipe dream, but they've made it happen.
After I sort of checked out of the Final Fantasy series after the transition away from turn-based combat, I was a little wary to get into this one, but I've found the combat system really engaging (though it can be a little tough when you're on a melee character and have to keep your distance, given that you can't charge your ATB gauge unless you're attacking) and fun.
I am, however, I believe getting close to the end of the first part of the game. The first game?
See, by breaking up FFVII into different episodes, it is, I'm sure, more manageable for Squenix to put the game out, but it does create some anxieties - when I get to the end of this part, how long am I going to have to wait for the next to come out? Given that a new console generation is on its way, I'm also concerned that I'd have to buy a new console to continue this story.
Still, I have some left to play in the game, and I intend to enjoy it!
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Pro-Tip: Catching Up on New 120s
I recently got my Goblin to 120, eager to get his hertiage armor. Of course, even with all the catch-up gear from Nazjatar and the Black Empire invasions, he struggled a lot (fighting Gallywix at the end of the goblin heritage armor quest was a real pain) because his Heart of Azeroth was so profoundly far behind.
Ultimately, I do hope that Shadowlands will keep things from getting so ridiculous - the degree to which one must grind to get anywhere near caught up makes the catch-up gear kind of laughable... or so I thought.
Mind you, there's still a lot of reason to catch up. My Lightforged Draenei Paladin (yes, I have two 120 Paladins, don't judge me) also recently hit 120, and he's been carrying a 385 two-handed mace that is corrupted - it's by far his best weapon, but he's also very far away from being able to cleanse it, so the corruption is just something he has to deal with.
However, I discovered today that there's one very important catch-up: if you hit 120, make sure to do the quests to unlock Nazjatar, because doing so will grant you the quests to get the Heart Forge opened up, and thus unlock essences.
And, as it turns out, this also bumps your Heart of Azeroth up to level 50 instantly.
What this means is that the traits on all the Azerite gear you've gotten as a catch-up will suddenly be available, and in addition, the item level boost to your necklace might help you get better gear out of world quests.
I'd have appreciated it if, along with the way to buy essences that they added recently, they also made the Heart Forge unlock for free. If you hit 120, you should get a quick quest in which you just talk to MOTHER and she opens it up and boosts your HoA to level 50, rather than forcing you to go to Nazjatar, a zone that is basically irrelevant now (I do feel a little bad I never checked out the Eternal Palace raid, but I imagine queues for that are abysmal now, pun unintended.)
I'd also appreciate if the quests to unlock the Black Empire invasions and the Legendary cloak and the Horrific Visions was also streamlined - yes, you can skip parts of it, but if you're like me and you have a bunch of alts (see name of blog,) the excitement of the story of it is a little less compelling the eighth time around.
However, more than this, my hope is that in Shadowlands, catch-up gear will feel like enough to get you... you know, caught up. The whole point of this stuff, after all, is to let a new character jump into the action not far behind your main - sure, you'll still need to work to get your gear in tip-top shape (hence why I think it's fine for Black Empire gear to be about 35 item levels behind Normal Ny'alotha gear, world boss gear, and the stuff you get for a full Horrific Vision clear) but the manner in which you just don't seem functional as a character unless you do multiple long quest chains (the 8.3 stuff in particular, which I haven't done yet on my Lightforged) doesn't feel really great.
We've been told that, while mains will have to wait until level 60 to choose a Covenant and start progressing through that system, alts will get to choose while they level. That is cool, but I wonder how things will look in 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, and so forth.
I'd love to see progression systems simplified - gear is a fine progression system, and worked on its own for a long time. While Artifact Weapons were really cool, I always felt that it was the flavor of them, rather than the progression system, that made them worthwhile. If we are going to see other progression systems (like Soulbinds in Shadowlands,) let's make sure there are easy catch-up mechanisms for that as well as for gear so that players can feel like they can jump into the action if they level up an alt late in the expansion.
I'd love, for example, if I choose to level my Druid to 120 (currently, the likely retired Night Elf and the new Kul Tiran are both sitting at 110,) I could just pop over to the Heart Chamber and get all caught up and immediately go to Uldum to start working on Black Empire invasions, rather than going through three separate length quest chains to unlock essences, the cloak, and Nazjatar.
Ultimately, I do hope that Shadowlands will keep things from getting so ridiculous - the degree to which one must grind to get anywhere near caught up makes the catch-up gear kind of laughable... or so I thought.
Mind you, there's still a lot of reason to catch up. My Lightforged Draenei Paladin (yes, I have two 120 Paladins, don't judge me) also recently hit 120, and he's been carrying a 385 two-handed mace that is corrupted - it's by far his best weapon, but he's also very far away from being able to cleanse it, so the corruption is just something he has to deal with.
However, I discovered today that there's one very important catch-up: if you hit 120, make sure to do the quests to unlock Nazjatar, because doing so will grant you the quests to get the Heart Forge opened up, and thus unlock essences.
And, as it turns out, this also bumps your Heart of Azeroth up to level 50 instantly.
What this means is that the traits on all the Azerite gear you've gotten as a catch-up will suddenly be available, and in addition, the item level boost to your necklace might help you get better gear out of world quests.
I'd have appreciated it if, along with the way to buy essences that they added recently, they also made the Heart Forge unlock for free. If you hit 120, you should get a quick quest in which you just talk to MOTHER and she opens it up and boosts your HoA to level 50, rather than forcing you to go to Nazjatar, a zone that is basically irrelevant now (I do feel a little bad I never checked out the Eternal Palace raid, but I imagine queues for that are abysmal now, pun unintended.)
I'd also appreciate if the quests to unlock the Black Empire invasions and the Legendary cloak and the Horrific Visions was also streamlined - yes, you can skip parts of it, but if you're like me and you have a bunch of alts (see name of blog,) the excitement of the story of it is a little less compelling the eighth time around.
However, more than this, my hope is that in Shadowlands, catch-up gear will feel like enough to get you... you know, caught up. The whole point of this stuff, after all, is to let a new character jump into the action not far behind your main - sure, you'll still need to work to get your gear in tip-top shape (hence why I think it's fine for Black Empire gear to be about 35 item levels behind Normal Ny'alotha gear, world boss gear, and the stuff you get for a full Horrific Vision clear) but the manner in which you just don't seem functional as a character unless you do multiple long quest chains (the 8.3 stuff in particular, which I haven't done yet on my Lightforged) doesn't feel really great.
We've been told that, while mains will have to wait until level 60 to choose a Covenant and start progressing through that system, alts will get to choose while they level. That is cool, but I wonder how things will look in 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, and so forth.
I'd love to see progression systems simplified - gear is a fine progression system, and worked on its own for a long time. While Artifact Weapons were really cool, I always felt that it was the flavor of them, rather than the progression system, that made them worthwhile. If we are going to see other progression systems (like Soulbinds in Shadowlands,) let's make sure there are easy catch-up mechanisms for that as well as for gear so that players can feel like they can jump into the action if they level up an alt late in the expansion.
I'd love, for example, if I choose to level my Druid to 120 (currently, the likely retired Night Elf and the new Kul Tiran are both sitting at 110,) I could just pop over to the Heart Chamber and get all caught up and immediately go to Uldum to start working on Black Empire invasions, rather than going through three separate length quest chains to unlock essences, the cloak, and Nazjatar.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Breaking Down FFVII Remake's ATB, Materia, Proficiencies, and Other Systems
Final Fantasy games tend to like to rewrite their own rules with each iteration. While the first ten or so games were built around turn-based combat and random encounters, the way that characters, for instance, learned spells and other abilities changed each time from Espers teaching spells in VI, Materia slots in the original VII, or X's sphere grid.
So let's break down how battle and other systems work in VII Remake.
Attacks and ATB:
No longer a turn-based game like its antecedent, FVIIR has action gameplay that plays into a more quasi-turn-based system called ATB (Active Time Battle - though don't confuse it with the original ATB from the original VII, which was just based on time.) Each character can attack with the Square button, and different rhythms will sometimes yield different types of attacks. You can dodge with Circle and use your character's special ability with Triangle.
Attacking, dodging, blocking, and just waiting will build your ATB meter. A filled meter will allow you to take a special action - either an ability, a spell, or use an item. Typically, there are two bars that can be filled sequentially, so you can bank a second meter to do two special actions in quick succession. With a full bar, hit the X button and you can open a menu while the game slows down to ludicrously low speeds (though not fully paused) so you can navigate the menu and pick what you want to do. Taking any of these actions will use up one of your filled ATB meters, so you'll want to continue with basic attacks to it up again.
At any given time, you're directly controlling one character in combat, and typically, you'll build ATB up faster with your active character. You can thus focus on the character who is most useful in the fight or swap between them (which you can do instantly by hitting left or right on the D pad, or up or down, or I think R1 and L1) to spread the wealth.
Even if you're not directly controlling a character, you can hit R2 or L2 (including while in your X menu) to scroll into the other characters' menus and have them use abilities, spells, or items. Part of the tactical challenge of the game is making sure that everyone is doing something useful when they can be.
Materia:
As you gain new gear and upgrade the weapons you find, you'll gain more and more Materia slots. Materia grants various bonuses, dictated by color. Green Materia gives access to spells - a character with, say, a Lightning Materia equipped in one of their slots will gain Lightning-based spells like Thunder. As you use those abilities, the specific Materia ball will gradually upgrade, giving access to new features, such as more powerful spells (Like Thudera and Thundaga). Yellow Materia grants Abilities, which are like spells, but don't cost any MP (there are other ways to get Abilities, which I'll cover later.) Blue Materia tends to have passive bonuses that can improve magic, while Pink/Purple Materia has general bonuses like raising the character's MP or HP max.
The more slots you have, the more Materia you can use. There is a last kind of Materia, which is Red Materia. This allows you to summon powerful allies like Ifrit, the fire elemental, or Shiva, the ice elemental, to help you in boss battles. Thankfully, each weapon has a special dedicated slot for this type, so you won't have to remember to swap these in before a boss battle.
Proficiencies:
While you'll get new weapons over the course of the game, the old ones aren't necessarily useless. Each weapon for each character comes with a signature ability you can use while wielding it. Using that ability enough (I want to say about ten times, though it might vary from ability to ability) will make the character proficient in that ability, and thus allow them to use the ability regardless of which weapon they're using. Even if you have a weapon that isn't as good as the one you've got, it's worth using it for a bit so you'll have the associated ability.
Pressure and Stagger:
While beating monsters is always going to involve whacking them until their HP goes to 0, you can have an easier time with them by staggering them. Certain abilities, and, depending on the monster, certain types of magic damage, will allow you to pressure an enemy, which will make them less effective in combat. If you fill their Stagger meter, they'll become Staggered, and that will leave them stunned and taking significantly more damage. Abilities like "Focused Thrust" or "Focus Fire" will usually fill the Stagger Meter faster.
