All right, and welcome back to episode seventy nine of The Bench where if you thought that we were getting rid of weak Auras and Weekora like add ons in Midnight, let me tell you you are wrong, as now there is a Northern Sky Raid tools add on that I would describe as Weakura esque it.

As you can see on screen right here, you got some kick trackers that are happening with these add ons, Squishy, what's actually going on with all these add on changes?

Because I thought that add ons were not supposed to have any performance enhancement elements to it?

Was that a lie?

I have to imagine that this was an oversight realistically to my understanding.

So first of all, this mechanic is there are ads that you need to interrupt, and all of them except one have a shield.

When you interrupt the one without a shield, all of the remaining stacks go down, one making another one without a shield, and so on and so forth until all of them are gone.

And all this does is it tells you the number of stacks of a shield, yes, which is public information.

And that's where I think the overset occurs, because realistically nothing is done wrong here, but Blizzard is waging war against people that want and are hungry for this information, and they will continue to do so, I think, until Blizzard manages to find a way to stop that completely.

But I think that like the general message at the very beginning of this beta cycle where Blizzard was like, we don't want add ons to have any performance enhancement elements, I felt like that kind of thought process made sense.

Not the truth.

I will, I will, I will be the first to say that is not the truth.

You are still gonna need add ons.

Maybe they'll be a little bit less powerful, but not by a ton.

You will absolutely still need that ons.

Yeah, you will probably need more ad ons than before.

We're gonna need more add ons than before.

But that's because Wekora's isn't an all in one solution, right.

Yeah.

Yeah, if you want to know my hot take, they should have just deleted all outs, like just yeah.

I mean, I don't like the direction that they're going right like on what I mean maybe everyone foresaw this and they're like sea grawl, we told you this was gonna happen.

This is terrible, But like I'm starting to get into the camper.

I don't like the changes because well I'm with you, there are like essentially now you have still all the bad side, Like I like what I guess, like what have they done?

Like you know what I mean, Like what is the difference now like other you know, besides, like what is the difference between midnight and We're within?

Except for doing all this stuff is way more convoluted and annoying now and all these ad on developers have to rip everything apart.

Computational add ons are gone.

That's about the only thing.

So stuff like omni CD and he Killer are out, but like that's the only thing, right, Yeah, for the I'm pretty sure.

Yes, I mean I feel like a.

Chill is in the game more or less.

Yeah, And I mean like OMNICD wasn't I would just describe as an offender, right, Like I I'm to talk people off the ledge saying that omne CD, like it's fine that if it goes away, because I don't think it's that crucial of an add on, But like the hope was that it's going away and things are gonna be more simplified, and now it's just like these are basically the only targets now.

If there's gonna be a raid week or a raid package or whatever you want to call it add on, And yeah, I guess keep in mind that, like you know, again, we're going through all these different stages of the beta, so this is just a snapshot of how it looks in the current time.

But it definitely is a little bit weird to see all of the add ons just back.

Now.

We're getting too close, I think to the ad ons being back.

I am with you.

I think that this I agreed with their general message about what was going on with all the add on stuff on the beta, and this is not correct.

I think that everything that has happened here almost feels like they're going in the absolute wrong direction.

But I don't I don't know, like at some point, do we just go back to what we had for forever?

Because this I feel like that's never.

That never works, right, Like game developers from my experience like never will be like nope, like there was the meme about the rip chord right and shadow Lands.

Never in the history of games have developers made a change and then been like, Nope, we were wrong, and then they just go back to how it was or like I shouldn't say never, but very.

Very very I mean this feels like we're literally at the exact same spot though, Like I feel like nothing is changing like with this.

Yeah, I don't know.

I guess let's see what they do.

But they're giving they.

Yeah, and and base on well what mobs are casters and what mobs aren't?

And I know you said that thing about the man of Bar, but I think that there is a large distinction between understanding that a mob has a man of bar and is a caster, and the name plate that is attached to that mob is colored a different color based on the condition of whether or not it's a caster.

Well, I think that's okay, I don't.

To me, that's not that's not really anything like having colored It's not a part of the base colates.

It's a base game, like I don't know it, but actually don't, but.

I would advocate for the base game to have that functionality.

Then, Yeah, why isn't there just a drop down that says all nameplates one color and then like color you know what?

Well, like whatever the options are, right, like either lieutenants and casters just casters or whatever, like, because to me, that.

Was the goal here is to make the base game better.

But the base game is not improving in the correct direction.

Instead, Blizzard is now offloading a bunch of the ship to add ons again, Which then if we were offloading the uied add ons already, why not just leave it at where it was?

Like, what are we even doing here?

Like a big thing is they need to have There needs to be an elegant solution to do the things that people want to do, right, So like with add ons, you kind of can have not an elegant solution, Like, for instance, with color coded nameplates, the way UI people like me or Dorky or whoever did it is you literally go buy mob by mob name by name and be like, Okay, this one's blue, this one's beige, this one's blue, this one's red.

Mean, while you're playing on PTR, right, But ninety percent of the people that interact with color coded nameplates they just copy someone else's profile, right, So it's not like everyone has to do this.

But in the Blizzard UI, like that wouldn't be how it would work, right, Like you wouldn't go into the options venue, like, Okay, defius trapper is this defiaus pillager?

Is this defiaus?

You know, like you would but something in the like now it seems like there could be that, right, Like, if it's okay, color casters this, color lieutenants this right, that could be a drop down.

That's very, very easy to have a drop down in the game.

So why to me, these are like a little bit separate issues.

Like to me, the name plates is like them dropping the ball with their current UI, like they need to improve the in game UI.

Like the point is that you want the in game UI to be good.

But then the other part of it is like, well, also, add ons are you know, going back to doing all this crazy shit that you know, anchored things on name plates with numbers to tell who to kick what Like that's yeah, I don't know.

So for me, they had two they had two parts, right, one was to remove like the computational aspect of it, and the second one was basically to make it so that addoms were not a competitive gameplay advantage.

Those two things.

Just like the second statement, a goal in itself is just flawed.

Adoms are always going to be a competitive advantage because they let you show information in a different way, one that more easily parses to each player.

And I think that, like the second goal was fundamentally flawed from the start.

But I think the first goal still holds true.

Well, they said that they shouldn't be able to do anything with add ons that you can't do in the base game, and that's not Oh.

I think that is.

Unequivocally just not true.

I mean that that was not true from the start, Like you can't reorganize stuff the way you want to just from the base Uy, So like that entire thing wasn't it.

I don't know what was going on there, but I think that goal is is just been falsehome to start.

But I think good.

I was just going to say, I think there's different degrees to that, Like I don't think that's black and white, you know, like to say, oh, I want to change the texture on my health bars, or like I want to change the way shields are displayed.

You know, it's a little bit different from like I want to play an airhorn when a spell goes off, or I want to count down for five seconds when I engage with this spellcaster.

You know, like there are different degrees of how what displaying information differently is.

And I think at a very basic level that's like there's still a fine place for add ons to exist.

Yeah, but we now we're back to not a very basic level with what things how things are being disorbed.

There are text alerts as well that can show up in the middle of your screen.

Correct, was she uh?

Yes?

I mean you.

Basically the way it works is stuff like liquid reminders or what is it.

It's called timeline reminders.

Now Relos Northern Sky Raid Tools has a version of this.

Basically a bunch of things are doing where you can no longer script it to exact phase changes or stuff like that, so the timers might be a little off, but from the start you can essentially use something like wow Utails, which is made by Visario and his team, where you can script an entire encounter out using your personals and have text reminders still from the startup encounter.

It just might be off by a couple seconds if you push early or push a little late, but like you can still have a thing in the middle of your screen that says soak, or you can have a reminder to press your defensive here, or press you're healing cool downs or stuff like that, which I thought, I mean, I think people were really happy to get rid of this stuff, but apparently it's back.

I'm happy to get rid of this shit.

This is some of the stuff that I want to go.

On, Like, yeah, mister bended the Earth events.

Yeah, if you're gonna give it to me, yeah, I'm gonna use it.

It's it's ope, But like I don't want to use it.

And that's why I think most people are right now.

It's like, I think the second goal was a pretty big failure, but that being said, I am still hyped for the first, like the first goal being satisfied, unless, of course, they like pull back on it.

But did you see the Tally tweet?

By the way, No, let me pull it up.

I just I just remembered about it.

This was going around and people are like, question mark, question mark, question mark.

I have been so deep in the okay, it is the tft rabbital I've been so.

People are discussing whether or not this is bait or if this is Legitly.

Yeah, so Tally has been known to have connections and the things.

But I mean, like, I yeah, so basically the tweet what he tweeted, the ad on ripcord is slowly being pulled, but I believe we might hear about a big yank pretty soon, basically alluding to what we were talking about early was like, you know, things going just being like fuck it, you know, things are going back to how they work to be fair in my like, so at least from what I'm caught up with right now, the biggest setback from the current UI to the base game right now is the fact that WEEKRAS doesn't exist.

And that's simply a choice by WEEKRAS, right, Like, that's just there's still a huge portion of week oras that would be incredibly useful that people could use that and that would work in the game.

Week WRAS is just choosing not to continue the project.

So besides, like and that's not really a Blizzard yank, you know, but I mean that's what else would be left other than weekors being like, yeah, by the way, we're coming back, Like, I don't know what this could mean.

I mean, I think that what Grause said earlier is absolutely right, where like I don't see game developers being like, yeah, guys, we were wrong.

You know what.

We went through this beta cycle for three months where we tried to do all of these things and we were wrong.

We're going back to add ons, Like, I just I don't see them doing that.

They've walked some of the changes back to where we're in this weird gray area where things are, in my opinion, worse, not better.

I don't know, it's really hard to get.

This is kind of what I was saying earlier on whenever we were like seeing the initial like stages of beta where there were like no add ons like in development, and we didn't really know that the functionality limitations of what add ons really had.

And now we're starting to see what the functionality limitations and what add ons have as more accomplished at on, developers are trying to put together larger projects and we're seeing stuff like Northern Sky Raid tools and stuff like that come out, and we're like, okay, so you know, maybe Blizzard didn't go hard enough to actually achieve any other fucking goals that they said.

Instead, now there's these weird workarounds.

I would be very surprised if they actually did something drastic, like all right, computational add ons are back on the table, Like I would be really really surprised if they were just like, you know what, we're keeping up with the status quo that we've had for the last twenty years.

What's your what's your read on it?

Squish I mean, you're more intened.

Don't know that they would ever pull that back.

That was the whole point of the change, and I don't think they would ever do that.

I don't think that they're The problem that I have with it is I don't know if it actually any of the stuff that they've done.

