I love the ever so slowly increasing in size, in your face, EMBLEM OF FROST.

In reference to the "vampire bat people" I think the term you're looking for is gargoyle. they're Gargoyles.

My biggest complaint is just how small this expansion feels. Splitting it into 4 separate continents for the zones makes each one feel tiny, especially Bastion. I would have preferred one large continent with Oribos being a massive tower in the middle, and that continent floating in an endless sea of anima, rather than being floating islands in a void.

I think the term were looking for was existential dread. Knowing that life is but a speck of sand to anyone in Shadowlands would make you question everything and feel insignificant.

27:43 Correction, only Keepers of Life, like Wild Gods or Loa, are put in wildseeds, restored, and returned to life. They also do this with all of their memories of their past lives left intact, no mind wiping for them. Mortals who are sent to Ardenweald instead stay in the zone forever, and are given animal forms to run around in and help the fae with the rebirth of the life gods.

The Emblem of Frost joke took for surprise, great video as always!

Ah yes, "Adenwalled", my favorite.

So much hope in his voice

Just wanted to say I found your vids like a week ago (dunno how I've missed them for this long) and have been going through quite a few so far. And I wanted to say I love your voice, haha. Thanks for the great content!

I gotta say i LOVE the venthyr. good gothic vampire aesthetic, a cool story when questing through revendreth, and i like the teleport ability. A+ for me.

I'm pretty sure that Ardenweald is more based on the actual fae than the dnd feywild, lmao

3:33 Second highest raiderIO score for healers in the world is a disc priest :P Great video anyway!!

Revendreth is Soooo annoying for non demon hunter classes, or levitate/slow fall Very high palaces with bottomless depths, you gotta run all the way around or waste Goblin gliders

They didnt include archaeology. Automatic 0/10.

I picked Venthyr as a Lock and as of currently it has the worst ability for Locks but I'd rather play a slightly worse build than be forced into joining Night Fae, something I personally find nauseating thematically and aesthetically. It really sucks that the balance between covenant abilities is so large that one ability performs significantly better than the others in all aspects of the game. Here is to hoping they tune/balance the abilities out a tad bit so it brings them closer together in terms of usefulness.

"Disc Priests are bad in M+..." Meanwhile in MDI...

I experienced a bug in torghast, ending floor 3 with some friends, take the portal to 4th floor and... I'm in floor 5, while my friends are in 4. That was a ride

I love how you use the Highmountain Thunderhoof as your main mount. There’s so many mounts in the game, and this one is my favourite too! So simple, so nice!

As if 5 separate zones that require a central transfer station didn't slow things down enough, there's only a handful of flight points in each zone. The zones are then packed with fast respawning mobs, so it takes time to fight to an objective, and there's no flight whistle so it's fight back out again. Then, if all that slowing down wasn't enough, the terrain is often so up and down or convoluted that if you're up, you need to be down and vice versa, especially in Revendreth. Finally, the icing on the delay cake is lag, lag, lag and more lag. It's hard to believe we're 21 years into the 21st century when it takes 20 seconds or more to farm a node, let alone fighting something. Someone in chat said they were making an official complaint to the Ministry of Lagriculture. If all that isn't slow enough for you, then the faction tagging that was introduced for BfA is still there, so get used to masses of the opposite faction dominating a WQ making it take much longer to complete. For me there's too much to hate and not much to like. The new barber shop options get a like, but most of the rest is a chore or worse.

"Ardenwalled." You must've seen that harry potter fantastic beasts sequel recently to pronounce it like that. They say Ardenweald within the game as well so there's no excuse lol.

@hirumaredx To finish a soul ash mission as Venthyr do the following (I get a successful mission every week): Top left > Meatball. Top Middle > Nadija. Top Right > Kaletar. Bottom left > Rahel. Bottom right > Theotar. Guaranteed Soul ash mission for 3 weeks so far. Make sure troops are above lvl 20 thought, even if by a little only.

The venthyr do look like vampires. They're modeled after Bram Stoker's Dracula - right down to the hairstyle. Modern vampires since that movie portrayed vampires much differently.

i hate the maw, such a boring place. being a worgen has finally paid off though, moving at mount speeds in the maw. still hate the place.

