"We're not looking to add a bunch of abilities" - class design is DEAD

[oland138]

To be fair, hotted also specifically asked if they're keeping the rotation the same size. I would argue that we don't need more rotational abilities in general (I'm not speaking for ALL specs obviously). What we need more of is the abilities that make classes unique.

[Larrizon]

It's very easy to criticise and to say "Obviously doesn't work!" in hindsight, but very few of Legion's classes and specs are actually bad. I mean, why don't you go through and try to tell me all the specs for all the classes that are bad, if you disagree.

And if you're going to say "move from 20 to 40 abilities", why don't you list, say, three examples of specs for different classes, listing their 20 current abilities, and the 20 more you would add.

You have literally claimed to be a better game designer than Blizzard has. Time for you to stop mouthing off, and actually say EXACTLY what you would do.



You have no reason to believe the bolded bit is true. It's just a rando claim on your part, that a few cranks on the forums push. I played tanks most of this expansion and the first I found any class/spec disappointing was when I tried SV Hunter. Up until then, everything had been rosy, and I had played some other DPS specs - just not that one.

If the majority of players were disappointed in their classes, too, they'd be a lot louder about it - we've seen that in the past. You keep saying that design was good through TBC, Wrath, etc. but you clearly don't know I actually played back then (indeed back to beta), and it wasn't. It was frequently disastrously terrible. I mean, your boy Greg Street gave us brokenly OP DKs, followed by just broken and shit DKs, for example. But that was god-tier design, right?

As for Mr Custom Talent Trees, well, if Blizzard think he's good, they'll hire him. That's what they do. They hire fans all the time if they actually think they're good. Trouble most fans who have elaborate design concepts actually have shit ideas, or no ability to handle the math and logic required to actually make class design work, or lack the professionalism and emotional maturity required to throw your ideas in the bin when they don't work.

"Where is the dedication and fervour from the devs?" IN THEIR BLOODY OFFICE, genius. Where do you think it would be? Do you think Blizzard lets devs just blab class concepts and rando ideas all over the fucking internet all the time? What the fuck? You seem to be completely unable to understand the difference between a professional, full-time game-designer who works at a major studio, and some guy coming up with "intriguing concepts" on Tumblr or whatever.

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What idea?

What the devs have actually said is that some specs will get serious redesigns, but they're not going to redesign every single spec this time.

If Ret isn't redesigned, I think you'd be right to be annoyed, but they haven't said which ones will and which ones won't be so...?

What's the point? Wasting my time to appease you and prove what most people already know, that Legion gutted any hope of quality design.

As other posters have told you already, you're delusional. You have a warped belief that Blizzard have meticulously crafted classes that actually eclipse past designs. Dead PvP ladders don't lie. The CONSTANT disgruntlement across forums, not pertaining to balance noooo, instead concerning the actual fun of the class, don't lie.

"Fervour and dedication in Blizzard offices", HAHA what a joke. How can you prove that? Because from what I and most other people have seen that's anything but true.

[HordeFanboy]

What did you expect from modern retarded devs????

[Larrizon]

What did you expect from modern retarded devs????

I'm actually not surprised in the slightest. I said even before Blizzcon that they wouldn't fix anything and it's because they can't. They dug themselves an inescapable hole with Legion. It would take one gullible prick or someone who started playing last year to assume good intentions from nu-Blizzard.

[Eurhetemec]

What's the point? Wasting my time to appease you and prove what most people already know, that Legion gutted any hope of quality design.

And there it is! You talk the talk, and you absolutely cannot, and will not walk the walk. Just like I said. It's how people like you always end up, and it's why people like you never become real designers.

You talk aaaaaaall this shit about how you're better than the real designers, about how they don't have any "fervour", and the moment, the very moment you're asked to the slightest bit of work, to put your money where your extremely boastful claims are, you chicken out.