Weapon Upgrades:
Each weapon can be upgraded using Skill Points, which you gain each time you level up. Each weapon has its own set of skill points, which can be spent on different bonuses while upgrading a weapon. You can thus choose to focus certain weapons on particular strengths if you want - maybe you want one sword to be Cloud's spell-casting weapon, while another is focused much more on physical damage. This also helps keep older weapons relevant.
There are, of course, a lot of things to keep track of here. But I've found that they come together to make for an enjoyable game that blends the tactical decisions of older FF games with fast-paced action gameplay.
So let's break down how battle and other systems work in VII Remake.
Attacks and ATB:
No longer a turn-based game like its antecedent, FVIIR has action gameplay that plays into a more quasi-turn-based system called ATB (Active Time Battle - though don't confuse it with the original ATB from the original VII, which was just based on time.) Each character can attack with the Square button, and different rhythms will sometimes yield different types of attacks. You can dodge with Circle and use your character's special ability with Triangle.
Attacking, dodging, blocking, and just waiting will build your ATB meter. A filled meter will allow you to take a special action - either an ability, a spell, or use an item. Typically, there are two bars that can be filled sequentially, so you can bank a second meter to do two special actions in quick succession. With a full bar, hit the X button and you can open a menu while the game slows down to ludicrously low speeds (though not fully paused) so you can navigate the menu and pick what you want to do. Taking any of these actions will use up one of your filled ATB meters, so you'll want to continue with basic attacks to it up again.
At any given time, you're directly controlling one character in combat, and typically, you'll build ATB up faster with your active character. You can thus focus on the character who is most useful in the fight or swap between them (which you can do instantly by hitting left or right on the D pad, or up or down, or I think R1 and L1) to spread the wealth.
Even if you're not directly controlling a character, you can hit R2 or L2 (including while in your X menu) to scroll into the other characters' menus and have them use abilities, spells, or items. Part of the tactical challenge of the game is making sure that everyone is doing something useful when they can be.
Materia:
As you gain new gear and upgrade the weapons you find, you'll gain more and more Materia slots. Materia grants various bonuses, dictated by color. Green Materia gives access to spells - a character with, say, a Lightning Materia equipped in one of their slots will gain Lightning-based spells like Thunder. As you use those abilities, the specific Materia ball will gradually upgrade, giving access to new features, such as more powerful spells (Like Thudera and Thundaga). Yellow Materia grants Abilities, which are like spells, but don't cost any MP (there are other ways to get Abilities, which I'll cover later.) Blue Materia tends to have passive bonuses that can improve magic, while Pink/Purple Materia has general bonuses like raising the character's MP or HP max.
The more slots you have, the more Materia you can use. There is a last kind of Materia, which is Red Materia. This allows you to summon powerful allies like Ifrit, the fire elemental, or Shiva, the ice elemental, to help you in boss battles. Thankfully, each weapon has a special dedicated slot for this type, so you won't have to remember to swap these in before a boss battle.
Proficiencies:
While you'll get new weapons over the course of the game, the old ones aren't necessarily useless. Each weapon for each character comes with a signature ability you can use while wielding it. Using that ability enough (I want to say about ten times, though it might vary from ability to ability) will make the character proficient in that ability, and thus allow them to use the ability regardless of which weapon they're using. Even if you have a weapon that isn't as good as the one you've got, it's worth using it for a bit so you'll have the associated ability.
Pressure and Stagger:
While beating monsters is always going to involve whacking them until their HP goes to 0, you can have an easier time with them by staggering them. Certain abilities, and, depending on the monster, certain types of magic damage, will allow you to pressure an enemy, which will make them less effective in combat. If you fill their Stagger meter, they'll become Staggered, and that will leave them stunned and taking significantly more damage. Abilities like "Focused Thrust" or "Focus Fire" will usually fill the Stagger Meter faster.
Weapon Upgrades:
Each weapon can be upgraded using Skill Points, which you gain each time you level up. Each weapon has its own set of skill points, which can be spent on different bonuses while upgrading a weapon. You can thus choose to focus certain weapons on particular strengths if you want - maybe you want one sword to be Cloud's spell-casting weapon, while another is focused much more on physical damage. This also helps keep older weapons relevant.
There are, of course, a lot of things to keep track of here. But I've found that they come together to make for an enjoyable game that blends the tactical decisions of older FF games with fast-paced action gameplay.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Ravnica Goes to Tier 2
Well, having now encountered all ten guilds over the course of six (seven counting an unofficial prologue) adventures that have been somewhat lightly linked, my Ravnica campaign has now jumped to tier 2.
The way I'm running it, here's how it works: players level up after each session, but while in a given tier, there's a level cap, which was 4. Now, however, with the jump to tier 2, every character, regardless of their previous level, now hops up to level 5, and the new cap is 10.
The intention is give players the excitement of leveling up quickly (especially given that it's built so that not all players will be there every session) while also keeping anyone from falling too far behind.
Level 5 is a big jump in player power for most classes - physical-damage-dealers (except Rogues) get two attacks per round, wizards and sorcerers get fireball, and clerics get the ability to revive people, meaning the party's overall power level has jumped up considerably.
Of course, as DM, that means I get to throw more difficult monsters and challenges at them.
I'll also start opening the world up a bit more, including starting to send them to other Districts. Only the 10th District is really detailed in the book, so I've invented five (one for each color) other districts elsewhere in the city-world that may play parts in the overall campaign.
While tier 1 only lasted about a month and a half, tier 2 is likely to go longer, giving people more time to sit at the level cap. There are a lot of plot points to get through in this tier, so I think we'll have a much longer stay here before people move on to level 11.
The way I'm running it, here's how it works: players level up after each session, but while in a given tier, there's a level cap, which was 4. Now, however, with the jump to tier 2, every character, regardless of their previous level, now hops up to level 5, and the new cap is 10.
The intention is give players the excitement of leveling up quickly (especially given that it's built so that not all players will be there every session) while also keeping anyone from falling too far behind.
Level 5 is a big jump in player power for most classes - physical-damage-dealers (except Rogues) get two attacks per round, wizards and sorcerers get fireball, and clerics get the ability to revive people, meaning the party's overall power level has jumped up considerably.
Of course, as DM, that means I get to throw more difficult monsters and challenges at them.
I'll also start opening the world up a bit more, including starting to send them to other Districts. Only the 10th District is really detailed in the book, so I've invented five (one for each color) other districts elsewhere in the city-world that may play parts in the overall campaign.
While tier 1 only lasted about a month and a half, tier 2 is likely to go longer, giving people more time to sit at the level cap. There are a lot of plot points to get through in this tier, so I think we'll have a much longer stay here before people move on to level 11.
Friday, April 10, 2020
Final Fantasy VII Remake First Impressions
So, despite being exactly the right age for it when it came out, I didn't play FFVII back in the day. It was available, I think, for the original Playstation and possibly PC, neither of which I had (ours was a Nintendo/Mac house).
By which I mean to say that I don't have any primary nostalgia for this game - it was more hearing about others talk about it that I learned of Cloud, Sepphiroth, Aeris/Aerith, Tifa, Barret, etc.
In fact, I actually didn't play any Final Fantasy games until X, though I eventually went back to play VI/III.
When the series began to turn away from turn-based battles, I was not a fan - to me, the turn-based system define the series, and helped tie it to table-top RPGs that had inspired it.
So while I don't have much specific VII-based nostalgia, I was a little wary of this game's action-focus.
Having had my hands on it, however, and taking the game on its own merits, I'm finding it very enjoyable. Much more than what I felt was the very clunky FF XII (though I know that game has its fans) this one commits to being an action-RPG game. You still build up an "ATB" meter, which you then use on abilities - special strikes that do extra damage.
The combat thus becomes fairly fluid, pausing (or more accurately going into super-slow mode) when you want to cast spells or select things from the menu. Your fast-paced attacks happen pretty much any time you press them, but you need to let the ATB meter fill to do more complex stuff.
There's also some tactical aspects that have been added - hitting an enemy repeatedly pressures and then eventually staggers them, causing them to take more damage. Some of the early enemies - guard dogs - have a much heftier amount of HP, but you can stagger them relatively easily, allowing you to burn your ATB options to wipe them out.
So far I've only had a couple segments controlling multiple characters, and while it was a bit awkward at first, I think I'll get the hang of it. You can easily access other characters' menus, allowing you to direct their special attacks, but they'll automatically use basic attacks against things.
Graphically, the game is flat-out gorgeous. Its mix of modern, futuristic, steampunk, and fantasy is something I realize must have been influencing me for a long time, even before I experienced it firsthand (see also: Twin Peaks, which I did see about ten years ago, but which I think was influencing me through pop-culture osmosis far earlier).
One element I really enjoy is that the sort of random gossip from people in towns is just broadcast when you walk past them, and separated from more important conversations.
I'm given to understand that the remake adds new story elements to the game, though given my only basic understanding of that original story, I'm just taking it as a whole. (Something about weird ghost things threatening Aeris/Aerith - she hasn't been named in-game yet - plus Cloud having various weird flashbacks/hallucinations involving Sepphiroth).
Currently, I've just arrived in the Sector 7 Slums and met up with Tifa, Cloud's childhood friend, who hired him for the act of ecoterrorism that starts the game.
By which I mean to say that I don't have any primary nostalgia for this game - it was more hearing about others talk about it that I learned of Cloud, Sepphiroth, Aeris/Aerith, Tifa, Barret, etc.
In fact, I actually didn't play any Final Fantasy games until X, though I eventually went back to play VI/III.
When the series began to turn away from turn-based battles, I was not a fan - to me, the turn-based system define the series, and helped tie it to table-top RPGs that had inspired it.
So while I don't have much specific VII-based nostalgia, I was a little wary of this game's action-focus.
Having had my hands on it, however, and taking the game on its own merits, I'm finding it very enjoyable. Much more than what I felt was the very clunky FF XII (though I know that game has its fans) this one commits to being an action-RPG game. You still build up an "ATB" meter, which you then use on abilities - special strikes that do extra damage.
The combat thus becomes fairly fluid, pausing (or more accurately going into super-slow mode) when you want to cast spells or select things from the menu. Your fast-paced attacks happen pretty much any time you press them, but you need to let the ATB meter fill to do more complex stuff.
There's also some tactical aspects that have been added - hitting an enemy repeatedly pressures and then eventually staggers them, causing them to take more damage. Some of the early enemies - guard dogs - have a much heftier amount of HP, but you can stagger them relatively easily, allowing you to burn your ATB options to wipe them out.
So far I've only had a couple segments controlling multiple characters, and while it was a bit awkward at first, I think I'll get the hang of it. You can easily access other characters' menus, allowing you to direct their special attacks, but they'll automatically use basic attacks against things.