" I hate nature " how can you humanly hate nature ?

The currency system you described for gear sounds a lot like valor, which I enjoyed.

they odnt have anything memorable for usic - yet the ysera rebrith music still rings in my heart

I think the only real problem with Legendaries is how expensive it is to level them up with your profession. It costs over 15k Gold in Etherial Shards to get it to rank 2 and on my realms rank 1 things sell for 200 gold so there is no way to get the gold back at all. And I am still sad that you can't upgrade your crafted gear to normal raid level anymore. That should be an option, expensive but an option. (Maybe by getting the recipe of the Mark of the Crafter out of the Raid or so).

12:30- 13:11 too would like a system like that to be (re)introduced into the game

"It dropped my Favorite +35 Anima."

I love the Maw

I'm a priest main and here's my take on the covenant abilities. - Kyrian: powerful BUT replaces a filler spell of yours. Since Shadow needs to keep up dots and Disc needs to have atonement, messes up my rotation, so it's good for Holy at best. Signature healing is not really needed with 2 heal specs, dispels and Shadow's leech. Pass. - Night Fae: as you said the buffs are too minor on the class ability. Signature is a speed buff I direly need, but is dispelled if I cast a single spell. Pass. - Venthyr: Strong burst damage, reverses dps and healing. Pretty fun, but singletarget only. Too bad. Signature lets me teleport somewhere close by. Very useful, but has a cast time however, so can't move around in a pinch. Overall decent, a nice edge mostly in PvP. - Necrolord: powerful dots for enemies, burst heal for allies. Has a travel time, but is instant and has a very good effect for all specs. Signature gives me a channeled shield. No time mostly to channel it in a prolonged fight, but still okayish and helps survival. Overall very good for most situations. So I went necrolord for its overall superiority. 😃

Say what you want about this games expansions but the music to me is always god tear

Same here as a Priest. The concept of Night Fae was really cool but just impractical for pushing end game content.

This is why i question Blizzard's decision to make your class abilities tied to Covenants. There will inevitably be a clash between what people want for the fantasy and aesthetic of their character and what's best to actually choose, and that's a problem that didn't need to exist

Kyrian here. I already finished two Soul Ash missions. The trick to win them is to place your followers to focus fire on the enemy backline so that they focus fire on the damage dealers and pick them one by one. You also need about 25-30 lvl for a lvl 20 mission

"I hate nature" -Hirumaredx

Covenant abilities not being equally cool is pretty much my only gripe. t. Venthyr Monk :(

Gearing wise you can get to 170 in all of 5 minutes with your own targeted stats to get started with the crafting gear and if you dont want to take that profession to craft it it’s very reasonably priced I like the feeling of getting anew piece again more than I have in years but that’s just me I can understand why people get frustrated especially when you don’t want to spend hours each day grinding! I’d strongly recommend buying crafted gear if you’re gearing an alt or just need an upgrade especially since you can target what secondary stats you need

