My(!) fundamental gripe with Legion PvP

[Deleted]

It feels like a MOBA.

Pruning left the classes in such a barren state that most of them fulfill their role and nothing else, with a push of 2-4 buttons. Rated PvP with a trusted group is extremely fun, yes, but unrated PvP as a general means to pass the time has never been more frustrating. Being completely dependent on other people may be "good" for a multiplayer game, but unrated PvP for me at least was a place where I could turn off my brain, gather some shadowplays for PvP clips and have some silly fun.

Now you, as a single player, don't have as much impact anymore. I tried every class, every spec, every talent combination I could think of - but with the exception of obviously brokenly OP things it felt nigh impossible to win a fight when simply outnumbered; because all the skill in the world won't help you when people play at 90% effectiveness by pressing their PvE buttons. Damage is a no brainer.

With this, healers got more important than ever and are basically deciding the outcome of random BG matches among themselves - even moreso than they already did in WoD. Only now, it's extremely frustrating for the DPS because most of them lost their means of self sustainment. God forbid you are matched in a BG without a healer on your team... it's absolutely unwinnable and a complete waste of time with the simplest dots ticking you to death before you reach an objective. WSGs with both teams healerless end in 0/0 because nobody could even reach the enemie's flagroom.

I'm going to enjoy rated PvP, yes. But, honestly, it saddens me that after 10 years and thousands of battlegrounds queueing for one alone just sickens me.

[Stormspellz]

doesn't even feel like a moba, moba most abilities are cooldown/skill shot type abilities, legion its more just rotation spamming.

[Soisoisoi]

It feels like a MOBA.

Pruning left the classes in such a barren state that most of them fulfill their role and nothing else, with a push of 2-4 buttons. [...]

I'm just gonna' stop here for a sec. I've seen this arguement before and all I can say is you need to check your spellbook and talents. If you only have 2-4 buttons then you've specifically talented into all passives or are simply not using your abilities as you should.

On my Rogue, on Beta, I have roughly 14 buttons that I use very often, that AREN'T major cooldowns. You can add 5 more if you want to add in those, and about another 5 on top of that if you want to count the lesser-used utility. Then roughly double it for arena/focus macros & binds.

[Taiknee]

Only now, it's extremely frustrating for the DPS because most of them lost their means of self sustainment.

I haven't played beta and probably won't, but can you explain/provide a few comments on what was removed?

[Cheerbleeder]

It feels like a MOBA.

Pruning left the classes in such a barren state that most of them fulfill their role and nothing else, with a push of 2-4 buttons. Rated PvP with a trusted group is extremely fun, yes, but unrated PvP as a general means to pass the time has never been more frustrating. Being completely dependent on other people may be "good" for a multiplayer game, but unrated PvP for me at least was a place where I could turn off my brain, gather some shadowplays for PvP clips and have some silly fun.

Now you, as a single player, don't have as much impact anymore. I tried every class, every spec, every talent combination I could think of - but with the exception of obviously brokenly OP things it felt nigh impossible to win a fight when simply outnumbered; because all the skill in the world won't help you when people play at 90% effectiveness by pressing their PvE buttons. Damage is a no brainer.

With this, healers got more important than ever and are basically deciding the outcome of random BG matches among themselves - even moreso than they already did in WoD. Only now, it's extremely frustrating for the DPS because most of them lost their means of self sustainment. God forbid you are matched in a BG without a healer on your team... it's absolutely unwinnable and a complete waste of time with the simplest dots ticking you to death before you reach an objective. WSGs with both teams healerless end in 0/0 because nobody could even reach the enemie's flagroom.

I'm going to enjoy rated PvP, yes. But, honestly, it saddens me that after 10 years and thousands of battlegrounds queueing for one alone just sickens me.

I agree with everyone word you said. When none of my friends are online and I want to have some fun and queue by myself, I usually pug unrated BG's for fun. It has always be fun as a rogue to just camp the crossroads at Black Smith in Arathi Basin or Berserker Buff house in Warsong. If you have skills, you can go 20-0 if you're a great at 1v1 combat. Now in Legion it feels so gimped down that the biggest noob in the world can just hit 2 buttons and contend with you. Meanwhile your *10 year veteran self is swirling and moving and dancing all around their back, doing 360 degree eviscerates and vanishing CC. But wait, they're are still toe to toe with you.

As days pass, Legion is looking more and more like the Flop of all FLOPS. I am beginning to think this is the end. We have tried to warn them multiple times. They never want to invite other players in beta cycles. Its always the same nubblets, and guess what, the game gets worst and worst. Suramar had so much potential to be the greatest zone of all time, even for world pvp, and just when you think they couldn't possibly fuck this place up with all the forum spam about the zone and helpful insight they.........fuck it up!