Graphically, the game is flat-out gorgeous. Its mix of modern, futuristic, steampunk, and fantasy is something I realize must have been influencing me for a long time, even before I experienced it firsthand (see also: Twin Peaks, which I did see about ten years ago, but which I think was influencing me through pop-culture osmosis far earlier).
One element I really enjoy is that the sort of random gossip from people in towns is just broadcast when you walk past them, and separated from more important conversations.
I'm given to understand that the remake adds new story elements to the game, though given my only basic understanding of that original story, I'm just taking it as a whole. (Something about weird ghost things threatening Aeris/Aerith - she hasn't been named in-game yet - plus Cloud having various weird flashbacks/hallucinations involving Sepphiroth).
Currently, I've just arrived in the Sector 7 Slums and met up with Tifa, Cloud's childhood friend, who hired him for the act of ecoterrorism that starts the game.
Shadowlands and D&D
The Shadowlands looks like it will be the most otherworldly expansion WoW has ever done. Even though we have traveled to other planets, even other timelines, and we have had the occasional foray into other planes of existence, Shadowlands appears, so far, to take place entirely in a place that is not even really another "location" but a different type of place one can be.
I've commented in the past about how Blizzard is often vague about the afterlife in the Warcraft cosmos. We've encountered ghosts and spirits of the dead who have come to visit us, and of course we've seen figures like Cenarius and Medivh seem to come back from death fully alive again.
Initially, I assumed the Shadowlands would be much as the Emerald Dream has been presented - as a sort of shadow of the physical world. Indeed, it seemed implied that when we were in our ghost form after dying, and going to retrieve our bodies, we were, in fact, in the Shadowlands.
That may have been the original conception of the place, but in this expansion, the idea is getting profoundly expanded.
In D&D, there are three... places, categories of places, whatever, that we can compare the Shadowlands to.
First, there's the Shadowfell, which is the sort of shadowy opposite of the Feywild. The Feywild is a land of fairies, the original elves, and cruel hags, which are a sort of monstrous race of witches ("Green Hags" are the classic green-skinned witch with a cauldron and such). The key is that the Feywild is bursting with emotion, where emotions and dreams take the form of living creatures. Meanwhile, the Shadowfell is a land of gloomy bleakness, filled with the undead, where the emotional color of the world has been sapped (I like to think that the Dark Souls games essentially take place in the Shadowfell).
(Actually, it occurs to me that you could think of the Feywild as manic and the Shadowfell as depressive.)
Another comparison to make is with the Ethereal Plane. The Ethereal Plane is one of two "transitive planes," and in most games doesn't really have much going on in it specifically, instead serving as a way to get from one place to another, or to simply get around some things on the material plane. However, depending on the writer/DM, the Ethereal Plane can get a bit more complex. First off, ghosts can travel on the ethereal plane, and the way that they pass through objects and fade in and out of existence is that they're actually transitioning to and from the ethereal plane.
The Ethereal is divided into the Border Ethereal, which is basically like the material plane but hazy and invisible. The Deep Ethereal, though, is where things get a bit more complex. This is where other major locations can be found, including the Fugue plane, which is a sort of stop the souls of the dead visit before being sent to their appropriate afterlife. In fact, the Eberron setting, originally conceived to be its own multiverse cosmos, was later retconned to exist as a sort of bubble of more mundane reality inside the Deep Ethereal, along with its own alternate planes, to unify the D&D cosmos.
Finally, we get to the Outer Planes, which are where D&D's most extreme and many of its most powerful entities come from. The Outer Planes are the worlds of the gods, and it's also where angels, devils, demons, and other powerful "outsiders" are from. It's here that the souls of the dead are sent off once they have been judged in the fugue plane. A chaotic evil person who dies might be sent off to the Abyss and transform into a minor demon, with the potential (albeit very low chance) to brutally grow in power and transform into more powerful demonic forms.
From what we've seen of Shadowlands, it looks like they're borrowing a few of these ideas.
First off, I'm still convinced that the "ghost realm" we use in game is a sort of "Border Shadowlands." Given that some Death Knight-themed quests take us into the "realm of shadows," which works like that, not to mention those involving the val'kyr and spirit healers, it seems likely that the Shadowlands have a similar "border" and "deep" divide, and that prior to Shadowlands the expansion, we've primarily seen the "border" regions (though I think Helheim and maybe the Halls of Valor might be Deep Shadowlands realms - Thros, also, maybe).
Admittedly, other than being sort of presented as an opposite to the Emerald Dream, there's less tying it to the Shadowfell (indeed, unless they seriously revamp their concept of the Emerald Dream, I'm not sure it even makes sense to consider them mirrors of one another. Ardenweald itself feels more like the mirror for the Dream. Perhaps we'll find out that the Emerald Dream is just one of a number of "Lightlands?")
The Outer Planes, though, also feel like a strong fit for the Shadowlands... sort of. The diversity of the realms of the Shadowlands enforces this notion, not to mention that it's where the dead wind up after they've died.
However, it's also not quite the same. As far as I know, we're not going to find the true homes of the gods - though that beings said, Warcraft has always been very cagey with what, exactly, qualifies as a god. Elune, as far as I know, is the only 100% god in the setting, though the Titans, the Loa, the Ancients, the Old Gods (it's even in the name) and more seem to vie for that title.
The other thing is that the entities we're finding in the Shadowlands are not the usual "outsiders" we've faced before. The Twisting Nether isn't the Shadowlands, and the Titans seem to be from the physical plane, rather than some Olympus-like other plane (even though they have a very Olympian space-citadel where we fought Argus).
What I'm very curious to discover is what, exactly, the people of the Shadowlands are like. We'll be going to these different realms where death doesn't really mean what it means to us. Is everything we meet there technically undead? Or perhaps undeath isn't even a possibility given that undeath would seem to require the dead to be returned from the land of the dead?
We heard a bit about soul-traders visiting the city of Oribos, but what sort of people are we expecting to see there?
In Planescape, there are humanoids who are from the Outer Planes (and in fact, they tend to look down on "Primes," or those from the Prime Material Plane). Are we going to meet humanoids in the Shadowlands? And if we do, what is life like for them?
This is WoW we're talking about, and thus I'm sure we'll be killing monsters. So what happens when you kill a monster in the afterlife? Does it just, like, wake up later?
I've commented in the past about how Blizzard is often vague about the afterlife in the Warcraft cosmos. We've encountered ghosts and spirits of the dead who have come to visit us, and of course we've seen figures like Cenarius and Medivh seem to come back from death fully alive again.
Initially, I assumed the Shadowlands would be much as the Emerald Dream has been presented - as a sort of shadow of the physical world. Indeed, it seemed implied that when we were in our ghost form after dying, and going to retrieve our bodies, we were, in fact, in the Shadowlands.
That may have been the original conception of the place, but in this expansion, the idea is getting profoundly expanded.
In D&D, there are three... places, categories of places, whatever, that we can compare the Shadowlands to.
First, there's the Shadowfell, which is the sort of shadowy opposite of the Feywild. The Feywild is a land of fairies, the original elves, and cruel hags, which are a sort of monstrous race of witches ("Green Hags" are the classic green-skinned witch with a cauldron and such). The key is that the Feywild is bursting with emotion, where emotions and dreams take the form of living creatures. Meanwhile, the Shadowfell is a land of gloomy bleakness, filled with the undead, where the emotional color of the world has been sapped (I like to think that the Dark Souls games essentially take place in the Shadowfell).
(Actually, it occurs to me that you could think of the Feywild as manic and the Shadowfell as depressive.)
Another comparison to make is with the Ethereal Plane. The Ethereal Plane is one of two "transitive planes," and in most games doesn't really have much going on in it specifically, instead serving as a way to get from one place to another, or to simply get around some things on the material plane. However, depending on the writer/DM, the Ethereal Plane can get a bit more complex. First off, ghosts can travel on the ethereal plane, and the way that they pass through objects and fade in and out of existence is that they're actually transitioning to and from the ethereal plane.
The Ethereal is divided into the Border Ethereal, which is basically like the material plane but hazy and invisible. The Deep Ethereal, though, is where things get a bit more complex. This is where other major locations can be found, including the Fugue plane, which is a sort of stop the souls of the dead visit before being sent to their appropriate afterlife. In fact, the Eberron setting, originally conceived to be its own multiverse cosmos, was later retconned to exist as a sort of bubble of more mundane reality inside the Deep Ethereal, along with its own alternate planes, to unify the D&D cosmos.
Finally, we get to the Outer Planes, which are where D&D's most extreme and many of its most powerful entities come from. The Outer Planes are the worlds of the gods, and it's also where angels, devils, demons, and other powerful "outsiders" are from. It's here that the souls of the dead are sent off once they have been judged in the fugue plane. A chaotic evil person who dies might be sent off to the Abyss and transform into a minor demon, with the potential (albeit very low chance) to brutally grow in power and transform into more powerful demonic forms.
From what we've seen of Shadowlands, it looks like they're borrowing a few of these ideas.
First off, I'm still convinced that the "ghost realm" we use in game is a sort of "Border Shadowlands." Given that some Death Knight-themed quests take us into the "realm of shadows," which works like that, not to mention those involving the val'kyr and spirit healers, it seems likely that the Shadowlands have a similar "border" and "deep" divide, and that prior to Shadowlands the expansion, we've primarily seen the "border" regions (though I think Helheim and maybe the Halls of Valor might be Deep Shadowlands realms - Thros, also, maybe).
Admittedly, other than being sort of presented as an opposite to the Emerald Dream, there's less tying it to the Shadowfell (indeed, unless they seriously revamp their concept of the Emerald Dream, I'm not sure it even makes sense to consider them mirrors of one another. Ardenweald itself feels more like the mirror for the Dream. Perhaps we'll find out that the Emerald Dream is just one of a number of "Lightlands?")
The Outer Planes, though, also feel like a strong fit for the Shadowlands... sort of. The diversity of the realms of the Shadowlands enforces this notion, not to mention that it's where the dead wind up after they've died.
However, it's also not quite the same. As far as I know, we're not going to find the true homes of the gods - though that beings said, Warcraft has always been very cagey with what, exactly, qualifies as a god. Elune, as far as I know, is the only 100% god in the setting, though the Titans, the Loa, the Ancients, the Old Gods (it's even in the name) and more seem to vie for that title.
The other thing is that the entities we're finding in the Shadowlands are not the usual "outsiders" we've faced before. The Twisting Nether isn't the Shadowlands, and the Titans seem to be from the physical plane, rather than some Olympus-like other plane (even though they have a very Olympian space-citadel where we fought Argus).
What I'm very curious to discover is what, exactly, the people of the Shadowlands are like. We'll be going to these different realms where death doesn't really mean what it means to us. Is everything we meet there technically undead? Or perhaps undeath isn't even a possibility given that undeath would seem to require the dead to be returned from the land of the dead?
