Analyzing the Pros and Cons of Dragonflight
The Dragonflight Season 1 is underway. By now, many have thoroughly sampled the expansion. The overall experience has been positive, and will likely stay that way. The current picture of Dragonflight’s advantages and disadvantages won’t change much for the next several months.
Researching the drawbacks and benefits of this new WoW chapter is a decent way to see if it suits you. There have been alarming problems at the start, but right now it’s quite enjoyable. Some flaws remain in the current version, but it’s largely a pleasant expansion. You’ll definitely have fun with it.
ADVANTAGES
There are more upsides than downsides, as you’ll see in this Dragonflight pros and cons analysis. It checks out, the game is fun and full of novel ideas, even if there are flaws. The advantages have much to do with obtaining loot and deepening many aspects of character progression.
LEVELING
You can quickly level up your character right from the start by taking advantage of early access to the new professions system and completing World Quests. Some of the more fun features, like dragonriding and racing, are also unlocked soon after starting the game. In short, it’s one of the most enjoyable Dragonflight benefits.
ACCOUNT-WIDE RENOWN LOOT
Some Renown loot is now accessible account-wide. It means cultivating a reputation with a certain faction can give you powerful items across the alts. You can use one of your characters to boost standing with certain groups and create a new character with an inherent advantage.
DRAGONRIDING
Dragonriding is widely praised as one of the most welcome additions to Dragonflight. It is a step up from flying mounts with a lot more depth and utility. You are able to upgrade your flying abilities with special talents, received from glyphs scattered all over the sky. As such, exploration is encouraged, and airborne travel is very convenient.
It would be a pain to collect all glyphs on each character anyway. Understanding this, Blizzard has designed these talents to be account-wide. Unlocking them on one character enables them on all other alts, although you still need to unlock the dragons themselves. For this, it’s very high on the Dragonflight pros and cons list.
SUPERIOR TALENTS AND SPECIALIZATION
Thanks to the new talent system, specializing in WoW became a lot more nuanced. There are two whole talent trees for class and specialization. This opens up a lot more builds than before. Furthermore, you are free to unlearn talents and reuse recovered points at any moment.
The spec progression was quite linear before. You could only pick one of three ability choices each 5–10 levels. The ability trees were massively reworked for Dragonflight, mostly saving the usual progression but giving players a lot of freedom. You can now pick new talents on each level, and different ability pathways aren’t mutually exclusive.
NEW UI
No Dragonflight pros and cons comparison is complete without the new UI. It is clean and modern, which is incredibly welcome. However, a far greater addition is that you can customize the HUD however you want. You can rearrange ability icons, bind buttons freely and play with them in many ways. Thus personalizing the experience.
BETTER PROFESSIONS
Crafting is another reworked aspect of the game. The items you create as part of your profession now have the quality parameter, which is increased by your skills and special equipment. Moreover, you can also accept crafting orders to help the guild or earn extra money.
DISADVANTAGES
Among Dragonflight’s positive and negative aspects, the latter is less prominent, and it is an excellent sign. It may change in later seasons, but it’s a solid content package. Even so, some drawbacks are too big to ignore.
STORY ISSUES
It’s not a poor tale, but it pales in comparison to some of the better expansions. It is a rather exotic and unique environment with the potential for originality and surprises. Instead, the devs reintroduce the old characters, whose arcs should be closed. The rest is mostly about dragons, which is nice.
This part is harder to judge because only a fraction of the plot is released. In its current state, however, it comes short of what it could’ve been. That’s the general agreement, anyway. It is one of the most prominent Dragonflight drawbacks, although the story preference is ultimately subjective.
DUNGEONS ARE LINEAR
The opening dungeons are more linear than usual. The new dungeons have few or no alternative paths. It makes them less complex and, thus, less fun for many people. It makes coordination easier, but it wasn’t that hard before. This aspect is likely going to improve later, though.
MYTHIC+ DUNGEONS
The current Mythic+ dungeons in Dragonflight are problematic. They are supposed to be the pinnacle of difficulty, but many players agree that they are simply obnoxious. Even after many recent nerfs, the enemies still overwhelm you with effects. This isn’t challenging but time-consuming and irritating.
Mythic+ is very alluring, and it is the way to get the most powerful loot. The gear from these dungeons has the highest ilvl in the game, and it can be upgraded. Naturally, it attracts large swaths of people, and scores of them are disappointed. The Season 2 dungeons will probably be more fun, but the current ones are not balanced.
What to Expect
This Dragonflight pros and cons summary is only relevant until the next season, which comes out in spring or summer. Some of these pros and cons may switch sides by then. Judging by recent nerfs, you can expect that the dungeons will be less boring and nauseous.
As for the PvP meta, it was pretty broken in the early versions of this expansion. By now, it’s all been smoothed out more or less, and PvP is at least playable. It is impossible to predict what it will be like in summer, though. You can expect a new Dragonflight pros and cons evaluation by that point.
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