My favorite is Necrotic Wake. It's such a challenging dungeon but there's so many opportunities for skips and tests of skill and awareness that will make this a mainstay dungeon in terms of discoveries. It feels like everytime I run this dungeon I learn a new path, a new skip or a new strat every run that can only be done with certain classes in certain covenants, it's kinda crazy. My least favorite is Spires of Ascension BY FAR. The trash between the 1st and 2nd boss feels like a whole dungeon itself and then the 2, 3rd and 4th bosses are all within spitting distances of each other. The last boss is also stupidly frustratingly involved and really relies on a full team that knows what they are doing making this just an absolute pain in PUGs and it's not an easy task to explain to them to hide in the bubble when it explodes and you have to collect orbs and you have to throw a skillshot at a moving target and you have to avoid the patches on the ground or you get a crazy stacking dot. Runner up goes to Sanguine Depths exclusively for the final gauntlet with Kaal and how tiny her platform is. I have a personal hatred for bosses that kill you by knocking you off platforms. The camera also can get super uncomfortable in that boss fight and it being a boss fight that ends after like 20% always feels unsatisfying as hell. I've only done the Necrolord and Night Fae covenant campaigns and I have to say [POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR THE NECROLORD CAMPAIGN] I originally thought Maldraxxus was going to be amazing because the introduction to the zone with the Theater of Pain and how they are all stupid fight sexual idiots was hilarious to me but then they started getting into politics and betrayals and idk all 5 of the Margraves are dead by the end of the campaign and I thought they were kinda neat but they just didn't do anything with them even though literally every character talks about their margrave like they are the literal biggest chads ever but you just don't really get to see it. I mean the Necrolord story is very clearly unfinished because the story is just leading up to unifying Maldraxxus just like Daddy Primus would have wanted it with there being literally nothing tying the Runecarver and the Primus together even though they are very clearly the exact same person and it's not even a little secret, they both look the same, they both share the same voice actor and they are both master runecrafters and there is only 1 runecrafter as good as the Primus in existence and there's 1 other guy who is just as good but where is the Primus I wonder HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Even finishing the campaign it feels very clearly unfinished. The Night Fae one is sick though, the story is great, there's clearly more to this story but you don't feel as cuck blocked as you do with the Necrolord one and almost every campaign mission with the Night Fae one feels cool and fun with introducing new lore and reintroducing old characters that you just don't get with the Necrolord one beyond the new Baron of the House of Rituals. Everything about the level 60 Night Fae campaign is great 100% recommend levelling a Night Fae. Also having all those secret Form Shift shapes from all these different methods and there being more in the game's code to be released at a later date just makes this easily one of the most fun covenants for me so far. There will probably even be a secret form shape released later on with substantial hints that there already is one in the game right now just super hidden. This one so far is the only one I recommend going out of your way to level an alt to play this campaign and luckily for you it feels like half the specs in the game's best covenant is Night Fae.

I WOULD LOVE!!!! To get Emblems back. Embles where such a great system.

I think Torghast is one of the best new additions, but has been executely poorly in terms of enjoying it and wanting to do it. I wish they would add a mythic difficult that would give loot. Or possibly lock gear behind the great vault with the addition of an endless mode? Something like Complete 30 Layers in one run for the first slot. Or just do an endless mode that gives loot milestones as you progress. For example. Completing 25 layers had a chance to drop 190 gear 50 layers 200 gear so on and so forth. I’m sure there’s a way to make that reasonable and balance it. People enjoy the powers, but it seems like a drag every week cuz all you get is soul ash. Some people don’t even have the gold to put the soul ash to use.

Man that sucks that your favorite covenant had an absolute terrible ability for it. I was lucky and my chosen class/cov combo that i wanted for aesthetic reasons is absolutely disgustingly fun, in the form of balance druid and night fae. Convoke the spirits is absurd (and fun!)

Gotta say. I agree with the covenants and their abilities not lining up well. As a paladin I basically have to take Kyrian and that works lore wise. But i don't really get the choice if I'd disagreed. Divine Toll is just way too powerful to ignore. I think Torgast is a mixed bag really. It seems really hard on DPS players and almost too easy for tanks. Survivability in twisting halls (corridors? i forget) becomes a real issue by late floors. I tend to go in there as a healer with a few other people. Let me tell ya, Damage being dealt to DPS classes is unfair no matter what powers they pick. Where as my tank friend can handle almost anything thrown at him in huge numbers. It just feels really unbalanced right now. The one thing I have to disagree heavily with is the story. You ever play a little indie title called "Lords of Xulama"? In that game the main antagonist has every reason to tell the protagonist the big secret going on. Every reason to try to stop him by way of reasoning. But he just doesn't. He stands there posturing and berating the hero for not understanding. All to protect this big reveal they have at the end. That's what's happening in Shadowlands. The Kyrian storyline is all I've played through so far. But I can't ignore all the times the Forsworn have gone on about how I'm being manipulated and lied too. About what? Who knows. I know they're mad about their memories. But the process was explained strait forward enough at first. Ditch the memories to prevent moral conflict in the accended. The implication then is that the explanation was false. How? Why? For who's benefit? How do I make a good judgment with so little information? No body knows. The story expects me to just except that I'm defending the status quo. But never explaining why or if that's even a good idea. All while the enemy has every reason to just spill it out for me. Same goes for Windrunner. All she does is talk about how she's gonna change a broken system. She's trying to convert Anduin. But want's him to do it site unseen for some reason. That's not how you do it. The bad guy should always act rationally. And if you can't get the story to do that because you're hiding something. Then it's not something worth hiding. It's bad writing all around. I'd give it a 5/10 because it has good moments. But it's built on a lousy foundation overall. My paladin isn't a robot that follows orders without question. I need to know if what I'm doing is a good choice. Even if it turns out to be wrong in the end. Right now it's just a nebulous concept that the Status Quo is good.