After 10 years, this is my last chance I am giving this game. I am not going another 2 years, with re-design classes where everything is actually just worst than before. Talent trees are still gated, and that is the biggest joke of it all. Gated talents, only 1 path to go or you're not balanced. Each class has that 1 spec, while the other 2 are not even in the same tier of actually being viable.

[Deleted]

I'm not saying we only have 4 buttons, I'm saying you only need 2-4 to fulfill your role and play at an estimated 80% effectiveness, but even using all of those won't win you a 2v1 against mouthbreathers with a swifty-macro. Ofc theres room upwards, but skill floor and ceiling are creeping closer to each other since expansions ago and legion is not helping that in the slightest.

- - - Updated - - -

I haven't played beta and probably won't, but can you explain/provide a few comments on what was removed?

A crass example would be the DK DPS specs. On live they have the option to opt for strong sustained self-healing thorugh Death Siphon or bursty with Death Pact (which they had baseline since their freaking introduction, as it's directly adapted from the warcraft 3 hero unit).

In Legion, all they have is Death Strike. Period. And it doesn't even heal enough to deal with the damage of a single Agony.

Other specs are in the same boat, mostly, and the idea behind this is to make DPS more dependent on healers - basically to give healers in Legion a reason to exist, as healing across the board got hit pretty hard. It's nice in group play where damage you deal is immediately visible and not just vanishing into nothingness with no real insight where it went (looking at you, WoD enh shammies), but when running around without a healer in the back you just feel vulnerable to everything.

[Soisoisoi]

I'm not saying we only have 4 buttons, I'm saying you only need 2-4 to fulfill your role and play at an estimated 80% effectiveness, but even using all of those won't win you a 2v1 against mouthbreathers with a swifty-macro. Ofc theres room upwards, but skill floor and ceiling are creeping closer to each other since expansions ago and legion is not helping that in the slightest.

If you can't beat a "mouthbreather with a swifty-macro" when you're using all your abilities then chances are the [non] lack of abilities isn't the issue. The current beta is obviously un-tuned, Swifty himself one shot me for 2million as a Prot Warrior. What did I do? Well, I sighed and said "beta is beta". And then the next day they tuned tanks down a bit, an I assume will continue to do so.

[Taiknee]

I'm not saying we only have 4 buttons, I'm saying you only need 2-4 to fulfill your role and play at an estimated 80% effectiveness, but even using all of those won't win you a 2v1 against mouthbreathers with a swifty-macro. Ofc theres room upwards, but skill floor and ceiling are creeping closer to each other since expansions ago and legion is not helping that in the slightest.

- - - Updated - - -



A crass example would be the DK DPS specs. On live they have the option to opt for strong sustained self-healing thorugh Death Siphon or bursty with Death Pact (which they had baseline since their freaking introduction, as it's directly adapted from the warcraft 3 hero unit).

In Legion, all they have is Death Strike. Period. And it doesn't even heal enough to deal with the damage of a single Agony.

Other specs are in the same boat, mostly, and the idea behind this is to make DPS more dependent on healers - basically to give healers in Legion a reason to exist, as healing across the board got hit pretty hard. It's nice in group play where damage you deal is immediately visible and not just vanishing into nothingness with no real insight where it went (looking at you, WoD enh shammies), but when running around without a healer in the back you just feel vulnerable to everything.

Ahh okay, thanks for explaining!

[Deleted]

If you can't beat a "mouthbreather with a swifty-macro" when you're using all your abilities then chances are the [non] lack of abilities isn't the issue. The current beta is obviously un-tuned, Swifty himself one shot me for 2million as a Prot Warrior. What did I do? Well, I sighed and said "beta is beta". And then the next day they tuned tanks down a bit, an I assume will continue to do so.

There is no problem in beating a mouthbreather, but in beating two (or more). If you take the time to reply, spend some of it on reading what you reply to. And tuning won't fix that. The only specs that stand a chance when outnumbered are brokenly OP, like tanks, or deal enough burst damage to be able to brute force it.

You can be as skilled as you want, with damage happening basically passively and witout the means to self-sustain to stall into plays you will not kill two people before you die.

[nodq]

It feels like a MOBA.

Pruning left the classes in such a barren state that most of them fulfill their role and nothing else, with a push of 2-4 buttons. Rated PvP with a trusted group is extremely fun, yes, but unrated PvP as a general means to pass the time has never been more frustrating. Being completely dependent on other people may be "good" for a multiplayer game, but unrated PvP for me at least was a place where I could turn off my brain, gather some shadowplays for PvP clips and have some silly fun.

