Pruning, remember when this game was so popular because it required skills.

[Detheavn]

So we went from Wrath Babies to MoP and WoD now?
Weird to see people change things to fit their context...

[Wass]

Hi.

Some people are going dangerously far from reasonable posting and geting into borderline spam territory. If you post, make sure to add some value to the discussion. Unconstructive posts will be infracted from here on out. Also, behave. Insulting other users won't be tolerated.

Thank you, carry on.

[Darktbs]

The only things i will miss are Death Pact for my Frost Dk and the traps for my Hunter.Other than that.

Plague Strike.-Never use since i picked the Necrotic Plague.

Death and Decay - It is cool but if i miss it i can just go to Blood.

Icy Touch <<< howling Blast.

Blood Boil -Same as Death and Decay.

however,i do miss Gorefiend's grasp.

[solarfallz]

Terrible example. Not only was Wrath full of retarded bloat, but it was also the first expansion that was so bad that the playerbase stopped growing. Where at first glance you might see the subscriber number peak as an indication of "most popular" a peak is actually THE TURNING POINT of good and bad. Wrath lost so many subs it was unreal, and really only managed to not totally sink due to massive marketing campaign at the time.

[minteK917]

Terrible example. Not only was Wrath full of retarded bloat, but it was also the first expansion that was so bad that the playerbase stopped growing. Where at first glance you might see the subscriber number peak as an indication of "most popular" a peak is actually THE TURNING POINT of good and bad. Wrath lost so many subs it was unreal, and really only managed to not totally sink due to massive marketing campaign at the time.

read the graph correctly plz. It started with the most sub and went into cata with the most subs lol. It only fell during Cata. More then one year of ICC was not able to drop the subs.

[Mafic]

The dropoff happened in Cata because the talent trees were pruned hard and players left in droves.

[solarfallz]

read the graph correctly plz. It started with the most sub and went into cata with the most subs lol. It only fell during Cata. More then one year of ICC was not able to drop the subs.

See those huge gaps during WOTLK? Think about it for just a few seconds.

[melodramocracy]

Another thread desperately trying to prove that checkers is more interesting than chess. More news at 11.

Infracted. See warning a few posts up.

[Deleted]

There was a lot more choice for PvP with old talents. Off the top of my head for warlock PvP specs included:

30 affliction for shadow mastery (10% more shadow dmg or was it 20% maybe) / 21 destruction for ruin (increase crit damage from 50% to 100%) playing with succubus and spamming seduce and shadow bolt. Very cheesy but effective, made popular by drakedog and his PvP videos.

20 affliction and 31 demonology for nightfall and soul link. Very tanky almost unkillable spec, no burst damage though but could outlast opponents with dots and self healing (rare in vanilla). Usually played with felhunter.

31 destro for conflagrate and 20 affliciton for nightfall for a burst damage spec, very fun but was easy to kill compared to other specs.

[Knolan]

So you stopped playing when you stopped being a god class that can do everything.

See, this is exactly why pruning happened in the first place. Everyone had an answer for everything and the game has devolved into 'which class has just a bit more numbers'. In an ideal world each class will have something special they do that no one else can, meaning every class is viable and different.

The problem is... Well. Druids. Their class fantasy is being good at everything, which just does not fit into a game where each class is meant to be good at one thing and bad at others. I foresee druids being overpowered for the entirety of this expansion, as well -- because god forbid resto isn't top dog for more than a week.

If anything, druids require more pruning. Particularly removal of bear form / root shifting to help them get on with the times where they aren't allowed to have four viable tank healing dps specs.

Gods? Not at all, as you said yourself, everyone had a lot of CDs on MoP, the difference is that if I was good I could counter someone who wasn't, I had plenty of great fights during BGs against people that actually knew what they were doing. Nowadays if a rogue stuns me every 20s which is a part of their basic gameplay, I am fucked.
Also, I played as a feral druid through WotLK and Cata, S8 to S16.

Also, I played on arenas a lot and druids at MoP's longest seasons had a 2% arena representation a peak, comparing with warriors who had ~12 and peaked 15%, for instance. I played a feral druid through ups and lows for as long as I found that druids were fun and felt like a druid.

[Saberstrike]

Eh; I won't disagree with you that having 10 counters for all 10 things someone can do to you in the game is exciting in a 1v1, but in a setting that's anywhere above / including 2v2 such things are impossible to balance properly. There's no real room to shine if anyone can heal / remove stuns / run away from you forever.

