Removal of Remove Curse

[Ipsissimus]

The ineptitude of the Mages you've played with doesn't mean that Remove Curse was out of place.
Furthermore, there (used to be) more to WoW than just raiding. Competent PvPers knew to use Remove Curse on their teammates (hell, I still have dedicated bindings, and I PvPed maybe for a month since January 2012), who to put Focus Magic on and whether to apply Amplify or Dampen Magic depending on the situation.

Sticking to PvE, A Mage who knows to use his Remove Curse is an asset in the few avenues where it might actually help.
Doing Mannoroth without a healer who can decurse? Thankfully you have Mages.
Running a Timewalking instance back in time to when the game had further RPG elements? Bet you're happy you have a Mage with you to quickly help.

Unfortunately, the player base's incompetence might just be why they removed the spell. All of their design decisions in quite a few years have been about streamlining and making the game more accessible, after all.

[Imnick]

I don't think it's anything to do with "player incompetence", they just want to solidify debuff removal as a healer thing (which hybrids have access to also, similar to how hybrids can both taunt and resurrect).
Using slow fall on people during Ragnaros was funny though, and will continue to be possible for any future knock-up effects (I love that they call them that, given that at least in England that's slang for "impregnate")

[Ipsissimus]

I apologize for being lazy and unclear. The specific incompetence of Remove Curse usage wasn't the main factor in its removal, IMHO.

Rather, the overall player base's unwillingness to fully familiarize themselves with their characters and make genuine efforts to overcome obstacles did.
Much the same way all healers received dispel when 10 man had to drop the same gear as 25 man (and then almost all raid debuffs became magical debuffs...), hybrid DPS was brought in line with pure DPS because being an Enhancement Shaman who enables all the melee to whoop ass wasn't rewarding enough, or how niche/utility spells were lost because players were either not using them or giving feedback that they're not fun (I'm positive plenty whined to Blizzard how Focus Magic only went on one person).

There are plenty of other examples, but you've been playing this game long enough to understand my original, general meaning with player incompetence.

[Imnick]

I remain unconvinced that you can really link many (or any) of those changes to a response to player incompetence, more than just a change of design intent based on what they believe makes an enjoyable video game.

10 man dropping the same gear as 25 man, and raids being balanced for 10 people, for example... has nothing to do with player skill at all? That's just Blizzard changing their minds on how many players you should need for a viable endgame raiding group.
It's a very strange example to use when you want to say that changes were made in response to player skill. "Having 24 other people in your group" isn't something I would really describe as a skill.

You seem to be implying here that the only reason Blizzard could ever have made a change in philosophy is in service of "making the game easier, for those incompetent players", which is really a viewpoint I have trouble with. It's their job as game developers to constantly strive to make things more enjoyable, entirely unconnected to their "difficulty".

[Ipsissimus]

Incompetence isn't just how well they execute a DPS/HPS/TPS(heh) rotation.
A competent community would field teams big enough to combat the instance at its highest difficult, or at the very least strive to, assuming they want to raid. It's about mindset and philosophy, basically.

Though, I agree that it isn't just a matter of how the community approaches or handles the game. I neglected how, in my opinion, Blizzard also consciously 'streamlined' the game and 'made it fun' in order to make sure that people can consume the cheaper content that they've been producing. Raids cost less to retain players with than dungeons or quests do. The more people raid, the easier Blizzard's job is. The easier average raiding is, the more people raid.

Perhaps I'm too jaded though. It's been a very long time since I attribute as noble a quality as earnestly striving to make the game enjoyable to Blizzard. It's difficult to consider their decision as innocent or gameplay driven more so now, given the recent asinine post about base UI versus addons, or the details of the scaling ilevel in Legion.

edit:
And as much anti as I sound, Mythic raids are still fantastic and far surpass any other large scale PvE option in MMOs. Legion's starting tier is going to be fun.

[Deleted]

To be perfectly honest I wish we had more things to do with the raid frames. Anyone that has used a healing spec properly knows how efficient it is to use the frames for spell casting. Now we went from 2 rarely used to 1 rarely used so I wished we had 3-4 frequently used or ok, at least 1 frequently used in case we want to deeps mainly (it could be spells that eventually give deeps to us though).

