Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

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Albain
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Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Albain »

If this thread ISN'T okay I will remove it, but I want to keep track of what it's like to level on Beta, where to find certain things like cooking. Will contain spoilers, and possibly a bit of RP.

My current hunter is Jagati, a panda. I like pandas. Her pet is Crimson, a red lynx stolen from some Blood Elves.

She's 102. Today I am getting BM's artifact. So far I have discovered BM is okay, if you misdirect and then stack dire frenzy, BW, Barrage, stampede and Multishot all at the same time and basically turn entire groups of mobs into puddles before my pet can die. But boy is the yelling annoying.

Cooking was finally acquired yesterday. Following Azsuna's primary questline up until the dragons which can send you n orth to more dragons or south to help some ghosts, go south and 2 recipes will be learned as you go. Fighter Food is especially useful, 1,000% healing out of combat means no downtime. Until now I have been primarily Survival, and my .. survivability has been just fine. But there's a lot of leveling to go..

Did the BM artifact intro! Not difficult at all with an ilevel above 700.

Faction switching seems to have possibly done some damage to my ability to get Snowfeather to go away, and Emmael Shadewarden to appear. This could be detrimental, I'm heading to Trueshot Lodge to see if I can do my turn in there.

I can't. It looks like I may have to reroll. At least I'm only 102..
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Wain
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Wain »

A blog thread is pretty cool. Go for it :).
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Albain
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Albain »

Excellent!! I will be editing this particular post throughout the day until/if I run out of space, try to keep it to one a day.

Keeping Jagati in case needed for Bug Report, new hunter is Jacint. First things first, getting another red lynx back, and attempting to get Skoll to see if BM quest dialogue changes. Sadly Skoll is not yet here but gonna hang in there for a few minutes and see if he spawns.

Flying mounts seem to be riding a little too high on the screen.

How to get to old dalaran when the ships aren't working: Head to Mage Tower. Port to new dalaran. Take portal to Shrine. Take shrine portal to Old Dalaran!

How to get flying training on your demon hunter, which doesn't come with it: Head to portal locations. Take Hellfire Peninsula portal. Head to thrallmar. Train it there.

Snagged Friender to keep an eye on Legion pet health and see if race changing disables my ability to use mecha pets. Still haven't done broken shore again on new-hunter.

The more I play survival, the more complete it feels as a spec. Like it has a theme, a purpose behind it, a motif that actually WORKS while in combat. This disappoints me, because I've been beastmaster since at least TBC. I have caught every spirit beast at least once, some multiple times. But comparing its current state to survival's, I no longer feel like I can do my JOB in an instance as BM. I don't like adding to the melee clutter but I still have my bloody TRAPS as survival. It never felt like a bit deal until I tried to rely on Wyvern Sting to lock down a mob and couldn't do it. I couldn't do it! I prided myself on my trapping skills. I have in BC taken a talbuk trap by trap all the way out of Nagrand and into Shattrath City. Combining this agonizing lack of any real replacement CC with the obnoxious yelling required by the spec, and the painful amounts of downtime while I'm waiting for my very few buttons to come off cooldown is the nail in the coffin for BM for me. Unless something seriously changes.. I don't think I'm going to go back to it.

Which means leaving Loque behind. I've had that pet a long, long time. I'm going to miss him. I'm going to give BM a fair shake at 110, once I can get my hands on the Adaption legendary for testing purposes and feel out if the spec is better then.

Incidentally, racechanging after you've tamed a mechanical lets you keep that mechanical. I still have Friender and my silver Strider as a panda!

So far frankly the class hall missions don't feel any different from garrison missions, except that I'm not sure where to get more followers from. This is really disappointing me.
Albain
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Wednesday.

Unread post by Albain »

Continuing to get back to where I was. Fac-swapping from Horde to Alliance DEFINITELY messed up my class quests, I tried it again with a throwaway alt. I left a bug report on this. Back to Azsuna!

Having done this particular set of quests four times now, I can zip right through them. I want to get to the rest of the zone to finish teh story, but I ALSO want to not be doing every quest ever so there's still some surprises for live. The dalaran NPC bug is back, after all day working normally. Throwing myself off Dalaran and into the water is a perfectly viable way to get away. Downside: no NPCs anywhere else either, so now I'm fishing.

Happily, I still have no real issues with surviving out here, though I expect that to change suddenly and severely once I hit 108 or so. Fighter Chow might help. 1,000% health regen means if I survive the fight I'm healed for the next. If anyone actually reads this and wants some chow, let me know. I might be spending the morning fishing it up.

A lot of time spent realm-hopping due to the phasing bug being back in full force. Ran into some trouble with a rare, I really miss Spirit Bond. I am running with Friender in tank spec on PURPOSE, because it really teaches me threat management, pet management, and frantic juggling in order to keep him alive. He doesn't get hit harder than my wolf, he just has literally less than half the hit points of my wolf even in tenacity.. It makes things a bit more exciting now that I figured out how to keep my normal pet alive. Also noteworthy, Friender hits half as HARD as my wolf too, with an average of 600 damage to Lilly's 1100. I want to see where the difference is at 110.