I don't know if it achieves any of their stated goals like they wanted.

I think it.

You do.

You think it's going You think it's going to make it easier for them to develop bosses and create content for the players that that isn't limited or stagged.

Maybe I think that.

Was a direct goal.

Okay, it's definitely part of a goal of removing computational add ons.

I mean the goal was just to remove computational add ons like that.

I think that was goal one, which on two fronts makes encounter design easier.

And also, I don't know the exact wording they use, but essentially puts an intellect challenge back into the game, aka players using their brain to do things instead of being told directly what to do.

I mean, I cannot comment on the first part of that, but I can say that I do think this will make people at least use their brain more.

Okay, on a on a per raide basis, how many how many encounters do you think actually have computational add ons that are let's say necessary.

I don't want to say like, okay, you know every everybody's weak or a pack has a computational add on for like energy prediction or whatever.

Right, I'm talking about, like what what is actually necessary on a per boss basis.

I think whenever people were doing the triangle soaks on dementsius that was that would have been a required one.

What else is required?

You know?

I think all the historic ones it would be like jailer assignments and stuff like that.

Well to me, to me, I think the problem is not necessarily required, but like it's just the it's just the way we do things now, if that makes sense, Like can you do this mechanic without a week or yes, but let's just have the week or automatically assign things and everyone turn your freaking brain off and just everyone listening to the week or right, And to me, that sucks, like that's bad gameplay.

But from like a raid leader perspective or from a I'm managing a bunch of kids in a daycare in my raid you know, like you just want to have a very strict okay, like I guess, like for example, like I.

Mean, especially this season, how many how many assignments week or has existed?

Like now I'm not even talking about like required versus not.

I'm talking about just like how many how many notes did you.

Say up for Rectus was one?

Demensius, Lumithar had the beams, right, Lumithar had the beams, Yeah, Demnsius phase one, Dementsius phase three, okay, three bosses though phase three was static right like phase phase three you just go to the same plan every time, and that was the issue.

Lumithar was also static.

But like if it depends what you're going for here, like.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't even call it.

Yeah, but you used an add on a Lumitthar to tell you whether not other people had stacks or not, like did you need it?

No, Like what you know, nobody had a hug using or anything.

Either.

I think we will know by the end of next tier whether or not this was successful or not.

By the last boss of the Keltonos raid on Mythic, which is Dementsius combined with star Augurt memory mechanic.

Oh yeah, sorry Danathrius, if you haven't seen as slight spoilers, basically the last phase there are two separate teams in different phases and if and you have to collide to the stars in the correct order, but you can't collide outside of it or something like that.

We don't know exactly how it works, but that it's a really weird mechanic.

Yes, but also at Danathrius, two separate phases thing where you're like mirrored from each other.

Kind of kind of interesting mechanic.

I think, I think we'll know for sure how that happens.

Yeah, I don't know, man, this.

I mean, I guess I'm just thinking about a mechanical like, Okay, so think about DOMNSSP one.

So what do they called the gravity thing where two people per side get targeted and they have to go away from the raid, but they want to be kind of like in a line, right, with one person in front, one person in back, and so okay, when you do that mechanic, you're kind of like looking at what class the other person is.

Okay, who goes to the front, who goes to the back.

Right, there's like some thinking and some play but the assignments week wors just tells you to go front and back all the time, right, So, like one example is like we had a demon hunter that would like to like fell rush or something and go to the back because it would help his melee up time and then he could just press one button and get to the back.

But he's a melee, so who that assigns him to the front.

And it's like, well, just shut up and go to the front, Like you're assigned to the front.

Stop playing around what you want to do or what's good for your class.

Just shut up and do what the week word tells you to and don't think.

But like, I just don't really like that gameplay, you know, do you need a week or to tell you who goes in the front, who goes back?

No, But because it simplifies things, then people use it, And then because people use it, it makes the fight less fun, is my sort of point.

Yeah, I guess my thought process was like there's a single digit number of add ons that are or a week wars that are gonna get end up getting actually negatively affected by this, and it's like or like actually getting removed, and just like is that really what their goal was was just you know, these really strange outliers.

I thought I thought the game.

I thought the game was supposed to be getting more maybe simplified or something.

But it does not feel like we're doing that way.

It feels like it's about you know, I think that combat pacing is slowing down a mythic plus a little bit, which is like a little bit of a different discussion.

But I think they personally, as somebody that enjoyed this kind of thing, I think this is exactly what they're going fork Like for me, I support this level of I want my brain to be engaged in some way during encounters and not just like fractillis be told where to go every step of the way that is not game played.

You're putting reminder.

You're gonna put a reminders on your screen again, Like.

I are you putting words?

I mean I've played some optively for a while.

I know this.

I don't use reminders currently.

Well, that's the job.

That's the job of the developers, though, is to give us challenges where we can't just be like, you know, it's not a target.

I mean, like that's why there's the definition of a patchwork fight right, you just sit there and you attack the boss.

It's like that's the whole job of the encounter designer.

I mean, the way I think of it as like, Okay, imagine you like, imagine, wow, was baseball except for like, add ons are something in the game, right, see you shut up, So imagine imagine that, like, okay, you play baseball, except for anyone can bring whatever kind of glove they want.

You can just there's no rules about gloves.

You can just go make whatever kind of glove you want and just show right, and then eventually people are gonna start showing up with ridiculous shit, right, there's these giant gloves and these magnet gloves and sticky gloves, right because like and that's sort of how add ons are.

Wow.

Yeah right, So like it's basically how the game is with add ons, where you know, Blizzard has all these different things like your HP and your MANNA and you know how fast your character moves.

But when you're UI, the player has full control over it and you can do whatever you want with it.

And I feel like it just makes it harder in general to make a fair and interesting, challenging fight when the player has full control over something and Blizzard can't really like say, oh, you can do this or you can't do those.

I have a feeling that this is step one of a multi step process for them.

I don't I think they ran out of time here.

I'm gonna be dead honest with them.

I think they've been off where they could do.

I can pretty like say that I think they ran out of time here and this is step one.

I think there will be more coming.

But I think what this does right now is removes a lot of the outliers, some of the worst offenders of Adams to ever exist, stuff like the the the good old you know, Neltherians, Layers, Shell Game, Markerkra.

Do you ever how many times they try to break that?

Uh?

Yes, I do remember that one.

Yeah, Like I think that stuff is probably like that is going.

To be right because.

Something like that, like you know, it's obviously like a mechanic.

They've done twice now in Meltarians Layer and then Kaiveeza, So it's not something that happens too often, but for the times that it does happen, it kind of ruined a mechanic for them, And that is the level that I think they are getting some design space back.

They are getting rid of some of the the extreme outliers of add ons.

I mean, I think.

There's not an opposition of what they're saying, like did not did Blizzard not like come out and like all right, we're putting our foot down.

These are all the changes that are we're gonna happen, gonna have to deal with it.

And now it's like none of that, none of it was true, Like literally none of it.

They're all walking it back like well, what am I a crazy no?

Which is which is why I think they ran out of time.

I think it's very clear, like the damage beat stuff, like they came back there like yeah, all this is planned and we still haven't seen some of the stuff there.

Like I absolutely think they thought they could do more with the time that they had and they haven't.

So now they're going Now they're giving people back more than they wanted to, but they have to because of the current situation that they're in.

Speculating whether or not they ran out of time, it's just like not very fruitful because like, workup Lizzard, we don't work up Lizard, right, we don't.

Sure, but but I think this explains the shift in their philosophy.

Yeah, it could explain it, I mean a hundred different and they could have changed their mind.

They you know, they could be like this is is the wrong way.

It's just a weird trade off, Like this isn't really what I envisioned.

Like so when I said this is what they said, I think, you know, well I envisioned this, right, Because let's be honest, none of us expected a fully perfect launch of Midnight with removal of add ons, right, but what I imagined is are UI is a little bit janky, but we save time on not having to worry about having a bunch of add ons and computational shit, right, like you can just play the game.

Is the UI going to be not as good and JANKI yeah, but there's the upside of like we don't have to deal with all these add ons.

We save so much time.

Maybe Blizzard might make some cooler fights blah blah blah.

Right now, it's almost like what is the upside, Like now we still have to mess around with add ons and still do all this stuff just to do what we want.

But then it's like there's just these weird fringe things that are being removed that like weren't even really that big of a deal in the first place.

I don't know, like I think, I just think that I guess I just think they didn't do enough, like I think they gave back.

I mean, and I don't even know if they fully did it on purpose, but I just and and again, to be fair, I don't necessarily think all this, all the add on stuff is bad.

But for me, the pro of having the game be more accessible, having the game be more watchable because everyone's UI looks similar, having things be plug and play Like, to me, these are all this is what I liked about the add on removal.

I'm not like, oh, I hate all add ons, but these are the upsides that I saw, And now all my upsides that I was looking forward to are gone.

Now these upsides of like, you know what I mean, likespoint.

I think like philosophically, the things that I wish add ons did was I wish it allowed you to customize your UI in a way that you felt comfortable with.

Right whenever I'm talking about you, I'm talking about like heads up display elements of things that are already like baked into the game, and how you customize them is really kind of up to you.

That's kind of what I wish the scope of add ons were.

But now you get into this weird state where add ons, instead of just being this heads up display editor, will now give you competitive advantages because now it's doing things that the default UI literally cannot do.

And that's where it loses me.

It's like, if it's not doable, why the default you?

Why why the fuck can an add on do it?

And like the things that I really don't like, the reminder add ons, I'm not a huge on those tts, obviously, you guys have heard me preach about that for a while.

Not a huge fan of tts add ons.

I actually didn't like the kick trackers.

You know, Grouse said that he doesn't think removing on me CD is a big deal.

I actually think that removing on MECD is a pretty big deal.

Not be able to track the rest of your party's kicks is nice.

I really didn't like the gameplay that spawned out of that kind of thing, and so I think that like removing kick trackers is good, and I think that like, yeah, no assignment week ors, those are all really nice things, but we're not We didn't do all of that right, that the their stated goal was that all of that stuff is going away, and that you know it's not it's not it is you know, there's there's still going to be a competitive advantage by having these add ons, and I think that that, to me is like they could have done more.

I'm a little bit disappointed in like where this is landed.

Admittedly, I feel like.

We ended up in the middle of like we got rid of some of the people wanted it.

You're right, right, it would have been better to either leave it or to what I'm saying, Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, thank you.

Like, either if we were have just kept going how we were going, I think that would have been fine.

And I think if we would have also just nuked everything and then just left it at ground zero and gave them more time to rebuild the UI and left a jenky for a while.

