WoW skill: Knowing your class vs knowing the boss

[ceall]

I disagree with OP.
Yeah, mechanics were easier back then (I started raiding with ICC, where the assumption still applied for most bosses).
But what we have now is far more complex than just learn boss and you're good to go.
My guild just now started with mythic elisande. You need to do so much kicking, moving (both, melee and ranges, but ranges more), soaking orbs, killing adds at the right time, so rings don't screw your raid, all while maximizing your DPS/HPS on the boss to get it into the next phase.

It kinda shifted to knowing what you have to do in certain situations, while still performing as good as possible, adapting and pulling your weight.

[Emerald Archer]

I disagree with OP.
Yeah, mechanics were easier back then (I started raiding with ICC, where the assumption still applied for most bosses).
But what we have now is far more complex than just learn boss and you're good to go.
My guild just now started with mythic elisande. You need to do so much kicking, moving (both, melee and ranges, but ranges more), soaking orbs, killing adds at the right time, so rings don't screw your raid, all while maximizing your DPS/HPS on the boss to get it into the next phase.

It kinda shifted to knowing what you have to do in certain situations, while still performing as good as possible, adapting and pulling your weight.

Tbf, Elisande on mythic, the mechanical difficulty isn't really seen often. It's quite rare to have a fight that full on.

[Kreeshak]

Well without taking everything the original poster said in context word by word I am going to address his main issue:

He claims that current raiding is hard, and overwhelming to start with. And he would prefer a system where the bosses where easier, and the difficulty shifted into mastering a more complex class.

While I agree that raiding might be overwhelming, perhaps it is me that just got old and lost patience with learning new stuff. Personally I would like less overwhelming raids with less in number mechanics. Perhaps I would like less mechanics but more gear checks.

On the classes complexity nowadays I think they are just about fine. Perhaps some personal flavor to make them slightly more "fun". But there is nothing too easy, or too hard with them.

[Deja Thoris]

What a well thought out, insightful evaluation of the OP's comments .... worth all 8 hours it took you to come up with.

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You quote something that is undeniably true, then whinge about the OP being a troll ?

How does that add up ?

It adds up because its not undeniably true. The fact that I denied it shows its not undeniably true. Got any more stupid insights to add?

[trm90]

Well without taking everything the original poster said in context word by word I am going to address his main issue:

He claims that current raiding is hard, and overwhelming to start with. And he would prefer a system where the bosses where easier, and the difficulty shifted into mastering a more complex class.

While I agree that raiding might be overwhelming, perhaps it is me that just got old and lost patience with learning new stuff. Personally I would like less overwhelming raids with less in number mechanics. Perhaps I would like less mechanics but more gear checks.

On the classes complexity nowadays I think they are just about fine. Perhaps some personal flavor to make them slightly more "fun". But there is nothing too easy, or too hard with them.

The funny thing is that patchwerk-style fights with a few mechanics can still work. Mythic Augur and Mythic Tyrant Velhari are good examples -- a few phases with only a few not-so-new mechanics, but they're still total nailbiters that require perfect execution and good use of offensive/defensive abilities. But Blizzard bend over backwards to make overly bloated shitty fights like Botanist or Odyn. I know we're 12 years into WoW, but it feels like they're overcomplicating a lot of their newer fights.

[Deleted]

The funny thing is that patchwerk-style fights with a few mechanics can still work. Mythic Augur and Mythic Tyrant Velhari are good examples -- a few phases with only a few not-so-new mechanics, but they're still total nailbiters that require perfect execution and good use of offensive/defensive abilities. But Blizzard bend over backwards to make overly bloated shitty fights like Botanist or Odyn. I know we're 12 years into WoW, but it feels like they're overcomplicating a lot of their newer fights.

It depends on preference. While you enjoy the "easier" patchwerk fights there's some masochists out there who like the complicated ones just because it's fun to wrap your head around everything going on.

[Deleted]

So before we get into what I mean by "WoW skill", I want to concede some caveats:

• I'm talking PVE here.
• Gear is more important than skill.
• Raid success often has more to do with organizational effectiveness and group dynamics over individual skill.

Now that we cleared that up, I want to address what I think has been a massive shift since the beginning of the game. And for me personally, not something I like very much. Early on in Vanilla, boss mechanics we essentially laughable, but classes were far more complex. Skill leaned hard on "knowing your class" over "knowing the boss".

What I really liked about this is if I was a veteran X class, I could enter any boss fight, learn the few mechanics, but my skill and knowledge always carried over from fight to fight.

Now it seems like every spec is extremely easy, but every time a new tier comes out it becomes exhausting to have to learn every mechanic for every boss (and sometimes multiple phases). It no longer feels like I'm mastering my hunter, it just seems like I'm mastering a temporarily valuable boss fight.

Nothing carries over either. I could be the best X class, but it doesn't matter if I don't know the boss mechanics.

I don't think it should lean heavy either way (but def slightly more towards class mastery), and I do think you should be able to pick up on certain things happening in a fight and as a veteran player know how to handle it on the fly, just by your knowledge of the game.

And the pinnacle of this are the class challenges at the mage tower, where you not only need to learn the mechanics of the fight, but having the right spec and legendaries also has a great effect. It also shows to the extreme in challenge modes.

I have been playing since mid-Classic and raiding since end-Classic to end-Cata (shifting to LFR and dungeons afterwards), and while I have a big repertoire of experience-based reactions to mechanics, I still have to practise a bit to get used to a boss, especially if there are multiple mechanics on different timers which can overlap and thus completely wreck any kind of learning progress.