Worgen, males at least, do NOT have the obnoxious screaming for BM that everyone else does. I may give it a go on an alt.
Last edited by Albain on Wed May 18, 2016 5:56 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Wain
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Wain »

The phasing issues certainly are a block to progression at the moment :( I don't understand why phasing is such a struggle every new xpac. Every time it seems weeks are wasted on phasing issues. Do they keep changing the code so much? Or is it such a convoluted system that it needs to be precisely tweaked each time? :/ Ah well, I'm sure they'll get it right. It just seems to take up so much of the server guys' time, every time. In WoD we still had issues when the game was released. That really mustn't happen again, gameplay at launch cast the game in a terrible light.

I suspect there are quite a few quests that will currently be lost for good if you abandon them or switch at the wrong point. I can testify that the BM artifact chain is currently like that. I got locked out of a quest section in Mimiron's Workshop, and tried abandoning it only to find that it didn't fix anything and meant I could never go back. I ended up deleting the toon and starting again. I'm sure they'll catch all these before release, but right now it pays not to be too adventurous if you don't want to start again ;)
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Albain
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Albain »

They had the phasing bug pretty well fixed last night, hours went by without no phasing issues. Then they rolled out a smallpatch and it borked everything up again. I figure it's kind of like how when they tried to fix the primary backpack to be bigger than 16 slots and doing so broke the mailbox badly. The code is so old and convoluted that even a minor tweak screws eevrything else up. And since it's beta, a whole lot is getting tweaked, and every expansion a lot of new code is being thrown in..

I'm not fac-switching this time. Or abandoning quests. If i run into a problem I'm just gonna sit on it til a server restart happens. /knock on wood. :/
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by 13thmaiden »

Keep us updated on the cooking! Is there the same fishing/farming mechanism from the last two xpacs for this one?
Albain
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Albain »

13thmaiden wrote:Keep us updated on the cooking! Is there the same fishing/farming mechanism from the last two xpacs for this one?
Sort of! You buy HALF your reagents from the vendor, and the rest you go out and farm in the traditional manner. The recipes ONLY drop as quests as far as I can tell, and which quests aren't stated much yet. I'm not seeing the variety of options we've had before either, there's literally just 6 recipes until 110. I'm slogging away at it but not knowing where to find the recipes means having to do every single quest in every single zone.
Albain
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Thursday

Unread post by Albain »

I've rolled another BM hunter and parked them in storm peaks to try to catch Skoll and see if the intro BM artifact changes if you have him.

Back to huntering! Beastmaster for the time being, because if I'm gonna play Surv live I might as well play the spec I'm NOT going to, on beta. I miss being a panda but worgen are the only ones without the annoying yelling and screaming when using Direbeast. Today instead of phasing issues it's tremendous lag, so that's slowing things down.

Being UNABLE to tolerate being a worgen, because I love pandas that much, I am now going through every damn soundfile in the game looking for the one that makes the yell so I can SILENCE it. Once I have successfully found this file for pandas if anyone wants it for the OTHER races I will make you a sound file. In theory once I know where this one is, I can find the others fairly easy. Frustratingly! I can't see Legion's files in here. I may have to ask for help from Professionals.
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by 13thmaiden »

I'm hoping in a new patch they lower down the sound of the shouting since so many people have complained about it. Kinda like the stomping of hydras and corehounds back in the day XD
Albain
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Albain »

13thmaiden wrote:I'm hoping in a new patch they lower down the sound of the shouting since so many people have complained about it. Kinda like the stomping of hydras and corehounds back in the day XD
The sounds are still here, unfortunately, but now my BM hunter is shooting tiny, tiny lightning bolts, so there's that. I feel like I have a minute shaman in my gun.
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Friday.

Unread post by Albain »

Spent most of the day doing actual job things! Back to beta. Cobra shot finally feels WORTH pressing, it does a decent amount of damage. With that fact, it now feels like Chimera is even more mandatory, to keep up enough focus to use Cobra reliably. Because of its current buff, I am going to focus as much as I can on a Cobra-heavy build and see if it feels more BM to me. So far, honestly, it does. My pets ARE doing a lot of damage, but between chimera and cobra, I'm at least feeling like i'm doing more than yelling at my pets. However I am NOT using Way of the Cobra, because I don't currently have the crit to support it. Maybe in a few levels!

I'm spending most of my evening catching up on my leatherworking quests. I found a ghostly smallpet black nightsaber cub outside Blackrook Hold, off the Nightsaber rare pathing back and forth there. It's cute. Falling off cliffs in Highmountan can land you in Suramar, this is bad.