But I guess, I guess I just don't understand because if it's like a, oh, Blizzard is scared of releasing the game with the jinky UI sort of thing, I mean, the UI has always been ship like.

Sorry, but basically as long as I've played in the game.

If you're a casual player and you just kind of like mess around and play the game whatever.

The UI is totally passable, totally fine.

You don't care to use that on unless you want to.

And if you're a competitive player, the game is ship.

People at the race word first use the base UI.

Are exactly of some of the elements, some of the elements.

And I might argue that they are using it and good with it because they've used it for a long time and are good with it for a long time.

Sure, but that shows that it the information that you need.

Sure, but again, yes, most of it, right, not all of it, most of it because they are they are using week words of stuff like they have.

You can say that race world versus people people use the base UI, and they do, but they also have like what do they call it, Like it's literally called the Horse and it's like this giant program that one of them has and it like syncs with all of them and they can like push updates and change stuff and like, yeah, so they have the big, the most cybernetic of enhancements on top of their base UI.

Something I think, Uh, how I even say this, Gosh, I'm I'm trying to think about the way to convey this, Like, I really wish that Blizzard did just like did more with with the base UI to try to to try to make it to where you didn't have all of this garbage going on, because Okay, I think the best way to describe this is like this, I bet, I bet if you turned off all of your add ons, you would get like pretty decent FPS.

In most situations, there are so many add ons that cause like insane fps drops and I and I really wish that, like you could play the game without add ons without just having this insane FPS penalty.

But at the same time, it's gonna be you're gonna have a performance loss, which is not really acceptable either.

Yeah, I mean, don't forget everybody's gonna have to make their UI in two weeks, right.

Indow in hardcore, do you do you play with add ons?

Uh?

So, I use a much smaller than retail, but I still have like a handful, Like I have weak oras, I have cell for one.

I like having the HUD in the middle of my screen, like so I can see my spells and sometimes like basically what I want right, like to customize what buffs and what buffs and de buffs that I see, what's like seeing cool downs in the middle of my screen.

There are also like lots of like random helpful, useful week eras week or that you know, plays an airhorn if you're drowning because you fall asleep while you're fishing in your bed.

Yeah, but in hardcore, and this is partly I'm not saying this just because of the no ad ons thing.

This is also a classic versus retail thing.

But you just everything loads so much faster.

Like I'll literally be in a dungeon.

I'll be like careful guys, like wait a second, I gotta reload, and then two seconds later it's already reloaded, and I'm in the game because just because I'm used to retail where it like takes twenty seconds to reload.

Sometimes if you're in a dungeon.

People use that on is basically since the beginning of Wow.

I mean, and to that point, grawl is using add ons even still in hardcore.

So if they exist and there's an advantage to using them, they will be used, yep, Right, So I don't know.

Oh well, I mean, let's just hope that things go in one of the directions, you know.

Like, yeah, I just hope things get better, not worse.

It's kind of I just hope that.

You know, we don't end up with a clusterbug where we still have all of the cybernetic enhancements, like at least make them not really hard to use and not really hard on the add on devs, right, like, hopefully they But I I kind of worry that there's gonna be this back and forth battle coming soon where it's like, okay, well Blizzard tries to take back some of these things, right they see this week or a package that Northern Sky has and they start trying, they start taking back and making private some of the information.

That's sort of why why I'm a little bit pessimistic and why I'm a little bit worried right now is that's what I see.

I mean, this is this is like the private or of debacle again.

This is how feels.

Yeah, have you seen the new targeted spells TTS thing?

Zarathus was testing it on a stream.

Yes, I was complaining about it last week and you guys were like, well there's not that many targeted spell.

Well they made improve this to it, but like I know, zeph is making it.

Zaretha's was trying it.

It's just like con in my Sarah caverage was like targeted by this, targeted by this.

It's just like, oh, how can you listen to this that that would cause my brain so much more hard.

Yeah, it's terrible.

That's why I don't like it in the game at all, because us using it is an advantage and listening to it is awful.

Like it is, so it doesn't feel like you're playing the game.

It literally it literally it's kind of like the airport.

No other video game do you just start and then just like an air horn goes off and then you have targeted by exibility here, It's just like none of that's part of the game.

Please.

Uh all right, all right, what what controversial thing do you guys want to discuss next?

Grell?

Which one of these two con versus one button rotation or resortheis poll on resilient keys.

Oh geez, let's do zorth.

Thisis pull on resilient keys.

That was definitely a funny one.

I saw that pop up on Twitter.

I think, oh yeah, tittles LinkedIn and I actually commented a picture of me responding Yeah, but uh I here here's the thing about resilient keys, right, I think for a majority of people that don't interact heavily with Mythic plus.

If you're like somebody, if you're anybody who does like three k ish score like for the achievements and then doesn't really play too much M plus, you just do weeklies, just do crass.

Resilient keys are like super omega great.

And I see no problem with resilient keys for those people.

You know, like if you're somebody who has all time twelves and you just want to do twelves and you don't want to be in this situation where you de rank your key and it's eleven and it sucks whatever.

Like for the people who are just in M plus for the gear or for whatever, I think it's fine.

But yeah, as you get into higher keys, it gets kind of shitty.

I actually didn't see the results of the poll.

I voted early when you put it up, and then.

I don't know what he's uh he had He.

Had a bunch of like silly questions on uh yeah, google doctu.

He said resilient.

He seems like a very controversial topic.

I'll probably make a video of there's conclusive data on this I will say I think the cross section of people who follows Orthus on Twitter and the people who don't like the Resilient Keys are probably a very close cross section of one another, admittedly exactly.

That's why I think that That was my thought right away when I saw him doing that poll, was like, well, I mean Zorthis is like a high M plus streamer and a MIVID grade streamer like the people that watch him or I do think he's broadening his audience a little bit, like he's been making a lot of good, like beta type of content, so I wouldn't be surprised at some point in the future this is not true, but for now, I would say a majority of his viewers are like, yeah, competitive players essentially.

Yeah.

I do think the questions were kind of interesting, like do you like resilient keys is basically yes, no, don't have an opinion?

What level range did you play?

What do you like about resilient keys?

Like, what do you think the posites are?

I will say I thought that this poll was maybe there was a little bit of bias.

I will say I think from the the.

I thought it was kind of fair.

I thought it was kind of fair.

I think that there was bias from the way that the questions were asked.

So it's like, what do you like about resilient keys?

What do you dislike about resilient keys?

And then I think that this question is incredibly biased.

If there was no resilient keys, which would you rather write?

That kind of gives you bias.

But also at the last.

Why why does that?

Why does that give you bias?

So basically the two options are, if there was no resilience, would you rather remove all depletion or just go back to the old system.

Yeah, but there's there's also not like an open answer.

I don't know, there's just like it kind of is implying that resilience should be removed.

Yeah, I don't know.

But like I think that in general, it's like what do you like about resilient keys?

I think that the less homework keys, I mean I think that this is like almost unequivocally the advantage, right, is that there's less homework keys.

And then you know this one is depending on who you are, easier to pug your own key.

Those are probably the two bigger ones, right.

I think that this this part right here, the gives an option to prog keys is the issue with resilient keys more more or less, but maybe that's just it's a hot take.

And then the dislike about resilient keys, the note tip booting stuff, I feel like that's completely relevant.

Dude.

People talk about boosting with resilient keys all the time.

I don't think that they could get me to care, Like, I don't think that people could gets.

A big EU thing.

I mean, maybe I'm just making this up, but I just from what I've heard, is just something that is just way worse on ease.

Oh I'm not paying.

I'm paying for it regardless.

Like, but if anything, Blizzard needs to just remove this ship from LFG.

It's not an issue of resilient keys.

Yeah.

No, I agree with that actually one hundred percent.

Like don't get.

Yeah, sir, we'll get to that right after they've bad the the the real gold boosters at the third party website scroll.

Yeah.

I mean that's been that's been like one of the things that I've championed the most is them removed, Like getting that to me, I just don't really see an upside to what, Like, I just don't.

Is No, I think girl's lagging.

Hmmm, hold on a moment, No, because I'm hearing him cut out a lot too.

Hmm, well, g G, maybe maybe girl will stop cutting out a low test.

Yeah, no, my discord is blowing up.

Sorry, okay, okod uh what were you saying?

Sorry, I don't remember.

I just am told to know that my discord is blowing up.

Okay, but yeah, I don't know.

I just hate the advertisers and all G.

I just don't see why.

Like there's all I always hear these conspiracies that like, oh, Blizzard makes so much money from this and the Wow token and that blah blah blah.

I just don't believe any of that, and I just like don't understand why, Like I I actually I don't know.

I guess.

I had a dispecial with somebody about this, and they basically said that I drastically underestimate how hard it is to get rid of them, and the actual like effort and systems they have in place to stay in LG and like zombie accounts and how fast they can create accounts and all this stuff.

I don't buy it.

I still don't buy it.

I was not convinced, but that was my reasoning.

What I was told was, like it is impossible to get it out and keep them out of LG, which I don't buy.

But I think there's ways they can limit it, Like if they put a one mythic plus rating score, that would like all they need to do is reduce the barrier of entry.

I think make it.

You should be required to be a max level character to listen to anything in LG.

I think that would be a good start too, Like there's bare minimum stuff that I feel like they should be able to do to curb that.

But yeah, as for the like tip boosting stuff, like, the way I see it is it only exists because.

It works, meaning that do people pay for that?

I have to imagine why would people think about it from an avenue standpoint?

Why would you otherwise as a booster spend god knows how long in LFG.

May not making.

Gold because why would you do that because you're stupid?

You think it might work?

Two I mean sure, well because you see other people doing it, so you think that there has to be some people that are I don't know.

I mean I can't, I can't tell you if it's any you think.

I have no idea on it, But to me, it only makes sense if people are doing it for a reason.

But maybe I'm wrong on this question.

If there was no resilt, which would you rather?

I would rather them improve resilient keys, right.

I don't think that either of these are really like good solutions remote depletion entirely or old depletion system every key can deplete.

I mean, if you're making me pick, I guess i'd pick the old depletion system.

But like i'm i'd rather than just make resilience better.

I think that removing depletion entirely has so many other problems that aren't it's like hard to articulate, right.

How would they make the current resilient system better?

I mean that's really I don't have like a really elegant.

Oh yeah, I was just wondering if you had one, yet I don't have anything like that.

I agree with what you're saying, like we just and that's been my goal too, is not necessarily to say remove resilient, but just like we need to think about this and iterate this rather than sit on this because I think it'll become problematic.

That's like sort of my my stance on resilient.

Sitting on it and trying to improve it.

But they should continue to try to improve it, right right.

I think it's not black and white to me, Like you can't just remove depletion entirely.