The point is, you'd show you weren't just sneering and boasting. Even if I didn't like your designs, at least you'd be trying to walk the walk, but no, just more talk and boast and criticism of others, whilst refusing to do even slightest bit of work yourself.

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To be fair, hotted also specifically asked if they're keeping the rotation the same size. I would argue that we don't need more rotational abilities in general (I'm not speaking for ALL specs obviously). What we need more of is the abilities that make classes unique.

I would concur. More utility, more interesting abilities, not returning to the days of bloated, filler-crammed rotations.

[killwithpwr]

It's very easy to criticise and to say "Obviously doesn't work!" in hindsight, but very few of Legion's classes and specs are actually bad. I mean, why don't you go through and try to tell me all the specs for all the classes that are bad, if you disagree.

And if you're going to say "move from 20 to 40 abilities", why don't you list, say, three examples of specs for different classes, listing their 20 current abilities, and the 20 more you would add.

You have literally claimed to be a better game designer than Blizzard has. Time for you to stop mouthing off, and actually say EXACTLY what you would do.



You have no reason to believe the bolded bit is true. It's just a rando claim on your part, that a few cranks on the forums push. I played tanks most of this expansion and the first I found any class/spec disappointing was when I tried SV Hunter. Up until then, everything had been rosy, and I had played some other DPS specs - just not that one.

If the majority of players were disappointed in their classes, too, they'd be a lot louder about it - we've seen that in the past. You keep saying that design was good through TBC, Wrath, etc. but you clearly don't know I actually played back then (indeed back to beta), and it wasn't. It was frequently disastrously terrible. I mean, your boy Greg Street gave us brokenly OP DKs, followed by just broken and shit DKs, for example. But that was god-tier design, right?

As for Mr Custom Talent Trees, well, if Blizzard think he's good, they'll hire him. That's what they do. They hire fans all the time if they actually think they're good. Trouble most fans who have elaborate design concepts actually have shit ideas, or no ability to handle the math and logic required to actually make class design work, or lack the professionalism and emotional maturity required to throw your ideas in the bin when they don't work.

"Where is the dedication and fervour from the devs?" IN THEIR BLOODY OFFICE, genius. Where do you think it would be? Do you think Blizzard lets devs just blab class concepts and rando ideas all over the fucking internet all the time? What the fuck? You seem to be completely unable to understand the difference between a professional, full-time game-designer who works at a major studio, and some guy coming up with "intriguing concepts" on Tumblr or whatever.

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What idea?

What the devs have actually said is that some specs will get serious redesigns, but they're not going to redesign every single spec this time.

If Ret isn't redesigned, I think you'd be right to be annoyed, but they haven't said which ones will and which ones won't be so...?

I might have misunderstood, but what i picked up on was that the devs have this idea for BfA classes to stay *mostly* the same...
Can you direct me to the place where they announced a different approach?

Now as someone who just started playing my Paladin and has never really been a big Ret Paladin person before I have to ask exactly what is the problem with the rotation? I'm not trying to start any kind of argument I'm just curious. It feels personally to me really good as I'm leveling right now. I'm currently using this Talent Setup.

I just want to know what people WANT rather than what they are unhappy with.



This is exactly the kind of question worth asking.

Retribution rotation is not the problem (allthough me and many other Rets will be pleased with a removal of thw Judgement debuff...)
The problem lies with the specs toolkit. Mostly.

First and foremost, we have the Retribution Passive.
While the devs might say that they never take that into account in balancing our damage, it most certainly is.
They won't be able to balance us other wise.
Having a proc upon a team mate's death is:
1. Counter intuitive
2. Un-balanceable if not taken into account
And,
3. Super dumb

Taking that stupid Passive ability and buffing our abilities to make up for its absence will be a great first step in repairing Ret.

Secondly, the Crusade talent.

It has been a source of great debate in the Ret community.
The talent is quite straight forward, very difficult to balance.
Especialy with the Wrath of the Ashbringer traits which buff its duration.
When you take this sort of talent, one of two scenarios happen.
Either its way too strong or its way to weak.
It has (generaly speaking) no middle ground.
You in fact hurt your DPS greatly by picking DP over it (unless you have Soul Lego).

