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Star Stable is a horse riding MMO. In it, you play as a girl on a quest to help a small town and its people. You get your very own horse which you can ride to help out townspeople with their troubles. Other than helping out people, you can also compete in horse races either against yourself or against other players. Also, you need to tend and care for your horse. As you play through the quests you earn xp and gold. Earning xp levels you up and gold can be used to buy items from shops.

Controls

The controls in Star Stable take some getting used to. The game play like a typical MMO in the way you pick up quests and complete them. But for controls its a different story. While in most MMO’s adjusting your camera will also face your character towards that angle in Star Stable it doesn’t. Instead, in order to turn you need to press A or D for left and right respectively. Unmounted controls are pretty decent and work relatively ok. Running is on toggle instead of holding by default which is a weird choice but not too bad.

Horse controls are a bit weird, if you hold W you will simply walk slowly, in order to speed up you need to tap w a few times and then you can let it go completely and your horse keeps running. If you don’t tap w every now and then your horse will slow down so if you want to go at max speed you need to tap W a few times and then tap it every so often to keep up the speed. These controls are not your typical MMO controls and they certainly take some getting used to, but once you do they seem to work well for the game.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Star Stable is similar to other MMO’s except there is no combat. Instead of combat you participate in horse races. All the races I’ve seen so far take place in the same zone and although you are instanced, the scenery doesn’t change. The races are checkpoint time based, you have to run through all the checkpoints in time to complete the race.

In addition to races, the game also features fetch quests and delivery quests. Some quests send you out in to the world to collect a few things and turn them in. Other quests send you to talk to a distant NPC and maybe help him out by once again clicking on a few objects in the world. There’s a decent amount of variety and they try to mix it up between quests and races.

Progression

As you complete quest you level up and earn gold. The game is restricted to level 4 for free players and if you want to keep leveling you have to purchase a subscription. To their credit, they don’t market at all in the game. You have a small icon next to your map for subscribing but that’s it.

Completing quests also earns you gold. You can buy various items with gold. Some of the items offer statistical benefit while others are just a cosmetic change. Most of the items are locked behind level gates and reputation gates. For example if you want a particular item you might need to be level 7 or earn the friendly status with a certain faction.  Overall the progression systems are pretty straight forward and don’t offer much depth but they work just fine.

Art Style and Music

The art style is nothing special but it gets the job done. The world is colorful and overall pleasing to look at. The game offers many different ways to dress your character and they all seem well put together. I can’t say that I’m in love with the art but I don’t hate it either. As for the music, its a pretty standard cheerful sound throughout the game.

Conclusions

To be perfectly honest, the game does not appeal to me at all. Star Stable has a very specific target audience which I, a 29 years old man, am not a part of. The game is clearly targeted to young girls and women that enjoy the idea of owning and riding a horse. The game has no combat and the majority of your time is spent completing fetch quests and horse races. To me, these are not the kind of activities I look for in a game. Having said that, if you are a part of the target audience, the game is not bad and might worth a shot.

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As any other successful online game, Warframe is an evolving beast. I played Warframe when it first came out for a few hundred hours. And most recently I decided to check it out again and see what changes time and Digital Extremes (DE) brought upon us. So much has changed in Warframe it seems like a brand new game. A ton of new frames and weapons were added. There are now flying missions with the Archwing. A new storyline quest was added with the ability to go into human form. And last but certainly not least the Plains of Eidolon, an open world area. With all these additions I decided its time for a Warframe 2018 review.

Gameplay

For me, the most important part in a game is the gameplay. You can give me the world’s prettiest and best narrative but if the gameplay is not there, I’m not there. In Warframe, you play as a space ninja. Equipped with three different weapons and your specific warframe abilities, you complete missions with various object, gather materials and resources, and use those to craft and upgrade weapons and warframes.

Traversal

Controls are tight and responsive. Navigating the levels in warframe is fun and engaging, you have a plethora of acrobatic maneuvers including; wall run, wall jump, wall cling, double jump, bullet jump, backflips, sidespring, slide, and rolling. You can even combine some of these maneuvers with melee attacks for even more mobility. All of these different abilities make you feel like an unstoppable ninja as you make your way in each mission.

Combat

Warframe eschews your modern triple A 3rd person shooter cover gameplay in favor of fast paced mobile combat. Combat in Warframe is great, you have a great number of weapon types to fit your preferred gameplay style. Shooting feels satisfying as you mow down hordes of enemies. Other than shooting you also have warframe abilities. These abilities vary from frame to frame with some feeling really great and others feeling a bit lackluster. In addition to shooting and abilities, Melee combat is also an option. You can choose to go full melee and that’s a viable option. Melee weapons are extremely varied and you will most likely quickly find the ones you like. I usually use a sword for their medium attack damage and speed. Whether you choose to shoot, melee, or use abilities to kill enemies, they all feel satisfying and good to play.