Adaptability might be a measurement of skill, but things get blurred if gear issues come in the way. My first 20 attempts at the fire mage challenge were not successful, because I don't have any raid bonuses (t-sets, recommended trinkets) and probably also a bit lacking in the item level department (896). Still, I managed to get to phase 2 a couple of trys, but I surely will need better gear to get this done.

I sure miss Patchwerk fights a bit from a DPS perspective, where it's not about paying attention to a myriad of conditions outside your own performance. Constant target switching to some add spawns, move here and there just because... it get's old.

The other thing though is the constant change in the class mechanics design. Last time I have been playing fire mage was in TBC in raids (ZA time runs, Hyjal, BT). I switched to fire some weeks after reaching 110, because frost was that much underperforming and I had no legendaries (and was then kinda locked to the fire spec because I got some good legendaries for that spec). Anyway, if you have to relearn and re-master your class over and over, it also hampers your skill a bit. It's quite demotivating, like your character has some severe stroke from time to time and has to get back all the basics.

[potis]

If you consider skill understanding the math behind what you can "do" and what you cant "do" then sure.

Skills comes from knowledge, the more you know what the fuck is going on PvE wise, the better you are.

The more you react to it also, the better you are.

Pressing 1 2 3 4 5 6 isnt "skill".

Classes were never hard, but saying vanilla had anything hard is a joke, vanilla just had punishable fails, if you failed you died, back then bosses had 4-5 abilities and 2 phases, 3 of them lethal, now they have 15 abilities and 4 phases but only 1 ability can be considered "lethal" while the others are pretty much "Just dont ever be below 30% and you will never die"

You are better when you know your limits and when you know how strong you are, thats the problem with most WoW players, they do not understand how their own character works.

Hence why there are still tanks being all like "I PULL AS FAST AS I WANT" on HC dungeons, while my Fury Warrior has 2mil more HP than their shit tank alt and the healer in the group has something like 4.2mil HP with the HC buff, aka over 900 ilvl etc etc while the other 2 DPS along with me pull something like 3mil DPS in a dungeon that requires 500k combined to complete.

There are simply people that dont understand the math behind the game.

[Deleted]

Honestly could not get past this. Classes were in no way "complex" in Vanilla unless this was the first MMO you'd played and you were just learning how they worked. And even then, they were pretty simple.

Well it was complicated for healers with triage / different spell ranks.

[Bigbazz]

What a well thought out, insightful evaluation of the OP's comments .... worth all 8 hours it took you to come up with.

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You quote something that is undeniably true, then whinge about the OP being a troll ?

How does that add up ?

Sorry did I hurt your feelings? I went straight to the point.

[Deleted]

Spamming Shadowbolt or Fireball or Auto Attacking doesn't make a class complex. The only reason it seems less complex now is because back then no one knew what they were doing.

I agree with this very much. Back in vanilla people didnt have tools like simcraft afaik and generally there wasn't the numbers crunching we do now so you had pages and pages of abilities 90%+ of which were a dps or hps loss to even cast, but you wanted to play on the fantasy or simply were a noob and tried to fit them all in some kind of rotation, when the most optimal would be 1-2 ability spam and auto attack.

Also now the individual skill still exists very much i would say, and not just the learning personal mechanics kind of thing but learning your class and spec specifically. I mean if you are a high percentile player(lets say 75%+ with non bis legendaries and avg rng) consistently and you do that while actually doing mechanics and not cheesing stuff that might cause a wipe just to rank higher, then you are a master of your spec. And a high percentile player means he knows what talents to use, what to swap to and for what fights, what itemization you are looking for, close to perfect rotation, and all that while doing mechanics.

The difference in skill between a low or even average and a very high percentile player is BIG, and skill in this case means alot of practice, alot of research, and realistically some intelligence.

[schwarzkopf]

It adds up because its not undeniably true.

Well, for those around in Vanilla as I was, they would know differently.

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Sorry did I hurt your feelings? I went straight to the point.

1. No.
2. No.

[Bigbazz]

Well, for those around in Vanilla as I was, they would know differently.

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1. No.
2. No.

Confirmed, feelings hurt.

[endersblade]

Vanilla was not complex when classes had 1-3 skills at most, 1 offensive cd, and then a bunch of fluff utilities that you would almost never use.

I am lol'ing so fucking hard right now. You very obviously never played Vanilla, or at the very least, never played Pally in Vanilla.

[Puri]

Early on in Vanilla, boss mechanics we essentially laughable, but classes were far more complex. Skill leaned hard on "knowing your class" over "knowing the boss".

While I agree that this is infact true for the last four xpacs, saying classes in vanilla were complex takes away all your credibility. Most specs were single ability spammers, or followed a trivial rotation like 5x sinister strike then 1x eviscerate. There was exactly 0 complexity in playing your class.

[Swalload]

I very clearly remember my extremely complex hunter rotation in vanilla, I almost broken my arcane shot button, but then it happened, the feign death and drink mid-fight. Using consumable items??????? in a rotation??????????? pliz bring back complex class mechanics blizzard sensei

[Canderous1]

classes complex in vanilla. good show chap! lol.

[Joeygiggles]

Gear is more important than skill....lol
Tell that to the mages in my guild who were 20ilvls apart both Fire spec and the 880 was doing better than the 900
Youre post is a joke

[Borfl]

I am lol'ing so fucking hard right now. You very obviously never played Vanilla, or at the very least, never played Pally in Vanilla.

Yeah ret was complex lmao https://youtu.be/rXNWvytYbyo