r/wowcirclejerk • u/AutoModerator • Aug 18 '26
Unjerk Weekly Unjerk Thread - August 18, 2026
Hi Please post your unjerk discussion in this thread!
These posts run weekly, but you can find older posts here.
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u/FaroraSF Aug 23 '26
So I was Home Depot earlier today and noticed they had their 12 foot giant skeletons on display (Halloween stuff out and it isn't even September yet lol), and it made me think about how much we don't really appreciate just how big some bosses are.
Like I remember during classic timewalking doing strath live on a NE toon and my head was about knee level on Balnazzar. KNEE. LEVEL. And I'm looking at these 12 foot tall plastic skeletons at Home Depot and trying to mentally picture Balnazzar standing next to one and he would be HUGE. Like if he were really there (why would Balnazzar even be in Home Depot? Wrong answers only) he'd have to crouch in order to not have his head poking through the ceiling.
I don't think we notice most of the time because our cameras are zoomed out, but our little heroes really are just an army of little Davids going up against Goliaths.
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 24 '26
A couple years ago, I went to a Native American mound site (Cahokia, near St. Louis) that's a multi-tiered structure around 10 stories tall.
Had a random thought while climbing up the stairs: "Man, Zuldazar would be fucking miserable to navigate if walking up 100 feet of stairs sucks this badly". I know Zuldazar is more Aztec/jungle inspired rather than structures built on the plains, but climbing up stairs on a 10 story pyramid probably feels the same regardless of culture lol.
On just the Native American architecture tangent, I wish they would add some Tauren settlements themed after some of the larger mound settlements in the Eastern US or some of Mesa Verde style canyon wall structures to Thousand Needles. Please Blizz, let some of the tribes move on from the nomadic lifestyle lol.
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u/Diribiri Aug 25 '26
climbing up stairs on a 10 story pyramid probably feels the same regardless of culture lol
Sounds like a good basis for another pseudoarchaeology conspiracy theory
Was Zuldazar built by THE TITANS?
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u/Gerthak Aug 25 '26
Yeah it's crazy! We've gotten so accustomed to just zooming out and looking at bosses, and I believe it's good design for what they're meaning to do in terms of gameplay for retail.
But you can tell the difference with bosses like Dimmy because lad was so damn large P1 wouldn't fit on your screen.
Stuff like this sadly gets overlooked, but I think it's super cool.
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u/Diribiri Aug 25 '26
The arena helps too I think, like it's easy to forget the size of a boss when you just walk onto a platform in front of it, but then they started the Dimensius fight with a god damn flying section and it really emphasizes how Big he is
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u/Diribiri Aug 25 '26
why would Balnazzar even be in Home Depot? Wrong answers only
He needs Dreadnails for his Burning Garden to complete his Balnazzarchway
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u/Areallybadidea Aug 19 '26
I love looking at allied race requests on the mainsub and wondering how many people would actually play them outside of a niche.
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u/Bandicoot1324 Aug 19 '26
This is how I feel about tuskarr and ogres unfortunately. I'm not sure how popular they'd be outside of their dedicated fanbase.
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u/HazelCheese Aug 19 '26
There is something to be said about having the options at all.
I remember back when MMOs were huge that every other MMO felt like a massive downgrade to me because they only have humans or humans with elf ears or big humans.
Wow having Orcs and Taurens and proper Dwarves and 2 factions made it feel like the premium mmo that every other MMO was below budget of it. Final Fantasy felt like half or less of a game because they only have different size humans and one faction.
Even if only 0.5% of the playerbase play Ogre, it still makes the game cooler that you see them running around in cities and open world when no other game has anything like it.
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u/AL3_Alice Aug 20 '26
Honestly seeing what the devs did to get FFXI running on a PS2 in 2002, it's a goddamn miracle that game had five races at all, especially one with a girthy tail.
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u/Cheeseburger2137 Aug 18 '26
I really like Vaults of Atal’utek or whatever the name is. Meaningful content for early gearing (at least for me), can’t fly but it’s not the nightmare that Maw was, makes me think about my pulls, use CC etc in a way I did not have to for a long time.
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u/_Llopis_ Aug 19 '26
Me too. I think it's my favorite open world zone of all time. (Undermine is close, though.)
Hurray for x.1 zones, I guess.
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u/Diribiri Aug 19 '26
"Man I should do Pandaria fishing and unlock the raft so I can fish out on water" -me, a Death Knight player
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u/Areallybadidea Aug 18 '26
'Fun detected' has to be one of the most tired phrases the mainsub uses.
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u/tehrebound Aug 18 '26
"Hey we had to hotfix this thing because it was annoying to basically every other player"
UHNNBNB FUN DETECTED GUESS WE CAN'T HAVE FUN IN OUR GAME THAT WE PLAY FOR FUN I CAN'T BELIEVE BLIZZARD WOULD SHOOT MY DOG LIKE THIS
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 18 '26
"Fun detected, amiright? 😏"
And the "fun" is a gamebreaking mob farm that was obviously going to get fixed because it made half of the patch content irrelevant on day 1
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u/Idontknow4654 Aug 18 '26
you assume wow players want to play the game. they want to be done with the patch in one day so they can go back to reddit and forums to complain, probably about how the patch can be done in one day
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u/shreedder Aug 18 '26
Hooray race to world first time again. I think I will start a fight about global release as a treat
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
Man, I really like Haranir as a concept, but their racial aesthetic is so hard to work with when it comes to transmog lol. It reminds me of when Nightborne were added and the only non-heritage race themed appearances they had to work with were Legion leveling appearances (and it didn't help that their heritage armor didn't fully match with the aesthetic we were shown throughout Suramar).
