Holy shit Growl got really good at that Dorki impression in just a week's time

Max's poster that fell last week is still on the floor

Dorki's point about how weird the damage balance feels for this patch and DF in general is spot on. It's been noticeable for us plebs that start out the season doing 11-15s where its in that range vs our early gear level that everything is chunking you 80/90% of your health but also is dying insanely fast, it feels so weird everything is a glass cannon. It's made healing feel really bad too.

take a shot every time Max says 4 healing.

Max’s dog needed help grabbing something under the couch 😭 lol

I think knowing teams aren't gonna wipe is kinda a good thing, since the worst experience in MDI is when a team wipes and the map is over but you still have to wait another 20min for the other team to close out the dungeon

Alternative reality: Fyrakk saves Smolderon when he asks for help, and you have to fight a half health smolderon during Fyrakks add phase.

We all know Dorki’s least favorite teammate is growl.

I think that Max's idea about secret boss TR tournament could work very well with a mini-raid. Dedicate the dev hours to a product that will eventually be in game, then have this tournament act as public testing of the instance. Basically, bring back mini-raids.

Very cool Poddyc with the upcoming birthdays and welcome back non-impostor cat

WRT the raid speedrunning, this is the meta and classic and it's generally very fun to watch. The added tension of it being their one-off weekly lock out adds to it in a way that it might not on retail, but there's definitely some good ideas there to pull from if nothing else.

To build on your pull the goalie analogy Max, I think the going for it on 4th down in the NFL (and especially considering what happened in the Super Bowl overtime) is where 4 DPS in MDI should land, the consequences are dire if you fuck it up, but it can be a game winning move.

When Dratnos and Tettles did Push Week back in the day that ended up being a pretty big factor in what got me into M+ and ultimately into the endgame of WoW, I specifically remember him casting a Temple of Sethraliss run with Ellesmere and I rerolled Hpal after that and got my first KSM.

Have to add my +1 for the Push Week event from bfa. That was absolutely one of the best things we've ever had. Such an awesome community event.

On the raid race ideas, there was also a livestream race of Echo vs Aversion in Ny'alotha during BFA (during farm) which was sick to watch. I wish top guilds did that more often

WoW esports ideas: - Delve speedrunning - Mok'gora tournaments - MDI for raid bosses across the expansion (e.g. Terros, Raz, Experiments, Rashok, Gnarlroot, Smolderon) - Faction leaders gauntlet Things that could be used for esports but I'm too lazy to think of right now: - Brawlers guild - Scenarios - Dragonriding

On the topic of evolving wow esports: it might be a bit of a meme but I'd love to see a "wow triathlon" where a single team competes in M+ speed / M+ push / arena all in one tournament.

Now I feel old, I could a parent to all of them. '74 gang, graduated in `92 lol.

I just noticed the Echo with the gold medal in the background 10 minutes from the end 😂

Happy birthday max. Yeah it’s weird when you get to your thirties. It’s like your warranty ran out on your car and everything just starts breaking.

i love the echo in dorkis background

Happy birthday Max and Dorki did us proud.

I started watching MDI in shadowlands, and from my point of view, MDI is lower keys and you speed run them. I enjoy the lower key level and seeing teams Speed run them. That's what i enjoy about the MDI. If i want to see teams struggle and take the full timer, that is what TGP is for, and i also enjoy that, but its 2 completely different game play types.

1:05 additional mechanics to bosses is something from WoLK time Ulduar, doing certain mechanics to active hard modes to bosses

For the one-off tournament realm boss, you could just reuse existing assets. You could even add some flavor, because you know how blizzard loves their flavor. The tournament realm raid boss could be someone who just keeps coming back no matter how many times you kill him over, and over. That's right, the ultimate raid esports challenge is Millhouse Manastorm.

I like Max's idea about a limited-time raid boss however I think it would be a great idea to have it plugged into the WoW interface in some way so that you could see what the current guilds/groups were that were killing the boss the fastest, and reward teams a seasonal vanity item to show that they came in 1st/2nd/3rd place. For example, in Guild Wars (the original game) you were rewarded with a special trim for your cape for placing 1st/2nd/3rd in a seasonal ladder. This was enabled by giving everyone access to the same level of gear and also showing the ladder in the current in-game interface, so that you didn't really need to alt+tab to find out what was going on.

Dorki kind of answered the patreon question at the start about control based support specs - that's basically what tank is. They control the mobs through positioning/threat, as well as things like ROP and Grips and Sigils. The difference in League is that it's pvp so threat isn't a mechanic they can incorporate, so it has to be CC based.