Now you, as a single player, don't have as much impact anymore. I tried every class, every spec, every talent combination I could think of - but with the exception of obviously brokenly OP things it felt nigh impossible to win a fight when simply outnumbered; because all the skill in the world won't help you when people play at 90% effectiveness by pressing their PvE buttons. Damage is a no brainer.

With this, healers got more important than ever and are basically deciding the outcome of random BG matches among themselves - even moreso than they already did in WoD. Only now, it's extremely frustrating for the DPS because most of them lost their means of self sustainment. God forbid you are matched in a BG without a healer on your team... it's absolutely unwinnable and a complete waste of time with the simplest dots ticking you to death before you reach an objective. WSGs with both teams healerless end in 0/0 because nobody could even reach the enemie's flagroom.

I'm going to enjoy rated PvP, yes. But, honestly, it saddens me that after 10 years and thousands of battlegrounds queueing for one alone just sickens me.

That has more to do with the fact that everyone has the same "gear" now. There are no undergeared ones in random BGs anymore. The buttons to press aren actually more or less the same as in WoD. Of course you can not win a fight 1vsX as easy as it was before.

[Sforza]

Op has a point. Look at classes like frost dk, they lost most of their utility and got turned into a damage bot. The difference between a pro and a scrub frost dk will be basically who reacts faster to procs. The skill ceiling is directly proportional to the number of spells a class has, they could have fixed this with the pvp talent system making them all actives but most of them are boring pasives so gg.

[Aceveda]

Yup, they're watering down every class to a simple rotation with some more rotational options from talents, giving every class/spec a defensive, and a CC or two.. Everything that is considered niche/situational is removed, because god forbid an MMORPG needs that. Current dev team is obviously in love with MOBAs and they're trying to make WoW more and more like it, and like diablo, and not a standalone MMORPG that it used to be, for shame.

Ability pruning sucks, it's killing the game, especially PvP. Isn't it funny how they're not even showing what's changed/removed from the classes/specs in the patch notes this time around? There's blogs with generic class info and the specs' rotations, but nothing aside from that. As if the rotations is all that matters (cuz we moba now), I can already see the amount of backlash as legion launches and more people realize wtf happened to their spellbooks.

[RH92]

In my opinion it is not only Legion, it is whole game evolution. I feel classes lost their vibe with specializations locking you into ability skillset back in Cataclysm and subsequent ability prunning.

While I agree some ability prunning was needed, I simply dislike basically having no class core. For example I used to enjoy having Corruption and Curse of Agony on all Warlock specializations, not only Affliction. Was it actually needed? Not really, but you had extra abilities to use while having nothing else to do and it also enhanced the idea of "debuff and DoT caster".

Just remove specialization and all talents on Live and you will understand why classes feel dull, because the core is pretty much empty.

[heinz0r]

Some good posts here, I have been feeling like this since they started this whole process way back in cata, when they first slimmed down the talent choices and made us commit to that one specific talent area and specific rotation of spells. And they continued it from then on with every expansion until now.

It is really sad to see this, even though I am a person that likes to adapt to changes in these games, and experimentation that comes with it, but in the case of wow, those changes were always rather sweeping and they always took more control away from the players, so they could "balance it more efficiently". And here we are, a couple weeks before prepatch: beta and ptr is in total shambles for pvp, the worst state it has ever been in, that close before an expac launch. And they even reduced the amount of abilities and talents, but they still seem to need probably until a couple months into the actual live game to at least get the game to be somewhat fine.

I am rather surprised to hear about the lack of self sustain however. From playing ptr at least I cannot really see it that much. Yeah healers are already very strong even now, which is pretty worrying, because usually there is a massive whine fest among healers when an expac starts, until blizzard sweeps in and patches them back to demigod status right away. But this time around they dont even seem to have to do this.

There were a couple days on ptr and beta where noone would play healers, at least not in bgs, and also rarely in arena skirmishes, but then they did some changes and we are already back in a spot where one healers is enough to keep a whole group alive vs 3-4 guys banging on him, so yeah. Its all super fluffy again, except for the fact that this makes for super boring gameplay where idiots can keep making mistakes with healers in their back while ppl without one have to pull every stunt in the book in order to keep the fight open (and theres not many of those left with less abilities to use).

Guess its finally time to just quit the live game and find a nice and cosy tbc 2.4.3 freeshard to settle down on

[InDecisive]

Suramar had so much potential to be the greatest zone of all time, even for world pvp, and just when you think they couldn't possibly fuck this place up with all the forum spam about the zone and helpful insight they.........fuck it up!