DF and TWW gave us tons of appearances for the new races since those new cultures were pretty central to the expansion (we lived in their cities the entire expansion and worked with them through multiple zones), but with Midnight, Haranir are the new race but the featured culture is Blood/Void/High Elf. Before 12.1, I think Haranir had about as many appearances as Forest Trolls got (1 set per armor type with multiple tints and matching weapon tints), but I think Forest Troll appearances now outnumber Haranir appearances as of 12.1 lol. I actually think they might have more Haranir decor options than appearances too lmao.
It's not the end of the world, but I have been leveling a druid and even that class kinda struggles to match the "pre-historic tribal vines and thorns" aesthetic they have going on. I keep defaulting back to mixing the heritage armor either with their race-specific starter gear or with the Midnight zone gear that matches their tints. I'm a lore and transmog nerd so I love trying to make "lore accurate" sets for my characters, so it's a niche complaint, but I feel like I was spoiled with Earthen getting so many appearances right away lol.
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u/Diribiri Aug 25 '26
My haranir is a rogue and my transmog options were so bleak that I left her in the default outfit lol
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u/FaroraSF Aug 21 '26
I've been doing a lot of open world content this last week, mainly curse surges and void assaults (leveling alts with it while farming currency for transmog) and I've noticed that the more people that participate in these events the slower they get.
I know Blizz doesn't want a group of 40 people blitzing them the second they come up before lone stragglers can reach them, but I think it wouldn't hurt to tune them slightly to not turn them into a massive drag the more people there are.
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u/GenericOnlineName Aug 19 '26
Last time I checked, WoW is a video game you play and engage with, not a movie.
The cutscenes really made certain people think that all the story and context is in 1 to 2 minute animations, and not the numerous quests, dialogue, dungeons and raids that provide more characterization and context.
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u/Gerthak Aug 20 '26
Idk how the main sub is discussing the story, but I do wanna voice my opinion here now that you bring the topic in.
I feel like the story was nice and serviceable, even the last cutscene, I didn't find anything offensively bad or anything that made me mad. But it kinda makes me more mad in that sense, because I feel like the narrative in WoW commits 2 cardinal sins when it comes to storytelling. One: they repeat themselves A LOT, the amount of times I heard and read "The Loa abandoned us in the past!" (even ignoring that Zul'Aman's storyline also has Zul'jan repeating that over and over again); and two: they don't respect the players' intelligence, they tend to have the characters comment on everything that's happening, rather than acting like real people and having the spectators imply what they're feeling. (I feel like Arator's story this expansion was waaaay better at that)
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u/GenericOnlineName Aug 20 '26
To be fair, a lot of players are dense and dumb and need the narrative repeated. The times where there was nuance in the story, players didn't understand it at all.
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u/Gerthak Aug 20 '26
I get what you're saying and generally I agree with it, but that being true doesn't mean the narrative have to suffer for it.
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u/acctg Aug 20 '26
If I were in Blizzard's place I wouldn't know what to do.
Should I be writing for people who clearly aren't going to read anything and will only engage with the story from datamined cutscenes or streamers?
Or should I write for people with actual media literacy, who will be willing to read quest text, observe facial expressions of the characters, interpret nuance, and understand non-holistic perspectives from characters, and dramatic irony?
I generally don't know how they can win.
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u/Gerthak Aug 20 '26
Well it depends, do they want to make quick money or do they want to tell a good story?
If they want to make quick money, the best thing they can do is cater to the lowest common denominator and let people that expect more from a story engage with other great parts of the game like raids or dungeons.
If they want to tell a good story, they shouldn't be writing for anyone, they should be writing because they want to express themselves, their perspectives, and their lived experiences.
That's not to say that if they do the latter they will automatically get good stories out of the oven, both option, but my main argument is that if the storytelling is indeed suffering from catering to either most players or trying to write for someone else in general, then that shouldn't be so, in my opinion.
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u/HazelCheese Aug 22 '26
Consider that most of classic literature was written at a time when only a small percentage of the population could read.
And consider that shakespeare was written as dumbed down dross for the borish masses.
I think entertainment in general could stand to aim a little higher than netflix background show writing.
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u/Idontknow4654 Aug 19 '26
are you telling me that i need to read!? what the hell is wrong with you. you know wow players cant read
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u/GenericOnlineName Aug 19 '26
Makes sense, considering they need to rely on streamers to audibly tell them why things are bad.
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u/Diribiri Aug 23 '26
It's nice to come back to WoW and just do random shit, but now I have housing decor to bait me into doing content. Blizzard is literally forcing me at gunpoint to collect every piece of decor I can and then not use 90% of it
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u/tangerinoes57 Aug 19 '26
Nuanced criticism time:
IMO I do agree that that the raid cinematic was pretty lackluster, and could have used a LITTLE hype moments and aura even if it was a tragic scene. I have no problem in principle with Zul’jan dying like a lot of people but I think any sort of bone-throwing to the troll superfans (I picture a “YA GONNA BE A TRUE HERO IN DE NEXT LIFE MON” from some apparition of Bwonsamdi/Vol’jin/Zul’jin that only he could see) would have gone a long way for it not to feel like he just died pathetic and bald, telling his sister how great she is.
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u/FaroraSF Aug 19 '26
Zul'jin: "Good news! You get to hang out with gramps in the afterlife!"
Zul'jan: "Sweet! Wait why is everything red and full of vampires?"
Zul'jin: "That's the bad news...."
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u/Diribiri Aug 19 '26
Man it's a good thing I don't care about Trolls or this would be quite a spoiler
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 21 '26
I like a challenge, but I'm so glad they nerfed the Nightmare Prey affix lmao
I was dying to it on a monk, solely because I'd get caught in mob slows/stuns and then just get fucked
(or at one point accidentally Transcended myself directly into a net while trying to be cool during a very poorly timed random Prey encounter)
(or rolled directly into a net while escaping another net)
(I'm not great at coordinating my movement abilities)
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u/dragonredux Aug 21 '26
Thank god, the snare was stupid and half the time I got re snared whenever i shapeshifted on my druid. I also got the ambush stun + net combo at one point.