Missions

Your main activity in warframe is completing missions combining traversal challenges and combat challenges. Mission types are varied. Some of them focus on objective defense and survival, others on clearing out a number of enemies or assassinating a boss, and others on infiltration, sabotage and stealth. Combining traversal challenges and combat Warfame’s missions are mostly enjoyable to go through. Occasionaly you will encounter a frustrating mission but these are rare events. Most of the missions are relatively simple and straightforward allowing you to focus on the fun combat and ninja-like maneuverability.

Warframes

When Warframe initially released all the way back in 2013, It had a handful of frames. Digital Extremes kept adding more and more content to the game and currently there are 35 (!) warframes to collect and play with. These frames serve as Warframe’s classes. Each frame comes with different abilities, stats, and uses. Frames have different uses and each one focuses on a different aspect. Frames can focus on tankiness, objective defense, damage dealing, crowd control, stealth, team support, and even materials farming. Each frame fills a different role and so far all of them feel useful in different ways.

Frost

To give you an idea of the variety available in frames, I will try to cover a few of them. Frost, for example, is a frame with frost theming, focusing on objective defense and AOE CC and damage. Frost can create a massive snow globe. This globe protects an area from enemy fire and slows enemies inside it. Frost also has the ability to summon an avalanche, Damaging and freezing all enemies in a large radius around Frost. While frost is great for defense missions it is outclassed in different missions. For example, for a quick assassination mission you might want to bring Mirage instead.

Mirage

Possibly my favorite frame, Mirage is a clown themed warframe. Focusing on damage dealing and confusing the enemy with clones. Mirage is a fast frame with high damage dealing potential. To accomplish this role you mostly use two abilities from Mirage’s kit. The first ability is Hall of Mirrors. Hall of Mirrors creates four clones around mirage which mimic her actions and deal a portion of her weapon damage. The clones also draw enemy fire. The second ability is Eclipse. Eclipse is an activated passive with moderate duration. While Eclipse is active Mirage deals extra damage while standing in light and takes less damage while standing in a dark area. The combination of these abilities make mirage a damage dealing monster, and a joy to play.

I can go on and on about each frame listing their strengths and weaknesses. Rhyno is massive tank, Valkyr is a melee berserker, Ember burns all enemies around it, Trinity supports the team granting energy and health. These are only a few examples of the frames available and there is truly something for everyone. Whatever your preferred play-style is, Warframe has you covered. Beside these frames there are also Archwings.

Archwing

Archwings are a special type of frames designed for space and underwater combat. Probably the weakest part in the Warframe experience are archwing missions. It seems DE has realized this as well and chose to leave them behind and move away to other, better things. Archwing missions place you either in space or underwater with special frames called archwings. These frames come with their own abilities but they are way less fleshed out from the normal frames. Controlling the archwing is novel and cool at first but quickly becomes an annoyance due to the clunky controls and uninteresting level design. Luckily, archwing missions are few and far between and mostly optional.

Weapons

Pretty much all I’ve said about frames applies to weapons as well. There are a massive number of weapons available in Warframe divided into three categories: primary, secondary, and melee. You also have companion weapons and archwing primary and melee weapons. The weapons in Warframe are extremely varied with each one acting differently and possessing different stats. For primaries you have semi automatic rifles, automatic rifles, sniper rifles, bows, shotguns, and “other”. The “other” category  is filled with laser rifles, explosive launchers, flamethrowers, poison rifles and more. Secondary weapons can be divided to semi automatic pistols, automatic pistols, shotguns, and others. For melee weapons you have pretty much anything you can think of. Swords, hammer, polearms, fist weapons, thrown weapons, whips, daggers and more are all available.

This wealth of weapons allows a deep customization of your character. After some time of developing your arsenal you will have a multitude of weapons to choose from to fit the type of mission and enemies you are about to encounter. Each weapons feels different and has its own strengths and weaknesses. With lots of side-grades, the weapon system is fun to play around with and crafting new weapons is always exciting.

Mods

Complementing weapons and warframe, mods provide more customization and power upgrades to each weapon or frame. Each weapon and warframe has the ability to be outfitted with mods. Mods increase and change that weapon’s power and attributes. Mods are leveled up independently from weapons and frames using credits and Endo. Normal mods drop randomly from missions and enemies. In addition to those mods there are special mods. Nightmare mods, corrupted mods, primed mods, riven mods, and the most recently added set modes, all offer different things and can be obtained in various ways.