Decided to spend some time killing the rares in northrend to force a Skoll spawn, only to find some troll hunter parked at a spawn spot. This makes me unreasonably angry. I'm not out here spending all my time doing this so someone ELSE can get the wolf, ESPECIALLY since I am certain they're NOT going to pass on if the dialogues change if you have Skoll along. So I'm not doing that anymore for a while.

Saturday

Once I finish turnovers of garrison liveside I'm going to buckle down and get to questing. I want those four other cooking recipes, and I don't know where they are. Especially mastery and crit!

Spent a while rerolling to test BM screams. Allyside, because switching Horde screws everything up.

NO YELL:

Dwarf Female
Dwarf Male
Night Elf Male
Worgen Male
Gnome Male
Worgen Female

Annoying Yell:
Pandaren Female
Gnome Female
Goblin Male
Night Elf Female

Tolerable Yell:
Human Male
Human Female
Pandaren Male
Draenei Female (sort of. One of her yells is easily tolerated, the other makes my ears bleed)
Draenei Male

that cave on the old coast road with the treasure box in it now has NPCs too! A lot of neutral Humans, that attack if you loot the box. Being a hunter, this was not an issue.
Albain
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Sunday

Unread post by Albain »

Not much time today, picked up a puppy. Oh boy do they eat up your time.

Working on my cooking quests som more. The two-star recipes are supposed to drop but I haven't found them yet. I think I could tolerate BM if it's on a non-yeller, AND if I keep cobra shot, but it's just not the same. I'm looking foward to hitting 110 and seeing if Adaption fixes this.
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Wain »

No wonder I've never noticed the yelling problem. That's some detailed testing you did!
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by 13thmaiden »

We're gonna have to get someone to do on the horde side to test the yells. Great testing on the Allyside though!
Albain
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Albain »

I have a horde hunter now to racechange them and check on yells. So far just a blood elf female. This will be edited when I can get to the rest.

NO YELL:
Tauren male
Troll male
Troll female


Annoying Yell:
Undead male
Goblin male
Goblin female (maybe. I don't like it, some may find it tolerable.)
Orc female


Tolerable Yell:
Blood elf female
Blood elf male (though his yells generally sound more like.. grunts?)
Orc Male
Tauren female
Undead female

Oddly enough the bloof female's yells are ... a lot deepervoiced than expected.


Managed to snag Skoll, so I'm currently headed to do the BM entry quest. Again. Skoll definitely still has the old model. Being plagued by disconnects.

Foiled. Dialogue is not functional for the quest. I will try it now and again later. Wednesday, ran the scenario. No change if you have skoll along. I am going to leave him at this point to test every patch that rolls in, see if it changes.
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Saturday

Unread post by Albain »

Hopefully going to get some good testing in today. Just got the marksman weapon, I think I need it to progress my class hall. Is it me or is Marks mostly waiting for procs? I won't use any artifact power for it but I might dabble a bit in it for a little, I've never played marksman and don't know what to expect. Maybe today I'll finish Azsuna too.

I'm a little disturbed that I find myself enjoying marksman. I don't know that I'm playing it right, but it feels acceptably fun. Survivability is okay, with pet + black arrow, with the two juggling threat I generally don't face-tank much. my DPS feels much higher, but I don't know if that's just 'me' or not.

Caught Treble and Rush, for the heck of it. Doing my class quests a little too. Pro tip: kill at least 4 baby boars, get one fire wood. You can probably kill three boars in one hunger fit.
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Thursday

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Been a busy workweek!

Found another recipe, at Bradensbrook in Val'sharah! That's 3 out of 6! Also found a lot of pettable tinypets in the various inns and buildings, I've been petting them but I do't know if it's related to anything. It's just cute. Rexxar is snaggable as a bodyguard at level 103, but right now bodyguards are a bit annoying with the level of yelling they do so I'm leaving him to farm missions. Val'sharah is even prettier than Azsuna was. There's lots of treasures here too, I can tell, bu finding them is the hard part. I found THREE smallpets for battle here so far.

There's a rarestar on the minimap that led me to think there's a rare inside but there wasn't, just a treasure box on the second floor.
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Re: Alba's experiences on Legion beta.

Unread post by Albain »

Leveling my hunter has been somewhat stopped by being unable to get out of a tree I bugged into, and being unwilling to go through such a headache as all three intro scenarios again. But I do have an alt! Nomi's cooking quests are a complete chore. I did find another recipe in Highmountain doing quests, and found one in Stormheim dropping off a viginette bear. That gave me the six total I needed.

I'm reaching a point where I feel I tested the classes I want to, to a degree where I know what I'll want to do and how I'll want to do it live. I don't know if I should keep doing things on Beta, or save the rest for live.
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Unread post by Albain »

So Nomi takes 4 hours to try to cook with your hard-gthered mats and then often burns it. I can see cooking recipes will become super obnoxious super fast.

I couldn't keep BM. I just enjoy survival too much. Without being able to get out of my tree I had to begin a new hunter, who is going to probably stay survival. All the problems I have with BM and its mindless rotation simply aren't there with surv.
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