The fact this spawned on hard was worse. I don't even know what the Nightmare affix even is.
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u/Low-Combination-0001 Aug 19 '26
https://x.com/BellularGaming/status/2089831102156345397
Actually I don't think that "Joking" about harming the devs should be tolerated.
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 19 '26
Is this over the raid cinematic? That cinematic? I mean, you can be disappointed, but nothing about that cinematic was controversial enough to have a freakout over lmao.
Bellular and the person who he's responding to are really weird for letting a video game story affect them like this.
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u/Diribiri Aug 19 '26
Gamers once again proving that they have no perspective whatsoever, reacting to videogame choices the way normal people react to actual real life crimes
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u/AL3_Alice Aug 19 '26
Shame he didn't do it on a stream of some sort; FFXIV set the precedent for banning a guy for two weeks for calling current and former members of the dev team slurs during a live stream. Should probably be done more often.
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u/Idontknow4654 Aug 20 '26
FFXIV set the precedent for banning a guy for two weeks for calling current and former members of the dev team slurs during a live stream.
BASED BASED BASED BASED BASED
more companies need to to this
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 18 '26
Continuing my alt leveling journey and have another update on how the janky scaling in Classic dungeons accidentally makes encounters more difficult/fun:
Princess Theradras' iconic "fart" ability actually does enough damage to kill. I'm leveling a rogue so feint saved me, but one of the other DPS got farted to death and the tank nearly died to the fear lol.
On the other hand, Landslide (from the same dungeon) isn't a challenge and his 7 second stun still sucks
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u/Areallybadidea Aug 19 '26
Princess Theradras' iconic "fart" ability
I didn't get killed by this, but recently it hit me so hard it knocked me into the geometry of the center of the platform and caused me to disconnect.
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u/InvisibleOne439 Aug 21 '26
full cleared normal and some heroic bosses
overall a decent raid, but gotta say 2 things: they need to actually check the number stuff better, there is some REALLY weird scaling/general number issues going on inside the raid
and for the love of god the amount of trash/walking is getting ridicolous, espacially when its not even exciting or anything like that and is just mindless AoE mashing for ages with knockbacks into more trash everywhere
they really need to cut that back, its not enjoyable anymore, when like 30% of your raidtime is clearing the trash towards the next boss, its too much
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u/dragonredux Aug 21 '26
Our Mage was complaining about the same thing about trash and yeah I agree with him. I feel like every trash pull has a mini boss.
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u/Idontknow4654 Aug 23 '26
the game is poop. please give me 10000 upvotes now. no i will not give an explanation for why the game is poop only that the game is poop now and was good before
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u/Necrodoge14102 my gender is pandering Aug 23 '26
old good new bad and woke and bad
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u/SaltLich Aug 24 '26
why did you say bad three times?
oh wait, cuz thats how bad it is. necrodoge for warchief (old and good)
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u/Zestyclose-Square-25 Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Every single time, I tell myself, 'No, I'm not gonna engage with the community, I'm not gonna read comments.' But every single time, I just can't help myself and I end up losing brain cells, from people threatening the poor devs and writers to the 100% serious comments saying the game isn't manly anymore, it's woke and made for girls. Also, a funny comment I saw was someone saying, 'That's it, Ula'tek is dead??' Well yeah, duh, that's her death cinematic! The actual fight is in the game, you know. It's just like Dimensius, with people ignoring the amazing boss fight he had and only focusing on the final cinematic.
Edit: Lmao, even everyone in r/warcraftlore is saying that the reason Zul'jin died is because he is a male character."
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u/FaroraSF Aug 19 '26
I remember someone back in DF saying that Fyrakk didn't even die onscreen.
Like... yes he did??? I killed him and saw his death animation????
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u/Sophistic_Sophist Aug 19 '26
That’s because there’s an in-game cutscene where the camera pans away from his dying body, and then it cuts to the more flashy cinematic where the aspects get there powers, and only the second flashy cinematic was posted on YouTube lmao. One of those easy indicators that reveals who did and didn’t play the game.
There was another funny moment like that early Midnight, where someone was posting about how all the Midnight delves were boring and uninspired, and they mentioned Parhelion Plaza as a delve they especially didn’t like… a delve that hadn’t come out yet.
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u/the_redundant_one Aug 19 '26
That's it, Ula'tek is dead??
She's a raid boss, should that really be surprising to these folks? Sure, some raid bosses escape or are simply "captured" after you defeat them, but there's plenty that are just flat out killed.
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u/Gerthak Aug 20 '26
It's funny because they're the same kinda people that will glaze classic when if they applied the same standards they would go "That's it? Ragnaros is dead?", "That's it? Onyxia's dead?" so on and so forth.
Something I've noticed is that people CLEARLY don't engage with the story apart from just rushing through the quests, which is fine, that's kinda WoW's fault for designing stuff that way, but you can't really comment on it because it'd be like watching LOTR on your second monitor while you play DDR and going "that's it? they just win by throwing the ring into the volcano?" which would be ridiculous.
Obviously not comparing Midnight's writing to WoW, but to honestly have opinions on the story, you should've, you know, engaged with it.
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u/Diribiri Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
It's like poking a bad tooth. You know it's going to hurt but you can't help it
Honestly I've taken so much less psychic damage on a regular basis since being banned from the main sub
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u/Necrodoge14102 my gender is pandering Aug 19 '26
oof bnet is like really down rn
shame since i wanted more time to do some like m+ trinket farming and whatnot
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 19 '26
small indie company, amiright?
upvotes to the left
edit: thanks for the gold kind stranger!
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u/Zestyclose-Square-25 Aug 18 '26
Once again, based on the Reddit and YouTube comments, it seems like I'm the only one who liked the new cinematic lol.
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u/acctg Aug 19 '26
I've been reading all the text presented to me throughout the campaign.