The mod system offers deep customization with the ability to completely change how a weapon or frame behaves. For example, Rhyno can be built as a massive tank focusing on empowering his armor with mods. On the other hand he can also be built as a CC focused frame. Focusing on prolonging and increasing the range of his stomp which stuns all enemies around him. Nova can be built as a “fast nova” or “slow nova” focusing either on slowing the enemies or speeding them up, with each Nova build supporting a different strategy. The amount of different builds available to frames and weapons is breathtaking. If you enjoy tinkering with stats this system was made for you. If you don’t enjoy and it seems tedious you can simply hop on to any builds site and copy paste a good build for your weapon or frame.

Plains of Eidolon

The latest and greatest addition to the game is the Plains of Eidolon. The Plains of Eidolon are an open world area where you can engage in missions and other relaxing activites such as fishing and mining. Up until now, Warframe had you loading into a maximum of four players missions. In between missions you were on your personal ship. Rarely you also go down from your ship to these hubs called relays. Relays were the only place you could see a big number of players but your visits to relays are usually short and to the point. There is no real reason to hang out in relays except if you want to do some people watching.

With the Plains of Eidolon DE has added an open world area and a small hub near it. This hub contains several reputation factions and vendors with new weapons and skins. But the main meat of this area are the plains themselves. In the plains you take on missions which reward you with reputation, currency, and unique mods. The plains also have a night and day system and during the night you can go out to hunt Eidolons. Eidolons are these massive dinosaur looking robots which require team coordination and strategy to bring down. Eidolon fights are novel and interesting, offering a different combat experience to Warframe’s usual missions.

Other than combat activites, you can also fish and mine. Fishing is nice and relaxing. You use a spear to fish, and launch it at the fish to gather their useful materials. Mining is done via a special device which directs you to nearby mining nodes. All of these activities are engaging and interesting in their own ways and I enjoyed partaking in each of them.

Story line

Before going into this part of the review, I’d like to point out that stories in games is usually something I don’t pay much attention to. For me the story is just background and I prefer delving deep into the mechanics and gameplay rather than the story. Having said that, I actually think the story in Warframe is pretty cool. In Warframe you play as a Tenno. Tennos are an ancient mysterious race with the ability to control warframes through conscience transference. As a Tenno, you use you warframes to fight several factions each with different motives and objectives.

The story in Warframe is delivered mainly through a few story-line quests. These quests deliver the story as well as introducing you to new mechanics and gameplay features. As such they are not mandatory for progression. However if you want to get some cool new stuff, you need to go through them. Unlocking the archwing is done via these story quests. And recently the ability to go into operator mode has been added.

Operator

Operator mode lets you leave your warframe at any time and play as the Tenno. While gameplay was previously restricted to waframes alone, it is now possible to control the Tenno directly. Your Tenno comes with its own weapon and abilities. As a Tenno you use your void powers to fight the enemies. You have the ability to use a void beam, a void blast and a void dash. Moreover, you have the ability to turn invisible. Your Tenno also comes equipped with an amp. Serving as your Tenno’s weapon, the amp can be switched and upgraded like other weapons. The last thing to note about Tennos is the focus skill tree. When you unlock operator mode you also unlock the focus skill tree. Slowly earning focus will reward you with passive and active benefits to both your Tenno and your waframes.

Overall, the operator is a nice addition to Warframe. Breaking up to gameplay and adding more progression is a good thing. In these types of game it’s important that you always have something to chase. The focus skill tree fulfills that purpose in an interesting and different way to Warframe’s other progression systems. I’m not deep into the skill tree so I can’t say how powerful it feels but at least on paper, it seems to be a meaningful upgrade.

Business Model

In the world of free to play games, the business model of a game can be a deal breaker for many people. Let me just say this outright before going into details. Warframe has one of the best business models out there. You can earn anything in warframe by playing. And when I say anything i mean it. Every piece of content available in the game can be accessed using materials and credits or platinum. Be it weapons, warframe, skins, inventory slots, or anything else you can think of, you can earn it by playing and trading with other players.

Warframe’s uses two types of major currencies, credits and platinum. Credits are earned when you complete missions. There are two ways to obtain platinum, you can either buy some with real money, or you can sell items to other players for platinum.

Platinum

Platinum can be used to purchase almost everything in the game. So for example if you want that shiny new weapon you can either get the blueprint and craft it, or you can buy it outright with platinum. Platinum is also used to speed up crafting, buy inventory slots, and various skins. Now I can already hear some of you screaming “pay to win!”. But remember, you can earn platinum simply by playing the game and trading.