At the moment, Crusade is at the best place it has been throughout Legion (in my eyes) due to two things:
The nerf to Wrath of the Ashbringer trait, and the buff to Blade of Wrath.
It might be manageable in BfA with having gotten rid of thw Ashbringer and its traits, but thats something we'll have to wait and see about.
I would much rather if they put it away and brought back Sanctified Wrath. Or even Holy Avenger... You know what, i don't mind even having Seraphim or Inquisition back to replace it (two of my most hated Ret spells)

Thirdly, there is the problem of the movement deficit.
Obviously, every class has a cost to movement, but to Ret it is arguably the most punishing.
The way our spec plays, we need to be constantly hitting something in order to be in the competition at all, while every second we waste away from a boss we lose so much dps (especially while Crusade is active)

Fourth, our defensives are at the worst state they have been in a long long time.
Shield of Vengance is a massive joke, BoP barely has a place to be effective and Bubble has way too long of a cooldown (as well as being on the GCD if you are not specced into Divine Intervention...)

And lastly, the in-efficient Talents that we have that could be replaced by efficient ones.
Such as Consecration, Execution Sentance, Virtues Blade, Holy Wrath and Either Greater Judgement or The Fires of Justice (depending if you look at the perspective of having t21 or t19.

There is a solution to all of it, easiest of which is just get rid of those stupid abilities that hinder us and bring back other, better designed, better suited spells like Hammer of Wrath, Divine Protection, Emancipate, Long arm of the Law, execution Sentance (Baseline) and more.

If Blizzard cares about class balance, they should get on with some changes...

[Eurhetemec]

Here is the interview with a lead game producer (male) and another (lead) game producer (female) - starting at 9:25 (I mean the video is linked in post 1 of this thread and the core statement is used as a title for this thread):

Thank you. She directly contradicts this entire thread. People have been misrepresenting what she said hardcore.

She explicitly says they like the kind of rotations we have now (+ amount of skills in Legion for most rotations): "We're not looking to expand this with a bunch of new abilities." That could always change in the end ...

No reasonable person could interpret that as "no new abilities", I'd suggest. But I get that the narrative in this thread changed what she said.

Wanting to keep the rotation about the same size and not adding a "bunch of new abilities" are completely different things from "no new abilities" or "no changes" or "we like the way all classes play". None of those is true, yet the OP and others have claimed all of them is true.

As I said, making artifact skills talents by removing actual talents is another point that I really dislike. Why do they need to remove talents to achieve this? Why just don't bake them into the spec as a baseline ability?

Ion was very clear that they have three options, and will consider it on a spec-by-spec basis.

1) Remove entirely.

2) Make baseline - i.e. part of the spec.

3) Make a talent.

They're going to pick and choose which to do. I mean - the three tanks specs I play most, all of them could lose their artifact abilities, and I wouldn't even blink. They're just things you pretty much hit when they're up. So I won't mind if they're gone, but like Discipline Priests, they really need to keep that and as baseline, I think.

As for the bolded bit, I doubt they'll remove talents just to make space. Some talents are being removed/replaced for other reasons though. For example, in BM, we know that Dire Frenzy is becoming the basic spec ability, and will no longer be a talent. So that leaves a space for a talent - which could be occupied by either a new talent, or by an artifact ability, or whatever.

They equalized most specs when it comes to gameplay. That's my gripe. Most of the specs feel and play similar. Builder / spender without CDs, ressource based with CDs - that's the game design for DPS specs. I agree that healer and tanks got better but DPS was - imho - never worse than it is now.

"Never worse" is hyperbole.