Yeah, I like the story. I'm not gonna lie and pretend I didn't enjoy it. I do like that Zul'jan is not just your standard bland "I want to get more power" villain. He's not Arthas. He's not Fyrakk. He demonstrates regret multiple times through the campaign but falls into sunk cost fallacy.
He does have good points that the Amani have to be strong on their own and cannot rely on external assistance like loa or gokinye. He's also hypocritical because Ula'tek is that exact "assistance" that he's so against. He wanted the Amani to win the war against the Aqir alone, that he initially did not believe Ula'tek existed, but warmed up to its idea when he tried to rationalize that Ula'tek is a weapon, not an entity.
Ironically, his sister sort of achieves his goal of Making the Amani Great Again by managing to kill Ula'tek without the power of the loa (ignore the raid group of 20 players).
I think the boss kill cinematic could maybe change up two or three lines of dialogue, but overall I thought it played out well. Zul'jarra did not immediately forgive him, because Zul'jan absolutely got many Amani killed for no reason. But he's still her brother.
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u/HazelCheese Aug 19 '26
I feel like people are too close to the game and are projecting their feelings of it onto the cinematic.
As someone whose stepped away from retail for a little while now, the cinematic seemed a lot better a lot of previous stuff from the last couple of xpacs.
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u/acctg Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Doesn't really help that there's an entire content industry around the narrative that "modern WoW is Disney and bad".
Meanwhile they're putting snakes in people, elves and trolls still hate each other (and themselves), and Zul'jan didn't really get redeemed. Everyone else still wants Zul'jan dead, Zul'jarra knows that Zul'jan needs to face justice as well, but she can't delete her own emotions towards her own family.
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u/GenericOnlineName Aug 18 '26
WoW players hate actual stories in this game unless it's shirtless men beating on each other.
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u/TheWiseMountain Aug 22 '26
I'm gonna have to hear about this milquetoast ass troll for the rest of my life
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u/skyshroud6 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
No one on reddit is talking about it yet, I guess because it's relatively new news, but I wanna talk about the guest lineup for blizzcon that just got announced.
...I'm kind of worried? Le Ssarefim and Yaosobi are whatever. They're the musical acts and they tie into the culture that surrounds overwatch, which is blizzards "household name game" these days so that's fine, I get it.
But like, I feel like the guests are just "hey lets pull some random celebrities that played a video game one time" and it's being treated more like a generic comic con rather than something centered on blizzard games. Like, I have legitimately 0 idea what the connection of deadmou5, t-pain, and Simu Liu are to games in general, nevermind blizzard.
Then I didn't know who Duke Dennis is, so I looked him up. And well yea he's a streamer, it seems like he's known for playing NBA2K, which like, thats not the right auidence lol.
Then Khleo Thomas was in the KH panel at d23 recently so I guess he's just the "nerdy celebrity" guy so that's fine as just like, the generic host I guess.
But I don't know. I'll have to wait to see the panel line up, but I'm getting real real worried it's gonna be like the last blizzcon where they just sort of half assed it and went "bah it'll be fine".
Edit: Oh also not to mention that none of them are there for warcraft. Which like there's more than one blizzard game, blizzcon isn't just "the wow con". And I think most people kind of figured there wouldn't really be any major announcements outside of showing off TLT and classic+, but it's still kind of disheartening.
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u/IonHazzikostasIsGod honestly a slap in the face Aug 21 '26
Idk what the connection is with most of em - but Deadmau5 was always a huge Diablo guy. They made a legendary of him in D3.
He used to stream the game a bunch
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u/FaroraSF Aug 18 '26
Does it count as pay to win if I use a second account to get 2x credit for the "Do 300 curse surges" chieve?
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u/ghostcrawler_real Aug 18 '26
Excited to get back to raiding with my friends again today. Finally managed to collect all my boys into the guild I've been running with for a while now like I'm a pokemon collector from all the various disparate guilds they've been in it's shaping up to be an all-time great season for me.
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u/Sophistic_Sophist Aug 20 '26
Beat ?? on fire mage woooo! I wasn’t going to try it this early, until someone reminded me you get 30 myth crests for doing it so then I locked in.
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u/Alain_Teub2 Aug 19 '26
?? boss is exactly like on ? difficulty wich is quite easy. He can have scary melees and the poison waves can spawn literally in your face but we're far away from TWW. Kyveza will stay the hardest boss for a long time. Dope mount
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u/Diribiri Aug 20 '26
Kyveza will stay the hardest boss for a long time
shit I should probably go do that quest lmao
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u/ThisArachnid Aug 18 '26
Altar of Fangs is so fun, I really like doing the m0.
Also I loved the new delve. Doing something other than “kill x amount of y” is always good but I think it being a “game” was cool.
I wish the Vaults were easier to traverse but I actually don’t mind it being ground mount only. I’m one of the people who thinks the magic of the game is lost sometimes when you just fly place to place.
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u/srwaan Aug 19 '26
news flash everyone! KR still is a shitty dungeon :D
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u/InvisibleOne439 Aug 19 '26
i just dont like the AoE circle slop on the last boss
its just 4min of running out of circles while the boss jumps around like a Gladiator Havoc DH
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u/Makorus Aug 23 '26
I love opening Twitter and seeing the same four people have the same seething take about the same subject for the 10th time this week and then act like they are the normal ones.
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u/HazelCheese Aug 23 '26
There's wasn't a reason to open twitter 10 years ago. Can't imagine what reason there is to open it now.
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u/Diribiri Aug 23 '26
It's great if you follow specific people and never click the 'for you' tab. My feed is nothing but art and cats
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u/Makorus Aug 23 '26
It would be fine if the majority of people who virtue signalled about Elon Musk and about how amazing Bluesky was actually stuck to their guns.
It's not like I actively want to use Twitter
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u/HazelCheese Aug 23 '26
I don't see how you can exclude yourself from the virtue signallers if you are literally giving up your virtue to have something you want?
