I Ranked Every WoW Patch Since Legion 

I started in 8.2 and Visions of Nzoth was SO much better than any other patch I've played, S is the only fair option. I was playing a lot but I was only heroic raiding (occasionally helping a guild in mythic) so the first bit of accessibility wasn't important to me. The corruption vendor was SO noice, playing Hpal and getting 80% wings uptime was just so much fun, building out corruption on my other guys (masterful for my mage ect), it was just SO much fun. Azerite armour was sick at this point, it added a lot of cool stuff to your character but because it was all on a vendor it was easy to get the pieces you needed. the only issue was how much corruption trivialised the difficulty especially in heroic

End of BFA is some of my favorite memories of WoW, it was a ton of fun imo

man this brought back 8.3 nostalgia, such a banger of a patch it’s amazing they haven’t attempted anything like corruption again since

I'm so happy every tierlist ranks 8.3 so high. It was an amazing patch, alt gearing issues with corruptions and essences aside. The raid was amazing, and the corruptions were the ultimate power fantasy.

I feel like Legion, BFA and SL got really good at the end of each expansion with really bad starts. I remember hard quitting legion during launch.

The thing with removing AP from WQs is not only about seasonal vs all day players. It's also about what people like doing with their time in the game. And the feeling of if I want to do X activity I am forced to do dialy, constant chores on Y activity, just to get the power I need to X activity because character power is tied to it. It's like Visions of N'zoth, I personally loved doing 5 mask runs, and then trying on alts to do them as early as poissble. When I you're forced to do them every week and can't fall behind on an alt, or can't ever catch an alt up, it ruins it. I loved Torghast, in 9.3 when I came back, and they removed rhe restrictions and gave it the little skill tree (which gave you Qo amd other power ups inside it, no more looting enemies for the in-run currency). I loved rhe Mage Tower, got my 1st appearance on Day 1 of release spent hours progging the encounter with consumables the whole thing, changing talents, figuring stuff out. If I was forced to grind it every week for player power, it would be ruined. Personally the activities I love doing in WoW are M+ dungeons and Raids with friends. And trying out different alts, and doing those activities with them. WQs are fun, for the first couple of weeks I engage with the expansion or patches open world content. Anything that becomes a demand on my game time and becomes a requirement for player power in order to spend it doing what I actually want to (M+ and Raids), becomes a drag and drains the fun out of the game eventually. No matter how good the activity.

Man I am so happy max rated 8.3 high. I thought it was dope and loved it as well. What I'll say is, even though the vendor was finicky, it kinda worked out. My solution was to play virtually every class (I had 4 bis toons with full sockets and bis corruptions by the end) and loads of other giga geared Alts, and with the rotation it felt fine because I was always getting something good for someone so it never really was a problem. However if you suddenly went hey I wanna play prot war and wanted versatiles, I can see how it'd feel like shit since you might have to wait a while

Post Corruption Vendor 8.3 was the most fun I ever had playing WoW

This video made me realize the huge disconnect between what diehard fans think is fun and what newer players enjoy.

I think a lot of people forget that the first 2 or 3 times you ever ran torghast it was actually kind of awesome. It's just that the misery of the 200th time is all that sticks in your memory.

Gonna say right now, Visions of Nzoth wa S-tier. That was so much fun, heroic guilds attempted mythic, the corruptions allowed you to push M+, you had so many options to actually refit your characters in both ST and MT armour/weapons. and you got to play it safe or be a risky bitch... fun times all round The only downside is the cycle of corruptions that could be bought

One thing that was a huge issue in the beginning of SL for casual high end players, was how overpowered PvP gear was. If you didn't do PvP you would fall significantly behind a potentially lose your raid spot.

The end of BFA, having 5 gearsets of different corrupted gear (full haste set, full crit set, full dps set, full vers set, full meme set) Allowed me to do so much cool stuff in pve/pve/visions. That was peak WoW for me. playing class with that much stats felt great

End of bfa one of my favorite patches of all time. The corruption system was the firs time since beta I found gearing to be interesting. I do agree how you got it was horrible at the start and still kind of lame with the vendor but using and playing with corrupt was so much fun. The corrupted timeline solo stuff was pretty fun to.