Plot twist, sylvannas doesn't have any "plans". Literally just turn everything into hell.

I love your videos man, keep goin plz

Ori and the blind forest is such a beautiful game!

I come from theduellogs! I just found out about this channel, I only knew about your other one where you talk about DnD. I'm already subscribed to the three of them :)

They really didn't learn the lesson from BFA to STOP HYPING SHIT.

Love your videos pal! Great work

You rant about your priest covenant is so funny, it reminded me of my main. I main boomkine and for rp reasons I chose venthyr. I liked the zone and asthetics of the covenant. Unfortunately, Night Fae is the Bis covenant. after all, convoque IS the most op covenant ability of the expansion. So after reaching 26 renown (the max at that week) I had to switch to NF. I'm not happy about that choice but I had to do it for raids and M+.

Currently doing the finaly layer of Twisting Corridors to get the mount so my alts can have an easier time in the Maw.

I wish they'd give us an option to take any of those 4 covenant abilities with only difference being spell animations/colours based on covenant we got. For example (as a priest) joining Night fae covenant and choosing Mind games (venthyr class ability) so its casting animation/spell itself changes to that dark/light blue-ish color. Just an opinion, but I think that would make a lot of people happy

There's no morale dilemma. Supposedly the arbiter is all knowing and knows what's best. If you're selfless and altruistic by nature, you go to Bastion, an opportunity for you to become an objective ferryman that guides lost souls and fights the void,which would be an honour. If you're not selfless and altruistic, you don't go there, simply because you value yourself more than your duty to a system that's been etched in stone unknown millennia ago. I hear they "like" that arrogance in Ravendreth.

These new zones and stories just doesnt seem like warcraft to me, the classic continents and zones just seem so much better. I suppose i just wait for TBC classic which is the same thing.

An infinite progression system in WoW could only work as intended if strictly implemented for outdoor/open-world activities, as a mean to complement the game and provide a goal for players who don't engage in instanced content (be it PVE or PVP). In no way should it be a performance boost for competitive/rated content as it would turn into yet another mandatory chore. Think of it as an open-world version of Thorgast, where you can build up power over time to tackle on more powerful opponents (on a totally more paced, less absurd version of power progression, ofc).

Necrolord troops have the best AOE bro, I can clear " a calamitous infestation of skeletons" with one champ and 4 screamers! Totally balanced! Also, the venthyr (the vampire people, not the bat people) are the ones who suffered under people like tyrants, kings, lords, popes, pontiffs, warlords, aristocrats, and the wealthy. They suffered so much in life and now they get to inflict the same thing on the people who tormented them their entire life. Until denathrius turned against them, venthyr society was actually rather equal. The souls that go through the purifying treatment are shown the error of their ways, either by passively watching people live full, equal lives not under anyones boot, or they have it utterly beaten out of them, chased, hunted, tortured, tormented and drained of any power they previously held

The biggest complaint I had about SL in retrospect is Zovaal. He had the potential to be a very interesting villain. Instead they made everything tell don't show, they kept telling us he was the mastermind behind everything, but when you see him in-game he's just "for the evulz". No development, no backstory to speak of, no motivations, no personality at all. I was actually expecting them to say Zovaal was evil, but he was just a pawn and being used by Denathrius for his own ends, with Denathrius behind the true mastermind behind everything. THAT I would've believed. But instead of that, we got Dollar Store Thanos. And they destroyed a bunch of good lore in the process.

okay so quick note is that the feywild is far from original. Mab is a figure in english folklore and while she isn't GOOD she's VERY morally ambiguous. i'd be very surprised if she turned out to be evil

Why does he pronounce everything exactly like hazelnuttygames? They say Torghast and Ardenweald incorrectly the exact same way.