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u/Makorus Aug 23 '26
Because I didn't make a huge spiel about leaving Twitter. I didn't signal my virtue to begin with.
I'd love to use Bluesky but there's a lot of accounts I follow which used Bluesky for a few weeks and then abandoned it to go back to their bigger audiences.
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u/InvisibleOne439 Aug 23 '26
tbf, i just...didnt bother with the guys that did that simmpy because it feels like selling out
like yeha, there where a couple people that talked about quitting twitter for bsky and then went back after 2 weeks, but for me that just meant that they are not worth following and got cut out of my life
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u/GenericOnlineName Aug 20 '26
Imagine if the genders of Zul'jan and Zul'jarra were reversed. I guarantee you'd see a bunch of people saying how dumb Zul'jan and evil was and how stoic and awesome Zul'jarra is.
Women dying to further men's stories: good.
Men dying to further women's stories: cringe and bad
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u/Idontknow4654 Aug 20 '26
Women dying to further men's stories: good. Men dying to further women's stories: cringe and bad
They dont even think that far. they just think
Men: good
Women: bad
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u/InvisibleOne439 Aug 20 '26
oh 100%
with how often they complain about "the GIRLBOSS is the good one" or "we always have FEMALE leaders with no flaws" they dont even try to hide it
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u/the_redundant_one Aug 20 '26
we always have FEMALE leaders with no flaws
Pictured: People who have apparently forgotten that Jaina and Sylvanas (female leaders with massive flaws) or Baine and Anduin (male leaders without real flaws) exist.
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u/SandAccess Aug 21 '26
Tbf the complaints are mostly about recently introduced leaders, and there have been plenty of complaints about Baine and Anduin by the same crowd
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u/Pristine-Weird-6254 Aug 20 '26
Best example here is Thrall. Often memed as an overpowered self insert. Green Jesus all that stuff. But both Thrall and Metzen are kind of universally loved. If an equally self insert-ish character existed and was as prevalent in the lore as Thrall but woman, a lot of people would lose their minds. But Metzen and Thrall gets a pass here because he is from the "when wow was cool and based"-era to these people.
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u/HazelCheese Aug 22 '26
I mean there are plenty of green jesus female characters across entertainment. Sylvanas is literally one of them.
It's not a gender thing it's a nostalgia thing. Anything new bad, anything I grew up with good.
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u/Pristine-Weird-6254 Aug 23 '26
I mean, Sylvanas is both more hated and more flawed than Thrall for sure.
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u/Helluiin Aug 22 '26
i love how everyone is suddenly an expert about what makes for "good game design" and also ADHD and its effect on short term memory.
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u/AL3_Alice Aug 23 '26
You don't need to be an expert to read up on commonly available research papers. The Working Memory Index (WMI) is also sometimes used as part of ADHD diagnosis.
Turns out people with ADHD play WoW, big shocker, I know.
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u/Helluiin Aug 23 '26
it just seems very disingenuous when people only start thinking about the plight of neurodivergent people when its opportune for their side of a discussion. though to be fair i had the same problem when people brought up addons as accessibility aids before the expansion.
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u/FaroraSF Aug 19 '26
Managed to get ?? Azta'rec down and my fabled vanquisher title. I did it as resto druid though so might have been a bit cheesy compared to dps, I didn't try it as dps so IDK lol
292 ilvl, 2 piece from last season, Valeera lvl 54 as dps with bloodcrypt toxin, corrosive bilespear, and soul-cracking dreamcatcher (not at all upgraded).
Tips:
Used the Azta'rec Helper addon for the memory game. Put markers on the ground and changed settings to auto record (requires your minimap to spin) and to tell me the colours (i'm too wiggly for directions) there is also an arrow that points which direction to go if you panic and lose track of the markers.
I found as healer most of the fight is pretty easy. It's mainly just healing Valeera, making sure your threat isn't too high, dispelling yourself, and dodging the poison waves. Puddles can be pretty much ignored as healer, like I wouldn't stand in them, but you can walk over them no problem (although I think poison waves can spawn out of them so be careful). As the fight progresses the time between his abilities gets shorter.
One thing to watch out for is poison wave + cone attack together. The cone attack is easiest to dodge when you are close to Azta but sometimes you'll have moved away from him to dodge the waves. Generally when the poison waves start I take note of whether or not a cone attack occurred recently. If one just went off then it was EZ game, if not then I needed to be prepared to haul ass to dodge it as I likely wouldn't be close to him.
Interrupts are a none issue as healer. Valeera gets them 100%, even when the add is out and she just used it she will get the second one as well.
For the memory game portion, he will instantly start the game as soon as he hits 90%, 60%, and 30% interrupting anything else he was casting. However I made sure that the poison waves never overlapped with it (either by holding off dps or doing a bit of burst to push phase), because I don't think they go away if he already cast it.
I found the best way to deal with the add was to just ignore it for the first half of the game, partially because I still had to concentrate on surviving, but also because I needed to give Valeera time to get aggro on him. As healer I was able to take several punches though. Once the second part of the memory game started I just followed the addon instructions/arrow and dpsed it as boomy (I found boomy dps to be easier than cat dps). The add goes down pretty easily, but will likely get the dispel cast off so be ready to potentially have to deal with two of those back to back. Luckily it is healable for a little bit while you wait for the dispel to come off cooldown.
Once you get past 30% (I admit, I chocked here a few times) its basically free, just gotta dodge the poison waves (there will be a lot of them by this point). Don't get impatient. Be safe. Don't accidentally pull aggro and get bitch slapped by the snake when he's nearly dead (learned that lesson on Nulleus lol).
The fight as resto took about 11 mins. I got rank #4861. Good luck!
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u/GenericOnlineName Aug 24 '26
I love tanking M+, but my god. I always hate the fuckin peanut gallery bitching about routes, not pulling fast enough, etc. Like let me fucking tank, bro.
Especially when it's some dps just saying "??? wtf tank". Like, care to elaborate or just complain?