The patch for BFA that introduced essences not mentioning the ridiculous hoops you had to jump through for some BiS is criminal. Stuff like blood of the fallen initial release being a ridiculous amount of pvp farming before being needed. That alone with the benthic gear rng should’ve knocked it down a tier.

QOTD: Vessel Of Balance - Lower the Attack and Defense of all pokemon on the field by 25% including this pokemon. Basically doubled up treasures abilities but effects the pokemon with the ability as well. Can see this being useful for attacks like psystrike. Perhaps make it so its a genuine state drop so it has interaction with other abilities more than the treasures of ruin do.

One thing to note about eternity’s end is that it brought back tier gear and it’s goated because that. So it was a solid low B

Legion is the goat xpac. 7.0 does have some criticism of non-alt-friendly, and legendary luck, but it was simply incredible. The artifacts' initial leveling, the hidden effects / appearances. It was special stuff. Love the rest of the Legion patch rankings though. Argus/Tomb were also special.

the link in the description isnt working. any other way i can see his reaction to dratnos's list?

As a non mythic raider the only issue I had with Legion launch was the artifact weapon grind for OS. Overall though it was an 'S'. My first legendary was the chain lighting wrists that I got from a BG. I still loved it

Anyone know the name of Max's outro song? It's super chill and I'd like to listen to the full thing

Actually a good and reasonable list with well explained takes.

FIRST (and the best) go on Max, we need more content bro

Getting rid of borrowed power in dragonflight was definitely a big W, but borrowed power was added to the game to solve a very specific problem. If you add stuff every expansion and never take anything away, it eventually gets to be way too much. That's a problem that's going to crop back up eventually, and it will be interesting to see how they address it.

I was playing casually in 8.3, and while it was so fun getting BACK into wow, I remember corruptions feeling like absolute ass. I always felt like I was so far behind that there was no point in trying

The only thing I was confused about was how max finished explaining how bad domination shards were and how they replaced tier, just to completely to forget to address the fact that Eternity's End brought back tier sets for the first time since Legion, which is what makes eternity's end an A.

I though it was cool when we only had a few special mounts that worked in The Maw, having to actually "earn the right" to mount there.

53:20 I wish they had done what they did with the Dawn of the Infinite dungeon for the new dragonflight dungeons that weren't in the rotation for the season. Just a set difficulty activity with decent loot to get a taste of the dungeon while it waits for its time in m+. Maybe a weekly quest to do a specific one that rewards normal raid loot, similar to the timewalking raid quests

Is there any chance we get something like a second channel for just uploading max reacts to videos in the future? i found this late and wanted to also watch the max reaction to dratnos tier list as well but twitch vods are only for the last 2 month so it got deleted:( Thanks for amazing content anyways, this was amazing.

Eternity's End (SL's end) has to be at least an A: 2 amazing m+ affixes; catalyst (late but still better than not having one); for the 1st time you could do multiple raids in a patch, altho in a schedule but still but better than not having it; dinars; all mega dungeons as a m+ rotation; only negative, for some people, is the raid was too hard

You’re definitely right that if you got your BIS legendary on your main as your first one it was EPIC.

wait are you watching if your raid is still going smooth while making the tierlist? :') that's top tier

Chains of Domination felt like a near death experience for WoW. A horrible open world/daily zone and system followed a 9 month content hole so for the first time in 10 years we had real trouble getting 10 people back to raiding at least, many filled up weeks - topped of by a 15 minute fight that was... okay, not even very great 15 minutes.

Still remember getting my BIS legion legendary from a blingtron the day that it got nerfed. Could not even begin to describe my sadness.

Did you rank patches or raids :)

Another thing on 9.1. Dom shards made your crafted Legendaries in those slots invalid, and there was no way to recraft or refund your mats. I came back to the game and saw I needed to literally delete my legendary and farm Torghast for weeks just to recraft the same legendary I already had... and just bounced.

Honestly the current patch has been the most fun I've had in WoW since 8.3, and I'm not playing augmentation (I main a feral druid, and have a disc/shadow priest as alt, which I've played as disc 80% of the time). Then again, I'm not aiming to time +25 keys (which I think I could, as feral, without needing a carry), nor am I no-lifing the game as much (nor am I feeling pressured to do so), which only adds to the enjoyment. Currently progressing Mythic Sarkareth.