RE: RWF 1 boss raid scenario that Max is suggesting is a great idea. They could easily just add the boss to the live game as a bonus raid (ala Trial of Valor raid, Crucible of Storms, etc) once its been defeated too.

My biggest gripe about the MDI bracket for the cups is this. The Cups brackets are setup into a double elimination style bracket. DW was knocked out with 2 losses, Legendary and Dawgs were knocked out with 2 losses. How are you going to have a “Grand Final” with an undefeated team, and not have a “Re-Final” incase the undefeated team loses? You’re telling me Echo gets knocked into losers bracket on round 2, LH goes undefeated and Echo can just pop back up and go “oh the map list to the final was leaked to us, we’re taking this trophy. Sorry. Dont worry though, you dont get a redemption bracket like we did.”

I remember that m+ push week thing dratnos and tettles did. It was really well received iirc and was surprised they didn't do it on occasion since.

I like the 1 juiced up boss idea. As someone that doesn't raid, this would be very palatable. I think reward could be some kind of tally system which tracks unique kills so its about seeing how many of these you can do

Happy Birthday Max! 🥳🥳🎊🎊🎉🎉🥂🥂🍻🍻🎂🎂

I think the solution for the MDI isn't key banning or raising the key but ban a class. HOw do these teams work if you have to remove a lock or DH.

One of the biggest comparisons to RWF to me is the Gauntlet in PoE. Gauntlet is super cool and finding some kind of solo player thing(maybe delves?), mage tower etc, and making it some kind of leader board.

The idea about 1 boss fights sounds cool, even if it's not actual raid boss later they could still add it to live servers as a world boss or some kind of event type of thing.

I think the problem with aug is that there only 1 dps support but i also agree with max that tanks and healers prob should just get more support abilities as 1 1 3 has always worked and feels good

Isn't it awesome when watching a podcast to get an ad every 5 minutes?

56:20 re E-sports options, the audience *loves* to see unusual compositions. Imagine a TGP-esque tournament, but teams can use a spec for only ONE dungeon. It introduces a ton of strategy, and teambuilding questions. How do you fill out the utility matrix? Where are there complementary damage profiles, and how best do you pair those with each dungeon? Again, the primary driving force here: the public ADORES seeing underdog specs get a chance to shine, and this would be a perfect opportunity for it

A late happy birthday to Max!! Also can’t believe it’s already the 12th episode

That hockey analogy is dope. I’d never want to watch the Stanley Cup finals if it was 6on6 no goalie cup final. lol. Maybe I’m biased though as a healer/goalie lol

Max reinvented D2 contest modes. Put out a raid that everyones totally blind to. Enforce some sort of power cap, either through scaling people down to a given ilvl, or providing gear for the raid. All the focus is just on learning a fight instead of having to minmax splits and stuff

That raid e-sports idea sounds awesome

These guys cooked up raid racing from Blizzcon years ago. Firelands and ToT are the ones that come to mind. If anything, just make it wings that you're competing on.

That moment when you realize that you are older than all of these men (not by much, but still). Oh boy, time flies.

How about this for a cook: a randomizer in the style of like the pokémon league in the games. You enter a room and its a random raid-boss. You defeat it and then you enter the next room and its another boss etc. And you have to commit to the roster you enter the raid with :)

An option, not likely to be popular or workable, is to remove all off-healing from specs that aren't healers. Or, you make their healing only effective on themselves. Figuring out how to make raid healing just healing and not CD scheduling would also be good.

i'd love if they did a mythic gauntlet between races. 5 old banger mythic raid bosses scaled to current ilevel. if they had more resources maybe add or change 1 mechanic per boss to spice it up

25 feels like the sweet spot big pulls are possible with coordination. But you risk death the bigger you pull cause there is noticeable damage

Maxs' raid cook would work better with a single old content raid boss on tournament realm possibly with a tonne of private auras so mechanics are done as natty as possible!

They should just make the healer the support. They heal and they provide buffs to do damage in the same way Aug Does. Just find a way to make the healing healers do somehow convert into DPS gain.

Dorki's energy level is just a total sap on the group, I know he's tired from MDI, but holy moly the other two are having to work so hard to keep the convo going

PVP Related E-sport thing but I think they could possibly introduce a MOBA style 5v5 Arena Mode. Have lanes/jungle/Objectives Maybe they reduce player kit or just have buffs you can purchase. has some elements of a PVPVE world similar to how Alterac Valley was. I feel like PVE needs some other gameplay loop outside of keys/raid now. It feels like PVE has reached the point where you are either pushing High keys/CE and there isnt much else. I liked Growl's idea on the last PoddyC of having a Leaderboard "Low Key" mode where you are just trying to see how fast you can kill a 22-24 key similar to MDI and still gain rewards from it. The only other thing PVE could do would be having an Omega style boss that you fight 5man or possibly 10man. Basically a souped up Dungeon Boss with full raid mechanics but that isnt far off from what max was suggesting just a player sizing thing. PVE is really difficult to create E-sports content out of.