The DPS specs are much closer together, DPS-wise, than pretty much any other expansion I can think of. Less than five DPS specs are absolute rubbish, performance-wise. That's NEVER been true in WoW before. Never. Even a couple of those are kind of okay because they're so easy a mediocre player can do far better with them than a mediocre player can do with a theoretically more powerful spec (Frost DK and BM Hunter, for example - BM Hunter also has good utility), though admittedly there are a couple of higher-performing "ez" ones too.

But you look back to earlier expansions and you often see much worse situations, situations where dozens of specs were not just "a bit worse", but utterly worthless, and Blizzard had a very hard time fixing them.

I do agree that there's too much build/spend design, and maybe tanks/healers got too focused on, so I hope more DPS diversity happens in the next expansion. I just don't think it's the "screaming disaster" some people say it is. It's funny how most people complaining about this seem to be Ret Pallies and MM Hunters - which agree are not in a great way - but they're claiming everyone has it that bad? Nah.

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I might have misunderstood, but what i picked up on was that the devs have this idea for BfA classes to stay *mostly* the same...

Can you direct me to the place where they announced a different approach?

http://finalboss.tv/main/2017/11/5/b...iew-transcript

I am getting super-bored of linking this to people who don't bother to research shit and just go with whatever crazy bullshit lies the OP of a thread CLAIMS are true though

Relevant quote:

Q: With class fantasy being the big push in Legion, what is the scope of class changes in BfA?
A: There are improvements to fidelity, visuals, animations - that is an ongoing effort. They are not expecting to see dozens of specs fundamentally reworked like they did in Legion. Clearly there were a lot of large changes there: a lot of those worked out well, some less so. Some specs might see a more thorough rework - revisiting of what they did in Legion and taking a second crack at it and learning based on feedback. No changes as drastic as Survival Hunters are being planned for BfA at this time.

They're not going to do another Legion and redesign every spec again. As someone who plays mostly tanks and healers, I am glad of this, because as others have said, most tanks and healers work pretty well right now, and I have yet to play one which was boring or frustrating.

So hopefully they'll use the "more thorough reworks" they mention on the duller or more broken DPS specs - that seems to be mostly Ret, MM, SV and Outlaw (Outlaw is a pretty simple fix though - fuck Roll the Bones).

[Syri79]

The problem is too many abilities make playing a class tedious - I don't want to use 9 different abilities for a basic rotation

This is exactly the problem I have with WoW, more so these days. Rotations. Why do you want to just press 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 on and on and on... Yes, with rotations, more abilities will be tedious. If those abilities actually do different things, and rely on situations to use the right one, having more abilities becomes a LOT more interesting. Imagine having a few anytime abilities, a couple of charge-up big hitters, some positional abilities and reactional abilities. Suddenly you can get a lot more enjoyment out of a class because not every fight is the same, just with a different dance pattern on the floor.
I'd love it if they got rid of the rotation mindset, and you actually played the character...

[Larrizon]

And there it is! You talk the talk, and you absolutely cannot, and will not walk the walk. Just like I said. It's how people like you always end up, and it's why people like you never become real designers.

You talk aaaaaaall this shit about how you're better than the real designers, about how they don't have any "fervour", and the moment, the very moment you're asked to the slightest bit of work, to put your money where your extremely boastful claims are, you chicken out.

The point is, you'd show you weren't just sneering and boasting. Even if I didn't like your designs, at least you'd be trying to walk the walk, but no, just more talk and boast and criticism of others, whilst refusing to do even slightest bit of work yourself.

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I would concur. More utility, more interesting abilities, not returning to the days of bloated, filler-crammed rotations.

Your kidding right? As I said I'm not wasting my time writing up essays about all the problems plaguing class design, JUST for you. I have nothing to prove to you. If you were a Blizzard dev? Someone important with influence? Of course I would. Instead you're just some random cunt on a random thread in a random forum.

Tell me, what would I gain? Your approval that I secretly crave? That I could only ever dream of becoming some designer or whatever with your defining final word? No, it'd be a fruitless effort.