Never did i think someone could have nostalgia glasses for any part of bfa...but here we are

S3 and S4 of SL were the goats, i loved Tazavesh and I think it is the best dungeon design of any mega dungeon it’s actually insane

I would rank the beginning of Legion a letter grade higher simply because the artifact weapons, questlines, and class quests were utterly incredible.

New player to wow from the start of this expansion. Got super burnt out in ff14 and ever since moving over here I've had an absolute blast. Dragonflight raiding and m+ has been incredible

If anyone wonders why 8.3 is in S tier, all I can say is that everyone was completely overpowered and over tuned. Crazy haste procs and cd reduction procs. It was fun.

I'm here for the visually scuffed tier list meta

8.3 and 9.2 were the most fun I’ve had in wow. Corruption gear was fun as hell, and the 9.2 experience was objectively the best as a disc priest main. Tier set and later df talent tree buffed penance to a point where you could outdps everyone, the other major contribution was of course ascended blast and nova. MACHINE GUN PENANCE. SL turned from a bad expansion to a fun one in 9.2

End bfa was feast or famine though for casual at least . The difference between the BiS corruption and azerite talents was over 50k dps variance for some classes. They managed to salvage a horrible system the game play was fun for a good portion of people but it was a bandied system

BFA launch patch is an F for me because the entire feeling of all of the power lost with that patch caused my guild to completely lose interest and killed it. RIP Wolfsong, one of the best guilds I was ever apart of.

P1 Sylv made me go boomie cuz seeing my dps sky rocket on that part made my day (wasn’t like my guild forced me too…)

I want them to bring back torghast but reskinned as caverns of time and only for fun But I want 10 mythic + in the pool, I know it’s a tall ask, but I think 2 more dungeons in the season would help elongate the season for me personally

Professions were pretty cool but it was mainly Lariat, pots, and cauldron makers. Everything else was/is pretty trade chat easy.

What made Korthia do dislike was that was when they finally released flying for the expansion, then gave us a new zone where all the "new stuff" was and we were stuck on the ground.

The AoE thing works for healers, too, at least for me personally! When aoe damage is coming i fucking love it as a disc in M+ but when I have to ST heal i feel so bad 😢

25:50, regarding World Quests. I was fine losing world quests, but I really hated losing things like the match game or fly in and kill just one guy and fly out to earn progress towards my box. Which is why Legion is still my favorite expansion among many other reasons. At least they've gotten back somewhat to fast and fun world quests to just enjoy yourself though.

dragonflight prepatch, with both legendaries, covenants and new talents was peak

I'm surprised Max likes the essence system in BFA so much. Grinding them was annoying, none of them (besides 1) were really impactful, and they weren't account bound for some wild reason. The only thing that wasn't just "whatever' about the system was Focusing Iris was a fucking awesome button to push, and maybe that's the only thing Max is thinking of when he thinks about the system? Idk.

i never got my bis corruptions. it was tragic. i wouldnt get new gear because i wasnt pumping hard enough for my guild to say it was worth it to give to me

It's hilarious how often blizz team has no clue

Good thing you left out the Thunder King patch, because that should be the winner based on that baller fucking trailer. Else, shadows of n'zoth and twilight dev was the shit

As the first retail patch I've ever played, 8.3 was fun. But I don't understand why 9.0 is so low on the list, I absolutely loved progging Mythic, Sire was such an amazing boss both mechanically and as a theme. Maybe because it was my first CE, but regardless.

12:32 trash can mysteriously opens. One can only be led to assume its by some ghostly entity. Stay safe, Max

I wonder where Max is getting the notion that way more people like augmentation than dislike it. Because the only people who like the addition of augmentation evoker in my top 400 mythic guild are the people who play augmentation evoker.

I hated fatescribe more than kelthuzad. We actively avoided doing the fight at all in heroic reclears even. If you ever tried doing the runes with above 120-150ms (Basically living in the continent of America outside of the US) it became a buggy unpredictable mess.

Prideful was terrible because it REQUIRED you to always follow very specific routes. If you had one guy pull something by accident then it would just wreck your key because you either wouldn't have prideful for where you wanted it, or you'd get prideful right in the middle of a tough fight and it would wreck the group. Prideful was a pug killer through and through.

bless you fronk

I hate the gcd change to this day.