It's better for the game in the long run if fights are fast and people actually die, than if you chase a druid around pillar for 30 mins while the -healing debuff stacks up. May as well cut the middle man and cut to the chase, no?

[A dot Ham]

Me neither.

I decided it was time to deliver the truth about this game to all the god damn WoD and MoP babies already.




Look at this Graph carefully first. As you can see WOW was at its most popular during Wrath of the lich king. Now lets see about that huge amount of skills that brought all those nerds to the yards.

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=105151

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=121407

So yeah, go pruning go.

(1) Giving you a tool for every situation makes the game about execution, not about skill or strategy. You can teach a monkey execution. When you see yellow hit this button. When you see a cast bar, hit your interrupt.

(2) When new abilities are added/were added. The team looked at strengths and weaknesses and closed the gaps. They either improved upon strengths, or trivialized weaknesses.

(3) They can only be so creative, when there is overlap in strength and weaknesses we get homogenization, homogenization leads to players seeking to do more solo content, and devaluing fellow player involvement.

(4) Games like LoL are widely popular and have a wide range of skill for the given character. So clearly less IS more. (in b4 some fucktard cries WoW is an mmo not a moba, so before you comment at least demonstrate you are rational enough to be able to draw parallels between the 2 game types or I will simply call you an imbecile) the principles are the same. The strategy and skill comes from the TEAM you create, and how their strengths compliment strengths or fill the gaps in weaknesses. The pruning in legion makes grouping relevant again. Ya I can't solo shit anymore... but is that REALLY a bad thing? We are after all playing an MMO. Massively multiplayer...

- - - Updated - - -

The game requires skill now. Skill does not come from a sheer number of abilities, it comes from careful positioning and using abilities at the right time.

No that is execution.

Take something simple like basketball... stand at the free throw line, and hit the red box with the ball and you are likely to score a basket.

Take me 5'11" white and overweight
vs
Kobe at 6'6" black and fit
vs
Shaq at 7'1" black and tall AF

You can give the same instructions to all 3, and if all 3 do it, and all 3 score, that's execution.

SKILL is how you employ strategy to achieve that execution.

Shaq is likely to just shoot over you and pretend like you aren't there.

I am likely to miss.

Kobe is likely to do some fancy show off leg work and/or fake and then shoot.

Jordan is likely to jump over all of us.

In terms of WoW. A mage vs a warrior (teammates unknown) a mage is likely to use the same rotation and number of abilities to take down a warrior. So prefer to pretend they are melee and take hits to the face. Some prefer to let teammates engage and nuke from the back line. While others prefer to do a little of both. The rotation is arguably the same though. You knowing that isn't skill though.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS: I think its funny that people use old, irrelevant, and incomplete data to draw wackadoo conclusions about the current state of the game.

[Papuchongo]

Yeah Wrath is still my favorite expansion.

[Knolan]

Eh; I won't disagree with you that having 10 counters for all 10 things someone can do to you in the game is exciting in a 1v1, but in a setting that's anywhere above / including 2v2 such things are impossible to balance properly. There's no real room to shine if anyone can heal / remove stuns / run away from you forever.

It's better for the game in the long run if fights are fast and people actually die, than if you chase a druid around pillar for 30 mins while the -healing debuff stacks up. May as well cut the middle man and cut to the chase, no?

I disagree, there are quite a few trade offs in there, you need to balance the game on those. But on the topic you brought, I think that is the reason many people left (besides those who don't like the game with less buttons, like me), they said:

"Ok, we will remove the abilities and the game will be more balanced!"
And now, where is the balance? Players paid the price, they have a game that no longer have abilities players used to love in the name of balance, and yet there is no balance to be found. In your specific example, try killing a rogue in a 2x2 match and tell me how well they solved the problem in the run away forever area.

I don't blame ability pruning to be only reason WoW lost subscribers, but it was one of the main reasons it lost mine (the changes to professions and gear customization sealed the deal). I remember when MoP came out I went with excitement to check what new abilities there was in the game and what cool new plays I would be able to pull. When I got to take a look at legion, I was instead looking for what abilities I had lost.

[Saberstrike]

I won't say you're wrong -- rogues are op; But I feel like it's more because they weren't pruned enough, moreso than because every other class is now weaker. Both those things are true, but it's a rogue problem rather than pruning problem with your specific example.