My time with Warframe was spent entirely free and I was able to earn a few hundred platinum by trading. To give you a rough estimate of how much platinum is worth, Buying two weapons slots costs a meager 12 platinum. Buying a warframe slot costs 20 platinum. The prices are extremely fair. You can absolutely completely access any piece of content in the game simply by playing.

These systems in Warframe truly give each player a choice in how they approach the content. If you’re the type of person that wants to blaze quickly through content you can do so by purchasing platinum. But if you’re the type that wishes to play for free and earn everything by yourself, you can do that too and at a fairly reasonable pace.

Conclusions

Warframe has come a long way since it’s launch back in 2013. From a bare bones space ninja simulator it has become a massive game chock full of interesting content. The wealth of warframes, weapons and mods available offers deep customization options. Acquiring those frames and weapons is a major part of the game and more or less the core gameplay loop. If you enjoy loot, you will enjoy this loop. The new Plains of Eidolon shake things up offering you an open world area with many activities. The story and the addition of the operator are really cool additions and I enjoyed going through the story quests unlocking new abilities. The business model is extremely fair and possibly the best business model I’ve ever seen. To sum things up, Warframe is a great game and if you even have a slight interest in it, you should check it out.

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With the upcoming release of BFA, I wanted to look back and review WoW in 2018. And so I present to you my WoW 2018 review. WoW has been around since 2004 and is a vastly different game today. In 2016 Legion released following and learning from Warlords of Draenor successes and mistakes. Legion added many new features to WoW but the biggest one for me is mythic plus dungeons. The addition of mythic plus has really elevated WoW for me from a game I play briefly at the start of each expansion to a game I played the most these past couple of years. but first things first, the Demon Hunter.

Demon Hunter

The 1st thing you notice about Legion is the addition of the Demon Hunter class. Blizzard has done an amazing job with this class, capturing its class fantasy perfectly with the havoc spec. Havoc DH are the most mobile class in WoW. As part of your basic kit as a DH you get a double jump and a glide. Moreover as havoc your mastery stat increases your movement speed, you have two charges of Fel Rush a short fast dash And you also get access to Vengeful Retreat, a back-flip which launches you several meters backwards similar to the hunter’s Disengage. All of these abilities make the Havoc DH extremely mobile, able to quickly position anywhere on the battlefield within seconds.

Havoc

In regards to Havoc’s rotation and offensive capabilities Blizzard chose to keep it simple and satisfying. At it’s very core DH’s single target rotation is comprised of only two spells, Demon’s Bite and Chaos strike. Demon’s Bite is your builder with each cast dealing low damage and filling your fury. Chaos Strike is your spender, each cast spending fury to deal high damage. To complement these core spells you have several short and low cooldowns.

Metamorphosis is your biggest cooldown. Using Metamorphosis launches you to a target location, transforms you to a giant demon, increases your haste and empowers your Chaos Strike and Blade Dance. Other than Metamorphosis, you also get two short cooldowns, Fury of the Illidari and Eye Beam. Fury of the Illidari launches spinning glaves at your position which damage all enemies over 3 seconds. Eye Beam is pretty self explanatory, you briefly turn into a demon and shoot a laser beam from your eyes damaging everything in front of you.

Utility and Defensives

For utility and defensives DH has some interesting tools. You have a short AOE stun called Chaos nova. Your interrupt is a short cooldown ranged interrupt which gives you fury if successful. You also get a sap like CC ability in the form of Imprison, incapacitating a beast, humanoid, or demon for 1 minute. For defensives you have two options, first is Blur, popping Blur increases your chance to dodge and reduces damage taken. The second defensive option is Darkness which spreads darkness in a small circles around you for a few seconds. Players standing in the darkness have a small chance to avoid all damage taken. The final defensive option is Blade Dance’s 1 second 100% dodge window. While difficult to time correctly it is a valuable tool for high end content.

Vengeance

Vengeance Demon Hunters are tanks focusing on damage mitigation and life leech. As a Vengeance DH you still keep your double jump and glide but instead of Fel Rush and Vengeful Retreat you get Infernal Strike. Infernal Strike allows you to jump to a location similar to warrior’s Heroic Leap. An interesting thing to note is that while Havoc DH rotation is kept simple, Vengeance DH rotation and abilities are far more complex and I would argue that Vengeance DH is the most complex tank to play in its current Spirit Bomb build.

Vengeance’s rotation revolves around two resources, pain and soul fragments. Pain is your standard resource bar filling when you take damage and use certain abilities, very similar to warrior’s rage. Soul fragments however are these small purple orbs used either for instant healing or for damage and healing. Some of your spells have a chance to shatter a soul fragment from your target and you can have a maximum of five soul fragments.