Removing depletion entirely would have to come with other changes such as you know, you have to do a fifteen before you can do a sixteen type stuff, Like there's a reason like people like a point to Fellowship and it's like, oh, Fellowship does it, there's no depletion, and it's like, well, Fellowship is a completely different leveling system that does.

Not relate to Wow at all.

So I don't think the question is exactly fair because it's not black and white as in, oh, it's removed depletion or go back to the way it was.

It's like, yeah, there's a lot of different things that would need to happen for you to remove depletion.

I've seen people say the resilient plus one thing, where yeah, I think that that comes with a whole host of problems as well.

Where I think I do think that also comes with a bunch of different problems where you're going to have people like doing obviously they're doing higher level dungeons, but I think I think it will come with a bunch of I don't think it's just like as black.

I like switch that.

I don't think it's a black and white as it really makes it seem.

I haven't really thought about the best way of articulating it.

But there are other problems with giving the resilient plus one that isn't exactly you know, it's not just a once that s fits all solution, And I think that's the that's the issue with resilience.

It's like there's no one you know, if Blizzard did this one small thing, it would make resilience perfect.

It's like that's that's why I don't think it's like an easy thing to answer, like what would you do differently because it's like, oh, I don't think it's one thing.

I think that they would have to like take major swings at, like how do you make the cringe parts of resilient keys where you know, spamming resilient priory and forcing you to progress you know, the highest level of dungeons, Like how do you move that kind of cringe part of it well well keeping the good parts of the lesson work keys and it's easier to pug your own key, Like how do you how do you keep the good parts while removing the really shitty parts of it?

Yeah, it's it's a tough thing to really articulate all of you know, the good, the good parts and the bad parts about what's going on with resilient keys.

But yeah, I think that Blizard Chick continued to try to iterate on them grew.

What did you think was harder between Priory and grim Bitole?

Ooh, I stopped because I feel like this is a Zorthis question where like he has a day and he has data on this, but he wants to see what people think.

I hm, I believe I voted Priory.

I anecdotally think that grim Batole is harder to play, like I think.

I think my the cope that I had in my brain when I answered this question was from a balance perspective, like just a twenty four grim Batole versus a twenty four whatever key Batol was just well, I don't I'm just making up a number, man.

It was just like, strictly, I don't want to say harder, but it was just like, I guess, relative to the other keys at that level, it was just more challenging, I guess, or more difficult, but like, yeah, I'm trying to think of how I were this, but it doesn't really make sense.

I mean, delta delta higher between the two.

To me, it feels like Priory is hard but fair, whereas grim Baitole was not fair.

I guess if that makes sense, Like to do a twenty four grim Baitole, it feels like you have a lot of things right and get lucky, whereas like Priory, every time you die, it's like you did this wrong.

I did this wrong.

You didn't los this, we didn't kick this.

There's just so many things that you have to do right, whereas grim Bitol is just like oh the d buffs or the curses went on the wrong people, or like something weird happened with the pillar that we were tanking the boss on, or we got really unlucky sequencing on the first.

Boss respawns were cooked.

Yeah yeah, Like I felt like in Priory you wipe it specific moments, and grim Baitole you can wipe the fucking anything, like all my tank got double tankbustered and just got evaporated, just like oh gg I.

Guess yeah, maybe it's because I didn't tank, but I didn't think grim Batole was like that crazy.

It was just like so much dumb stuff would happen.

Yeah, I hated Grimbatole from like a twelve perspective.

So I think I did the dungeon as few times as possible.

Was really hard.

I think that that.

But both are quite hard.

I think they're almost hard and a little bit of different ways.

Right.

Priory requires intense focus, and grim Bitold just like was mechanically, in my opinion, a lot harder and you could just get screwed by a bunch of bs, kind of like Krel said, Yeah, okay, Gral, you linked this reddit post.

Explain to us what's going on here?

Oh geez, So we were so the last episode when we were talking about like our takes in the drama events and different things that happened.

I had talked about the single button rotation and we basically talked about how it was a nothing burger.

And someone made a post on Reddit that got a lot of up votes that was essentially saying, single button assist made this game fun again.

And then a person posting their I believe they were either normal or heroic logs in the in the post that said they did normal heroic.

Basically, I believe it was somebody who said they played they played Healer and they wanted to try DPS, but they like didn't want to actually learn it, so they just like wanted to get their feet wet a little bit.

But because they could use the one button and raid with it, they like had a bunch of fun.

Which, to be fair, look, I have some of the most demonic ways that I have fought in my life.

I'm not shaming anybody.

If you enjoy the one button rotation, you can do what you know.

This is not what the post is about.

I just thought it was funny that number one we were told Like basically, I think part of the idea behind the one button rotation is people don't quite believe how good it is, or they don't realize how good it might be.

Because he basically has this post and he's like, well, I looked on Wowhead and Wildhead says you lose twenty five percent damage if you use the one button rotation.

But I don't play perfect, so I'm not really losing twenty five percent damage.

Actually I'm gaining damage.

Which is damage.

I thought that was I thought that might have been obvious, right, Like when you say twenty five percent damage.

What do you think you're like, do people think they just their damage number just goes down twenty five percent from what it is right now?

Do people think that they're playing perfectly?

I'm not sure what the idea is, but I just And then if you read the posts, the response is people are like, oh wow, like I didn't think you could do that.

I didn't think the one button rotation is that good.

There's also a lot of people funny enough, like shaming heroic raiders and saying like this difficulty is trash.

You're bad if you play this, like don't even you know, like kind of like weird almost like the it did turn into a little bit of like an elitist issue.

But yeah, I just thought it was a very very funny post about like it got swept under the rug and nobody was talking about it.

And then as soon as I said that, here comes this Reddit post about, oh look how good the single button rotation is.

Well, this is this is why we thought it was gonna be a problem to begin with, was because of the elitism right where you there's gonna be we thought, you know, obviously didn't end up working out that way.

We thought that there was gonna be insane social pressure onto people who really don't want to use the one button rotation to use it because instead of losing twenty percent damage, they're gaining twenty five percent damage or whatever because they're bad.

And I think that it's like then that creates kind of the argument was always like that isn't gameplay?

Right?

Is that while you are going through the motions, you've just stripped away a bunch of gameplay from the people who wanted it to just press one button over and over again.

Now, the reason that it didn't work out is that most people just want to press their rotation or feel at least, you know, feel like they're pressing their rotation.

But which is good?

Which is good?

To be fair, Again, if someone wants to mash one button and be able to play the video game, I have no problem with that.

Yeah, Like to me, that's cool.

However, I'm worried about people who don't want to press one button, who are worse than this guy and who are like, oh wow, now I'm trolling my raid.

Like imagine they're Timmy and Jimmy in the guild and they both suck, but they're friends and they have a lot of fun rating together, and all of a sudden, Timmy now uses the one button rotation and now he's like beating Jimmy, And now Jimmy's sitting here in his guild feeling like he's trolling.

And it's like that's sort of what I worried about about the system.

But again, so far, so good, right, Like, you know, people are kind of just like I don't feel like using it.

The reason nobody uses it is because it's not fun, and like, okay, that's exactly how it should be.

So I'm kind of just like quietly observing and seeing this.

But it's funny that a lot of people didn't realize how good it was because again, like the guy posts, what did he say, seventy two average on Heroic, which isn't like the most impressive accomplishment.

Yeah, but it's still better than a lot of people, right, Like to get AotC and to have reasonable looking logs is.

Still like he's getting purple and he's getting purple and orange parses with it on Heroic, which.

Yeah, he has like a ninety five on soul Binder or whatever.

I think, like, I think the fears are definitely there, but it didn't look like they panned out.

People aren't being forced to use it or anything like that as far as I know, which is fine so so far, I think it's doing it.

It's there people who want to use it, and with no doubt doubsides and I don't think I can say anything more than that right now.

I do think if it gets more widely used than Blizzard needs to like nerve it.

But I don't know.

Do they okay, Like from a developer standpoint, if they treat this as a floor, is that a bad thing Because one of the things that I know that they've talked about and part of the add on discussion was the delta between the best players and the opposite of the best players.

I think it's because I think the issue is that it's not a floor, right, It's really not the floor.

I think that, like, there are people who have played this game for like fifteen or twenty years of it handily out vps by the one button rotation, and seeing it as a floor just means that you then clump all of the people that were below that into using the one button rotation and to get out of using the one button rotation.

You say, oh, you have to read a guide and do a lot of this because actually out dpsing the one button rotation is pretty hard.

If you haven't played the spec.

Yeah, Like, if you're somebody who's fluent with the spec and we've played it for a long time, it's not difficult.

But like, let's say you've had Let's say you compare two people who are either not great wild players or just new to the spec.

Right, you're gonna slam the other guy if your using You.

Said fluent with a spec.

That The problem that I have with that is like, Okay, it's like the difference between knowing English and being an English professor at a university, right, Like.

Right, okay, Okay, there's a lot of degrees to that.

That was a loaded statement.

Yeah, but like you know, back in Legion when they did the original Mage Tower, I remember doing like every spec Mage Tower because I wanted be the artifact apparents before they went away.

If one button like rotation existed, I probably would have used it for a lot of specs because they're also that I don't give a crap about playing or learning the real rotation for and it's probably good enough for the Maje tower, and I think from that angle, I think it's perfectly fine.

I would use it.

Yeah, I don't know, it's it's tough.

I mean, obviously it doesn't really it doesn't really affect.

I mean, I.

Mean, on the one hand, what if what if you had a button that would just blow up the whole Mage tower instantly?

Would you press that?

Yes?

Right, So there's a difference between there's a difference between rotation, like people who are interested in learning ir rotation versus people who are interested in doing the mechanics.

I there, okay, So like it's like getting a mouse whenever it's hold on, it's like getting a mount whenever it's current for mythic versus going back three expansions later and blowing up the raid right to get them out.

I don't know that that that that is what I'm talking about here, Like I know people who are not interested in learning class rotation that is not interesting, that is so born to them.

They have zero interest in that, But they want to play with their friends and do their raid mechanics, which they find interesting.

Coordinating with friends working together in mechanics, and I think that is a very very good case of the one button rotation for people that just want to log in and just you know, yeah, I agree the floor.

I fully agree.

I agree with that.

I think that if you want to use it, that is.

However, I think the whole like Mage Tower, I'm using this to get an achievement.

That's a little different.

It's like I would do it.

It's like that, I know you would, but you would also you probably use the blow up the Mage Tower button.

Well, but then that would defeat the purpose of the Mage Tower, which then puts into question.

And you get what I'm saying.

It's kind of like a bot.

Like you know people in the past use rotation bots to do their rotation for them.