We heard a bit about soul-traders visiting the city of Oribos, but what sort of people are we expecting to see there?
In Planescape, there are humanoids who are from the Outer Planes (and in fact, they tend to look down on "Primes," or those from the Prime Material Plane). Are we going to meet humanoids in the Shadowlands? And if we do, what is life like for them?
This is WoW we're talking about, and thus I'm sure we'll be killing monsters. So what happens when you kill a monster in the afterlife? Does it just, like, wake up later?
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Ikoria, Magic's Newest Plane, is the Land of Gargantuan Monsters
While I don't play the game anymore, I've always loved Magic: The Gathering's constant creation of new planes. Every world has to abide by a few rules dictated by the mechanics of the game - the biggest being that it has to have swamps, islands, plains, forests, and mountains, and cultures and creatures that fit into the five colors of mana that represents in some way - but they go to very different conceptual spaces with them.
Ravnica, my favorite of their settings, and one in which I'm currently running a big D&D campaign, for example, is a world that is just one enormous city dominated by ten extremely powerful guilds that each have their own goals as well as purposes they fulfill for the city.
While Magic spent its first several years only on its original world, Dominaria apart from a few trips to a couple other planes that were still part of a Dominaria-centric story, things started to change after ten years with the introduction of Mirrodin, the first set to take place on a new plane (in fact, a literally new plane, as it was created by one of the characters from the earlier story arc) that committed to a very serious thematic identity - in this case a world of metal in which organic life all carried with it some element that would, elsewhere, be considered artificial.
Since then, the number of known planes in the Magic multiverse has utterly exploded.
The popular settings have gotten revisits. Three blocks (meaning "sets of sets") have been released for Ravnica, and we've now gone to the gothic-horror world of Innistrad twice, the Greek-mythology-inspired Theros twice, and are preparing for a return to the adventure-world ravaged by eldritch abominations, Zendikar, for a third time.
However, before that, we've got Ikoria.
The set's name is Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths, and the world seems quite exciting. There seems to be a lot of inspiration here from Japanese "kaiju" movies, as well as anime/manga like Attack on Titan, though the human cultures of Ikoria seem less specific to a real-world region (as far as I can tell).
Essentially, a bit like on Innistrad, humans are definitely not on the top of the food chain here, as there are profoundly massive monsters who regularly threaten human civilization. The result is that humans have fortified themselves in various cities, trying to evade the monsters with massive walls or building the city out of floating balloons so that they can move out of the migration paths of the creatures.
The set seems to be built both around having these very large creatures, and a mechanic where you can combine the features of various creatures to make an even bigger monstrosity. It also seems to have a three-color "wedge" theme like Tarkir, with a different monster type for each "triome."
Personally, my main interest in Magic planes is as future destinations once my players' characters' planeswalker sparks ignite (which will not be for a while - they're only about to hit level 5, and that won't happen until level 13). I am already imagining some kind of massive kaiju fight on the walls of Drannith (a major location on Ikoria).
Ravnica, my favorite of their settings, and one in which I'm currently running a big D&D campaign, for example, is a world that is just one enormous city dominated by ten extremely powerful guilds that each have their own goals as well as purposes they fulfill for the city.
While Magic spent its first several years only on its original world, Dominaria apart from a few trips to a couple other planes that were still part of a Dominaria-centric story, things started to change after ten years with the introduction of Mirrodin, the first set to take place on a new plane (in fact, a literally new plane, as it was created by one of the characters from the earlier story arc) that committed to a very serious thematic identity - in this case a world of metal in which organic life all carried with it some element that would, elsewhere, be considered artificial.
Since then, the number of known planes in the Magic multiverse has utterly exploded.
The popular settings have gotten revisits. Three blocks (meaning "sets of sets") have been released for Ravnica, and we've now gone to the gothic-horror world of Innistrad twice, the Greek-mythology-inspired Theros twice, and are preparing for a return to the adventure-world ravaged by eldritch abominations, Zendikar, for a third time.
However, before that, we've got Ikoria.
The set's name is Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths, and the world seems quite exciting. There seems to be a lot of inspiration here from Japanese "kaiju" movies, as well as anime/manga like Attack on Titan, though the human cultures of Ikoria seem less specific to a real-world region (as far as I can tell).
Essentially, a bit like on Innistrad, humans are definitely not on the top of the food chain here, as there are profoundly massive monsters who regularly threaten human civilization. The result is that humans have fortified themselves in various cities, trying to evade the monsters with massive walls or building the city out of floating balloons so that they can move out of the migration paths of the creatures.
The set seems to be built both around having these very large creatures, and a mechanic where you can combine the features of various creatures to make an even bigger monstrosity. It also seems to have a three-color "wedge" theme like Tarkir, with a different monster type for each "triome."
Personally, my main interest in Magic planes is as future destinations once my players' characters' planeswalker sparks ignite (which will not be for a while - they're only about to hit level 5, and that won't happen until level 13). I am already imagining some kind of massive kaiju fight on the walls of Drannith (a major location on Ikoria).
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Runeforging and Frost Death Knights
At some point, likely due to the talent option from way back in Wrath called Threat of Thassarian, Frost became the DK dual-wielding spec. Still, after DK specs were locked to tanking and dps, (if you didn't play in Wrath, you might not remember that all three specs could do both roles, and in fact, when initially announced, Frost was meant to be the tank spec and Blood the dps spec, while Unholy was expected to be a sort of PvP/Utility spec) the option remained from Cataclysm through Warlords of Draenor for Frost to choose between dual-wielding or two-handed weapons.
For a time, this actually changed their rotation/priority system. It flipped back and forth once or twice, but the Killing Machine proc used to make both Obliterate and Frost Strike auto-crit, and there were talents and later passives that would make Obliterate do more damage for dual-wielders and Frost Strike do more for those using two-handers (again, I'm pretty sure this flipped at some point).
As such, it was always a bit of a challenge to balance the spec, because there were, in fact, two mini-specs within it (similarly, Fury Warriors used to be able to use ordinary one-handed weapons and got a boost called Single Minded Fury when they did).
There were a couple factors at play:
Special attacks like Obliterate used to always be based on the main-hand weapon's damage - your attack power really just increased your weapon's damage, and that then translated to the damage of your attack (which led to some funky math, given that ability damage was calculated as "flat amount x" + "this weapon's damage," which meant that abilities might scale differently at different gear levels). So using a two-handed weapon meant that you'd deal more damage with your abilities, but a dual-wielder would also be hitting with their off-hand weapon to compensate.
Frankly, I don't pay as close attention to the mechanics as they work today, but I believe that ability damage is all calculated simply based on attack power, which means the type of weapon loadout you use shouldn't matter (and given that all melee specs are currently locked to one weapon loadout style, it's not like you have a choice).
For auto-attack damage (which also used to be a far larger percentage of the damage that melee classes did) I imagine they just balance off-hand weapon damage so that it makes up the difference for the higher damage of the single 2-hander.
For Frost Death Knights, however, it gets a little more complicated.
Death Knights have always had a very nice advantage, which is that they get weapon enchants for free as a class feature. I think Blizzard initially wanted you to swap out your forged runes based on the encounters you expected (there was one that did extra fire damage to undead, for example) but ultimately they wound up narrowing these down to the only ones you were likely to actually use.
Rune of the Fallen Crusader actually mimics the vanilla-era "Crusader" enchant, boosting strength for a short duration and also healing you a bit, and is the default rune for Unholy. Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle makes you tougher, though I think the self-heal and boost to strength from Fallen Crusader sees a lot of Blood DKs going with that one as well.
Rune of Razorice is the one designed for Frost, and causes a bit of frost damage to the target as well as stacking a debuff that increases their frost damage taken.
Now, the thing is, when dual-wielding, you can easily stack up this debuff with just one weapon, leaving the other free for Fallen Crusader, whose buff is obviously good for any melee combatant.
If you're using a two-hander, you have to give one of them up. Historically, Fallen Crusader was so good that you'd lose out on the boost to frost damage.
The thing is, if all attacks are based on attack power and they can easily balance auto-attack damage between two-handers and dual-wielding, in theory it shouldn't be hard to keep Frost balanced between these two weapon choices. But the runes create a bigger problem that plays into scaling, and that is where things get hairy.
Consider, for example, that if you drop Razorice, thus lowering your overall Frost damage you deal, that also means that your mastery, Frozen Heart, is less useful, given that all it does is boost Frost damage.
You could buff Razorice to the point that two-hander Frost DKs want to take it, but then they miss out on Fallen Crusader, and you've got to come up with some way to compensate them for the lack of Fallen Crusader's periodic strength boost.
Given that I'm by no means a game designer (apart from some D&D homebrew stuff) I wouldn't even know what problems to anticipate here. It's possible that the proper formulations - giving Obliterate and Frost Strike a little buff when using a two-handed weapon, or something - would solve this issue. But it does seem like a little imbalance that might cause problems in the long run.
Or, it could mean a .05% difference in DPS, and thus only matter to those who are chasing world first raid achievements.
What I do know is that I think two-handed weapons look cooler, so I'm going to go with that.
For a time, this actually changed their rotation/priority system. It flipped back and forth once or twice, but the Killing Machine proc used to make both Obliterate and Frost Strike auto-crit, and there were talents and later passives that would make Obliterate do more damage for dual-wielders and Frost Strike do more for those using two-handers (again, I'm pretty sure this flipped at some point).
As such, it was always a bit of a challenge to balance the spec, because there were, in fact, two mini-specs within it (similarly, Fury Warriors used to be able to use ordinary one-handed weapons and got a boost called Single Minded Fury when they did).
There were a couple factors at play:
Special attacks like Obliterate used to always be based on the main-hand weapon's damage - your attack power really just increased your weapon's damage, and that then translated to the damage of your attack (which led to some funky math, given that ability damage was calculated as "flat amount x" + "this weapon's damage," which meant that abilities might scale differently at different gear levels). So using a two-handed weapon meant that you'd deal more damage with your abilities, but a dual-wielder would also be hitting with their off-hand weapon to compensate.
Frankly, I don't pay as close attention to the mechanics as they work today, but I believe that ability damage is all calculated simply based on attack power, which means the type of weapon loadout you use shouldn't matter (and given that all melee specs are currently locked to one weapon loadout style, it's not like you have a choice).
For auto-attack damage (which also used to be a far larger percentage of the damage that melee classes did) I imagine they just balance off-hand weapon damage so that it makes up the difference for the higher damage of the single 2-hander.
For Frost Death Knights, however, it gets a little more complicated.
Death Knights have always had a very nice advantage, which is that they get weapon enchants for free as a class feature. I think Blizzard initially wanted you to swap out your forged runes based on the encounters you expected (there was one that did extra fire damage to undead, for example) but ultimately they wound up narrowing these down to the only ones you were likely to actually use.
