The Breakneck speed at which Blizzard has been delivering content updates for us in WoW Dragonflight has been quite impressive, to be honest. Now we are talking about 10.1.7 - yet another minor patch before the next season and the next big patch which is presumably 10.2. Now it would be too early to talk about any possible balance tuning or any possible major changes to classes or specs or gameplay features that come in what is probably going to be one and a half perhaps even two months from now, what instead is worth talking about is a feature which is already testable on the lastest PTR - the Pings mechanic coming in 10.1.7.
What is Ping System & How Do Pings Work in Dragonflight 10.1.7?
Obviously in World of Warcraft right now you could just ping the minimap as you normally would and that's kind of how it's always been since Vanilla WoW, but in Dragonflight 10.1.7 you'll be able to Ping in-game in a 3D environment. This is intended to facilitate communication between members of a group without having to use voice or text.
All you have to do is use a keyboard shortcut. On the PTR, G is the default, but if the key is already assigned, F takes over. By pressing the F key, the mouse cursor lights up. If you select a portrait, enemy, or the ground and left click, a diamond icon appears on the target NPC or location for 7 seconds. This icon signals something non-threatening and even indicates it in the chat channel.
Now if you are still confused or if you were unaware of this, we are talking about the same things you might have seen in other games like Destiny or League of Legends mobiles in general having features to be able to better communicate with your teammates. Perhaps if you are in a raid for example, there might not be that much of a need to use pings because you expect it to be more coordinated and you expect to be in voice communication with your raid leader for example, so there might be much less of a need for you to coordinate around your group with pings, but however, one of the, for example, more participated in content is with Mythic+ specifically and that is where you might find a better use for this system.
Pings at the moment come in one flavor that you can just click with your keybind of choice you select whichever keybind you want and then with your mouse button you can click and the Ping will appear wherever you want it to be.
Ping Wheel & Ping Types:
Now there is also what is also been added in multiple other games which is the Ping wheel. That's the default behavior. Now, if you left-click and move the mouse cursor, you bring up a wheel with 4 additional controls:
Assist
Warning
Attack
On the way
All you have to do is select the information you want and the icon will appear where you selected previously. Again, the information is logged in the chat window, with additional details depending on whether you are pointing to a piece of scenery or not. It takes a little skill, but after a few minutes, you'll get used to it quite easily.
When & How To Use Each Ping?
Those are the four that can come from the wheel. If you use the normal ping without using the wheel, it's described right now in the game as a non-threatening alert. Now this is quite interesting because you can start thinking about doing a few things with these pings:
When & How To Use Warning Ping? For example, you can imagine yourself in a Mythic+ pool and the tank might be pinging two different packs to different enemies from two different packs, and then maybe ping On My Way in between those two packs to give you the idea that the tank is planning to pull both of those packs at the same time. He can use the Warning ping to track a path, for example, if you want to skip if you want to move past a certain group of enemies, the tank might be showing you a path to go forth to avoid for example a patrol, maybe you might be pinging the patrol to warn players that the patrol is coming with a Warning ping, that you are supposed to not pull that Patrol for example.
When & How To Use Attack Ping? Maybe you might be using the Attack ping as a better way to make players aware of focusing on a certain enemy more so than the skull marker that you can already put on enemies, you know as an extra warning for players to focus on a certain dangerous enemy. You can also start thinking ahead, it might be good for thinking ahead. For example, you are finishing one pack of enemies right the tough part of the pack is now gone, the enemies are at low HP and about to die, so you're about to move to the next group and you can already start thinking about pinging a certain packs being in the next path you're going to take in the route of your M+ to make it easier for your group to coordinate.
So that's what might be good about the ping system, right being able to give more coordination to the group. It has been perhaps a source of complaint for many players that admitted to classes recently for example we have got 10 more requirements of coordinated plays making it more challenging for pugs and casual groups not in voice comms to be able to deal with certain mechanics or deal with certain enemies because they have no way to communicate properly. Now a ping system perhaps might make it easier.
Main Features of Ping System
Now we do have some questions about the ping system. For example:
Limite To The Amount of Pings You Can Use
At the moment you can use roughly three pings in quick succession, there is a limit to the amount of pings you can be using, so you can't actually just Spam pings non-stop. You can usually have three of your pings out at any time, sometimes you can have four for just a few seconds before one disappears and you're back to having three pings, so you don't have an infinite amount of pings you can constantly spam.
No Option To Remove or Mute The Ping from Other Players
At the moment there doesn't seem to be an option to remove or to mute or to simply not allow certain players to Ping, so you can't actually ignore something that might be happening something like a classic of mobs like for example a player does a mistake like fails to interrupt or get set by a frontal and a bunch of players are going to spam the Warning Ping on the guy's head because he failed a mechanic for example. That might something that could happen since we have seen this happening before in other games when players have access to pings, they using pings to annoy other players or to just grieve or troll other players, that might be something that could happen in Mythic+ as well.
No Customization To Ping
Now at the moment also that does not seem to be a way to change for example the sound either the volume of the sound or the type of sound made by the pings. The same goes for the icons, that doesn't seem to be a way to change the icons of the pings. Also for you, there is no way to modify the text or the warning that shows up in chat. When it comes to pings that might be something that might change in the near future from Blizzard.
Pings Can Be Used On Mobs Too
Pings can be used either on the ground or by directly clicking on one of the mobs, in that case, the Ping will stick and follow the mob that you pinged for a few seconds before disappearing.
Ping Wheel Work Differently Than in Other Games
The Ping wheel itself will work slightly differently than other Wheels you might have used before. In the sense that now, you have to click with your mouse in the position you want to make ping show up, and then hold the left click while dragging the mouse button down to make the wheel appear. In other games you might have made the wheel appear right in the center of the screen, select the ping you wanted and then move your mouse to the location in which you wanted to make the Ping appear. Right now in Dragonflight, you have to first move the mouse in the position you want to make the Ping appear and then you can make the Ping wheel appear right over there. We think it's slightly less intuitive and slightly more clunky than other Ping Wheels you might have been used to, but overall it can function with the same purpose - the purpose of allowing your group of uncoordinated strangers you have not met before ever to sort of manage your way around the M+ key a little bit better.
Pings Will Be Used More Often By Tanks
You might have noticed that when we mentioned and talked about these pings, we often talked about the tank - maybe the tank can ping this or that, maybe the tank can ping the next pack they are doing. It feels like this might be just another feature that tanks have to pay attention to and for example just naming one DPS player don't really have to care nearly as much, as you assume that the tank is the one that is choosing the the route and moving the group around of the dungeon. So you might think that the Pings are also going to be used more often by the tank players. That perhaps might be one of the slight negatives having to put even more responsibility or even more expectations on the tank. Imagine if the ping wheel comes out and now suddenly the Meta is that everyone expects tanks to be like a tour guide, and cleanly and precisely ping everything that's supposed to happen in a key to make it easier for the rest of the party to move around, that will would put even more strain and stress on the tank while he's playing without having to put too much of it on DPS players or perhaps even healers.
We still think that overall it's a pretty good addition. There are of course going to be many players who are worried about the griefing usage of these pings in your group but we still think that overall you are in the same group for the same purpose, you're not playing in a PVP game you are trying to all do the same thing with the same goal against AI in Mythic plus, so there should be a little bit more of a cohesive idea of wanting to clear the dungeon in time. So we do think that this ping system might have a better use when it comes to WoW especially in Mythic+.
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