Not in the beta, could you give some context here? What's wrong with Suramar vs how it could be?

[thsevecha]

If you are a DPS DK, that can simply outheal 2 dps while doing a lot of dps yourself you can't really complain about Legion not favoring "skill".

[Deleted]

I'm just gonna' stop here for a sec. I've seen this arguement before and all I can say is you need to check your spellbook and talents. If you only have 2-4 buttons then you've specifically talented into all passives or are simply not using your abilities as you should.

On my Rogue, on Beta, I have roughly 14 buttons that I use very often, that AREN'T major cooldowns. You can add 5 more if you want to add in those, and about another 5 on top of that if you want to count the lesser-used utility. Then roughly double it for arena/focus macros & binds.

It's either way strongly simplified compared to wod. As sub you lost preparation, gouge, garrote, poisons + simplified shiv,group stealth, sanguine veins, slice&dice, recup got changed from a choice between dps and a hot to a simple cd with fixed value. And in return you got now passive cloak&dagger for ambush as well as 3 stacks of shadowdance, you can just push your dps boost in stealth that replaces premed and start the mongo spam of one button + finisher without a setup on someone since sanguine veins is gone wich makes rend less valuable and it's further discouraged by it being dispellable now as they made it magic.

[Soisoisoi]

There is no problem in beating a mouthbreather, but in beating two (or more). If you take the time to reply, spend some of it on reading what you reply to. And tuning won't fix that. The only specs that stand a chance when outnumbered are brokenly OP, like tanks, or deal enough burst damage to be able to brute force it.

You can be as skilled as you want, with damage happening basically passively and witout the means to self-sustain to stall into plays you will not kill two people before you die.

You can hardly compare a 2v1 in any sort of fairness. The same could be done in WoD as well so I do not see your point, some random Frost DK or Warrior could kill you in a stun, hell half the time I got killed in an Asphyxiate with Combat Readiness up too.

It's either way strongly simplified compared to wod. As sub you lost preparation, gouge, garrote, poisons + simplified shiv,group stealth, sanguine veins, slice&dice, recup got changed from a choice between dps and a hot to a simple cd with fixed value. And in return you got now passive cloak&dagger for ambush as well as 3 stacks of shadowdance, you can just push your dps boost in stealth that replaces premed and start the mongo spam of one button + finisher without a setup on someone since sanguine veins is gone wich makes rend less valuable and it's further discouraged by it being dispellable now as they made it magic.

As much as I agree it has been somewhat simplified, you can't really list Sub in Beta as a mongo spam of one button + finisher because of pruning. You do exactly the same thing on live too.

Just to list the abilities and the differences to make it more apparent for non-Rogues:

• Recup is now no longer a press and forget. You actually have to use Crimson Vial it at the right time to save yourself, OR, as much as possible for max overall healing.
• We've swapped SnD for Enveloping Shadows which you actually have to think about slightly now instead of another use and forget.
• Sang Veins was merely using Rupture or Hemo; it was a reason to use them because they were both so shit. Simply swap that for the Nightblade slow and there you go, another thing you have to keep up.
• Shadow Dance now being a mechanic where you use it as much as possible for maximum pressure whilst also saving it for when you need it is a lot more complicated than simply saving it to line up with burst.
• Cloak and Dagger obviously is a bit weird, they want it for "class fantasy" but also makes staying on a target much easier. It was also in the game prior, just that it was recognised as being shit [compared to Step] so nobody used it.

The loss of Prep, Gouge, Shiv & Shroud was the only real loss here when you consider what we have actually changed the rest of them. Then we also gained the likes of Shadowy Duel which I don't really think I need to expain how awesome this will be, and the Artifact's Finality which will make us track another buff for maximum burst. I'm going to guess these will be a huge make or break ability when people start using it properly.

Having said all that, I still don't ever see myself playing Sub until they fix the clunky action bar issue. Same as many people.

[Deleted]

Ofc 2v1 isn't fair, that was never my point. Because of it being unfair it was always the most fun to watch in PvP videos. Legion just makes coming out on top even harder than it already is.

[Soisoisoi]

Ofc 2v1 isn't fair, that was never my point. Because of it being unfair it was always the most fun to watch in PvP videos. Legion just makes coming out on top even harder than it already is.

That's a good thing. That means the average joe won't be able to 2v1 the so-called mouth-breathers, but the really good player still will be able to. The people making PvP videos will in all likelihood still be able to do that.