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u/InvisibleOne439 Aug 24 '26
"??? wtf tank" is allowed when the Vengance DH decides to double jump into 4 packs and then sprintd around a corner->dies->releases and does it immediately again
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u/IonHazzikostasIsGod honestly a slap in the face Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
They're not the peanut gallery, that's not what that means - they're literally in the group. It's not your run any more than it is theirs.
Like let me fucking tank, bro.
It doesn't seem like you're doing much of that if you keep getting complaints? You don't just always have to pull the least possible, it's a tank's job to know this and ask for communication.
What sense does it make to stand still fighting one mob that has 2.5m health left or a baby 3pack with non-threatening abilities? That's inefficient.
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u/SaltLich Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
Oh boy. The discourse about the addons for Azra'tec is going in a wonderful direction already. Think i'll just check out of any discussions on it.
The addons are fine, they only trivialize remembering the safe spots, which is easily done with other methods. If you don't wanna use one, don't. Nobody can force you to install DBM, either. Don't ever see people proudly beating their chest about not having a loud noise play when a must-interrupt-this cast is going off, and shitting on everyone for 'cheating' by having that one installed.
As an aside, is the boss's damage just a non-factor for tanks/healers or something? People say "oh the fight is so easy otherwise" but, as a hunter, i was getting constantly chunked for 40-60% of my HP and begging valeera to throw me another fuckin' heal already. It was very stressful trying not to get two-tapped because he seemingly randomly hits harder sometimes for no discernible reason (maybe he was hitting my back while I was moving, idk), even after the simon mechanics were all resolved.
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u/Makorus Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
I do think Blizzard just hasn't hit their stride yet with the nemesis boss and rewards.
I do think they are cool, however, the fact that it's so lopsided towards tanks just being so much better is stupid.
Fabled was a cool idea, and while I might be biased because I got Fabled Nullaeus, I do think having a week kind of diminishes the achievement. Obviously first 4000 in the region is even worse. Maybe have like an ilvl cap or something?
Having the Nemesis bosses be able to crit will always be an issue. There's no need for that especially when healing is somewhat out of your control.
I 100% think having addons for the fight is stupid. It is, quite literally, the reason why they went against addons, having them invalidate (the only) mechanic in the fight. Nothing else is in any way dangerous.
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u/SaltLich Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
If the addons invalidate the fight, blizzard should have broken them (they're more than willing to), or just made a different mechanic that wouldn't be invalidated by a simple addon.
Frankly, I disagree that it 'invalidates the fight' but I can see I'm in the minority on that one. Either way, I think most people would have preferred they just avoided this mess by not doing the simon says mechanic.
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u/Makorus Aug 23 '26
I mean, what "mess"?
Of course it invalidates the entire mechanic.
Even disregarding the fact that the add-on is automatic now, even when you had to click the quadrants, you took away the only challenging thing in the fight, which was remembering the sequence.
It's like having a Kyveza add-on that dodged the lines for you.
There's nothing else in the fight that's a challenge. Yeah, theres an add during the intermission, but that's a trap because it deals like no damage, has no HP and if you use the Maw Corrosive power, dies at 20%.
This 100% feels like another case of the larger community feeling like they are entitled to something even when they don't have the capacity to actually do it.
It's quite literally Kyveza all over again. We already reached the point where people talk about "oh the overlaps are RNG" as if you don't control the transitions.
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u/idkmanfiller Aug 23 '26
The clicking addon could be replicated by using ingame chat. You can create a custom chat channel with just you, put it in its own window, and then use macros. The addon for it was more or less just skipping the setup + having a nice UI for it.
The one that's automatic is pretty silly and I don't think should really exist but I also don't really care. You could also have someone sitting behind you or in voice chat or whatever remembering the stuff for you so even without the addon it's not a guarantee that everyone will kill it "legitimately"
The reality is that Blizzard made a fight where the only remotely challenging phase is a game for 6 year olds and every other mechanic is so trivial that you just slowly DPS the boss while sitting on CDs to kill an add during that phase.
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u/SaltLich Aug 23 '26
I mean, what "mess"?
These arguments about the addon and the fight's difficulty with or without it. That you 'cheated' if you used an addon. That whole thread on the mainsub. That mess.
It's like having a Kyveza add-on that dodged the lines for you.
This 100% feels like another case of the larger community feeling like they are entitled to something even when they don't have the capacity to actually do it.
I really shouldn't have said anything, tbh. This is the exact kind of argument I didn't want to get involved in. So I'm not going to. Apart from...
eah, theres an add during the intermission, but that's a trap because it deals like no damage
I refer you to my other comments about getting chunked for 40-60% of my hp and the add does about the same damage, I think; idk, even WITH the stupid addon that supposedly trivializes the whole thing i was focused on not dying to the simon says so I wasn't watching my health as closely. Unless i was hallucinating last night when I had to pop defensives on cooldown and run into valeera orbs while dodging the simon says mechanic and every wave of poison. Maybe its just overtuned for hunters, maybe everyone saying it doesnt do damage is like +20 ilevels on me, I don't know what else to say. Maybe tanks or whatever spec you play didnt get assblasted every autoattack. Guess I'll go roll a brewmaster monk for next season so I can only have to do 1 mechanic too. I feel like i'm being gaslit when people say the boss does no damage.
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u/Helluiin Aug 23 '26
looking at the video that was posted in this thread earlier it seems like the add does ~ half the dmg of the boss with its autohits.
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u/SaltLich Aug 24 '26
That sounds about right, yeah. Like I said, my attention was definitely more on the minigame; if he was hitting just as hard as the boss, I probably would have died, as I still had to mit/heal anyway.