I also won't disagree that getting new abilities is fun; However --

Once more bringing up druids and MoP, symbiosis was an abomination of an ability that was either impossibly overpowered or completely useless without middle ground. That's your sign that an ability is badly designed; There's still badly designed abilities (shadow strike), and even entire badly designed classes (rogue & druid (too strong) / warrior & shaman (too weak) ) in the game right now post-pruning, but now that the classes have less abilites and IF blizzard cares enough it would be a much more even space to balance them.

Or so I hope, at least. I don't really trust blizzard to give a hoot after WoD, but hey. Maybe now that so much has been removed we'd see a few things added now and then.

[Knolan]

I won't say you're wrong -- rogues are op; But I feel like it's more because they weren't pruned enough, moreso than because every other class is now weaker. Both those things are true, but it's a rogue problem rather than pruning problem with your specific example.

I also won't disagree that getting new abilities is fun; However --

Once more bringing up druids and MoP, symbiosis was an abomination of an ability that was either impossibly overpowered or completely useless without middle ground. That's your sign that an ability is badly designed; There's still badly designed abilities (shadow strike), and even entire badly designed classes (rogue & druid (too strong) / warrior & shaman (too weak) ) in the game right now post-pruning, but now that the classes have less abilites and IF blizzard cares enough it would be a much more even space to balance them.

Or so I hope, at least. I don't really trust blizzard to give a hoot after WoD, but hey. Maybe now that so much has been removed we'd see a few things added now and then.

I agree that rogues were OP WoD because they kept too many abilities (Gouge? REALLY? ) But the problem is that once you remove more abilities from rogue to balance it out, mages will be OP, then after that Shamans, then at some point, rogues again and in the end you will have a game where every class will be equal, which is a recurring complaint I have seem in the forums and made myself since cata hit.

And yes, while some symb abilities were absolutely useless (*coff* frost nova *coff*) and some were very overpowered (day 1 dispersion), they could have iterated on/tuned it instead of straight out removing.

[Deleted]

Me neither.

I decided it was time to deliver the truth about this game to all the god damn WoD and MoP babies already.




Look at this Graph carefully first. As you can see WOW was at its most popular during Wrath of the lich king. Now lets see about that huge amount of skills that brought all those nerds to the yards.

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=105151

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=121407

So yeah, go pruning go.

abilties got pruned enourmously in WoD and Legion
so the game was more popular when classes had more abilties
is that what you wanted to prove?

[Mafic]

abilties got pruned enourmously in WoD and Legion
so the game was more popular when classes had more abilties
is that what you wanted to prove?

Yup.

Cata started the pruning and saw the largest drop of the playerbase.

[Niwes]

cheeseus. i play that game without interruption since 2005. its absurd to me (just my oppinion) what shit some ppl are talking here. regardless if its the op, some pro-op ppl or contra-op ppl. imo some of you talk hillllarious shit *rolleyes* but thats just my oppinion...

[Deleted]

Some PVP history:
Vanilla and Wrath were the best times for pvp. It had more diversity and had great balance. TBC was more a between stage to get from vanilla to wrath.
In hindsight, although it brought more skill it would have been better if Arena never excisted. It tunnelvision balance too much.

Vanilla:
Only battlegrounds balance was Raidgear > Rock,paper scissor balance.

TBC:
Was all about Arena. Resilience changed a lot brought more skill to the field.
It was dominated by Arms warrior + Resto Druid zerg strat. At tournemants Rogue/Mage/Priest was always the victor, but required a lot of coordination. RPM only had one or 2 chances before the mage was oom and useless,

Wrath:
All about Arena.
It fluctuated more. Resto Druid + Warrior was still a thing but other classes shined as well. Mages were no mare 2 chances OOM useless.
Tournemants several comps were popular and each team played different comps. In the end RPM was the victor.
I rememebr whenever a 2melee+healer combo was the best composition the outcry was load. Players rather wanted RPM to dominate than 2 melee zerg.
Admittingly complaining about mages was a thing as well (their cc is annoying to deal with and when no one is in epic gear they are OP).

Cata:
Hmmm lost interest, didn't like the melee uptime. Was the first expansion mages wasn't dominating before players were weiring high quality qaulity rares + epics. Was wondering what the hell happened and what that would mean at actuall pvp stage.....but when i tried I didn't enjoy it I couldnt kite anymore as mage.