Great vid but covenant restrictions for the 1st patch were good!

They just never did any of the promised balancing for SL. Gave up off the jump so covs and legos were a huge mess.

When I think about it objectively, yes dragonflight is a better expension and the patches are good. In terms of fun/ my own opinion: After shadowlands season 3 (and 4) , the state of mythic+ became worse every season. The dungeons don't feel that great, with season 2 being worse than season one (despite having the BFA dungeons). Thundering was a bad seasonal affix, but having no seasonal affix makes it less interesting. The upgrade systems doesn't feel nice either. If I want to help friends in lower level keys, I don't get valor to upgrade my gear, but i get shitty upgrade tokens that are not compatible with my gear. however, it is nice that you can upgrade raid gear with tokens, but overall I would rather have the valor system.

Chains of Domination was my breaking point. I quit wow for a long time after that.

Dratnos really is goated

nighthold was on return to kharazan also

D4 just nuked 10.1.(5)... all of my M+ mates and the whole guild went offline after Diablo came out.

Definitely think your most controversial opinion here is Rise of Azshara. I'd have done the same as Dratnos and dropped it straight in F tier - as someone who was in a guild in Legion that shot for getting KSM and narrowly getting Curve, that patch had us clearing the raid on Normal a grand total of twice and never wanting to try Heroic and barely any of us ran keys above +9. Was the beginning of the end for our guild of 13 years, we had one last drama bomb and died 3 months into 8.3. Overall the least interaction I've ever had with a WoW tier save when MoP drove off half our players for the first year. 8.3 was definitely GOAT tier though. Half a dozen of us moved servers, found a new guild and not only did Curve for the first time since Legion but killed some Mythic bosses for the first time ever AND we formed a static M+ group that pushed beyond +15 for our first time and is still together every Thursday and has been getting full clear +20s done since SL S4.

8.2 and 8.3 were my shit as a casual and who played wow as its main game. so much shit to do.

Lore-wise, Visions of N'zoth was garbo tier... but gameplay wise, it was a definite S tier. You haven't truly lived until you've seen some dude get absolutely DELETED by a twilight devastation, hit so hard that they got sent back to Wrath And horrific visions was actually pretty good. It was challenging (in a strategic way) and you had to plan out your route in advance. If snore-ghast was based off of horrific visions, then I have no idea how they fucked it up so badly, it should have been a home run.

for me the Rise of Azshara is tier "F" maximum, it was my first moment when I decided to take a huge break from WoW, because this patch was increadibly zero

Two points you forgot about Chains of Domination, the seasonal affix sucked because you always skipped the frost guy and that meant you fought the last boss with a perma 50% slow. The other aspect that really sucked was that we waited 7 god damn months before it came out.

Azhara being above a C is insane to me.

25:48 might want to get a priest out to your house man because that's some ghostly shit.

48:30 On EU the server I play on its 100% true, We had 2 guys that was the ring guy, I was the L boots guy, Had 3 other that was the weapon guys, So i feel like it was executed well, just got overflown by ppl like 1 week later cause it was not hard to get to that point with no to much effort

Honestly, Islands could have been cool if they were dynamic (but targetable, loot wise) end game content like M+.

Great Ted Talk. 10/10 Would watch again.

Love borrowed power or hate it, we will never reach as high in an expansion again as the end of the borrowed power expansions without it. Having double SL leggos, all your corruptions and azerite traits, bis essences, god damn that shit was so fucking fun once we got to that point in the expansion. If this is what wow is now, it'll be fun, but it reaches a ceiling of fun where the coolest thing we get is an elemental lariat or rare ring from raid. I think that's bad for the long term health of the game and will lead to people eventually getting bored and moving on forever.

i like that yout video is 1 second shorter than dratnos lol

DF professions are giga pog, I made dozens of millions with them, never again paying real money for WoW again lol.

I am here dont worry

I don't think designing a seasonal affix is a coinflip

Massive W, since Legion Dragonflight is begining of expansion that is A tier. Yeah there are grievances in dragonflight but if blizz continues on this path...we are good.

Chains having it's own tier at the bottom...yeah accurate. I like SoD but that's about it. Also fuck the shards. On the topic of s4, I actually think fated raid affixes were just garbage design. The amount of padding made it so hard to tell who was doing actually good dps at a glance and also just felt so out of place overall....but M+ in s4, even if I stopped and came back for DF pre patch...that was a banger.