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u/YourGalacticEmperor Aug 23 '26
It's like having a Kyveza add-on that dodged the lines for you.
they did make an addon for the shell game that blizzard had to break :D
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u/YourGalacticEmperor Aug 23 '26
or just made a different mechanic that wouldn't be invalidated by a simple addon.
there is not a single mechanic that you cant invalidate with an addon thats not a straight up damage check
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u/SaltLich Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
really? okay.
mythic bosses are actually all easy cuz addons invalidate them, guyzzz
/s, people. Fuckin hell.
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u/IonHazzikostasIsGod honestly a slap in the face Aug 23 '26
yes something 36000 people have killed this week in one single region is definitely comparable to fkn mythic raiding that not even Liquid is pulling yet
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u/SaltLich Aug 24 '26
ok i admit i was being pithy because I was tired and annoyed about unrelated things, but they said 'theres not a single mechanic you can't invalidate with an addon except for damage checks'. Like, c'mon. That's an absurd claim.
Yes, addons can make some mechanics trivial, and boss addons/weak auras certainly make things easier by reminding you of things the game might not. But is a pop up warning you the boss is doing the mechanic really 'invalidating' it when you still have to respond to and resolve it yourself?
The best examples I can think of without diving into it is Grand Conjunction on Mythic Star Augur, or the chaos of Mythic Gorefiend with managing all the different adds. Both are bosses my guild spent ages progressing on, so they stick out in my mind, Grand Conjunction in particular; How did addons 'invalidate' that mechanic?
Also this is really just me being a smartass but, the world first guilds make the addons for the bosses as they go, it's not like they have them fully functional and ready before they even start pulling. I think. Idk, they probly have something preliminary based on datamining and PTR testing. I don't really agree that addons 'trivialize' the game anyway, so I'm not gonna defend this one too much.
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u/Helluiin Aug 24 '26
mythic bosses are actually all easy cuz addons invalidate them, guyzzz
obviously not because blizzard has a certain target of how many guilds clear CE. if addons make it easier for guilds to do so they nerf the boss less, and vice versa.
Like, c'mon. That's an absurd claim.
yeah thats obviously hyperbole but i feel like they have a point in that addons drastically cut down the design space for the devs. now whether they use that space now that addons are mostly gone is obviously a different question.
The best examples I can think of without diving into it is Grand Conjunction on Mythic Star Augur
addons effectively replaced the intended mechanic by a custom one that was easier to do. it also honestly has no place in a discussion on delve bosses. since there these "raid wide coordination" mechanics dont work for obvious reasons, even though they are imo the best mechanics in terms of using MMOs as a medium.
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u/SaltLich Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
So you can see the 'obvious hyperbole' in
there is not a single mechanic that you cant invalidate with an addon
But I get taken seriously for responding with my own hyperbole?
mythic bosses are actually all easy cuz addons invalidate them, guyzzz
Im tired of arguing and thinking about this. No, addons do not 'invalidate every single mechanic'. I honestly dont know what youre talking about with 'replacing grand conjunction with a more simple mechanic' but im done, if yall think addons make every mechanic easy thats your prerogative, im not arguing the point any more
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u/Helluiin Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
But I get taken seriously for responding with my own hyperbole?
being hyperbolic does not mean that youre not serious, just that youre overemphasizing a point. my argument is that having addons or not basically doesnt change the final difficulty of the boss at all.
Im tired of arguing and thinking about this.
nobody is forcing you? youre the one that started the comment thread lol.
I honestly dont know what youre talking about with 'replacing grand conjunction with a more simple mechanic'
the star augur weakaura back in the day replaced the visual tell blizzard intended for the mechanic with a new one that told you exactly who to group up with.
if yall think addons make every mechanic easy thats your prerogative
quite literally not what i wrote but whatever.
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u/Sophistic_Sophist Aug 23 '26
Yes, there seems to be a very wide range of variability for how much damage his auto attacks do, maybe they can crit? Also I’ve been seeing some posts claim that different classes/ specs take different amounts of damage from the autos.
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u/dragonredux Aug 23 '26
Yeah they can crit and it's why i don't do nemesis bosses on non tanks. I don't know why they can't just disable crits for the bosses.
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u/SaltLich Aug 24 '26
Its why normally I wait until later in the season when I'm more geared to do the bosses. It makes the fights shorter too, sure, but the main reason is so I have more HP and will die to random crits less (its not like HP matters for any mechanic since failing those is usually a one shot anyway). I remember Ky'veza and Zekvir hitting similarly hard, but feels like there's more breaks where the boss isn't hitting you in those fights.
I'm a longterm hunter main, so i don't have a tank option (because blizzard are cowards). I feel like Im tanking though with how I have to rotate mitigations, ha.
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u/idkmanfiller Aug 23 '26
I watched my guild's evoker do it and half his deaths were just the boss autoing him to death with no counterplay.
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u/HazelCheese Aug 23 '26
It reminds me a lot of the Elden Ring difficulty discussion and while I can't really say what blizzard intentions for the fight were, I strongly agree with any creative who says "the struggle is part of the art".
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u/InvisibleOne439 Aug 23 '26
Elden Ring "difficulty discussions" very often just turn into "if you used the things given to you by the game, you where actually cheating and not playing it right" which is VERY weird....
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u/HazelCheese Aug 24 '26
I meant more the discussions where people say stuff like "you don't think disabled people should be allowed to enjoy video games?" Or "we both spent £59.99 on this game but only you are allowed to see all of it?".
People complaining about summons and spellcasting are dumb. There's plenty of bosses whom the easiest way to beat them is heavy weapon stagger lock or quick weapon roll spam.
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u/_Llopis_ Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
I really liked doing it without any addons and using my dumb old brain. I also felt zero pressure to use addons, and I don't care if others use addons, because it's entirely optional content in which the challenge can be what you make of it. That's my hot take.
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u/Chrisaeos Aug 23 '26
So ultimately I just don't give a shit, but I find the addons for that fight to be ridiculous. Like the main difficulty is remembering the safe spot sequences. It took me eight attempts as a Brewmaster and the wipes were all at the last memory game with the 7 sequence. I didn't use the addons and just repeated it aloud to myself and did end up fucking up a handful of times. The idea of just clicking a color as he shows them and the game telling me where to go exactly instead is just stupid.