Ultimately the purpose of our discussion boils down to this: I (and many players) believe that the direction of class design, not only as of Legion, but moving forward into BfA is not adequate. You're of the notion that the opposite is true. Our opinions are divergent to a point that we'll never come to an agreement, but there's nothing wrong with that. You'll most likely play and enjoy BfA whereas I'll just dabble around on various private servers.

I thought I'd just put my 2c in and explain how disappointed I am with the state of classes (and to a lesser extent PvP) as they are now and how they'll be in the future. Because that's what it is to me. Pure, unrefined disappointment. That's all.

Consider our headbutting dissolved, at least on my end.

[Eurhetemec]

Consider our headbutting dissolved, at least on my end.

Dude, when you chickened out, after all the big "I can design a class real well!" talk, I already considered it dissolved. I've seen this before so many times, in different games and MMOs since, like, the 1990s. You get someone boasting and talking shit about the devs, how shit they are, how dumb they are, how they're "monkeys" or "retards" or whatever, and how the poster could shit out a better class, let alone design one.

But then you ask them to actually do anything? Like even come up with easy stuff, like a list of which specs are actually supposed to be "shit"? Nah. No effort. No gumption. It's always particularly funny because like you they often praise someone who did put that kind of effort in, did come up with designs - but that person is probably not talking shit about the devs, because he took a lot of time and effort to come up with his stuff, and knows how much more it would take to make it reality.

Anyway, peace out I guess.

[melodramocracy]

To be fair, class design has been dead for several expansions, they just keep kicking the corpse of it and calling the leg swing a feature.

[Nyel]

1. Thank you. She directly contradicts this entire thread. People have been misrepresenting what she said hardcore.

No reasonable person could interpret that as "no new abilities", I'd suggest. But I get that the narrative in this thread changed what she said.

Wanting to keep the rotation about the same size and not adding a "bunch of new abilities" are completely different things from "no new abilities" or "no changes" or "we like the way all classes play". None of those is true, yet the OP and others have claimed all of them is true.

2. As for the bolded bit, I doubt they'll remove talents just to make space...

3. The DPS specs are much closer together, DPS-wise...

1. Misinterpreting what? She explicitly said there will be no new abilities because they are satisfied with what classes have at the moment. She says that, she even emphasizes it (but quickly says MAYBE it's going to change later - if they don't have any desire to give us new abilities now it won't happen later neither). They seem to be happy with most of the rotations and the class design overall. That's why they don't plan to add new skills or change rotations. That's exactly what this thread is about, isn't it?

2. But that's exactly what they did with Fire Mage, Elemental Shaman, Vengeance Paladin. Most other changes we haven't seen but when they are doing this for 3 specs they are going to do this with even more. So instead of keeping the actual rotation they are ripping another talent or ability to replace it with the artifact trait.

3. I never had less fun playing DPS than in Legion. The funny thing is that I consider the most "broken" Legion specs the most fun ones (Demo Warlock & Surv Hunter). I am not talking about balance though. A spec can be fun even when it's not top or mid tier. I loved Shadow Priest in MoP and WoD but absolutely hate it in Legion. They might have given the spec a new flavour but they removed every bit of fun or variation the spec had.

The thing that bugs me a bit is that you are such an ardent defender of Blizzard at this point. I really don't understand it. Blizzard just doesn't know what to do with classes. Legion: remove every group buff - BfA: bring back every group buff / WoD/Legion: remove most of the utility skills - BfA: bring back utility skills. Blizzard's class design is just horrible and there is really no excuse for this.

[Larrizon]

Dude, when you chickened out, after all the big "I can design a class real well!" talk, I already considered it dissolved. I've seen this before so many times, in different games and MMOs since, like, the 1990s. You get someone boasting and talking shit about the devs, how shit they are, how dumb they are, how they're "monkeys" or "retards" or whatever, and how the poster could shit out a better class, let alone design one.