It's like, would you download one of those, Like where where do we draw the line?

Here draws the line and they drew it at the one button rotation.

Yeah, because they put it in the game for.

Me, like challenge is part of the game, and pushing a blow up the Mage Tower button doesn't actually have any challenge.

Yeah, but you know, there are certain specs which I do not care for.

Where are like rogue specs for example, like not for me, and if I wanted the thing on them, like sure, you could argue you should work for it, but if it's in the game and it's good, like who am I to say no while still being able to use you know, frogue defenses.

It is a philocility question, right, Like it's not if it's in the game, like please God, just use it, but like it's more of a it's more of a philosophical question of like should should this have.

Been in the game to begin with?

Oh, I completely agree.

It's where you personally draw the line of what is skilled.

What is playing the game?

I think is like a better it's not even necessarily skill, it's like what actually is playing the game?

And I view like the rotation is part of like the one of the fundamentals of actually playing the game.

It's like doing your rotation, which is why most people don't use the one button rotation, right, is because most people also view doing your rotation as part of playing the game.

But then there's you know, and I think it ended up being fear mongering.

We talked about a little bit last episode where we were worried that people were going to feel required to use the one button rotation and that didn't want to because it turns out that's not true.

Yeah, I mean some there are some games out there which just are very simple.

You have an attack and you have a block or something like that, and the entire most of the entire game is exactly like that, you know, very very basic buttons.

There's no rotation.

You have a you have a jump, a block, and a dash or something, an attack and that's it.

And that's enough for people, and the rest of the game comes down to mechanics dealing with different test of enemies boss, you know that kind of thing.

So it's going to vary from person to person.

But in the current state, I can't complain about the one button rotation.

Yeah, I mean, I like how we're like.

Not sure what we talk about this week, and then we're like, let's just put down the usual, just add ons, resilient keys, one button rotation.

Well delves, akers, augmentation, evokre.

We can do the greatest hits.

I did just I did just make a video talking about the most overpowered specs and mythic plus history a great days.

Roger did shut out make a cameo.

Yeah, this week.

This week I kind of had an idea, like what about talking about how to prep for the new expansion and kind of what goes into prepping for it.

Things maybe to think about whenever you're looking to jump into some of the new content.

Unless you guys have a better idea to talk about.

It sounds good to me.

Okay, yeah, I think UY stuff is the most important, but yeah, US stuff is actually interesting.

Okay, So I was gonna say, start with research, but I think that maybe talking about setting up your uys would be pretty interesting because.

I actually disagree with both of you.

I think the most important question is what class are you going to make?

I feel like for a huge majority of people, that's number one.

I have a I have a different one.

I think that actually setting goals for like what do you want out of the game, is going to be more important than figuring out your main because if you don't care right like about you know, if, in my opinion, like if you don't care about like thought of rerolling or anything like that, that almost like changes the discussion about what you're gonna mean a little bit.

I think, So, okay, we can talk about goals.

I think goals are very important and it helps you structure things.

But I also think when it comes to a game that's fun.

Right, if you are trying to like get good at lifting weights or something, you're trying to get good at tennis, I think setting a really really high goal and aiming for the stars and landing on the moon is fine.

I think with games it should almost be the opposite.

I think you should think of the very short term and just think of a very small goal and then just do it and then like see gauge, how you're having fun.

Right, Like, if you're somebody who's never played well before, or like someone who's like played very casually, I'm going to be a cutting edge raider, might be a little top of a goal.

Maybe it should be like I'm gonna get into a I'm gonna kill one mythic boss.

I'm gonna get into a guild that can kill mythical right yeah.

And then but ideally the way that it should work is you get hooked, right you say, oh, I've never rated before, I'm going to get a OTC.

And then you get ATC and you're like, oh man, look at that mythic loute.

Okay, now my next goal, I'm going to do a mythic boss.

But I do think it is important to kind of think about what you want to do in the game and set set some goals and kind of like point yourself in a direction because that kind of gives you an idea of like what you're getting yourself into.

Yeah, And I think that like with setting goals, it's just about like figuring out what you want to do with the expansion if you want to take it piece by piece, kind of like Gral said, I think that's how most people play video games just in general, where they just you know, their goal is to log in and have fun and they don't really care like about the minutia of it all.

That their only goal, it really is to just log in and have a good time.

And then they you know, it's kind of like whatever Day nine was flying around uh dornigal and he went to go saloon.

Oh god right, that's just peak.

Like he doesn't have he doesn't have like any major goals.

And I think that, like, you know, the goals vary.

Some people might be going for cutting edge, some people might try to go and get the rink one with the plus titles.

Some people might go and try to get the three ko mount or achievementor AotC or whatever.

Right, But I think that like figuring out how you want to play the game also is like almost step one, and for some people, figure out even if you want to play the game maybe is step one.

See a lot of people who are like, maybe I don't plays expansions.

It's kind of interesting.

Have you guys actually experienced that a little bit more more commonly, I would say, coming into Midnight than other expansions where your friend groups, maybe some people that normally play every expansion are less ecstatic.

I feel like, I feel like from my friend group, people are a little bit pessimistic, but also they're like that from every expansion.

Every expansion, these people are like making fun of the next wow thing or blah blah blah.

But I think a lot of them end up playing anyway.

I've noticed from me personally that I've been a little less excited.

But also I've done this now a couple of times, you know, like shadow Lands, it was my Swaw expansion basically, right, so that was like the burning Crusade for other people where you're like, you know, prepping stuff and leveling guys for it and stuff like that was what I was doing for shadow Lands, and now at this point, I've kind of been through the drill, yeah, and I'm just kind of like, well, let's see how it goes.

I would say I'm a little bit surprised with like the lack of beta activity and like the people who are like trying to do keys on there.

That's probably to me the lower activity, But I don't know if it's more more doomer than average.

Right now for me, this.

Kind of feels like wadd almost for me, Like I don't know if you remember this swishy where going into Legion, like nobody was doing anything on the Legion bad or anything like that, and it was even even that Legion ended up being bad.

Leegion ended up being one of the better expansions, one of the best expansions even, but it was like.

Damn, that's good.

I like that you say that it was that's.

The state of War with It is kind of fucking dead, but the state of Midnight might be really good.

I definitely noticed as well, like the hype on it, what people are talking about right now is like not much.

It's kind of cotta.

Creators are kind of quiet right now, which is never really a good side.

I met somebody irl who who recognized me today and he like apparently hadn't been playing the game for a little bit, and he asked me if Blizzard was killing the game by the removal of add ons.

I feel like that is just the rhetoric that is going around basically everybody, like everywhere with the game is that the add ons are getting nuked in that the game is going to be terrible because the add on changes.

I like, honestly surprised are going to be surprised at how many people are gonna be shocked when add ons are back in, like just as big of a force as before.

Yeah, Like, but I.

There's just nothing new like Apex Talents.

It's like, who is who is excited for Apex Talents?

Like they're worse than Hero Talents at least Hero Talents's some really cool ones.

And what else is there?

Devour dude for a new spec that spec sounds dead really all get least had Like, I mean, have you noticed it?

Who have you heard talk about devour social media?

Like m I think it's just been a little bit a while, Like it's too far away from the announcement and the the relief like dude comes out in two weeks when I mean maybe to me.

To me, when Devour was released, there were like four people in our guild Discord who game no, no.

Nobody would Nobody was stoked about Havoc whenever it was releasing, and then people played it during the pre patch and that spec was fucking sick.

But my my prediction with with Devour, I think, who knows how it'll be at a high end, I think it'll be like, okay from what I saw though, I think a lot of people might play it.

But it seems like a really punishing spec from what I understand, Like a lot of it is like getting those big collapsing stars, and if you're somebody who like cancels a cast or like doesn't manage your resources perfectly, you lose like a huge portion of your damage.

To me, it seemed like kind of a weird way to design a spec, given that they're like current philosophy in that it's simple and reasonable, like it makes sense the way it plays, but it's very, very punishing when you messed up up around those like stars and like the whatever the metamorphosis mode is or whatever.

So yeah, I don't know, I I don't know, I don't I don't notice any less hype, but it me personally when a Voker came out, it was a new Healer spec, so I was really excited about that.

There's no world where I play Devour demon Hunter, so I don't really care about it.

It's kind of like YouTube video series though.

Oh yeah, but yeah, I think that like setting goals and then figuring out your main kind of like girl said, those are probably the some of the most important stuff.

I also think if you're like considering fought and rerolling or like changing roles, you know, getting your character ready, I think is like really good step one.

Yeah, I think for me for goals, like I don't I don't, like, what are your personal goals out of curiosity?

Which one me?

Yeah, uh for next expansion, a little bit of a little bit of everything.

I'm raiding again, so you know, get cutting edge with my guild, I think is one of my goals.

I mean, we're just gonna kind of do We're gonna we don't really like set our our guild goals, Like we don't really have goals.

It's just like do the best we can given like uh, just given how much we raid.

It's not like, oh yeah, we want to get whatever rank.

So like for me, it's like perform as well as I can and raid I'm going to play and balance he it again, So I already kind of know what's going on with that, depending on how I'm feeling about the Mythic Plus ties.

And I'm not necessarily committed to anything, but I don't really have like a squad or any any group to play with.

If moon Can's good and Mythic Plus, I'll play that.

If moon Can is bad, I'll consider rerolling, depending on how I feel about the season.

But I don't really have any like I normally get title or get close to title depending on how I feel about the season.

And I know that OGG is obviously good right now, and so like you know, I've been considering playing that, but I don't think.

I don't think I have any like super concrete goals or things that I'm like committed to, uh beyond that, It's like I have content creation related goals, but that those almost are They're like tangentially related to what I want to do with you know, just like my long term goals for the game.

But it's like, you know, play play a new character, maybe do another Sabbath on thing playing like a melee DPS or something.

I just want to get streaming again.

I did if I ended up playing.

I'm and I know I keep saying that, but it I think if I started playing again, like I might have a goal of, like, you know, doing something big and like pushing keys or whatever.

But for the most part, I just I want to get back into the groove.

And but I think Midnight coming out or like at least the pre patch or whatever, like those sorts of events will be an easy catalyst to be like, Okay, finally we have stuff to talk about.

Yeah, cast a race rod first, that's obviously another goal.

Whatever's going on with mb I TGP do that again as well?

What about you, Squidgy.

I'm actually really hyped for the Mythic plus season, like there is a zero chance that I might push a little further.

I'm still scarred from when Tittle's pulled me to tank for him and like the China the Storm days, that's been like eight years, Yeah exactly, I'm still traumatized.

Man, Well, yes, the storm was bad.

So that was the Sheer days too, of VEGISTDH you over that.