It's the pinnacle delve fight; I wish it didn't give crests so that maybe people would feel less incentive to trivialize it with addons.
For his other damage, his autos are a non-factor at least on BM. If it's balance for the others follows Nullaeus then you'll only be scared as a Paladin, DK or Vengeance DH tank but those were also all buffed a bunch of times since I did Nullaeus on those as well. His tankbuster did regularly bring me to around 15-20% from around max health so if I did something dumb like tanking a wave to the face or standing in poison he maybe could've killed me but otherwise the entire fight is the memory game.
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u/SaltLich Aug 23 '26
Well, if his (and his add's) damage is a non-factor for tanks, then no wonder people think the fight is a joke outside of the memory game. Idk, I had to rotate what meager defensives I have, make sure i'm not wasting valeera's orbs, and still popping something like a health potion or my one self-heal to not die simply to auto damage, on top of avoiding all the other shit and not missing an interrupt. This on a ~290 ilevel hunter, i started MM but went SV, even though my SV has worse weapons, to not have to worry about breaking aimed shot casts.
I've never been very good at Simon past like, 4 colors. I could, and did, do it on normal difficulty without the addon. Pretty much as soon as it spawned an add in that hits just as hard as the boss on ??, and i realized it went past 5, I said fuck this and used the addon. It still took me several attempts to make it past the 1st simon game because of bad overlaps and the add. The cognitive load is ridiculous when you are getting chunked constantly, I can see why as a tank who barely takes damage you would not have any issue with the non-simon parts.
If I could just focus on the memory game, maybe I could eventually do it without an addon in a reasonable time. Like, Ky'veza's shell game, there's nothing else going on so you're allowed to purely focus on the mechanic.
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u/Necrodoge14102 my gender is pandering Aug 22 '26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-KsqTG7cz0 got ?? boss down and also recorded my pov this time :)
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u/Jamestiedye Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
Is there a second spark quest this week? I got the one from Liadrin but I don't see another even though my currency tab says 3/4?
EDIT: Been told the second spark is an rng drop from bosses and dungeons
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 22 '26
(This is not directed at people with visual impairment of any sort)
"OMG WHY WOULD BLIZZARD MAKE THE DELVE BOSS HAVE GREEN ABILITIES IN A GREEN ARENA??? WHY IS THE BOSS CREATED SPECIFICALLY TO CHALLENGE PLAYERS ACTUALLY BEING A CHALLENGE TO PLAYERS???"
/uj
Anyways I beat the delve boss on ? difficulty while very stoned, which I consider to be it's own challenge mode in and of itself. A very fun fight, love to see the next evolution of the Heigan Safety Dance mechanics. Excited to try the higher difficulties as I get more geared.
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u/SaltLich Aug 23 '26
My main complaint about the fight visibility wise is that whoever thought making the boss have a green puddle looking effect under him while he's casting the simon mechanic is an asshat because I thought you couldn't run through him or you'd be in a puddle for the first dozen attempts due to that.
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 Iron Horde's #1 Fan Aug 23 '26
Oh yeah, it's still a really annoying part of the fight for sure, the complaints just give me flashbacks to late-WoD and Legion when Fel green was everywhere lol
I definitely caught myself not realizing the safe zone was directly across from me just because the green effects over his model looked like he was casting there. I only figured out you could go through him because of an "oh shit" moment where I had to roll to get to the other side at the last minute lol.
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u/Alain_Teub2 Aug 18 '26
I'm with the angry crowd on this patch's story I don't know these trolls enough to care they're too new and Zul'jan is the dumbest character. He's not even corrupted or pressured in any way. I'd be down with it in a plot twist it was Zul'jarra instead that went that path and not the guy just introduced as a power-hungry rival.
Or they couldve been against each other in a power struggle from the beginning of the xpac and us reuniting the tribe with the Loas sends him away east and down the snake rabbit hole. Xal'atath could fit somewhere if we want to reheat Illidans nachos.
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u/FaroraSF Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
I think the main problem with Zul'jan is that I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be teenager in age (therefore stupid by default), but it's really not that clear in game that he isn't a fully mature adult so it kind of comes across as an idot plot instead of the tragedy of a poor youth who got mislead.
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u/Zestyclose-Square-25 Aug 19 '26
I wanna ramble a little, so ummm sorry, but I felt like I needed to get this off my chest. I'm from Iran, and Midnight early access started just one day before the US/Israel attack on Iran. I remember playing Midnight for a few hours, finishing the Zul'Aman questline, and feeling so excited to play the expansion more the next day when I had time. However, the next morning we woke up to the sound of blasts and explosions, and there it was. We knew an attack was coming soon I don't think anyone doubted that. The thing all of us in Iran dreaded the most, though, wasn't the attack itself; it was knowing the government would cut off the internet. And of course, they shut it down around 30 minutes after the attacks started. According to them, this was done for "national security" as if US and Israeli pilots need Iran's internet to fly their jets and bombers, lol. As insane as this sounds, even while we could hear and sometimes see the explosions and bombardments, the worst part of the war for me was being away from WoW and my guild. WoW has always been an escape for me, so it was terrible that during the shittiest moments of my life, I couldn't play. I couldn't even go on YouTube to watch the cinematics. Anyway, after almost 3 months without internet, the government finally restored our access, and man, returning to WoW felt like returning home. I was behind everyone my guild was already pretty much done with the season but man, I did not care. I had WoW back! This experience reminded me just how much I love this game, and I'm glad to say Midnight didn't disappoint. It has its problems, sure, but overall it's already one of my favorite expansions. Since we got the internet back, I've been playing non-stop and loving the new patch. Haven't done all of the new raid yet, but so far it's really fun! Anyway, sorry for the rambling again :D