"people hate the zone because it doesn't let you mount up" (LAUGHS IN WORGEN)

Little did you know night fae was actually very strong for shadow priests.

That galaxy tree is glorious!

YOU FACE MALDRAXXUS YOU FACE MALDRAXXUS

Ardenwald. Yeah, that place

Regarding Covenant Balance. Ion has said they won't do any balance changes to Covenant Abilities unless its a major patch like 9.1, or 9.2.

We're complete opposites on the dungeons, but otherwise I agree with you. Maw and Torghast are great additions.

Yay! I love your videos!

"Feeling to strong while in there and feeling to weak once leaving it..." As a Windwalker who had a run with 0 CD on my Touch of Death I have no idea what you are talking about T_T

"Conduits are minor" Fire mage has left the chat

It’s aight, hope pvp stays fun

Well, it makes sense that we get to see some themes of cosmic horror, Blizzard said they want to explore the cosmos and various forces in it, those portrayed in the cosmic chart in Chronicles, it's clear that we and Azeroth are just a smaller piece in the grand game of the universe that has been going on for eons, we can see it with the Void and Light attacking Shadowlands, Shadowlands fighting the Burning Legion, Legion fighting the Light, there is a constant struggle of powers greater than us and we're caught up in middle of it, the only thing making us somehow important in this war is us being the main characters and uniqueness of Azeroth

i picked venthyr because the umbrella proc spoke to me.

Nice review, i might pick up the game again then.

I really wish they didn't nerf Disc Priest for dungeons and just left it how it was in BFA with attonement healing being really good. Was most fun I've had in WoW since WotLK playing a class, and I literally leveled a priest from 1 to 60 for Horde to play with people only to be disappointed that they're absolutely trash in dungeons

Minus the bug where some of the Abom's inturrupt your channeled spells by forcing your character to emote... The Ride abom service, no fall damage (Holy cow revendrath) no dazing has been the best decision I made. But seriously just jumping off a building not relying on gliders or elevators makes revendrath bearable.

I do mostly agree, gotta mention the maw here tho. I do like dailies. and I do like the "painfull" way to going trough it. But to me, the maw feels a tad pointless, I dont see much of a big reason why I should go there, beside getting gem slots.

So far made a kryian pally as I love divine toll for prot and night fae fory mage. Going to make my lock join Maldraxxus and not sure for venthyr. Also ince you mention it before being your main, I'd love to see a video maybe on tips and tricks for Disc Priest. Like what add-ons for healing or in general used, etc.. even a history of disc priest would be cool too.

I absolutely agree with your opinion on how reviewers never rate anything 10/10. What's the point of having the scale go up to 10 if they never actually use the best grade. And don't even get me started on when I see a game rated 9,8/10. Bloody chickens.

Kirian here can absolutely agree... I still have yet to complete a single soul ash mission. My guys are closing in on level 30 and still can't be the level 20 mission

"The music. It's pretty good. 10/10". Bruh

I am horribly spoiled in the maw as a druid main. I can move at mount speed whenever I want. I never thought of how annoying the maw is for people who have to walk. Especially when their eye of the jail or level gets high. But I love the maw to be honest.

I agree with everything you said except for the Maw... That place triggers my anxiety so badly I need to take literal breaks from the game after going there. haha :D Otherwise a really good video. I always love the discussion :)