Oh my god, nothing you just you that was good.

Well all you can prayed for was Fily death Rocks.

That was good.

But yeah, like I think on the thick plus front, like I'm really excited for that after doing the Dungeons Raid.

We'll see.

I think there is some fundamental problems with that.

But interesting.

Plus we'll have to see about raid mythic plus rad or weird to me because like the content itself is obviously important in some aspects, but it's arguably less important.

I mean to ground Ive talked about this before.

It's arguably less important for me than like, are a bunch of people playing, like season one of the War Within sucks like that season like objectively sucked, but all my friends were playing, so I played a lot, right, And it's kind of like the same thing.

It's like, eh, you know, the dungeons could be bad, but I could still have fun.

Yeah, exactly.

We rated the dungeons and they were they were ragged quite low for season one of the War with It.

Yeah, what's funny is I played more, much, much more in season one than I did in season three, and I said that all the season three dungeons were like almost entirely much better than the season one, which is interesting, and I wonder, like, let's say I would have played season one less, would I have thought the same thing.

Let's say if I would have played season three a ton, would I have said the same thing.

I kind of wonder, you know, maybe because I played the game, yes super seriously this season, I was like, had a good view of the dungeon.

Yeah, like I think that.

I think that for me though, like I don't have a team or like any weird like aspirational goals for mythic plus, so I'm just gonna like I wouldn't I don't think that.

Most people call this plugging, but like I don't really I never really have a consistent group to play with in terms of like groups, So I just kind of play whenever I get invited more or less, or I end up making my own group most of the time.

Actually is what I end up doing is I end up making my own group.

But so that but that always comes with a bunch of like limitations of like I don't really know what I'm doing with the season at the very beginning of the season.

Also, honestly think for me, where the hell are the tanks?

Somebody's gotta find some some people to tank.

Man, maybe that needs to be our goals.

Just all three of us just become tanks.

No, I had that one time I started tanking.

That shit is never happened again.

I was terrible.

We were talking about the social credit and how like social credit and mythic plus should be Like you just have to put your time.

God, tanking is a tough spot.

That's just you putting in your dudes.

Yeah, I don't think Blizzard will learn.

I actually don't think there's a solve.

I think there's a fundamental problem with them thinking they know what is going to solve the tanking problem and it's not adjusting the actual issue.

I don't think that.

I don't think it's fixable.

I think there's ways to help it, and they're not doing it right now.

Okay, that's you know what.

All all all agree.

I'll concede with that.

Like the issue with Tank is like the role is too too impactful, right and it's too punishing whenever you make a mistake.

But I don't know how to do there.

I don't know how to fix that or more damage.

Just give them more damage.

I have a tank question for our viewers.

By the way, I mean, if you guys want to chime in, you can.

I've been playing a little bit of MOP Classic on and off now.

Granted it's hard to compare because MOP Classic doesn't have M plus.

To me, everyone I hear a lot about how much they liked tanking and M plus talking about vengeance and stuff.

From my perspective, tanking seems much more impactful and much more punishing in MOP than it does in retail.

So I'm interested in people who played MOP or play it currently what they think about tanking, because it, like, to me, it's I don't know if that's the direction that I would wow to go with, Like you take a ton of damage and you're like encouraged to like greed really hard for vengeance and stuff like.

I don't know, I don't see that being a good state of the game for tanking.

I'm kind of thinking that maybe people remember like the end of the expansion Siege of Ogrimar Farm, when they're like turbo megageared and they're just blasting, but they don't quite remember what it's like to like actually prog the raids or do the dungeons when you're undergeared.

But tanking seems hard and MOP.

It might be a perception thing because you know, tanking has a lot of risk for not a lot of reward, right like thinking is by yeah, it's it's binary.

You either live and your group does it.

You know, you do your job and you live and your group succeeds, or you die or your fails.

But like, at least in MOP you have that same risk, but you actually get some reward out of it too, a big fucking DPS and that at least, like that hits the perception of the dopamine filters right of, like you know, I'm taking on this role, I'm doing my job and I'm doing something for my group.

Like it's it's a noticeable thing.

So like it might just be a complete perception thing, but it works.

That was my issue with tanking was that like one hundred percent of the reward of tanking was contingent on timing the dungeon.

And it was just like, well, I'm working ten times harder than I than I would otherwise have to want any other role, and then my rewards the same.

It's these shmos that I've carried, like I don't know.

Yeah, Like and that's the thing is there's a fundamental imbalance between the risk and the reward of tanking, and until they solve that through any different means, like, it would be stupid.

I don't expect them to do this, but imagine if tanks always got a piece of loote at the end of mythic plus run, you'd suddenly have a fuck ton of tanks.

That would solve.

The rewardships get double loot.

And it's so I mean, tell me that would not solve the issue though in a ten sure, but that's where the majority of the issues occur, right, Like, there are ways to solve this, or the mid to low end.

I'm sorry, the high ends kind of fucked, I think, but I think there are absolutely ways that they can do this to make tanking more appealing.

They just haven't done anything about it.

Again.

Yeah, yeah, weerd heavily off topic.

Yeah, so figure got your band?

You got to figure your man?

Then you know, what do you guys think?

Like set up right?

No, No, we got to talk we don't.

We got to talk about figuring out your main.

Not going to talk about figuring out your main.

That was talking about gold.

So here's what I think about figuring out your main.

This is something that you have to get in your head in World of Warcraft.

So there's two things that you would decide that you want right.

Either you want to pick a character that's the meta character that everybody needs, that's really strong and really powerful, or you want to pick a character that you think is like cool that you vibe with, right, and everybody wants both.

Right.

You want to like see on a chart how good is this character and how much do I vibe with it and try and find like the perfect balance where you get both.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Wow, there's so much like weird tuning and unexpected things that happen that if you want to pick a character that's strong, you just have to wait and you have to be flexible, like if you're going in, if you're somebody who's like going into the next expansion, you just don't know what's going to be good and what's not.

You can look at a tier list, you can listen to people, you can try, but ultimately, if the most important thing to you is to play a character that's strong and needed and that people need in groups, you just have to wait and see how things play out and be willing to reroll rerolling is generally very, very easy, and wow, it's much different than other MMOs.

It's not like if you play one character for one hundred hours, it's going to take you one hundred more hours to get back on your alt to that next guy.

That's just not how the math works out.

So ultimately, I would say, just pick something that's cool and completely ignore any talk about what's good or what's meta or anything, and then if you run into a point where you're enjoying the game and that's holding you back, then the switch.

And I'm like such a strong believer in that, and I think a lot of people will have a much better time in the game if they do that, because I think a lot of people either a pick something because it's good and they don't vibe with it, and then they end up just like on another whatever fottomspeck and not have fun, or they get it in their head that their character is going to be good, and then once they run into problem, they don't want to real even though being fottam is very important to them.

When there are two months or there are two weeks into the expansion and they're like, damn, you know, there's a lot of people playing my class and it's not really that popular and everyone needs X Y class and they're just like, well, I'm committed.

I'm not making that and that's fine.

There's nothing wrong with that unless playing the most popular class is very important to you and if you at ed class, sorry, go ahead.

I was gonna say, I do think there's a lot of people whore like fifty to fifty on like one or two classes, and they want to do research in advance to see like which one of those two is better or it's like one of them like noticeably better, where it's like, okay, this is that's fair.

That's a bit of a better pick, right, Like say say you enjoy you know Mage and you know Warlock, and you're trying to pick between, well, which one's going to be better?

It's always made well.

I would I would highly encourage you, especially now, like if if you're somebody who hasn't played Wow in a while.

Wow has become very very alt friendly.

I understand that not everyone has tons of time, but like doing what you can to keep the other character and striking distance so that you can like decide to switch if you want to.

You know, like let's say you're somebody you like, oh, I want to play a caster, so maybe major Warlock.

Then you decide made then Warlock ends up being ope, like just putting a little bit of your time into your Warlock each week and just like you know, first couple of weeks, making sure you catch it up to max level.

Then you know, making sure you get some dungeon gear.

Yeah, getting to that point will make rerolling so much easier.

And who knows, like you might decide, hey, actually Warlock owns like not.

I'm glad I'm maintaining this.

I just want to play it anyways.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a good one.

I think, just to kind of echo what you guys were saying earlier, Like I find that people playing what they want to a lot of the times, very similar to the one button rotation, will just end up to them playing better and just playing better than if they had played a you know, flavor of the month class and are swapping to it type thing.

I mean, that's what I'm doing with with Raid.

I mean, I'm gonna raid on my moon can and you know, noon Cain might be good.

Or bad and Ray I don't really know, Yeah, exactly, like either way your you know, your key binding is better, you know your defensive you know, you know, the little things like that will help you.

And then if I care to do mythic plus on something that's fottom all level the character and gear it right.

But like I said, like you have a lot of time at the beginning of the expansion, I'll probably have like a good read on a couple of effects that are gonna be pretty decent.

You know, say, say Shaman and like Augiovoker are good things that played, or you know, Warlock or whatever all level, like a couple of characters that I think could be interesting to play because you know, you got you go, what do we have like three weeks or something at the very beginning of the expansion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When it comes to RAID, I think picking a class that you vibe with is more important.

Uh, Raid balance in general, I would say, is just getting better and better and better, and once you sort of find a guild or like a group that you fit snugly with, then you just are sort of there.

Whereas it's a lot harder to get that and mythic plus it seems like so I think if you're rating especially, I wouldn't really worry about what's good.

I would just kind of just pick something that you think is cool or that you would want to play, because ultimately, like you know, it's not like you're gonna have to find groups every single week for that, and like in general rating finding group just as like you know, are you qualified?

Can you join?

There's not really there's much less class like Discrepancy and Raid than there is in dungeons.

I mean, I think in Raid as well.

I don't know.

If you guys play like this, I literally just kind of get I'll say, get told what to play, but like historically I've been told what to play.

Now, I right, if you have a guild or you have a group of friends, fitting in with what they're playing is also good, right, Like if you well that's if you want to, right, I'm not necessarily saying you have to, but you know, like if you're in a guild, just knowing that, like hey, I'm the guilds X, that makes it much more simple because you know you're gonna have a spot, you're gonna be in their roster, like yeah, need you for.

This year?

It was.

But I mean even then though, right, like you played a class that most people would consider dog shit, and it was still probably fine for the most part, right, you know, and then.

I played.

Yeah, I mean see there you go like see, but that's how that's how it works, right, Like, granted, will everybody have the time to gear up a character that's strong enough to kill mypic Demensius for a Hall of Fame guild?

No, right, but eventually you'll be able to gear it up, you know, by the time turbo boost hits Like, you don't have to you don't have to do that extra.