Soul fragments can be used in three ways, First you can simply walk over them for some instant healing. Secondly you can use Soul Cleave spending pain and all soul fragments for healing and damage. Third is Spirit Bomb which turns your soul fragments into a bomb launching them at the enemy dealing massive damage and applying a debuff which causes 20% of all damage done to that enemy to heal you. The complexity of Vengeance comes from deciding how to use your soul fragments.

Utility and Defensives

Vengeance Demon Hunters offer great utility for five man dungeons in the form of their sigils. Vengeance has access to four different sigils each with a different effect and uses. Sigil of Flame simply places a sigil which deals fire damage. Sigil of Silence places a sigil which activates after two seconds silencing everything it hits for six seconds. Sigil of Misery places a sigil which fears all enemies in place for 30 seconds, effectively a mass CC ability. Sigil of Chains place a sigil which grips every mob affected to the center of the sigil and slows them by 70% for 6 seconds, this spell is similar to the Death Knight’s mass grip ability. Other than sigils you also have Imprison like Havoc.

For defensive cooldowns you have extremely powerful options in the form of Metamorphosis and Fiery Brand. Although Vengeance’s Metamorphosis shares the name with Havoc’s Metamorphosis they are different spells. Vengeance’s Metamorphosis transforms you into a demon increasing your HP by 30%, armor by 100%, empowering your Shear ability and generating pain passively every second. Metamorphosis is one of the best defensive cooldowns in the game. You become an unstoppable wall and can survive pretty much anything the game will throw at you. Vengeance second defensive cooldown is Fiery Brand, it is a short cooldown which reduces a single target damage done to you by 40%. While fiery brand is a powerful single target cooldown it has some downsides, it cannot prevent environment damage and it is limited to one target. Overall though Vengeance defensive options are very strong and on a short cooldown.

To summarise, both DH’s specs feel good to play in their own way. Havoc is a fast mobile demon infused badass, and Vengeance is a mobile complex tank with some great utility and cooldowns. moving on from the Demon Hunter I’d like to review Legion’s artifact weapons.

Artifact weapons and Legendaries

Legion introduced artifact weapons into Wow. Artifact weapons are special weapons tailored to each class and spec. Each artifact weapon can be filled with three relics which determine the item level of the weapon. Each relic also comes with a weapon trait so choosing the correct relic can have big results on your characters performance. Besides relic, your weapon also has traits which you gradually unlock throughout the expansion. Each trait gives you a passive ability, some of them increase your dps or hps output while others are more utility based.

In order to unlock these traits you must collect Artifact Power (AP). Artifact Power is awarded for almost any activity in Legion, be it a simple world quest or mythic raiding, you almost always will be awarded with some AP for your time. At the beginning of Legion AP was a bit problematic, hardcore raiders felt forced to grind AP 8-10 hours a day just so that they could keep up with raiding requirements. Since then, Blizzard has made changes to the way you earn AP and it no longer feels you have to grind AP in order to keep up.

Overall, the artifact weapons and AP systems felt good to progress in at the start of the expansion. But as Legion progressed and matured, AP and weapon traits became less and less relevant. Excluding traits provided by your relics, there is very little interaction and decision making with artifact weapons.

Mage Tower

One of the best small features of Legion is the Mage Tower. The Mage Tower offers spec specific challenges that when completed successfully award you with a new transmog look for your artifact weapon. Each class spec is presented with a different challenge and they all require different things from you.

For example the Marksman Hunter’s challenge tasks you with defeating twins. In this challenge you enter a circular arena in which one of the twins stays in the middle casting spells while the other twin chases you constantly. If the chasing twin reaches you he smacks you for roughly half of your hp and knocks you back, forcing you to constantly kite and CC him. Meanwhile, the other twin is casting spells, summoning mobs which have to be interrupted and placing runes on the ground you have to stand in. These challenges can get quite hectic and difficult requiring you to use every spell your spec has.

I’m not a big transmog fan and usually just use a set so for me the rewards for the Mage Tower aren’t all that attractive. But even for someone like me who has little interest in transmogs the challenges were fun to complete and most of the transmogs look really good. Most of my guild went crazy for the Mage Tower with some people leveling alts just so that they could collect the transmog reward from the challenge.

Legion Legandaries

Legion’s legendary system is a controversial issue. In previous WoW expansions legendaries were these unique items that you acquire after a long chain quest which you complete in small steps throughout the expansion. Traditionally, each expansion had just a handful of legendaries and they were made to feel unique and powerful. For legion Blizzard changed the amount of legendaries and the way you acquire them. In legion each class has several class specific and spec specific legendaries, in addition to non specific legendaries. Each legion legendary carries a unique effect with some of them focusing on utility and others on increasing your dps/hps/survivability. As you can probably tell, the legendaries focusing on output increase are the better ones for most encounters and are vastly more used than the utility focused legendaries.