Just wanna mention my opinion to some points: 1) Covenants: I really like the system, but the difference between excellent and totally awful is in case of some classes a catastrophy. Hunter for example. You need to play the Flowerpowerguys. There's no other covenant ability with that much of an impact. Vengeance DH aswell - 9/10 cases, you chose the Gayguys. Maybe Venthyr, after the MDI now, because the community realizes that the brand of them is good aswell. Always talking with a m+ perspective btw, don't have a clue about pvp, I did pvp the last time for the Pandaria-cloak. The Soulbind-System I really like because it's that simple. Choosing a guy, choosing the abilities and it's done. What I don't like is the way of acquiring those "Abilities". It's so annoying that I nearly have all WW and MW-Conduits on 184 and higher and my main spec - Brewmaster is behind. This should be bound on the lootspecialization. The campaigns I really like, exspect of the Ardenwield one, because it's no consistancy in the campaign. Different stories in my opinion, the Bwonsamdi one is of course the shining star of that chaos. 2) Zones and Quests: Well, all zones are really lovely designed but I really hat the Ardenwield-Quests. It's horribly boring and I thought sometimes, it will never end. I was Lv. 60 on my Main when I finished the first half of the area. No matter what, I really love Maldraxxus, i love this undead theme with liches, blobby bastards, constructs and the questdesign is just great. With my Shadow, I will clearly get Necro. Revendreth is fun aswell, when I first heard the voice of Denathrius, I was asking me if he has a stick in his ass, but well, the story was well, but sometimes a bit odd. But I really like the Monk-Cov.-ability by the way and the theme of that zone, and my brewmaster is part of the venthyr. Maybe I'm the only one in the world cause nearly everyone chooses the "best" one, as the pro's do. 3) Dungeons: I really like all the dungeons, there's no bad one, as u said aswell. The "worst" dungeons are those of the bastion for me, because I don't like that "follow the dumb girl" or "we are all good and the path and the path and the path". It's too peaceful sometimes, the quests are like talking the whole time as the greek philosophers did compared to Maldraxxus, where you have "kill that guy". But the bosses are all interesting and have good mechanics, nothing to blame about. 4) the finite progression-system: I like it. Just seeing an end sometimes is great and you don't get that fast annoyed apart from the 1k anima, when you get 35 anima for an instance, but well, it's fine. 5) Loot: Well, you said it. It sucks.

I went Necrolord. Maldraxxus wasn't even on my radar until the questing....getting thrown into a gladiator pit, I was like....ok, and then being a pally, the Ashbringer himself shows up? At that point I felt like I had to.

Ardenwald

I play an Orc Fury Warrior, and the moment they announced the covenants I knew I was going for Necrolords. I think they're the coolest, the armor looks the best, and I'm most interested about them. AAAAAAAAAAAAAND their warrior ability is absolute garbage. Only 6% of all fury warriors chose Necrolord. They really messed up the point of choosing a covenant that you LIKE and WANT.

28:45, Latmage is tearing it up

Hiru, here's the group i use for the soul ash mission for venthyr that works from top left to bottom right: kaletar/stonehead meatball rahel theotar nadjia

I'm also a priest main, but my first choice covenant, Bastion, has a pretty good ability, but I share your consternation with mission table troops. Boon of the Ascended does good damage and healing, the cooldown is a bit long, but it can really solve an AoE problem if you are judicious with employing it.

You hated waycrest? That dungeon was so freaking dope whaaaaat?

Idk if you knew or are trolling but we had badges and conquest points for the golden age of Warcraft

One correction. Mortal souls who go to ardenweald tend to those wild gods that get reincarnated. Only those that were immortal to begin with can reincarnate.

When I’m dictator, the term ‘metroidvania’ will be outlawed.

Could not stand doing and questing for the ember court. Path of ascension is better, but if it were an actual mini brawlers guild and I could just my own spells, I'd absolutely love it

I would have given the story a much lower rating. But I think that the whole afterlife setting was a mistake from the beginning, especially when we have visited different afterlifes at this point allready

The questing would be good... if they made 4 fully fledged zones. Which they didn't, they made one quest chain for each, which doesn't even cover half the zone; it's also tied to the overall campaign, so you don't get one zone with a full story of its own. And once that's done, you're just doing world quests the entire time.

i cant help but feel like aside from raiding there's no content in shadowlands. it's the same like 4 repeated chores and then timegated so hard you have nothing left but mountfarming the majority of the week

The only problem with bastion, is it iss o goddamn luminous, like i cant use anything not on dark mode, and there there is that, burning my eyes

Disc are NOT dog in m+ btw

I have never been so happy to be a worgan