I just I just hear them because I was bored.

And then we were starting Demensius and it was like, well this this shaman's you know, geared enough, like you can get brought like you don't have to be Like, I mean, my my mood wasn't getting p for loot either, like my moon was also not that good.

Prior for loot.

Retail players, you don't know what that's like in classic when two pieces of lut drop off a boss when you have weekly vault or quest cress upgrades or eddy thing, well, I'm lucky you to get one item from the raid each week.

The difference in prior for lute in modern rate is like three or four item levels, right, we're talking about and cress savings and shit like that.

Yeah, yeah, okay, anything else related towards figuring out your main.

No, that was basically my rant.

It's just play what you want and then if you care about what's good, then be willing to reroll.

Yeah, level a bunch of guys if you want.

Got Yeah, plenty of time.

But what else are you going to be doing?

So okay, then you know, prepping for a new expansion?

I think research is the one that actually is.

People understand that you need to do research, but I don't know if people necessarily know how to do research for the new expansion.

I mean, squish, what do you think some of the key like, the most like the easiest ways I guess to do research for the new expansion even happens.

Honestly, people want the easy solution to this, and I don't know there is a really easy solution to this, because it just depends what you're looking for.

In this case, we have so much time for leveling that you probably don't need to optimize your leveling path.

You probably also don't need to optimize your gearing before the season starts, because this gear is most of the time pretty worthless, despite everybody fiending for it in the two weeks before the raid, you know, stuff like super Rares.

I remember everybody feeding for that and it was for what six eye.

Levels wrathy reputation grinds too was terrible.

Oh that wasn't Supers, that was dragonflight.

Yeah, this was dirt farming for valor stones.

Yes, yeah, yep.

So like I think this time research is mostly just going to come down to Honestly, I believe Mythic Plus a lot more.

There's a lot of gotcha moments in this Mythic Plus that you just need.

You either know you don't know, and if you don't know, you probably die to it.

Then you say okay, now I understand, and then.

You won't screw it up again, okay.

And I think knowing those things, even just watching a single run through of you know, people that have played Beta tarithal Zorthys, Tittles, Grawl, I Fie streams like Yoda, like knowing these boss mechanics.

There's usually just one mechanic that you need to know, and once you know the mechanic, you're good to go.

And so it's like not too hard just watching one quick playthrough on two time speed until they get to the boss, you're probably good to go from there.

I guess there is a kind of an interesting question about Mythic plus specifically on like actually learning the dungeons, on doing the research beforehand.

And it is kind of this question about, especially with like Mythic Cluss and Raid, do you need to do the research because taking time kind of like Squishy said, to look through mechanics and whatnot, while useful, it's never it's never going to be a bad thing.

It is a more hardcore thing to do, and it might be just in your best interest to just play, have fun and not really worry too much about the mechanics, and you'll learn the mechanics over time.

So I think also just kind of assessing like where you're at is kind of important.

Whereas if you're trying to push for like high level dungeons early on, or you kind of feel like you don't want to be a burden to any of your groups, obviously doing research beforehand is valuable.

It's it's gonna be one of those things kind of World of Warcraft is a game where players spend a lot of time grinding and playing and very little time actually allocating any time to doing research where the research actually could help them in a lot of areas that they don't really test out or try.

I think for a lot a concern for a lot of people is the idea of staying ahead of the herd.

This would mostly be true with like dungeon groups, but kind of applies everywhere in games.

Is just and ultimately that just comes down to putting a little bit more work in than the average person would, which sounds annoying, right.

It's like, Hey, I'm playing a New World of Warcraft expansion.

I'm trying to have fun.

Why am I putting in work?

But again, it's like, if that's what you want to do, if you want to be ahead of the herd and be playing with the slightly better players and having, you know, like challenging yourself early in the season, you do kind of have to look up, Hey, what are these dungeons?

What are some of the harder bosses?

What are these mechanics I'm gonna need to know?

Is that something that's required?

No?

Is that something that like you need to do to accomplish anything in Wow?

No?

But if you're somebody who like really cares about.

Okay, I really need to get my twelve done in the first week to get that extra crest saver.

Oh, I don't want to have to deal with like, you know, lower keys.

I want to be grinding for you know, Gilded Cress right away.

Then maybe you do have to try and figure out some dungeons on Beta and make sure you're putting in time learning your characters, that your early key runs are successful.

And I think that there's something to be said for that too, the idea of staying ahead of the herd, Like, it's definitely it definitely makes your life easier if you are a solo only player, right Like, if you have people to play with, you don't care nearly as much.

But if you're somebody who's just out on the streets slumming and in pugs, it's definitely true that the sweat Lord idiots like us are gonna be just slamming keys immediately day one, day two, and we're gonna be up.

You know, we're not gonna be doing fours on day one, and so the subsection of people that are in doing you know, threes and fours on day one or two, it's just gonna be a lower quality player pool on average, and you're gonna have a lower success rate in the keys, which again, nothing wrong with it, but yeah, it is what it is.

I do think that one of the bigger things is actually playing with intentional learn.

It's kind of like the what Evade said all those episodes go where every single time you do a dungeon, you don't have to be perfect the first time, but you should every single time you see something go wrong.

Trying to understand and learn why things went wrong is very valuable, and I think that like even doing things like recording your own runs, especially early on, so you can watch back and try to understand what the mechanics are, like what went wrong or why these things happened, it can actually be super valuable.

And then on top of that as well, I think having at least for me like MDT is normally very valuable.

People use it mostly for routes, but I really like it for looking at and reading spells and spell tooltips to try to understand what all the mobs do, because I think trying to figure out like what the hell the mobs are doing a lot of the time is what are the hardest parts of doing mythic class.

Yeah, I think there's also going to be content creators out there like Tittle's who are going to release, you know, great videos out of here's what you need to know about you know about these dungeons, and that will be a great resource for you.

Yeah, I do think that it's still hard to like understand like what's happening in all the dungeons, even even I agree.

I agree, Like this goes back to what I said at the beginning of people want the very quick version of how to not you know, wipe the group and stuff like that.

But a big thing is failure should be okay because failure is how you learn MHM, and failure is going to happen.

So yeah, there's one thing I want to add.

It's a little bit off topic, but I think it's very much in the preparation the slash like research slash like before category is find people to play with.

Like World of Warcraft is infinitely more fun if you have people to play with.

So like if literally the most important thing you could do right now for having fun and having success in Midnight is go down your friends list of people that play Wow, especially those that you haven't talked to be like, yo, are you playing?

And if you're somebody who like doesn't have anybody to play with or level with or do dungeons with, like yo, you want to grind dungeons?

You want to you know, do stuff or maybe like during the pre patch week, see who is playing and be like, yo, you know what do you doing after work on Tuesday when the patch comes out and then plus comes out?

Like you want to grind or whatever?

Like being social and networking and finding people to play with like right away is going to help like not only make the game more fun, but also you're just gonna have more success like playing with the same people again and again, Like you know, if you go and I feel like a lot of people have this problem where they're like, hey, wow, kind of sounds fun and they play the New Wild expansion, but they don't necessarily like talk to many people or have a guild setup.

And then you log in and it's like, well, you do have some people on your friend's list, but you haven't talked to them in a while.

You don't really have a guild, and then it's like you're kind of just pugging and then the game just isn't really that Funyeah, in that situation, you know, it's just much less fun, and then you end up kind of like having a lot less fun a month in and burning out and quitting.

And there's nothing wrong with that gameplay loop of just checking out the expansion and seeing what's going on.

But there's a lot more too.

Wow, if you find yourself in a guild or doing keys with people and you know, so, I think that's something good that you can do.

Is like, honestly, one of the best things that you can do to prep for the next expansion, just because they're so little you can do, is like prep your your friends network, right, like hit up some of the some of your wild buds that you haven't talked to since the start of We're Within and see if you can find a guild or and if you don't have any of those, who knows, maybe logging in right now and playing with some of the few people that are playing right now, they might, you know, appreciate finding someone that they can game with because all their friends are probably offline playing classic hardcore and TFT.

That's why I like it.

That's actually why I really enjoy being in a guild is because it's I would say forced socialization, but it's like, you know, it is a I honest say required friend group, but it's people who are coming together for a common goal, and so it's people that you have things in common with that you are just inherently going to relate to more and more.

And those are one of the things that like, you know, I know that guilds are less common, but it is.

It is one of the things that I wish was a bit more free for a lot of people is that they are still in a guild and they have the network of people.

Because I feel like the people who are like the solo player endeavors, that's just been becoming more and more common and it's like it's tough to find and socialize and wow in twenty twenty six, Yeah, are there any large changes to how Mythic plus works.

I mean, obviously we no longer have cybernetic enhancements from like weekor packs that tell you win to defensive and whatnot.

I do think that's actually going to make learning dungeons a little bit more difficult.

There's been some kick lockout changes.

The dungeon pacing is a little bit slower.

Any other like large changes to how Mythic plus works.

Nothing major, like I think, it's just when it comes to mplus and rate a lot of it's just the same old, same old, Okay, so like learn the mechanics.

I mean, for me, one thing that helps me if I when I was a little bit more casual is basically I made a little like sheet and eventually I just stole one from Reddit that's some and also made of like a one line summary of every boss in the dungeon and maybe like one or two notes on what are the hard parts are?

You know, like just see like Okay, this is the boss where you got to soak the beans, and this is the boss where you got to make sure the phoenixes don't stack on top of each other, you know.

And then that way, when you're doing the dungeons, you sort of like already know what to expect before you go into each boss, and then you can kind of do the same thing for the raids too, and then just having like a basic you know, you don't have to like go on the PTR or the BETA and do the dungeons or anything, and you'll get to you'll get to experience them in the early weeks doing the like whatever the difficulty is normal or heroic or whatever.

And especially if you know already what's coming in mythic, you can kind of like see it in your head, you know.

Like for me, at least, I'm much more of like a how would you say, like a tactile learner, Like I can't just watch a video and all of a sudden, No, I have to just be in the fight.

But once I'm in the fight, I just very rapidly start to understand how things work.

And so if you take note, if you like kind of remember and think about, Okay, what are the mythic mechanics, what's going on in this fight?

Like even if stuff doesn't kill you, you gotta see like, oh man, we just raised four phoenixes and this would be really bad and mythic, and this is what I gotta do, or this is how I got to tank it, and just kind of like thinking ahead of time on the dungeons while you're doing them, either leveling or just like gearing in heroic.

Dude, I wish it.

I don't know, do we know anything about M Zero's squishy?

Uh?

They release.

The heroic wee but Myles but some mythic plus is mythic plus the week after.

