The Queue: I’m back

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments!

I’ve been gone for two weeks. That means I’m probably going to spend the next two weeks unknowingly repeating what my fellow Watchers have already said over the course of the previous two. Enjoy the repetition!

Own it. Rock it. Live it. Love it.

It’s funny you mention Stardew Valley‘s fishing because, while I absolutely love Stardew Valley, I hate that minigame so much. Fishing is the only thing I don’t do in that game. If it came to WoW, I would never fish in WoW again — and I actually quite like fishing in WoW right now! It’s boring, but in a way I find relaxing. It doesn’t require my full attention It isn’t twitch gameplay. Cast, take a drink, glance at Netflix, hear the bobber, click. It’s great. I don’t think every gaming activity should be something which requires one’s full undivided attention. Stardew Valley‘s fishing is a frenetic twitch activity in a game which is otherwise super chill.

In other words, everyone is going to enjoy different things. Personally, I’d hate to see fishing in WoW change too much. Some more interesting rewards would be nice, but the act of it is fine by me.

If this was a roundabout way of asking for general Legion fishing information, though, I don’t have much of that. I did a lot of fishing in the alpha in hopes of seeing something interesting, but currently, all I’ve found is the expansions catchup mechanic — which is all-encompassing. Everywhere you fish in Legion, you get fish which grant you +5 Fishing Skill permanently on-use. That’s all there is.

“Tuning” is jargon which refers to game balance — and “balance” would also be jargon, I suppose! “Overtuned” and “overpowered” are synonymous. An overtuned dungeon is one which has had its damage or difficulty cranked too high. Undertuned is too weak/too easy. If you imagine balancing a game is like turning a knob, undertuned means you didn’t turn that knob far enough. Overtuned means you turned it too far.

I took a brief hiatus. You could call it a vacation, I suppose, but I was still working on things in that time, just not necessarily Blizzard Watch things. I’m here this week, but I might be out again next week — we’re not sure yet! In any case, if I’m not here next week, I’ll be back full-time in April.

This question is simultaneously easy and difficult to answer! What you describe is exactly how it works: a higher level character can go questing with a lower level character (within Legion content, not all of WoW.) As you mentioned, let’s say you’re level 106 and your husband is level 101. If your husband sees a level 102 mob — something one level above him — then you’ll see that mob as level 107, still one level above you. You’ll see that mob with a larger health value than your husband, so even though you’re dealing higher damage than your husband is in terms of numbers, your impact on that health pool is roughly equivalent. If that mob is hitting you, it’s hitting you harder than it would hit your husband — but only because you’re higher level and you can take it.

How that works? I don’t know. Black magic? In general, it just works. You usually don’t notice it unless you go digging into it. Now, our Blizzard Watch dungeon crew has encountered some oddities which we simply attribute to it being alpha. For example, lower level healers will see their tanks as having different health values than they actually do. Is that a result of the game trying to compensate for a level 101 healer trying to heal a level 108 tank with over a million HP? A level 101 healer would normally have a much more difficult time healing that person than a level 108 healer. Is the game trying to compensate but the UI is freaking out? Or is the UI just freaking out period?

If you’re playing casually and just questing with a pal, it really does just work. You’ll feel like equals even if there’s a level gulf between you. Nobody will feel like they’re being carried by the higher level player.