Rune of the Fallen Crusader actually mimics the vanilla-era "Crusader" enchant, boosting strength for a short duration and also healing you a bit, and is the default rune for Unholy. Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle makes you tougher, though I think the self-heal and boost to strength from Fallen Crusader sees a lot of Blood DKs going with that one as well.
Rune of Razorice is the one designed for Frost, and causes a bit of frost damage to the target as well as stacking a debuff that increases their frost damage taken.
Now, the thing is, when dual-wielding, you can easily stack up this debuff with just one weapon, leaving the other free for Fallen Crusader, whose buff is obviously good for any melee combatant.
If you're using a two-hander, you have to give one of them up. Historically, Fallen Crusader was so good that you'd lose out on the boost to frost damage.
The thing is, if all attacks are based on attack power and they can easily balance auto-attack damage between two-handers and dual-wielding, in theory it shouldn't be hard to keep Frost balanced between these two weapon choices. But the runes create a bigger problem that plays into scaling, and that is where things get hairy.
Consider, for example, that if you drop Razorice, thus lowering your overall Frost damage you deal, that also means that your mastery, Frozen Heart, is less useful, given that all it does is boost Frost damage.
You could buff Razorice to the point that two-hander Frost DKs want to take it, but then they miss out on Fallen Crusader, and you've got to come up with some way to compensate them for the lack of Fallen Crusader's periodic strength boost.
Given that I'm by no means a game designer (apart from some D&D homebrew stuff) I wouldn't even know what problems to anticipate here. It's possible that the proper formulations - giving Obliterate and Frost Strike a little buff when using a two-handed weapon, or something - would solve this issue. But it does seem like a little imbalance that might cause problems in the long run.
Or, it could mean a .05% difference in DPS, and thus only matter to those who are chasing world first raid achievements.
What I do know is that I think two-handed weapons look cooler, so I'm going to go with that.
Trying to Decide Whether to Go Against Type or With It With Covenants
I have a lot of alts (see name of blog).
I will almost certainly have at least 4 characters at max level in Shadowlands (in fact, likely before the second major raid comes out) and so I expect to play through each of the four covenant stories.
The question, then, is which covenant for which characters?
Here are my first five characters in order of my sort of play-priority:
Human Protection Paladin
Draenei Frost (usually, though often also Blood) Death Knight
Night Elf Havoc Demon Hunter
Tauren Enhancement Shaman
Undead Subtlety Rogue
The way I see it, the following are the "obvious" choices for them:
Paladin - Kyrians
DK - Necrolords
Demon Hunter - Venthyr
Shaman - Night Fae
Rogue - Venthyr
But there are some considerations to be made:
For one thing, if I want to max out the transmog options I get, I need to at least have the Demon Hunter and Rogue do different covenants. Both, I've conceived as being hedonists who engage in heroism primarily just to preserve their ability to indulge in their vices (arguably the Demon Hunter took more extreme measures to do so, though the Rogue arguably has more reason to be pissed off - his fine wines don't taste as good to him as they did in life). They both feel like good fits for the Venthyr, but as both are leather-wearers, I kind of want to send them to different places.
The Demon Hunter, admittedly, given his fateful choice to become part-demon to fight demons, would probably fit in quite well with the Necrolords, whose whole deal is relentlessness.
Naturally, we'll have to consider how the actual sets look, too.
Part of me wants to play against type, though, and have the Paladin go for something that isn't all angel-land. I'd actually considered having the Death Knight join the Kyrians, as post-Argus, his mission has transformed from vengeful obliteration to an unceasing duty.
The Shaman also might not perfectly fit with the Night Fae, given that he's more concerned with the primal, pre-organic forces of nature.
It's really just a big question of what story makes the most sense for each character, and what will look the best on each of them. I think that means the Rogue really has to go Venthyr, as he is about as Ravenloft as any of my characters get.
Oh well, plenty of time to choose.
I will almost certainly have at least 4 characters at max level in Shadowlands (in fact, likely before the second major raid comes out) and so I expect to play through each of the four covenant stories.
The question, then, is which covenant for which characters?
Here are my first five characters in order of my sort of play-priority:
Human Protection Paladin
Draenei Frost (usually, though often also Blood) Death Knight
Night Elf Havoc Demon Hunter
Tauren Enhancement Shaman
Undead Subtlety Rogue
The way I see it, the following are the "obvious" choices for them:
Paladin - Kyrians
DK - Necrolords
Demon Hunter - Venthyr
Shaman - Night Fae
Rogue - Venthyr
But there are some considerations to be made:
For one thing, if I want to max out the transmog options I get, I need to at least have the Demon Hunter and Rogue do different covenants. Both, I've conceived as being hedonists who engage in heroism primarily just to preserve their ability to indulge in their vices (arguably the Demon Hunter took more extreme measures to do so, though the Rogue arguably has more reason to be pissed off - his fine wines don't taste as good to him as they did in life). They both feel like good fits for the Venthyr, but as both are leather-wearers, I kind of want to send them to different places.
The Demon Hunter, admittedly, given his fateful choice to become part-demon to fight demons, would probably fit in quite well with the Necrolords, whose whole deal is relentlessness.
Naturally, we'll have to consider how the actual sets look, too.
Part of me wants to play against type, though, and have the Paladin go for something that isn't all angel-land. I'd actually considered having the Death Knight join the Kyrians, as post-Argus, his mission has transformed from vengeful obliteration to an unceasing duty.
The Shaman also might not perfectly fit with the Night Fae, given that he's more concerned with the primal, pre-organic forces of nature.
It's really just a big question of what story makes the most sense for each character, and what will look the best on each of them. I think that means the Rogue really has to go Venthyr, as he is about as Ravenloft as any of my characters get.
Oh well, plenty of time to choose.
The Datamining Begins! Shadowlands Alpha Builds Mine-able!
Well, it's a little later than we might have expected, but we have the first glimpses of content from Shadowlands.
And boy howdy, does it look fantastic.
Generally speaking, I'm always happiest when Blizzard goes for a more heightened, high fantasy feel with WoW (taking a couple allied race alts to Outland is making me wish there were the resources to give all of Outland a sort of Arathi Highlands revamp, because conceptually, it's amazing, but it does look like it came out in 2007, oddly enough).
Well, with Shadowlands, WoW is going to its most otherworldly locations ever, and what I've been seeing looks ridiculously cool.
Each of the zones has its own vibe, with monsters, equipment, and other elements that fit in with those vibes.
Bastion, while probably the most pleasant zone (I'll need to see more of Ardenweald, though) has, I think, the least unprecedented look. It seems to share a lot with the Titan/Vrykul aesthetic as seen in Stormheim and the Halls of Valor, though the color palette is more heavenly than Odyn's Valhalla feel, with more blue and brighter golds. My Paladin will surely feel best here, though as a player, I think it will mostly be best to serve as a counter-balance to the much darker looks we come across.
Ardenweald is all about the organic, and the models we're seeing out of it actually remind me of early impressions of Night Elf zones like Teldrassil (RIP) and Ashenvale - that kind of organic greens and purples, where it feels like nature-based fey magic is everywhere. Armor made of wood, weapons with crystals attached to wood define the feel here, and the monsters are generally pretty, but in that fey way where you need to be very careful about pretty things. Also (minor SPOILER): there are Drust here. I'm super happy about that, because Drustvar is my favorite zone in BFA, and I really wanted to see more of that story.
Maldraxxus is going to look very familiar, given that the Scourge was essentially a stolen portion of Maldraxxus' power. While I might quibble a bit about where the Scourge got its look and feel (I was under the impression that Naxxramas and the whole obelisks-and-floating citadels thing was stolen from the Nerubian remnants of the Black Empire), the kind-of gross aspects of the undead in Warcraft basically come from here, with abominations, skeletal necromancers and liches, and lots of goo-monsters.
Revendreth is gothic-horror world, with the vampiric Venthyr, and a lot of classic gothic imagery like tombstones, gargoyles, refined ornate clothing with a sanguine color scheme, carriages. It seems the intro raid to the expansion will take place here, and appears to be essentially Dracula's castle. Notably, while the previous three Shadowlands zones are meant as final destinations for souls that have some worth (yes, even Maldraxxus, which is gross but not, apparently, a terrible place to wind up,) Revendreth is essentially purgatory - bad people go here to be "rehabilitated" by the Venthyr. If you find redemption, you either get sent off somewhere else or you can become a Venthyr yourself. If you don't, they dump you in the Maw.
And yes, we also get some armor and monsters from the Maw, and damn if these don't seem like the most freaking hardcore "bad guy" looking pieces. Essentially, imagine Sauron's armor or the Nazgul, and apply that aesthetic to everything from armor to dogs to knights to necromancers. My Death Knight really, really wants a full set of armor from here.
But that's not all! Oribos, the hub city of the expansion, also appears to have gear associated with it (and, less surprisingly, some NPC models.) This fits a bit with the Eternal Traveler set that those who got fancier editions of the expansion might have, with a kind of otherworldly, almost futuristic feel. A bit more metallic and shining, but in a different way than that of Bastion.
I've been excited about Shadowlands, but seeing the art work that's already visible is convincing me that if nothing else, the expansion will have some really amazing visuals.
There are also story spoilers to be found (which, as always, Magister Rommath reminds you that you have to take with a grain of salt) and, of course, some major things we have yet to understand.
But this is definitely getting me hyped big-time.
And boy howdy, does it look fantastic.
Generally speaking, I'm always happiest when Blizzard goes for a more heightened, high fantasy feel with WoW (taking a couple allied race alts to Outland is making me wish there were the resources to give all of Outland a sort of Arathi Highlands revamp, because conceptually, it's amazing, but it does look like it came out in 2007, oddly enough).
Well, with Shadowlands, WoW is going to its most otherworldly locations ever, and what I've been seeing looks ridiculously cool.
Each of the zones has its own vibe, with monsters, equipment, and other elements that fit in with those vibes.
Bastion, while probably the most pleasant zone (I'll need to see more of Ardenweald, though) has, I think, the least unprecedented look. It seems to share a lot with the Titan/Vrykul aesthetic as seen in Stormheim and the Halls of Valor, though the color palette is more heavenly than Odyn's Valhalla feel, with more blue and brighter golds. My Paladin will surely feel best here, though as a player, I think it will mostly be best to serve as a counter-balance to the much darker looks we come across.
Ardenweald is all about the organic, and the models we're seeing out of it actually remind me of early impressions of Night Elf zones like Teldrassil (RIP) and Ashenvale - that kind of organic greens and purples, where it feels like nature-based fey magic is everywhere. Armor made of wood, weapons with crystals attached to wood define the feel here, and the monsters are generally pretty, but in that fey way where you need to be very careful about pretty things. Also (minor SPOILER): there are Drust here. I'm super happy about that, because Drustvar is my favorite zone in BFA, and I really wanted to see more of that story.