The Luck of the Draw

The problem with legion legendaries isn’t in their effects or amount available. The problem lies with the way you acquire them. Legion legendaries are random drops that can drop from pretty much every encounter; raids, battlegrounds, arenas, dungeons, and even daily quests. To combat this RNG system and ensure every player will have at least some legendaries Blizzard implemented a bad luck protection system. This system tracks every activity that can drop a legendary, and if a legendary didn’t drop you get an increased chance for the next time you do such an activity. The moment a legendary drops for you the system resets and starts counting again. This system ensures all players will get legendaries at some point and at a reasonable pace.

While the bad luck protection system certainly helps fix some of the problems innate with RNG drops, it doesn’t fix them completely. As I mentioned before some legenedaries are strictly better than others. One can even argue that some classes simply do not function at all without a specific legendary. This fact is the major problem with Legion legendaries. You have no way to aim for a specific legendary and simply have to rely on luck that the one you want will drop.

Growing Pains

This problem was especially prevalent at the start of Legion. During the first raid, Emerald Nightmare, it was highly unlikely that you had all the legendaries and so you were stuck to use the ones that dropped for you. Because some legendaries are strictly better this caused a major problem for hardcore raiders that couldn’t get the most out of their character. For example I remember that for me the best DH legendary, Anger of the Half-Giants, was the very last legendary that dropped. This led to luckier Demon Hunters to outperform me by 20-40% dps output consistently. To combat this problem, some hardcore raiders leveled several same class alts to see which one of them gets the best legendary.

Conclusion

Now it’s important to note that this problem fixes itself after a few months of play. Eventually, if you keep playing the character, you will obtain all of your legendaries. Moreover, Blizzard has increased the chance for legendaries to drop and introduced a vendor which sells a random legendary for a special currency. This currency can be acquired at a rate of about 60-80% of the cost of a legendary each week. While these changes certainly help alleviate the problem they do not solve it completely, at least not for alts. Opening an alt in Legion can be a slow long process of farming for 2-3 months for the right legendaries before it is ready for high end content. To be fair, you can also be ready in a week or two depending on your luck.

Having said all that, I actually like the legendary system. Having a legendary drop for you is always exciting even after all this time. It gives you something to look for and a reason to keep playing. Also, having this toolbox in your arsenal is a nice system. For example if you play a Marksman Hunter you have a set of legendaries for single target and a different set for AOE. And if you are pushing high end content you most likely have a defensive set utilising Prydaz, Xavaric’s Magnum Opus. Having these legendaries allows a player to min-max their character according to the encounter. Overall I liked Legion legendaries despite their problems and I hate to see them go away with BFA.

Raids

Legion raids were a blast to play through with each raid offering a different setting and unique, interesting boss mechanics. The first raid we got in Legion was The Emerald Nightmare.

The Emerald Nightmare

Legions first raid The Emerald Nightmare is a corrupted area within the Emerald Dream. The best way to describe it simply is a dark red forest area. Inside The Emerald Nightmare you will find seven bosses. Nythendra, Ursoc, The Dragons of Nightmare, Il’gynoth, Elerethe Renferal, Cenarius and finally Xavius. Each boss offering different mechanics and dangers.

Nythendra is a giant corrupted dragon swarming the battlefield with disease and mind controlling raid members. Ursoc is a big bear that picks and charges a raid member. The Dragons of Nightmare are a set of 3 rotating dragons each with its own abilities. Il’gynoth is a giant eye invulnerable to damage until you kill all the adds it spawns. Elerthe is a druid which transforms to a giant spider and a bird in different phases in the fight. Cenarius is a corrupted druid you are trying to save from the corruption. Xavius, the final boss is a monstrous satyr trying to corrupt your raid and make you insane.

Trial of Valor

Trial of Valor is Legions second raid with only three bosses, some consider this to be a mini raid. It is home to three bosses. Inspired by norse mythology, we have Odyn, Guarm, and Helya. Odyn, the first boss, tasks you with vanquishing helya in order to free him from the Halls of Valor. Before sending you to fight Helya, Odyn tests your worth in combat.

During the encounter Odyn summons Hyrja and Heimdall, throws giant lightning spears at the tanks, and activates runes on the floor. Guarm is Helya’s personal three-headed guard dog. Guarm will spit different colored fire which must be soaked, apply debuffs to raid members, and run back and forth across the battlefield trampling everyone who stands in his way. Helya is the final boss of Trial of Valor. She will breath different kinds of breathes with different effects, summon deadly adds and tentacles which must be dealt with, and try to wash you away with massive tidal waves. Considered by some as the hardest encounter in Legion, Helya is ruthless and a struggle to kill.

