TWW Season 2: Solo Play

The War Within has been a wonderful expansion for casual, solo play. Each patch has added a new way to engage in the game. Each of these modes provides end-game play that has its own transmog items, gear, mounts and pets. If you want, these can all be run with a group, but Blizzard has figured it out and made them scale up when you group up. 

Dastardly Duos

This is a new limited-time game mode where you and up to 4 more people fight in an arena-style battle dome. The concept that your team has been pitted by goblin promoters against animatronic knock-offs of legacy raid encounters. During the fight, your team encounters waves of trash, followed by bosses from legacy raids. Randomly, gears will drop off, which can be used as a power-up that can change the fight dynamics. There is a key that allows you to control a vehicle and use its weapons. There's a time extender to prolong the fight. Last, there's a call for reinforcements that brings in more trash mobs. There's a score associated with the damage done, and if you fight within the spotlight. When done, a leaderboard pops-up that shows who got the highest score. If this is the first time each week, completing the quest will reward a champion-level loot item!

Solo, this mode is meh. First off, to make the leaderboard "fair", everyone's gear is scaled down to 619, so you immediately feel less awesome. The follower team is dumb. More than once, I've seen my dps attacking the decorations instead of the mobs attacking us. The tank won't attack until you do, and since there is no way to redirect them, I tend to aggro the trash first. The fights are boring. I've tried two different weeks in a row, and had the same two or three bosses each time. Perhaps I'm not progressing the fight enough. This could be an interesting way to level alts (70-80 at least), but I think it's only available at max-level.   

Suggestions:

• Remove the level tuning for those of us who only want the collectables. "Free For All" mode. I think I could solo the encounter on my mains.
• All gear dropped should be warbound. 
• Add mechanics that allow us to control the follower team. Thinking I could mark an npc with a skull, or have a hunter-pet style controls "attack that ==>" or "stay here" 
• Add mechanics that allow us to request specific bosses. "'You are not prepared to push this big red button."
• Having the bosses outside the arena, like the trading post mannequins. "This week's bosses are ____!!"
• Weekly loot per account is sad. This really discourages repeat play.

Horrorific Visions Revisited

If you played through the Battle For Azeroth expansion, you remember this scenario mode. Single player goes into a corrupted version of Orgrimmar or Stormwind. The city is broken into 5 zones, each with a different set of corruptions. The corruptions are debuffs that occur, and you have to deal with them. Bugs start landing on you, so you have to jump to shake them off. A void zone spawns, and you need to stand in it for a few seconds to avoid a dps loss. Working on this, while racing against a 'sanity' clock, when consumed, you zone out. Completing the objectives in each zone ends with you killing a mini-boss. Returning to the starting location is where you fight the last boss. This boss will now have the key ability of each mini-boss you completed. As you complete a run, you earn a currency that is used for both rewards and talents. The talents help make the horrific visions more survivable. The rewards are mostly cosmetic, but there is weapons available based on your achievements completed. 

This has been an interesting gameplay mode, nostalgic to when we played through in BFA. I was primarily playing hunter back then, so it's fun playing now on different classes. In order to pick up the jewelcrafting recipe, I took my priest through the Orgrimmar vision as well. Making rewards and materials warbound has definitely helped out, where my priest got the panther recipe, then my pally was able to complete all 5 bosses to get the materials quickly. 

Suggestions:

• Minor: The talent tree should auto-populate on alts. I started an alt run and died instantly, then realized I had half the sanity.
• Completeing the 1-mask achievement and purchasing the "all weapons are warbound" token, should open up the vendor to alts. Shuffling gear is slightly annoying when I can transfer the currency to the current alt and have them purchase their own gear. Much easier to compare stats and bag contents when they're all right there. 

Overcharged Delves

Delves are the new-to-expansion scenarios. These scenarios have an objective that must be completed. Each delve can have several different stories, ranging from collecting stuffed animals to stopping larger npcs that are performing a summoning ritual. As a bonus, Brann Bronzebeard can be tasked with performing one of the roles (dps, healer or tank). This allows me to run through on three different specs and have Brann run in a complementary role; disc priest has Brann tank, and pally tank has Brann dps or maybe heal. There is no time limit, so you can take your time. Slowly pulling small packs or creatively avoiding traps. Best of all, there are two selectable mechanics. Pally loves the pacifist rig, which is a giant mech that will randomly engage, has a flamethrower for melee packs, and a stun if you jump. My priest loves anything that increases damage done to make encounters shorter. 

Overcharged delves build on the same concept by adding a few mechanics. First off, they advertise that it will be slightly more difficult; a few more elite mobs in the packs. Careful pulls are required to keep from dying. There are statically charged areas that slow you down when running through them. As a bonus, a new talent tree was added. There's a titan console at the entrance and the halfway point where you can add(?) to the talent tree. Each talent requires 100 'titan shards' that drop off mobs, can be picked up in satchels around the delve, or in the chests at the end.

I've really enjoyed delves in general. Having Brann in there with me _has_ discouraged me from attempting the content with random pugs. Why get turned down to tank a pug-11-delve when I can solo the content easier? From my one run last night into an overcharged delve, I am not sure the 'increased' difficulty is worthy of the end-run rewards. I need more attempts to verify. I had a bounty map active at the time and don't know how that contributed. To top it off, two delve runs mean one more loot item appears in my weekly great vault. 

Suggestions:

• FOMO: Undercoins drop too slowly. This is the currency used to buy transmog items from the vendors in town. Some of those cosmetic items require 3000 coins. My pally that earned most of their gear via delves still only has less than 10,000 coins. 
• Bountiful keys. Keys are 'free' by doing a weekly event, or for sale for 1000 undercoins. I hate to do the weekly events to get keys on my mains as it takes gear away from lesser-geared alts. But.. see my previous item. Could bountiful keys drop in my great vault? Fill a delve slots, get a key? That's a 50% return on investment. 

Nightfall event

This is another flavor of the community events that started back in Dragonflight (cooking, primalist invasions, dreamsurges). Once an hour, there's an invasion. The invasion takes about 10 minutes. During those 10 minutes, tasks are assigned to the group to complete. The event culminates in a boss fight, rewarding a satchel of loot. If you picked up the (warbound) weekly quest, the boss fight will also reward a token that can be used to purchase an item from one of three vendors. In addition to the event quest, three additional quests rotate between two of the zones. They are the basic 'fill-the-bar' type quests, so not that complicated. There's a slight chance that these will drop gear, but not guaranteed.

• As I said above, weekly loot per account is sad. This really discourages repeat play. What about lower tokens? Sometimes all I need to replace a quest green, with veteran blue. Make the token warbound so I can send it to an alt? 
• Many of the cosmetic items are locked behind reputation. The reputation is tied to completing the 4 weekly quests. One of those is tied to the event. While I am open to a reputation grind for gear, I don't think alternating two zones is enough flavor. BOORING. For example, the Isle of Dorn could include an invasion spot. How about some overlap with a dungeon or delve? This elite rep grind requires running Ara'kara dungeon on normal or better?

Of these 4 modes, delves have been my favorite. Upgrades with every run. Replayable multiple times a week. Having Brann come along and help out has been immensely useful. I can comfortably play on a tank, dps, or healer and not hate it. Horrific visions will be my second because I've been working on collecting all of the mounts. This might drop off dramatically when I acquire the final 40,000 token dragon appearance. As the most tokens drop from my best geared toons, wearing multiple masks, it limits my gameplay to only my tankiest toons. The last two options, well, I'll see. Probably not going to see me more than once a week.