But then you ask them to actually do anything? Like even come up with easy stuff, like a list of which specs are actually supposed to be "shit"? Nah. No effort. No gumption. It's always particularly funny because like you they often praise someone who did put that kind of effort in, did come up with designs - but that person is probably not talking shit about the devs, because he took a lot of time and effort to come up with his stuff, and knows how much more it would take to make it reality.

Anyway, peace out I guess.

As I said, you're not important or influential in any way, a nobody. Why go through the trouble of doing anything, compiling even the faintest list, just to convince you of my intentions. You say listing specs would be easy, but that doesn't translate it to being meaningful. So I list some bad specs...then what? No reasoning, no coherent explanations. Why bother?

If a dev or someone of that caliber could see and evaluate my writings, I would have no hesitation to transcribe my thoughts. Otherwise, I might as well be scattering dust to the wind. I just don't care you about you at all.

Well, take care.

[kalaratic]

Flipside: Do you dislike how classes play?

This is a really awesome post, and I think it is important to look at class design with this perspective that you can't just add in a spell for the sake of adding things in. I wouldn't be surprised if the class design team had this mantra drilled into them going into 7.0. However, I feel that if you are always thinking like this as a designer, you limit your creativity to the point where you create bare bone kits because you know at that point every spell has to be there. As long as "DPS spell 1, 2, and 3", "AoE Spell", and "DPS Cooldown" are buttons you can hit, you have a spec. This is what legion class design boils down to, if there are outlier specs that have the odd 4th or 5th rotational ability, or some proc that briefly changes the rotation, they are far and few between.

I also think you playing a holy priest influences a lot of your opinion. I main a shadow priest but I do a lot of content as holy. The spec has a button for pretty much everything you could want as a healer. I agree that if you had to think of 3 active spells to add to the spec, you would be grasping at straws and resort to some uninspired choice just to fill that slot. I noticed this thought in general with a lot of people who play mainly healing or tanking specs that their kit feels pretty fleshed out, so maybe the designers did a fine job with those roles. I think viewing this topic from a DPS perspective opens up a lot more interesting discussion due to the min-max nature of the role.

I'm not just mad at the class design team because they are keeping their poorly designed reworks from 7.0. I think it's beyond pathetic that we see all these new and exciting 8.0 demos with some specs that are exactly what we have now with a party buff. There's no evolution, and that's what I really hate. If a designer believes that their 7.0 spec is the best it's been, that's fine. But to think it doesn't need to be pushed further, that all it needs is to bake in some artifact traits, is lazy design.

To watch the opening ceremony, the what's next panel, the Q&A panel, and hear nothing about class changes (even if they are minor) means to me class design is dead. If a class designer cannot find anything exciting to announce at an expansion reveal, they shouldn't be a class designer.

[Riistov]

There's a fairly significant group of people who are weary of seeing their class completely redesigned every 18-24 months.

Warlocks and Shaman come to mind. I was getting pretty tired of playing a new class every expansion lol.

[Eurhetemec]

1. Misinterpreting what? She explicitly said there will be no new abilities because they are satisfied with what classes have at the moment. She says that, she even emphasizes it (but quickly says MAYBE it's going to change later - if they don't have any desire to give us new abilities now it won't happen later neither). They seem to be happy with most of the rotations and the class design overall. That's why they don't plan to add new skills or change rotations. That's exactly what this thread is about, isn't it?

She doesn't say that. You literally quoted what she said, and... I mean, you do read English, right? It seems like you do.

"We're not looking to expand this with a bunch of new abilities."

That's not the same as "no new abilities". Why am I having to explain this to you? Any person should be able to comprehend and process how those are different things.

Ion said:

"Some specs might see a more thorough rework - revisiting of what they did in Legion and taking a second crack at it and learning based on feedback. No changes as drastic as Survival Hunters are being planned for BfA at this time."

So no, "no new abilities" is just a lie, and it's not something either dev actually said.