I think the raid boss on a the TR would be something they can reuse a model and change up mechanics that exist.

Another idea. You pull a boss and it randomizes to literally any other raid boss in WoW history that is of similar difficulty. Probably not that exciting but seems more doable for randomizer

Didn’t Echo kinda throw that Everbloom against Dawgs with Sanguine healing the boss? Or do I misremember

Every healer should be a suuport and have multiple cooldowns like PI. Bard in Lost Ark for example

A real fun new WOW Esport would be Chromie Raid Colloseum - they go to Chromie and enlist for the Event and then get teleported to a rnd Boss from any Expansion. Make it a 3 Round Game and whoever beets his 3 Bosses first wins. Make that a tournament.

Definitely appreciate having kicks and stops as healer that PUGs a lot. Having no agency over interrupts as healer just makes PUGs pretty much intolerable.

On the raid idea few extra idea. Could reduce the raid size to 15, to bring TL and echo down in strength a little and also allow those players who got benched to make their own raid team for the event? Also another thing they could do instead of making a new boss, is make you fight 2 bosses at the same time. Would take some tinkering but it would also make you adjust raid comps, ie maybe need 3 or 4 tanks.

I watched the whole MDI games and some of the eccentric routes and pulls we have seen; many of them did not pay off imo.

There has always been a “support” class… classic shaman is the epitome of support class and has been in the game since day one

I wonder if there would be any interest in an Ultimate style raid ala FFXIV, but just for a weekend. A raid where you are facing off against multiple bosses one after the other, the fight goes for like 15 minutes, and they would get to rehash bosses/mechanics from old raids. Obviously you wouldn't want to make it amazingly hard, but something just hard enough that people would take a day or two to figure stuff out.

I agree with Max. I would like the game to go back to support being in the tank and healer roles and removing a lot of the self sustain and utility from the DPS roles.

I think to have a support in WoW you would need to take away from the other classes. Remove CCs. Remove defensives. Very carefully leave some if its critical to a class's fantasy (i.e. frost slows/roots). Then put those jobs onto supports. I play a ton of albion online which is more pvp focused but still. The dps do dps. The tanks do the CC. The supports provide defensive buffs. The healers heal. Some albion support abilities: Put an area down that shields and speeds A giant line of speed friendly and slow enemy A channeled, repeated dispel/purge Put an area down that increases defenses and makes immune to stun for a couple seconds. Some dps have their own little bit of utility but its usually personal/temporary rather than group wide.

I hope the lads talk about legendary system in the next episode. DF legendary system has been in proper shambles and hope that they can cook some pretty interesting ideas.

Something that could be cool are lifelines. Nothing that benefits you a ton, or that's gamebreaking and you get 3 per tournament, not per cup, per full mdi tournament. One of those could be you can now 4dps that next key. Others could be an extra ban, or switching a ban. Idk even that's a little much though.

The problem with liquid and echo is that casual raiders will never compete with them. So assuming 90% of your player base are casuals then how do you get them engaged because the entry level against liquid and echo will completely kill any motivation for the average player. This happens in sports a lot, and the way to grow it is to have a level where players are able to take part in without feeling demotivated due to the overwhelming feeling of go against the pros. Like a lesser league of beginners, amateurs, semi pros, pros and world class .. And the best season to do that is next season when the raid is rotating weekly… echo and liquid can host it and you can even use it for talent scouting and engagement with the community that supports you = win win win

if dps classes defensives (and lock down) werent as strong, and healers damage wasnt as strong you would actually be trading damage vs safety by changing comp. the problem stems from the fact that if the pull goes correctly, the mobs are barely fighting back, so the healer isnt healing anyway, hes dealing damage. if damage you took was relatively sticky but not bursty, it would be a race for dps comps to win before they bled out, rather than a race to win before you run out of CC. this is not something blizzard can fix in a patch but its not a shock we got to this point, the amount of defensives and utility given out this expansion is off the charts.