Nighthold

Nighthold is Legion’s third raid. Home to the Nightborne, a race of ancient elves changed by a magical source of power called the nightwell. Nighthold contains ten boss encounters for you to battle through. My favourite encounters in Nighthold are Krosus, Star Augur Etraeus and Elisande.

Krosus is a giant demon partly submerged in water. In the encounter you are fighting him on a bridge which krosus periodically slams and breaks making your room to maneuver smaller and smaller until you either kill him or he breaks the bridge entirely and wipes you. Star Augur is a stationary boss inside a small circular room. As you battle Star Augur Etraeus the room walls open up to reveal a beautiful cosmic landscape. This reveal is my personal favorite view in all of Legion and is truly outstanding. Elisande’s encounter is time themed with slow and fast time bubbles you can use throughout the fight. Elisande rewinds time a few times before she dies and replenishes herself to full HP. These encounters are only three of the ten available in Nighthold, with each encounter offering unique mechanics and themes.

Tomb of Sargeras

Tomb of Sargeras, Legions fourth raid, consists of nine bosses. It is a varied raid in terms of themes, with some of the bosses contained in temple like rooms while some of them are in underground caves. Your objective in Tomb of Sargeras is to use the pillars of creation to seal the portal which transports the burning legion into azeroth. My least favorite raid in Legion, ToS has you fighting nine bosses with some of them having interesting mechanics while the rest are just decent.

The first three bosses are pretty straight forward requiring you to dodge, kill adds, and kill the boss. After those bosses you have more interesting encounters. Mistress Sassz’ine is the best encounter in this raid, she summons tornadoes that sweep across the battlefield and are unavoidable. In order to dodge these tornadoes you need to position correctly the adds she spawns and kill them in the correct time. When the adds die they leave behind a pool which slows the tornadoes, creating a gap between them allowing you to pass safely. This mechanic creates short high pressure situations where the raid leader goes “go go go kill them now now now!”.

The Desolate Host is also an interesting encounter, forcing your raid to essentially split into two raids. One group stays in the physical realm and the other goes in the spirit realm. Throughout the fight the boss will spawn adds that transfer between the realms and several other mechanics which require cooperation between the two raid groups.

Antorus, the Burning Throne

Antorus is the fifth and final raid in Legion. It is the burning legion’s stronghold and as such you will find eleven powerful bosses which are mostly demons. Among those bosses you will encounter: Garothi World breaker, The Felhounds of Sargeras, The Antoran High Command, Portal Keeper Hasabel, Eonar the Life-Binder, Imonar the Soulhunter, Kin’garoth, Varimathras, The Coven of Shivarra, Aggramar, and finally Argus the Unmaker.

Me and my guild are currently progressing Argus and we got him down to 20%. Probably the best and hardest encounter in this raid. Argus is a challenging encounter requiring team coordination and precise movements. The encounter is split into three phases.

Phase I

In phase I, Argus picks random players and places a circle or a spiky circle around them. Players with the normal circles need to stack with another player while spiky circle players need to stay away from other players. While that sounds simple on paper, coordinating 20 people to move around together is somewhat difficult and requires some practice to nail down. To make things more difficult, Argus also sends out a cone targeting a random player in the raid, leaving behind a a death fog. In this phase argus also targets random players with a blight DOT that when expires leaves behind a pool of death fog.

Phase II

Phase II is pretty simple. The circle and spiky circle are still present but instead of death fog cones and blight DOTs, Argus targets random players with soulburst and soulbomb. Soulbursts explode upon expiring dealing low damage to the raid the closer they are. Soulbombs on the other hand deal raid wiping damage to the group if not handled correctly. Overall this phase is the easiest in the fight and I think it serves to give the players a slightly more relaxed part before the real pain begins, phase III.

Phase III

In this phase the circle and spiky circle are still present. Soulbursts and bombs are replaced with several other mechanics. Firstly, the giant scythes, Argus spawns huge scythes all over the room leaving a small safe zone to stand in. The second thing you need to deal with are the orbs, Argus spawns an orb which gradually expands an area of death around it until killed. Leaving behind an area of death after the orb dies makes the room smaller and smaller as the fight progresses.

For the third major mechanic, Argus targets two random players with chains inflicting heavy damage on them. These players continue to take damage until they run far away and break the chain, upon breaking the chain the entire raid gets hit with a massive stacking DOT. Also present through the fight are orbs which move towards a player and the offtanks must soak.