If you get a borrowed power removal and a number squish at the same time, it merits an F.

They ended up taken sockets away from Benthic gear .

Has m+ balance ever been worse than right now? Maybe last patch of Shadowlands.

Essences alone stopped a lot of my friends from coming back in the middle of BfA. Even when they made the Essences account-wide and nerfed the initial requirements they still took too long to get for how much power they gave your character so by the time a lot of returning players got halfway through grinding the 'required' essences they were burnt out before they started doing the parts of the game they were actually interested in

4:28 any1 else notice his haunted trashcan?

8.3 for PvP was LOL. Smashing my keyboard on my druid to 2500

Aug evoker kinda had to be busted, since they don't want another survival or monk to happen.

8.2 patch Rise of Azshara was good patch if you wasnt melee who needed that pvp essence Blood of the Enemy. BotE was so horrible to farm ...

I think it's hard to argue with the opinion that 7.3 was really good, but I'm gonna be a bit controversial on 8.3 - if you were "into" it, it was S tier for sure. If you weren't though, 8.3 is a hard C tier and that's where I'd put it. I had a strong dislike for corruptions as it was all random slapstick shit, yeah you could stack crazy stat buffs or like 20 tiers of twilight devastation as a tank or whatever - if you got lucky. But to me it always felt like none of it was purposeful or well designed. Cool idea, happy for those that liked it, not a fan myself. I contrast the BFA combination of corruptions, essences and azerite armour to Legion's legendaries, artifacts and tier sets and I know hands down which one I liked more. And knowing that the end of a borrowed power expansion is when it is supposed to be at its best, I was very disappointed. Some cool ideas but none of them landed for me personally. Also the corruption vendor rotation thing was dogshit and everything else felt like chores - visions, world quests, Uldum/Pandaria, it all started giving me the same vibe I got doing Torghast and I hated that. I'd also put 8.2 in as a B tier. Essences were a huge improvement overall, but you forgot about the frankly ludicrous requirements for some of them. It forced people to play the game in ways they didn't want to play just to get whatever essences were BiS and rank it up. You could maybe argue to me that this is a C due to that, but I think an A is being a bit too kind. I also don't think either of those patches (8.2 or 8.3) were as good as 7.1 was, with Karazhan and The Nighthold. Yeah legendaries still sucked at that point but I'm also saying this as someone who only played one character, a paladin, and had fucking Uther's Guard as my only legendary. I could actually argue that 7.1 could be an A for Suramar as a whole (which I fucking loved) but legendary items were still a big problem at this point so I still think B is right for 7.1 on the whole. But I'd personally give it an A. 8.1 probably only sneaks into B tier because of the main raid. I'd also personally downgrade 7.2 - I thought the broken shore was kind of ass. Some might disagree but I enjoyed the Argus zones a lot more than the broken shore, even if they shared some similarities. I didn't raid this patch though and I know Tomb is well liked so probably just drop it to an A. Also, for me the reason why 9.1 was such a stinker (and also why I quit and therefore have no opinion on 9.2 and beyond) is becuase of the string of mid-tier patches in my book. BFA started out on the wrong foot with both the loss of all the borrowed power from Legion and some fundamental things like gameplay and (some) class design going down the toilet - the second tier 1 of azerite and essences and stuff were just lipstick on a pig. When you go from arguably two A or S tier patches in 7.2 and 7.3 and then back it up with an F for 8.0, a string of (my opinion) Bs and Cs throughout 8.1 to 8.3 and then hit us with 9.0 and the fucking Maw and Torghast, covenant stories that felt like they didn't really matter, plus the lock-in, conduit energy, just ugh. No thanks. 9.1 needed to be an A at least to keep me around and it missed the mark completely. So for me (my opinion who cares) S: 7.3 A: 7.1 (for me), 7.2 (but didn't raid) B: 7.1 (for most), 8.1, 8.2 C: 7.0, 9.0, 8.3 F: 8.0 swamp ass: 9.1 unrated: 9.2, 10.0, 10.1

While I liked Eternal Palace overall, Azshara was just a boss with way too many different fucking mechanics to worry about that dragged down the experience a bit.

4:27 Ghost?

yep