Maldraxxus is going to look very familiar, given that the Scourge was essentially a stolen portion of Maldraxxus' power. While I might quibble a bit about where the Scourge got its look and feel (I was under the impression that Naxxramas and the whole obelisks-and-floating citadels thing was stolen from the Nerubian remnants of the Black Empire), the kind-of gross aspects of the undead in Warcraft basically come from here, with abominations, skeletal necromancers and liches, and lots of goo-monsters.
Revendreth is gothic-horror world, with the vampiric Venthyr, and a lot of classic gothic imagery like tombstones, gargoyles, refined ornate clothing with a sanguine color scheme, carriages. It seems the intro raid to the expansion will take place here, and appears to be essentially Dracula's castle. Notably, while the previous three Shadowlands zones are meant as final destinations for souls that have some worth (yes, even Maldraxxus, which is gross but not, apparently, a terrible place to wind up,) Revendreth is essentially purgatory - bad people go here to be "rehabilitated" by the Venthyr. If you find redemption, you either get sent off somewhere else or you can become a Venthyr yourself. If you don't, they dump you in the Maw.
And yes, we also get some armor and monsters from the Maw, and damn if these don't seem like the most freaking hardcore "bad guy" looking pieces. Essentially, imagine Sauron's armor or the Nazgul, and apply that aesthetic to everything from armor to dogs to knights to necromancers. My Death Knight really, really wants a full set of armor from here.
But that's not all! Oribos, the hub city of the expansion, also appears to have gear associated with it (and, less surprisingly, some NPC models.) This fits a bit with the Eternal Traveler set that those who got fancier editions of the expansion might have, with a kind of otherworldly, almost futuristic feel. A bit more metallic and shining, but in a different way than that of Bastion.
I've been excited about Shadowlands, but seeing the art work that's already visible is convincing me that if nothing else, the expansion will have some really amazing visuals.
There are also story spoilers to be found (which, as always, Magister Rommath reminds you that you have to take with a grain of salt) and, of course, some major things we have yet to understand.
But this is definitely getting me hyped big-time.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Shadowlands Class Changes: My Big Takeaway is the Return of 2H Frost
With the Shadowlands Alpha starting soon, Blizzard has announced a sort of broad overview of class changes coming with the expansion.
Philosophically, the main takeaway is that they're trying to broaden class abilities so that the various specs have some ability overlap. In Legion, with its focus on giving each spec a very strong identity, a lot of classes were really divided between their specs. Today, outside of utility spells, most specializations don't have any shared rotational spells or abilities with the other specs of their class.
I'll confess I'm not entirely excited by this prospect. While I miss having Frostfire Bolt on my Frost Mage, that's not what they're bringing back. Still, what this will mean is a return of a lot of funky utility spells, with stuff like Warlock utility curses, Paladin Auras, and Raise Dead coming back to all specs for their respective classes.
As someone whose sort of secondary main is a Frost Death Knight, I'm extremely excited by the prospect of Frost being able to wield two-handed weapons once again. No word on if we get to transmog Frostmourne (though it wouldn't be inappropriate given the subject matter of the expansion.) It just remains to be seen whether it'll be easy to balance given that 2H frost doesn't have access to two weapon runes.
A few other things of note:
Both Elemental and Enhancement Shamans are losing Maelstrom as a resource, and going back to more of a cooldown-based rotation. While I think this is probably good for Elemental, I've actually liked the way Enhancement plays since 7.0, so we'll see how the new rotation feels.
All Paladins will once again use Holy Power. I'm trying to remember if it was Legion or Warlords that removed it from Holy and Protection. If you're one of those folks who wants Ret to go back to the way it was in Wrath, I think you're out of luck. Still, while I did eventually get used to the idea of simply managing cooldowns for my Shield of the Righteous, Holy Power did give the class a certain structure that I do think we lost. I'm going to mostly consider this a good thing.
Vengeance Demon Hunters will now use Fury instead of Pain as their resource, which is pretty much just a flavor thing. While I sort of liked the fact that you could tell a DH's spec by the color of their resource bar, this seems fine, and I think they picked the correct one to stick with.
Balance Druids are going to go back to having Solar Wrath and Lunar Strike causing Eclipses, but I don't know if that means anything for Astral Power.
Finally, did I mention Frost DKs can use two-handed weapons again?
Philosophically, the main takeaway is that they're trying to broaden class abilities so that the various specs have some ability overlap. In Legion, with its focus on giving each spec a very strong identity, a lot of classes were really divided between their specs. Today, outside of utility spells, most specializations don't have any shared rotational spells or abilities with the other specs of their class.
I'll confess I'm not entirely excited by this prospect. While I miss having Frostfire Bolt on my Frost Mage, that's not what they're bringing back. Still, what this will mean is a return of a lot of funky utility spells, with stuff like Warlock utility curses, Paladin Auras, and Raise Dead coming back to all specs for their respective classes.
As someone whose sort of secondary main is a Frost Death Knight, I'm extremely excited by the prospect of Frost being able to wield two-handed weapons once again. No word on if we get to transmog Frostmourne (though it wouldn't be inappropriate given the subject matter of the expansion.) It just remains to be seen whether it'll be easy to balance given that 2H frost doesn't have access to two weapon runes.
A few other things of note:
Both Elemental and Enhancement Shamans are losing Maelstrom as a resource, and going back to more of a cooldown-based rotation. While I think this is probably good for Elemental, I've actually liked the way Enhancement plays since 7.0, so we'll see how the new rotation feels.
All Paladins will once again use Holy Power. I'm trying to remember if it was Legion or Warlords that removed it from Holy and Protection. If you're one of those folks who wants Ret to go back to the way it was in Wrath, I think you're out of luck. Still, while I did eventually get used to the idea of simply managing cooldowns for my Shield of the Righteous, Holy Power did give the class a certain structure that I do think we lost. I'm going to mostly consider this a good thing.
Vengeance Demon Hunters will now use Fury instead of Pain as their resource, which is pretty much just a flavor thing. While I sort of liked the fact that you could tell a DH's spec by the color of their resource bar, this seems fine, and I think they picked the correct one to stick with.
Balance Druids are going to go back to having Solar Wrath and Lunar Strike causing Eclipses, but I don't know if that means anything for Astral Power.
Finally, did I mention Frost DKs can use two-handed weapons again?
Monday, April 6, 2020
Shadowlands Closed Alpha Invites Coming This Week
It's happening!
Blizzard has announced that the closed Alpha for Shadowlands will be starting this week.
Invites are likely to be rare, and the build we'll be looking at will be far from complete. They've announced that the Alliance version of Bastion, the zone, will be available to test, as well as the Bastion level-up dungeon, the Necrotic Wake.
I'm very excited that we'll finally be able to start getting a look at Shadowlands, as it's an expansion I'm really looking forward to.
The early stages of these tests are always very rough, though, so while it'll be great to get a sense of story and something of the expansion's narrative, it's also important to take everything we get with a grain of salt.
This is an Alpha, rather than a Beta, which I think is meant to imply that it will be very rough (missing textures, holes in the world one can fall through, etc.) The Alpha is there to make sure that the new expansion doesn't immediately explode. They have forewarned us that when the Beta starts, they will wipe all existing characters.
That said, I'm hoping they will start testing new systems as soon as possible. I think one of the big reasons Azerite Armor turned out as poorly as it did was that they didn't actually get the system working until the last weeks of the Beta test.
I think it's likely we'll get the level-squish early on, possibly with the initial build (in fact, the first thing they test could be just how things work at the new level 50) especially because they might need to wipe characters to implement it (though obviously they can't do that on live).
I think it's crucial that they figure out the Covenant system and the associated Soulbinds figured out as quickly as they can, because if there are any big problems with it, they need to know about them while there's still time to fix them.
Torghast, I imagine, will take longer for them to get up and testing. While I hope they do make it work early, I also think this is a feature that they can sort of use as much or as little as they want as the expansion goes on, depending on how people like it. Warfronts were very cool when they came out, and frankly, I wish they'd done more iterations on them, but they also became pretty clearly optional content by BFA's later patches. I'm hoping Torghast turns out better than Warfronts and Island Expeditions, but if it doesn't, I think it's less central to the expansion than the Covenants, which really have to be good gameplay for Shadowlands to succeed.
One of the real enjoyable aspects of these testing builds is to watch MMO-Champion and WoWHead datamine them to discover all the cool new models, icons, items, and fragments of story. And given the subject matter of this expansion, it's a story I'm really keen to hear more about.
BFA might have told a story I wasn't really interested in (I'd have preferred it as a pure Old God expansion, and would have liked to see N'zoth, rather than the Jailor, manipulating us into bloodshed) but the story it had was told well (also, I could do an entire expansion in the tone of Drustvar, which I'm hoping Shadowlands sort of is). But even if we didn't get a Necromancer class, Shadowlands seems like an expansion made specifically for my tastes in Warcraft content, and if they nail it, it might even outdo Legion.
Blizzard has announced that the closed Alpha for Shadowlands will be starting this week.
Invites are likely to be rare, and the build we'll be looking at will be far from complete. They've announced that the Alliance version of Bastion, the zone, will be available to test, as well as the Bastion level-up dungeon, the Necrotic Wake.
I'm very excited that we'll finally be able to start getting a look at Shadowlands, as it's an expansion I'm really looking forward to.
The early stages of these tests are always very rough, though, so while it'll be great to get a sense of story and something of the expansion's narrative, it's also important to take everything we get with a grain of salt.
This is an Alpha, rather than a Beta, which I think is meant to imply that it will be very rough (missing textures, holes in the world one can fall through, etc.) The Alpha is there to make sure that the new expansion doesn't immediately explode. They have forewarned us that when the Beta starts, they will wipe all existing characters.
That said, I'm hoping they will start testing new systems as soon as possible. I think one of the big reasons Azerite Armor turned out as poorly as it did was that they didn't actually get the system working until the last weeks of the Beta test.
I think it's likely we'll get the level-squish early on, possibly with the initial build (in fact, the first thing they test could be just how things work at the new level 50) especially because they might need to wipe characters to implement it (though obviously they can't do that on live).
I think it's crucial that they figure out the Covenant system and the associated Soulbinds figured out as quickly as they can, because if there are any big problems with it, they need to know about them while there's still time to fix them.
Torghast, I imagine, will take longer for them to get up and testing. While I hope they do make it work early, I also think this is a feature that they can sort of use as much or as little as they want as the expansion goes on, depending on how people like it. Warfronts were very cool when they came out, and frankly, I wish they'd done more iterations on them, but they also became pretty clearly optional content by BFA's later patches. I'm hoping Torghast turns out better than Warfronts and Island Expeditions, but if it doesn't, I think it's less central to the expansion than the Covenants, which really have to be good gameplay for Shadowlands to succeed.