Add a Vault or Archavon style world boss thing that is epic mid patch

For the mdi style raid thing instead of blizzard making new bosses at the start they could just bring back some of the best old bosses and scale them too mythic difficulty with a acouple extra or different mechanics. Like a redone Blackhand or Gorefiend

When I hear someone is born in 1994 i still imagine children feeling old

Ayo me and max share a birthday? LETSGO! 😂

Speed kill competition for a micro raid like the two boss raid in BfA or the micro raid from Legion with Helga. Stream the tournament and when it's killed it goes to live servers.

with each m+ season being a new dungeon set and TGP being more hype, I am wondering if it would be a better solution to just make TGP a tournament in every season.

hbd max!

I heard this cook from Max when he had the post-race talk with Roger, Meeres and Scripe and it sounds sick. Make it 10 man to give even more people the opportunity to join. It would be so fucking good. Would even see Echo v Echo and Liquid v Liquid in that case. You should really talk to one of your blizzard agents Max, make it happen! Edit: Also definitely give RWF Halondrus seeds from Tindral

I really enjoy the PoddyC! Great peeps on the stream and great content. And for the love of god Max, leave ur mates some more space to talk! Sometimes u‘re quite „monology“ and make some too many jumps in your thinking while talking :)

My healer POV regarding tanks.. I don't mind healing them -- when there is time for it. Seeing tank mechanic coming up and cooperating for it is fun. But current damage intake is too bursty. Tanks heal for 4x what my heals do, with things in their basic rotation. It makes putting gcds into them feel like wasted overhealing. It gets compounded with the rest of the group taking so much burst damage that needs to be topped, that really any time i target a tank outside of something like morchie/oakhard, im stressing that someone else might die within the next 2 gcds. If they rework healing in general to be less bursty and more about efficiency, healing tanks might naturally also be more interesting.

love the podcast but max has to let dratnos and dorki talk lol

Would love some consistency on when these come out ❤

Instead of rebalancing the healing required. Why dont we try taking away most of the defensives from dps. Then give healers new targetable/aoe defensives to put on your party. Giving healers more agency of how much your health bar goes down as well as pushing it back up.

great video :)

i might not have understood everything perfectly but Max's idea about a one-off raid boss tournament thing seems pretty gated. how many people out there have a lot of experience strategizing mythic bosses early into an expansion when the race to world first sets the precedent? seems like it would be a mini race to world first, which would still be fun but not that hype.

I'll admit I'm not super into MDI and super high keys in general but I just feel like if you can get away with not having a healer then blizzard has failed at balance for their dungeons, especially at this high key level. A healer should absolutely be necessary and not running a healer should mean that you get spanked.

but max we had those really close matches last mdi too? when key levels were more appropriate. I think 24 is the perfect level

been starved for some ggwow/poddyc etc

is Dratnoss missing a Tooth?

FUCK YEAH MY HOCKEY METAPHOR MADE IT INTO THE POD!!!!

The best part of the MDI is that it shows people what I have been saying for months. Aug is dead, it's dmg is way too low now.

i think there should be a difference to what classes you can bring for 3 dps v 4 dps. so 4 dps should not bring the meta comp, but should bring more defensive classes, while 3d should bring more class canons. being able to do 4dps while still running meta comp is the problem

Dratnos found out about Max's secret ddos button and paid the price. Growl is suspiciously gone this week. We can't just let him get away with this!

What do y'all think about giving each team a certain number of times they can use a 4 dps comp in a weekend? E.g. Each team gets 3 runs without a healer.

Have a race with raw skill and coaching...no add-ons. Id like to see this in awc too.

I honestly feel like the problem with the whole 4 dps strategy being too prevelant is just a result of veng dh being OP.. It feels like too small of a risk to go with no healer - if as dratnos said, there were no DH tanks, the risk/reward ratio would seem a lot more suitable

the problem is blizzard needs to rebalance healers in M+. Healers have lost their healing role because there is no attrition healing in dungeons. It's either 1 shot or nothing. Attrition healing and resources need to come back and matter.

Your take at 46 minutes about healer basically being there for dispels is why afflicted is the worst “healer” affix in the game. It steals the one things healers can actually do.

idea a friend of mine brought up for wow esports... make a world boss and stream "race to world first" on that boss... but it's open world, and open pvp.. so anyone can jump into the zone and grief/kill/fight/ whatever they want

The problem is not that Aug exists, it is that Aug is the only one that exists....Dungeons need to become 1/1/1/3 maybe

I graduated from high school in 93

7:19, actually, if echo didn't sanguine the last boss of EB they would have won the map I think, but yeah props to Dawgs for showing up strong! Always love the PoddyC while am cooking and stuff, keep up the good work y'all