2. But that's exactly what they did with Fire Mage, Elemental Shaman, Vengeance Paladin. Most other changes we haven't seen but when they are doing this for 3 specs they are going to do this with even more. So instead of keeping the actual rotation they are ripping another talent or ability to replace it with the artifact trait.

I don't think that they did do that. Can you cite a dev saying they ditched a talent solely to make space, not because it was a bad talent? You're not allowed to hoard talents, dude. I know you probably have a shelf full of action figures still in their boxes and stuff, but that's not how talents work.

[QUOTE=Nyel;47915467]3. I never had less fun playing DPS than in Legion. The funny thing is that I consider the most "broken" Legion specs the most fun ones (Demo Warlock & Surv Hunter). I am not talking about balance though. A spec can be fun even when it's not top or mid tier. I loved Shadow Priest in MoP and WoD but absolutely hate it in Legion. They might have given the spec a new flavour but they removed every bit of fun or variation the spec had. [/quot]e

I've had a lot less fun playing DPS in other expansions, because I don't enjoy specs that underperform wildly AND are un-fun to play. But this is a matter of different priorities. I consider SV to be totally un-fun in Legion, btw - but you enjoy it!

The thing that bugs me a bit is that you are such an ardent defender of Blizzard at this point. I really don't understand it. Blizzard just doesn't know what to do with classes. Legion: remove every group buff - BfA: bring back every group buff / WoD/Legion: remove most of the utility skills - BfA: bring back utility skills. Blizzard's class design is just horrible and there is really no excuse for this.

People keep saying this, but Blizzard have always experimented. They've always added and removed stuff. All the way back. You spit on that, but I dunno, it seems good to me, I'd rather they kept trying new stuff. And make your mind up, do you want them to try new stuff or not? You seem to want it, but to also be complaining about it!

As for "Blizzard's class design is horrible", okay - compared to who?

Who designs classes better.

I mean, off the top of my head I can say FFXIV does not. You'd have to be pretty bonkers to claim that. GW2 does not. Holy shit they just make balance worse and worse and introduce ever-less-fun-to-play Elite Specs - then make playing them near-mandatory. There are like three specs in GW2 which are vital and every other one is kind of a joke. BDO does not, I mean hahahahahaha but no it doesn't.

So who are these magic designers who are better than Blizzard at MMO design?

[Ragnarocket]

Warlocks and Shaman come to mind. I was getting pretty tired of playing a new class every expansion lol.

Enhancement shaman was getting pretty annoying to learn every time around. At least with Elemental it generally comes down to Lightning Bolts and Lava Bursts.

[Eurhetemec]

I'm not just mad at the class design team because they are keeping their poorly designed reworks from 7.0. I think it's beyond pathetic that we see all these new and exciting 8.0 demos with some specs that are exactly what we have now with a party buff. There's no evolution, and that's what I really hate. If a designer believes that their 7.0 spec is the best it's been, that's fine. But to think it doesn't need to be pushed further, that all it needs is to bake in some artifact traits, is lazy design.

To watch the opening ceremony, the what's next panel, the Q&A panel, and hear nothing about class changes (even if they are minor) means to me class design is dead.

Have you read the WoWhead article on class changes and new abilities? Because it seems like you haven't. There's one AFTER the buff-related one.

If a class designer cannot find anything exciting to announce at an expansion reveal, they shouldn't be a class designer.

I'm pretty sure we didn't have any big announcements about class design in at least a couple of other expansions.

[Rurin]

To be fair, hotted also specifically asked if they're keeping the rotation the same size. I would argue that we don't need more rotational abilities in general (I'm not speaking for ALL specs obviously). What we need more of is the abilities that make classes unique.

Exactly. Having more useless abilities that every other class has just for the sake of having more abilities is pointless.

[Riistov]

Enhancement shaman was getting pretty annoying to learn every time around. At least with Elemental it generally comes down to Lightning Bolts and Lava Bursts.

True!

I like the new builder/spender concept of Ele.

I like Legion Enhance, I just hope they stick with it. I don't know if I can handle another redesign.