One of the real enjoyable aspects of these testing builds is to watch MMO-Champion and WoWHead datamine them to discover all the cool new models, icons, items, and fragments of story. And given the subject matter of this expansion, it's a story I'm really keen to hear more about.
BFA might have told a story I wasn't really interested in (I'd have preferred it as a pure Old God expansion, and would have liked to see N'zoth, rather than the Jailor, manipulating us into bloodshed) but the story it had was told well (also, I could do an entire expansion in the tone of Drustvar, which I'm hoping Shadowlands sort of is). But even if we didn't get a Necromancer class, Shadowlands seems like an expansion made specifically for my tastes in Warcraft content, and if they nail it, it might even outdo Legion.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Feature Creep and New 120s
Even though I main a Paladin, and thus it's not like I don't get opportunities to play one much (even in his offspec - though given how little I've been running dungeons or raiding, Ret has felt more like a main spec this expansion than Protection,) I knew as soon as Lightforged Draenei were announced that I'd want to make one as a Paladin. I mean, the Draenei in general are very obvious Paladin-types, and the Lightforged in particular, who have been living in more of a militaristic environment than their blue-skinned brethren for a very long time, seem even better-suited to the role of a holy knight. (Sidenote: Given that Turalyon and Alleria experienced what was to us about 25 years after the destruction of Draenor as 1,000, if the Lightforged experienced the same time distortion consistently since they fled Argus, that would mean that your Lightforged Draenei could be literally over a million years old - and it's not like you see a bunch of children amongst the Lightforged, so it would stand to reason that, given the extreme longevity inherent to the Eredar/Draenei physiology, plus the Light's life sustaining properties, the Lightforged are insanely old.)
But this isn't really a lore post.
I decided to get my Lightforged Paladin, Armaad (I only realized after I came up with the name that it's a pretty close anagram of Maraad - which was not intentional) up to 120. He was the first allied race character on which I earned heritage armor, but was sitting around at 110 for much of the expansion (I've actually still not leveled my Druid or Monk to 120, though I did get my Kul Tiran Druid to 110 so he can take over from the likely retired Night Elf.)
Anyway, with the quarantine buff, I went through the main story quests of Tiragarde Sound and Drustvar and hit 120 while inside the walls of Corlaine (I held off until dinging to make sure I got the axe off the vignette mob there when it was at its highest item level.)
But hitting 120 has meant some very strange things.
First, I grabbed all the plate Black Empire gear I could find, though I also went and bought Benthic pieces of Azerite gear (given that blue gear still only has one major trait and no medium traits.)
However, even after blasting his Heart of Azeroth about 8 levels in a single emissary quest, none of his Azerite traits are even usable yet.
It occurs to me that if I want to play him at all seriously at 120 (which, to be fair, isn't super likely - he'll probably sit there until at least Shadowlands) I'd have to go through a whole lot - unlocking his essence slots, doing the whole Ny'alotha intro quests, and grinding a whole lot to get his Heart of Azeroth up to a decent level.
Now, obviously, any alt is going to have to do some work to become as powerful as your main, and I don't think it's a bad thing for there to be some effort involved.
But it's remarkable to me how many things don't come online when you hit the level cap on a new alt. Even with a bunch of catch-up gear, which boosted his item level by about a hundred, he's still extremely far behind.
I've mentioned before how all the various different systems that have come in with each major patch of Battle for Azeroth have been excessive. Frankly, I think the Essence system is actually decently cool, and while I wasn't too troubled by Warforging/Titanforging, I think the Corruption system is sort of interesting (frankly, I like the Horrific Visions more than Corruption itself, I guess just because I enjoy them conceptually and also having solo content is fun.) The Azerite Armor system, of course, has been a train wreck that they've kind of sort of made less excruciating (a bit).
But it wasn't all that long ago that we didn't really have these sorts of systems to worry about. Warlord of Draenor was not a good expansion, obviously, but it wasn't the fact that we were just traditionally gearing up that made it bad.
I loved Artifact weapons, but the thing I loved most about them was the flavor of them - the stories and visual design for them. And yes, it was fun to get all the little bonuses (I loved that the Subtlety Daggers made it so you took no fall damage whatsoever, meaning I could fly over a world quest and just dismount from a mile up, stealthing and dropping into Suramar like some sort of special-ops commando). But once artifacts started getting into that feature-creep space, like the Netherlight Crucible (which felt a lot like Azerite Armor's system, frankly) it got less exciting than annoying.
Shadowlands is going to have systems like this - it seems to be the way Blizzard is going with WoW for the foreseeable future. But I hope they'll learn to take a lighter touch. Get the initial system working right, and don't go totally crazy making it more complex. They got extremely carried away in BFA. Let's see some restraint in Shadowlands, shall we?
But this isn't really a lore post.
I decided to get my Lightforged Paladin, Armaad (I only realized after I came up with the name that it's a pretty close anagram of Maraad - which was not intentional) up to 120. He was the first allied race character on which I earned heritage armor, but was sitting around at 110 for much of the expansion (I've actually still not leveled my Druid or Monk to 120, though I did get my Kul Tiran Druid to 110 so he can take over from the likely retired Night Elf.)
Anyway, with the quarantine buff, I went through the main story quests of Tiragarde Sound and Drustvar and hit 120 while inside the walls of Corlaine (I held off until dinging to make sure I got the axe off the vignette mob there when it was at its highest item level.)
But hitting 120 has meant some very strange things.
First, I grabbed all the plate Black Empire gear I could find, though I also went and bought Benthic pieces of Azerite gear (given that blue gear still only has one major trait and no medium traits.)
However, even after blasting his Heart of Azeroth about 8 levels in a single emissary quest, none of his Azerite traits are even usable yet.
It occurs to me that if I want to play him at all seriously at 120 (which, to be fair, isn't super likely - he'll probably sit there until at least Shadowlands) I'd have to go through a whole lot - unlocking his essence slots, doing the whole Ny'alotha intro quests, and grinding a whole lot to get his Heart of Azeroth up to a decent level.
Now, obviously, any alt is going to have to do some work to become as powerful as your main, and I don't think it's a bad thing for there to be some effort involved.
But it's remarkable to me how many things don't come online when you hit the level cap on a new alt. Even with a bunch of catch-up gear, which boosted his item level by about a hundred, he's still extremely far behind.
I've mentioned before how all the various different systems that have come in with each major patch of Battle for Azeroth have been excessive. Frankly, I think the Essence system is actually decently cool, and while I wasn't too troubled by Warforging/Titanforging, I think the Corruption system is sort of interesting (frankly, I like the Horrific Visions more than Corruption itself, I guess just because I enjoy them conceptually and also having solo content is fun.) The Azerite Armor system, of course, has been a train wreck that they've kind of sort of made less excruciating (a bit).
But it wasn't all that long ago that we didn't really have these sorts of systems to worry about. Warlord of Draenor was not a good expansion, obviously, but it wasn't the fact that we were just traditionally gearing up that made it bad.
I loved Artifact weapons, but the thing I loved most about them was the flavor of them - the stories and visual design for them. And yes, it was fun to get all the little bonuses (I loved that the Subtlety Daggers made it so you took no fall damage whatsoever, meaning I could fly over a world quest and just dismount from a mile up, stealthing and dropping into Suramar like some sort of special-ops commando). But once artifacts started getting into that feature-creep space, like the Netherlight Crucible (which felt a lot like Azerite Armor's system, frankly) it got less exciting than annoying.
Shadowlands is going to have systems like this - it seems to be the way Blizzard is going with WoW for the foreseeable future. But I hope they'll learn to take a lighter touch. Get the initial system working right, and don't go totally crazy making it more complex. They got extremely carried away in BFA. Let's see some restraint in Shadowlands, shall we?
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Shadowlands Alpha Anticipation
Pretty frequently in recent weeks, Blizzard has been pushing alpha builds of WoW's 8th expansion, Shadowlands. Now, comparing this with BFA, I was already playing in the Alpha/Beta this time two years ago. But this year is, of course, not like other years, given that practically the entire country is in quarantine trying to slow the spread of a deadly virus (man, did not think I'd ever have to write that sentence on this blog when I started it several years ago.) As important as this game and Blizzard are to me and I imagine others who would read this blog, it's hardly an "essential business" in terms of keeping people alive and safe, and being in California, the company is under the same "shelter at home" orders that I am.
Granted, so much can be done online these days that it's clear some people are still working, but I'm going to be forgiving if this expansion takes a little longer to cook than previous ones given the literally once-in-a-century crisis the entire world is currently dealing with.
Still, I do wonder what kind of timetable we're looking at.
Since its announcement last year, we really haven't gotten many updates on how Shadowlands is developing. There are a lot of key systems that need to be tested, and after the debacle that was Azerite Armor, I think it's crucial for them to get these systems into play testers' hands early enough that they can change them before they go live (to remind people, Azerite armor only came in shortly before the end of the Alpha/Beta for BFA, and we all see how that turned out.)
System-wise, here's what I'm curious about:
I want to see how smoothly the level squish goes. In theory, with the existing scaling technology, they should be able to just adjust the ranges on existing content to make it work. That being said, with the actual number of levels being compressed, we need to see things like when we get certain abilities and talents. It will be a surreal experience to have a level 15 tank running Neltharion's Lair, but I think it's also important that classes have the tools to run those dungeons that had previously expected a mostly-complete toolkit (like, Rogues should definitely get their AoE tools earlier. Right now they don't get them until 63.)
Another off-branching issue with the level squish is how legacy raid content will work. Granted, I think that once Shadowlands launches we'll all be trying to get to 60 rather than going back to run Throne of Thunder for transmog pieces. But will the jump from 50 to 60 be so profound that it's easy to run everything from Ny'alotha to Molten Core? Because by that point, at least the leveling content those raids are connected to will scale to the same top level.
Then, of course, we need to get a feel for the systems of Shadowlands itself.
A lot can change after an expansion is announced (I remember when they told us Death Knights could choose which runes they'd etch into their blades - this was of course back when there were three types of runes, plus the "wildcard" Death runes) but as I understand it, the Covenants, which are the big thing in Shadowlands, work thusly, according to the announcement at Blizzcon:
You choose a covenant at max level (or earlier on alts) and this gives you two active abilities, one which is specific to your class. Then, you "soul-bond" with one of a number of NPCs from that covenant, and that gives you various bonuses in a talent-tree like thing.
Already, I'm a little concerned at the complexity of this off the bat. This is a bit more than the Aldor/Scryers choice in Burning Crusade. To be honest, unless they can really carefully balance this (preferably keeping it simple,) I'd more prefer this as an aesthetic/flavor choice than a deep mechanical one (something Blizzard always seems to resist - see Garrisons, and remember how well those turned out?)