Raids conclusion

Overall raids in Legion are great. Each raid offering a unique theme and story. While it is true that some bosses are more fun to fight than others, I would say that even the least fun bosses are still enjoyable. And the good bosses are absolutely a joy to fight. From the simple Nythendra all the way to Argus the Unmaker, each boss feels different and fun to fight. I had a blast raiding in Legion and I sincerely hope and believe Blizzard can keep up this level of polish in BFA.

Mythic plus

In Legion, Blizzard introduced a new system for five man dungeons, mythic plus. Up until now each dungeon had three levels of difficulty, normal, heroic, and mythic. For Legion there are essentially endless levels of difficulty. Normal, heroic, and mythic are still there but in addition to those we now have mythic plus. Mythic plus (m+) are infinitely scaling dungeons with the difficulty set by a number. Each level increases mobs HP and damage. Also additional affixes are added in level 4,7, and 10.

Affixes

Affixes are modifiers which change and add dangers to the mobs and dungeon. Each week one affix from the level 4 pool is chosen, one from the level 7 pool, and one from the level 10 pool are chosen. So for example this week we have bursting, skittish, tyrannical. Bursting causes each mob to inflict a short DOT on the party when it dies. The DOT stacks and damages party members. This affix forces you to consider making smaller pulls or stopping dps to not stack the DOT too high. Skittish is a bit more straightforward and simply reduces all threat generated by tanks. The level 10 affix is always either tyrannical or fortified. Tyrannical increases bosses HP and damage, Fortified increases non-bosses HP and damage.

The fact that affixes rotate on a weekly basis keeps the dungeon experience fresh. While it’s true you are completing the same dungeon, affixes force you to go about it in a different way.

Rewards

Completing a m+ dungeon will reward you with a few pieces of loot and AP at the end of the dungeon. Gear’s ilvl is determined by the level of the keystone you completed up to +15 which rewards you with 940 base ilvl. Completing a keystone higher than +15 still rewards you with 940 pieces. As you go higher you get more pieces at the end. Other than the loot at the end of the dungeon there is also a weekly chest containing one higher ilvl item. This weekly chest also scales depending on your highest keystone completed that week up to +15 which rewards a 960 ilvl piece. For comparison, heroic Antorus drops 945 pieces and mythic Antorus drops 960 pieces. As such you are highly incentivised to complete at least one +15 dungeon each week. Some raid leaders require you complete a +15 keystone each week.

Flaws

No system is perfect and neither is the m+ system. There are several flaws and problems with the m+ system. First, rewards only scale up to +15. If you are only concerned with the rewards you practically have no reason to complete a keystone higher than +15 once a week. Gear drops do not scale higher and the AP is irrelevant this late in the expansion. There are no achievements, titles, or mounts to be earned from going higher than +15. If you complete a +15 in time you get the keystone master achievement but that’s where it ends.

Now having said that, there are reasons to push beyond +15 if you enjoy the content. The main reason is bragging rights. Currently there is no good in game way to judge a players skill in high m+. The best achievement you can get is keystone master for +15 in time which really tells you nothing about the player when you are trying to push for +25 and upwards. You can argue that raid achievements can be used to quickly determine a player’s skill level. But I have seen cutting edge players fail miserably in even low keystones. Being a good raider does not equal being a good m+ player.

Mythic Plus Score

To combat this problem, external sites like wowprogress and raider.io track each player’s dungeon completions and times and score them. The scores are then aggregated to one overall score which gives you an idea to that player’s skill level and experience. Raider.io even built an addon which shows you each player’s score by simply hovering over them in game. And just like that, a competitive player has all the reasons he will ever need to push high keys.

While m+ scores are not official they are widely used and accepted by the community. Any player that pursues completing high keys is aware of these scores and most likely uses the raider.io addon. These scores are the new epics in WoW, remember those days where you saw a player with all the best gear in the game and thought “damn that guy is sick”? Those days are back in the form of m+ scores. Your score even changes colors according to WoW’s traditional color scheme. Scores are colored from green to orange with blue and purple in the way. Randomly hovering over a player in Dalaran with an extremely orange score leaves you in awe in the same way seeing a player with epic gear did back in the day.

Conclusions

In this review I tried to give a comprehensive look at WoW in 2018. From the new Demon Hunter class, to artifact weapons and legion legendaries, legion raid, and finally the new mythic plus system. And while each one of those subjects has some problems. Overall I truly enjoyed Legion and WoW in 2018.

The new Demon Hunter class is a joy to play and was my main halfway through Legion. Artifact weapons and legendaries are great additions to the game giving you an additional progression system for the end game besides gear. Raiding in legion was a blast with each raid mixing it up in terms of theming and mechanics. Finally m+ dungeons were my favorite part in Legion. Pushing keys. Wiping and slowly learning and improving was a great process. I’m still learning new things even this late in the expansion.

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