I don't think it's anything to do with "player incompetence", they just want to solidify debuff removal as a healer thing

I agree the design is about the separation of roles. I am not certain if it's strictly about healers or not. I do not know if it's the right approach either.

[Deleted]

I'm sorry for asking, but I'd like to know this: Why were Mages even able to Remove Curses in the first place?

I guess a dev thought "magic is good, curses are bad, magic removes bad".

[Deleted]

Maybe so. What changed?

Many of us believe it's a overall-game design change, e.g. "healers [or hybrids] should do that kind of thing". I'm not sure if there is conclusive proof of Blizzard's intentions anywhere.

[Deleted]

Ergo, "Removing Curses is not really part of the iconic Warcraft Mage fantasy, and didn’t fit the desired gameplay. " -WarcraftDevs, Twitter.(?)

Yes. The "didn't fit the desired gameplay" gets precedence here I believe. I doubt fantasy is ever a starting point in those things.

Thing is "desired gameplay" is open to interpretation without further details.

[Deleted]

Isn't the whole game based on Fantasy though?

Since it's a game it must have gameplay too, so fantasy can't govern every decision, the technicalities of gameplay must also make sense (according to what Blizzard thinks makes sense for gameplay).

[Volitar]

From a Shaman perspective I'm kind of glad its gone, Hex is so bad. So many DPS classes can can dispel it that it's silly. Imagine if DPS Shaman, Druids and other Mages could dispel your polymorph, would be pretty irritating.

[Volitar]

Irritating? Perhaps. Which DPS classes are we talking about here that can dispel Hex?

Mage, Feral, Boomkin, Enh, and Ele.

Mage, Enh, and Feral are all tier 1 comps and very prevalent. LSD with Ele Shaman is pretty popular as well and some Boomkin comps pop up here and there.

Tldr is really hard to land a hex vs a team with a brain.

[Aceveda]

Mage, Feral, Boomkin, Enh, and Ele.

Mage, Enh, and Feral are all tier 1 comps and very prevalent. LSD with Ele Shaman is pretty popular as well and some Boomkin comps pop up here and there.

Tldr is really hard to land a hex vs a team with a brain.

And it should be. Making it easier to land hexes by removing the dispel only leads to more scripted gameplay.

[Volitar]

And it should be. Making it easier to land hexes by removing the dispel only leads to more scripted gameplay.

So every other class in the game having a working cc but shaman is okay?

[Aceveda]

So every other class in the game having a working cc but shaman is okay?

"having a working cc" Uhm, you need to coordinate and cross-cc some more. It's always been like this. Removing counters and making everything easier to land just makes PvP more mindless and scripted.

[Lady Velvet]

Because it's the only ability you use on team mates, and even then only very rarely. It works very differently from other mage abilities, which are either targeted directly, on your self or in an AoE - Remove Curse stands alone as a team-centric support ability, which is made worse by the fact that it's almost always useless.

It really isn't that useless. I remember having a keybind and a hover macro for it and it was super easy to use on team mates.

[bloodmoth13]

Ability was FAR too niche, waste of a forced keybind.

The very VERY few times that it would ever be used were far too short and low impact.

Prime candidate for pruning if i ever saw one.

That said, i can understand that its a fairly thematic thing for mages to dispell magic, as they are masters of it, but being so niche was a terrible design.

A different solution perhaps would be to make it a PvP talent that would remove both magic and curses, as magic removal is a thousand times more useful, which would make the keybind in PvP actually worthwhile.

[Hotmail]

Ability was FAR too niche, waste of a forced keybind.

The very VERY few times that it would ever be used were far too short and low impact.

Prime candidate for pruning if i ever saw one.

That said, i can understand that its a fairly thematic thing for mages to dispell magic, as they are masters of it, but being so niche was a terrible design.

A different solution perhaps would be to make it a PvP talent that would remove both magic and curses, as magic removal is a thousand times more useful, which would make the keybind in PvP actually worthwhile.

How are niche abilities terrible design?

[Henako]

There's far better things a Mage can be doing with its GCD than using Remove Curse both in PvP and PvE.

You must be high on bath salts.

[ComputerNerd]

I'm sorry for asking, but I'd like to know this: Why were Mages even able to Remove Curses in the first place?

To annoy the warlocks.
Why else.