The other headlining feature is Torghast, a repeatable procedurally-generated endless dungeon. This could be really cool, but given that it's the way we get our legendaries, it'll be "required' content and thus needs to be fun and have legs.
While all of this is certainly important, I think a crucial consideration will be story.
Now, Shadowlands has a big advantage: given that it's a new plane of existence with practically no existing lore to contradict, Blizzard can be extremely novel and creative in the sort of things we encounter in the Shadowlands.
But WoW's story tends to focus on key individuals. And giving them each interesting plots that work with their character will be important.
As of now, we know of two characters who will be central to the story - Sylvanas and Bolvar.
Sylvanas has completed her transition into full villain territory, to the point that even if I'd kind of like it if she turned out to be playing a long game for the greater good, I think we've passed a point where such a thing was plausible (Teldrassil was really the last straw.) I definitely preferred morally complex, ruthless but principled Sylvanas over Omnicidal Maniac Sylvanas, but given that we're at that point with her, I want to know: A. why she decided to go that way, B. when she made her alliance with the Jailor, C. what she actually wants to accomplish.
Bolvar is no longer the Lich King, because there is no Lich King. The pre-expansion patch will evidently see us fighting a rampant, leaderless Scourge spreading out from Northrend as some kind of zombie apocalypse (or zombocalypse, as I prefer to call it) while we fight to get near enough to discover the reason why things have gone totally crazy (and get close enough to see that giant rift in the sky.)
The thing is, Bolvar was all set to do this gig for eternity, and instead got about a decade. He's still burned to hell by red dragonfire, but surely the fact that we just met his daughter this expansion means there's got to be some very complicated family reunion. Also, while Bolvar was certainly not the world-threatening monster that Arthas was, there are a lot of things Lich King Bolvar did that Paladin Bolvar certainly wouldn't have. Is he due for a reckoning, or are the stakes too high for us to worry about stuff like sending the Deathlord to attack the Silver Hand and the red dragonflight?
We're also going to be meeting some dead folks, given that we're literally going into the afterlife this expansion. We know that Uther, Draka, Kael'thas, and actually Cenarius (who seems to bounce between Ardenweald, the Emerald Dream, and the physical plane) are going to show up. There's a dungeon that'll involve Bwonsamdi (which I'm super happy about, as he's maybe my favorite NPC from all of BFA.)
Given the faction focus of BFA, it might make sense for us to leave them behind a bit - a little like early Mists of Pandaria. Also, it would feel really strange for the Alliance and Horde to establish bases in Bastion and fight over territory in what is essentially Heaven (or probably more accurately, Mt. Celestia, the primary Lawful Good plane in D&D.)
I'm sure that we're going to be introduced to various factions and threats. Blizzard has played a bit close to the vest in terms of end bosses for expansions. It seems likely Sylvanas or the Jailor will be that for this one.
But we also know so incredibly little about the Jailor at this point that it's hard to speculate on exactly what role he'll play (I think he's a he. I think the Arbiter is a she.) Clearly, the Jailor is a very powerful entity, but we don't know where he sits in a cosmology of Titans, Old Gods, Ancients, Naaru, etc.
As a big lore nerd, especially for grand, cosmological lore, I'm really eager to find out more about the Shadowlands, and how it relates to the greater Warcraft cosmos. While Warlords of Draenor took us to an alternate timeline and Legion (and arguably Burning Crusade) gave us worlds that were at least touched by the Twisting Nether, this is the first truly planar-travel expansion (ok, another asterisk, Cataclysm did have us go to each of the Elemental Planes, and Legion had us enter the Emerald Dream/Nightmare.)
While I'd initially filed the Shadowlands as the WoW equivalent to D&D's Shadowfell, in truth it seems much more like its Outer Planes. And that raises interesting questions about how much the cosmic entities we've encountered before relate to it. The Titans, godlike in power though they seem to be, are also, I believe, entities of the physical world like us. What do they know of the Shadowlands?
And if they aren't integral to the Shadowlands, perhaps other things are? Like, maybe that mysterious moon goddess the Night Elves are always talking about, you know, the one being Blizzard has always unambiguously referred to as a god, but without defining that?
The potential for revelation in Shadowlands is immense, and I think that's why I'm so eager to start seeing testing.
Granted, so much can be done online these days that it's clear some people are still working, but I'm going to be forgiving if this expansion takes a little longer to cook than previous ones given the literally once-in-a-century crisis the entire world is currently dealing with.
Still, I do wonder what kind of timetable we're looking at.
Since its announcement last year, we really haven't gotten many updates on how Shadowlands is developing. There are a lot of key systems that need to be tested, and after the debacle that was Azerite Armor, I think it's crucial for them to get these systems into play testers' hands early enough that they can change them before they go live (to remind people, Azerite armor only came in shortly before the end of the Alpha/Beta for BFA, and we all see how that turned out.)
System-wise, here's what I'm curious about:
I want to see how smoothly the level squish goes. In theory, with the existing scaling technology, they should be able to just adjust the ranges on existing content to make it work. That being said, with the actual number of levels being compressed, we need to see things like when we get certain abilities and talents. It will be a surreal experience to have a level 15 tank running Neltharion's Lair, but I think it's also important that classes have the tools to run those dungeons that had previously expected a mostly-complete toolkit (like, Rogues should definitely get their AoE tools earlier. Right now they don't get them until 63.)
Another off-branching issue with the level squish is how legacy raid content will work. Granted, I think that once Shadowlands launches we'll all be trying to get to 60 rather than going back to run Throne of Thunder for transmog pieces. But will the jump from 50 to 60 be so profound that it's easy to run everything from Ny'alotha to Molten Core? Because by that point, at least the leveling content those raids are connected to will scale to the same top level.
Then, of course, we need to get a feel for the systems of Shadowlands itself.
A lot can change after an expansion is announced (I remember when they told us Death Knights could choose which runes they'd etch into their blades - this was of course back when there were three types of runes, plus the "wildcard" Death runes) but as I understand it, the Covenants, which are the big thing in Shadowlands, work thusly, according to the announcement at Blizzcon:
You choose a covenant at max level (or earlier on alts) and this gives you two active abilities, one which is specific to your class. Then, you "soul-bond" with one of a number of NPCs from that covenant, and that gives you various bonuses in a talent-tree like thing.
Already, I'm a little concerned at the complexity of this off the bat. This is a bit more than the Aldor/Scryers choice in Burning Crusade. To be honest, unless they can really carefully balance this (preferably keeping it simple,) I'd more prefer this as an aesthetic/flavor choice than a deep mechanical one (something Blizzard always seems to resist - see Garrisons, and remember how well those turned out?)
The other headlining feature is Torghast, a repeatable procedurally-generated endless dungeon. This could be really cool, but given that it's the way we get our legendaries, it'll be "required' content and thus needs to be fun and have legs.
While all of this is certainly important, I think a crucial consideration will be story.
Now, Shadowlands has a big advantage: given that it's a new plane of existence with practically no existing lore to contradict, Blizzard can be extremely novel and creative in the sort of things we encounter in the Shadowlands.
But WoW's story tends to focus on key individuals. And giving them each interesting plots that work with their character will be important.
As of now, we know of two characters who will be central to the story - Sylvanas and Bolvar.
Sylvanas has completed her transition into full villain territory, to the point that even if I'd kind of like it if she turned out to be playing a long game for the greater good, I think we've passed a point where such a thing was plausible (Teldrassil was really the last straw.) I definitely preferred morally complex, ruthless but principled Sylvanas over Omnicidal Maniac Sylvanas, but given that we're at that point with her, I want to know: A. why she decided to go that way, B. when she made her alliance with the Jailor, C. what she actually wants to accomplish.
Bolvar is no longer the Lich King, because there is no Lich King. The pre-expansion patch will evidently see us fighting a rampant, leaderless Scourge spreading out from Northrend as some kind of zombie apocalypse (or zombocalypse, as I prefer to call it) while we fight to get near enough to discover the reason why things have gone totally crazy (and get close enough to see that giant rift in the sky.)
The thing is, Bolvar was all set to do this gig for eternity, and instead got about a decade. He's still burned to hell by red dragonfire, but surely the fact that we just met his daughter this expansion means there's got to be some very complicated family reunion. Also, while Bolvar was certainly not the world-threatening monster that Arthas was, there are a lot of things Lich King Bolvar did that Paladin Bolvar certainly wouldn't have. Is he due for a reckoning, or are the stakes too high for us to worry about stuff like sending the Deathlord to attack the Silver Hand and the red dragonflight?
We're also going to be meeting some dead folks, given that we're literally going into the afterlife this expansion. We know that Uther, Draka, Kael'thas, and actually Cenarius (who seems to bounce between Ardenweald, the Emerald Dream, and the physical plane) are going to show up. There's a dungeon that'll involve Bwonsamdi (which I'm super happy about, as he's maybe my favorite NPC from all of BFA.)
Given the faction focus of BFA, it might make sense for us to leave them behind a bit - a little like early Mists of Pandaria. Also, it would feel really strange for the Alliance and Horde to establish bases in Bastion and fight over territory in what is essentially Heaven (or probably more accurately, Mt. Celestia, the primary Lawful Good plane in D&D.)
I'm sure that we're going to be introduced to various factions and threats. Blizzard has played a bit close to the vest in terms of end bosses for expansions. It seems likely Sylvanas or the Jailor will be that for this one.
But we also know so incredibly little about the Jailor at this point that it's hard to speculate on exactly what role he'll play (I think he's a he. I think the Arbiter is a she.) Clearly, the Jailor is a very powerful entity, but we don't know where he sits in a cosmology of Titans, Old Gods, Ancients, Naaru, etc.
As a big lore nerd, especially for grand, cosmological lore, I'm really eager to find out more about the Shadowlands, and how it relates to the greater Warcraft cosmos. While Warlords of Draenor took us to an alternate timeline and Legion (and arguably Burning Crusade) gave us worlds that were at least touched by the Twisting Nether, this is the first truly planar-travel expansion (ok, another asterisk, Cataclysm did have us go to each of the Elemental Planes, and Legion had us enter the Emerald Dream/Nightmare.)
While I'd initially filed the Shadowlands as the WoW equivalent to D&D's Shadowfell, in truth it seems much more like its Outer Planes. And that raises interesting questions about how much the cosmic entities we've encountered before relate to it. The Titans, godlike in power though they seem to be, are also, I believe, entities of the physical world like us. What do they know of the Shadowlands?
And if they aren't integral to the Shadowlands, perhaps other things are? Like, maybe that mysterious moon goddess the Night Elves are always talking about, you know, the one being Blizzard has always unambiguously referred to as a god, but without defining that?
The potential for revelation in Shadowlands is immense, and I think that's why I'm so eager to start seeing testing.
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