Okay, yeah, everything less is after in zero's.

I mean, obviously they're not going to be the best thing for gearing that week, but you know, I actually think that doing M zero is probably pretty good just to help familiarize yourself with like the dungeon layouts and how the dungeons feel.

Kind of like what Girl was saying, Yeah.

I mean it's not bad.

Keep in mind again, like if you're somebody who's in a Hall of Fame guild, obviously you don't care as much about M zero's.

But if you're wanting to pug the raid, going into the raid frame one on Tuesday when it comes out is probably gonna be miserable for most people who are pugging.

So spending your time and going through all the M zeros and actually getting the small gear upgrades that you can get and then kind of stepping in a normal and that's that's gonna be really really for most people.

They will do M zeros.

Everybody.

Everybody's gonna make mistakes, and even professional gamers like Zorthis, who streams three hundred and sixty five days a year, occasionally gets silenced by the bowet silence here.

Yeah, it happened.

Everybody.

You will say, this fight, I've seen a number of people just trip on a swirly because this pink swirly all right, circle that spawns around you, and then a swirly spawns under you that is also a pink circle.

You just don't see it because of the same color.

Yeah, that's something that actually mechanically bothers me, is when they're circling.

Like when I have a circle on me in a fight with swirlies, I can't quite explain it, and my head it feels unfair.

I know that's just like a new response to it.

But whatever, this fight completely owned me because it's like you kind of I don't know.

It's hard because you're not always looking at your character, right, You're looking at your peripheral, so like you see, okay, I have a circle on me, and then you realize, okay, this is just the mechanic.

It's not you know what I mean, Like.

It's all of cinderbrew meterie.

Yeah, that was was like that for me.

High level wise, are there significant things that are changing?

Obviously, gear Uh, they're gonna do some a little bit cress stare stepping stuff that we've seen from data mining, but I don't think they've actually even confirmed to that, so I don't know if that's like guaranteed.

Uh So when it comes to when it comes to gear and cress and like crafts and all that, yeah, uh First, I would say, if you're somebody who like doesn't want to troll but doesn't care that much, you shouldn't care at all.

Almost all of the min max stuff that people do is so ridiculous and matters so little that you're not going to regret it, and you should just play how you want to play.

If unfortunately, you're like every single wold player that wants to role play as a world first rder and needs every single item level advantage they can get on every piece, the best advice that I would give you is you got to push back the dopabine, Like, I know you want to craft that weapon.

I know you want to spend your crest to get high item level.

I know you want to do this stuff, but just wait, like, just wait a little bit.

Make sure you Redreddit, make sure you know check the Wildhead news stuff like just see what people are doing, check the raider, see what you know Liquid is doing, or echoes doing like, don't rush into spending any resources that are I think not that are finite.

Dude, I think that like is so impos it's impossible to actually like fuck up your character.

Yeah, exactly, it's not a big deal.

That was my first point, right, It's like, you shouldn't just hold back if you like, if you don't really care that much, which is honestly how you should play.

Like, Yeah, having one or two item level difference is going to matter so little.

Now if you do raid in my raiding guild, however, and your your first craft is a PvP weapon because you prioritize PvP over rating, now you might get kicked from your guilt, but assuming that you're not doing that, it's unlikely to have any real consequences due this.

Tweet from Rello always comes up, which is I think exactly what we're talking about.

This was last year, and it's while players will spend two weeks optimizing, gearing and being feared about crafting anything because it could lose the point one percent DPS, but then it's not spend a single minute of preparing for a raid fight.

Yeah, and it is so true true, So.

Let's let's not.

We talked about mythic plus a little bit.

Let's talk about raid.

There's obviously prepping for the new expansion.

There's raid testing, there's reading the Dungeon Journal.

I think research versus reps is kind of an interesting conversation.

How do you min max the raid?

Min maxing your class?

Uh?

You know?

Where?

Do you?

Where?

Do you think that you start by prepping for a raid?

Squishy?

I think, honestly, this time cork Week's there, you honestly don't need as much because time spent in heroic for a lot of gills, Especially if you're not ting splits, you're just gonna run out of stuff to do, or if you're you know, not ready there, you're gonna do normal first.

The normal you get to see the mechanics beforehand.

If you really want to go above and beyond, yes you can look at rad testing.

But honestly, I don't even know if it's necessarily did, because I think the fights are a lot simpler this time around.

Yeah, I think raid testing is super useless.

I think if regardless of what level you're at, I think one really good thing that you can do if you want to prepare for the raid is watch a video of your class doing the fight.

Yeah, most guilds do not, you know, you'll be able to find something.

Even if you're in a very casual guild then you're only gonna do like the first couple of bosses in normal, you could still go look up somebody who's doing the bosses and kind of see like a general idea things you want to look for.

Number one, where is that person standing, if they're staying any you know, are they far away from the boss?

Are they close?

Are they in this corner?

Number two is when they use their cool down?

Do they just pop them over and over when they're up?

Do they hold for specific things?

What are they targeting?

And honestly, just with those two things, where should I stand and where do I use my cool downs?

It'll free up a lot more headspace for you to actually like think about your rotation and how you should handle the mechanic.

You don't like, I wouldn't go full in depth of like you know, every single defensive use or every single boss mechanic.

Literally just keep it real simple of like, okay, where do I stand?

Where do I use my cool downs?

And then just kind of like autopilot that and then.

Lords as you ray, Yeah, Lords dot io is the resource that you were looking for for that, and I think that, yeah.

Just trying that's cool down timings.

Yeah, yeah, just trying to figure out your cool down timings is going to be super super valuable.

Obviously not you know, movement and mechanics and stuff like that.

M but yeah, I think that's something that's squishally said about the the heroic week.

That's actually super true because it doesn't really let you fall by as much, especially if you're somebody who maybe has aspirations of doing mythic rating.

Does preparation and research change if you're not in a guild Squishy in regards to like you say you want to pug the raid, like, is it does research change at all?

Or is it just about getting into a pug?

I think if you are looking to lead a pug, which competent pug leaders are going to have bigger success, you're going to need to research the shit out of the raid and understand how things work, what assignment you're going to need, et cetera.

If you're just joining honestly with the way pugs are, you probably will also need a higher level than say going somewhat blind and with a guild just because you're you know, if every time a pug wipes, people are probably going to leave, and so to reduce do whatever you can to reduce the chance of a wipe.

You might want to look into it a little more, but like, ultimately, it's a game play how you want to play man.

Yeah, I think raid testing and actually watching videos for ray Is.

I feel like it's something that's talked about a lot, but it also is not as valuable as long as you know like a couple of the core mechanics on the boss, and I think that that's like the most important thing.

It's like what what can wipe us?

And then it's like as long as you know what can wipe you and like, uh, at least like a high level what you're supposed to be able to do or what you're supposed to be doing.

I think that's like totally reasonable.

But then once you get in the mythic, it's like almost completely different.

Your preparation Obviously, it's not like your preparation is gonna be a really big deal at that point.

Oh yeah, I mean, if you're going into day one mythic rating on Mythic Week, then you should.

Be you're watching the race.

Yeah, yeah, you should be looking for advice other than what is the cat with a waffle on his head to say you got to put it a little bit more investment than that.

Yeah, I mean you're you've already done the entire rate on Heroic, And then I actually do think that once you've done the entire rate on Heroic, if you then go and read the Mythic Mechanic, you already kind of like understand like a structural from like a structure all in pacing perspective, like what you're supposed to be doing on the on the boss most of the time.

And then there's some obviously like overlap changes and whatnot.

Yeah, oh huh okay, what else anything else for research and prepping for the new expansion that hopefully most of it.

Hopefully we don't have to download the Giant Raid week or a pack.

Usually I recommend not doing that.

By the way, almost always before the raid there's like, I mean, the way it's gonna be a standalone add on and not a week eur.

But basically I would I would recommend like in the pre patch especially and early on, getting familiar with your UI and being like understanding how to do things like hey, I have a D buff, how do I change the noise on this?

Or how do I put this in the middle of my screen, or like, you know, little things like that, or like how do I make my d buffs more visible?

Or whatever UI enhancements are allowed in Midnight.

Make sure you're familiar with how to do that stuff.

That way, when you run into those problems, you know in the RAID release, you're not just sitting here being like uh, you know, or like downloading some giant ad on package that has all these things that are hard to customize.

I think like getting from getting fluent with how to use your tools is really important, regardless of like you know, where they end up standing in midnight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, download the groul week or a pack.

Just pay him some money and he'll watch your stream and call it everything for you, Right, that's how it works.

That would be sick.

I've always thought about that.

Well.

I don't know if we'll be able to do custom sounds now, but it would be so funny to just have like a sub only custom sound pack of like you know, the streamer saying all of the things I feel.

Like, I mean, tetles, do you not remember your thing from beyond weak or sound that was good.

Beyond when custom uh sounds and wow are actually a pain in the ass to set up.

They're not that bad.

You have to have like a really weird file extension for them, and I don't know I found them.

Oh, I guess I just meant like setting it up once it already exists.

Oh yeah, sure, having a call is like fine.

Getting getting the sound set up is like I found it to be really annoying very.

Early in my very early in my stream career, when I was like getting different iterations of the waffle Cat made, I had like submitted, I like got one made by somebody who, let's say wasn't the best artist, but I didn't know at the time, and what they said were back was just like extremely demonic to the point where like I mean, I paid them and I was, but I'm like, there's no way I would ever use this.

And then one of my mods at the time made it into my thing from Beyond week era, which is basically like it would spawn these ghosts that would run at you and they'd be like clones of you.

But it replaced the ghosts with just this giant demonic cartoon, waffle Cat, and it just fucking killed me every time it spawned of I screen.

Yeah, I forgot.

I forgot about that.

Good, Okay.

I think we're gonna talk about UI next week.

I think that that's what's been discussed in our in our group chat.

We'll talk about UI and that ons every week, don't well okay, I'm talking.

We're talking about setting, not because we got pre patch on the twentieth, right, Yeah, okay, yeah, I think we.

I think once the prepatch comes out, we'll definitely do like, uh, I don't know if it's next week, but it's soon in the future, like a banger U.

I like figuring out exactly what you need to do in the pre patch that's definitely coming for sure.

So that's kind of why we're omitting the episode.

I think.

I think the prepatch episode needs to be next episode, right because because the pre patch.

Yeah okay, I.

Mean, I'm not gonna have much useful to say if the prepatch isn't even out yet.

But okay, well, like, what what is changing?

Okay, I guess there's nothing.

Change, guys.

We just come up some stuff from week to week.

All right, we don't know what's going on, or rather, I should say titles does.

That's why he's freaking out.

Goodbye Bye,