[8.0] Battle Shout is back!

[Deleted]

In well composed raid sure. In 5-man and solo content you won't get all the buffs. I like the fact that my solo dps is pretty close to raid dps, so not that happy about the change, not sure what it accomplishes.

It's a setback. While e.g. legendary system is a huge fail in Legion, removing raidbuffs is a step toward better QoL. You win time, by not having to wait for duffs after a wipe, you don't have to ask for a refresh and as I said, when everyone has all the same buffs it's just like incraseing your dps or hps by x percent, because they all add up. Instead just give us plain dps/hps increase or reduce enemy hp/damage.

It was a flawed system for years, they got rid of it finally and now it's about to come back?

[Bigbazz]

Class buffs aren't about the convenience or inconvenience, it's more about building group/raid composition and synergy. It's not really a thing these days but of course in the old days the difference buffs made was astronomical, it could easily be the difference between doing 2x or more dps than unbuffed or any point inbetween.. Nowadays give or take a few minor variances and Bloodlust (the only large factor) we do full dps at all times.

Both systems have a lot of merit in an MMO, but for sure the modern style is more convenient and much better for the solo or pug player. It really didn't feel good in TBC when your Enhance Shaman didn't show up and you had to revert to bottom barrel performance, or when you were considered a second class citizen to Hunters when it came to the optimal buff setup. Most dps battles in the old days were more about a war of the group/raid buffs.

To be honest the modern style in Legion is probably just the better option, performance is the majority placed on the player without the inconveniences of having to organise buffing, nor the let down of missing a key buff for your spec that will greatly affect performance.

[Warriorsarri]

I'd say straight away that the game is better off without having raidbuffs, but if they do decide to bring them back, don't give every class a unique buff. Only way I'd say it would make any real sense is if they had the system they had at the very end prior to removing them, few buffs which was shared between a few classes (Stam being priest, warrior, warlock, hunter, for example).

[Deleted]

If anything I'm glad they're bringing back class buffs, possibly not a different one for each class, but to at least contribute to taking a variety of classes rather than i.e. 8 rogues to a raid. Edit: Also contributing to taking synergistic groups to dungeons for example, either spellcasting or physical heavy groups. That idea has always struck gold with me.

Furthermore the only thing I'm really hoping for is an imaginative dps cooldown that doesn't make a single stat completely obsolete. Man can dream.

[Suntall]

Class buffs are back. All but the shaman ones have been out there now, so basically it's a revert. Not bad.

[nowish]

Btw to all of you who welcome that raidbuffs are back: You do realize, their removal is a QoL change, because "when everyone is buffed, then no one is buffed".

I think it was Ion that said it, but the idea that you would think about what classes to bring, as they would give extra buffs to the raid, is another thing to prevent class stacking to the extrem and maybe secure x class a raid slot, even tho its not a top dps spec.

Have arms war for physical dmg debuff on the target, have lock for CoE... Instead of how it is now (correct me if Im wrong, havent raided mythics since I quit in HFC, but think my observation skills are not too flawed) people just look at the sims and pick the highest dmg classes for most fights (unless you need soakers, then you bring rogues and rogues and ... rogues?).

Not having buffs / debuffs makes the game so fucking bland its ridiculous. At least some flavour comes back, now we just need FM and DI and snapshotting + reforging and we are set

#Bringbacksunders

[Deleted]

I think it was Ion that said it, but the idea that you would think about what classes to bring, as they would give extra buffs to the raid, is another thing to prevent class stacking to the extrem and maybe secure x class a raid slot, even tho its not a top dps spec.

Have arms war for physical dmg debuff on the target, have lock for CoE... Instead of how it is now (correct me if Im wrong, havent raided mythics since I quit in HFC, but think my observation skills are not too flawed) people just look at the sims and pick the highest dmg classes for most fights (unless you need soakers, then you bring rogues and rogues and ... rogues?).

Not having buffs / debuffs makes the game so fucking bland its ridiculous. At least some flavour comes back, now we just need FM and DI and snapshotting + reforging and we are set

#Bringbacksunders

Raidbuffs are the +stamina +str +crit etc. Your are not talking about them, you are talking about old class utilities. Battle shout along with the others gave a flat attack power increase to all. That is a raidbuff. Press a button in every 60 mins (it was 5 mins before, and if I remember correctly there was also a 2 minute version of it), recieve a cookie.
Such skillz, much flavour, wow.

About sim dps: As long as combat logging exists and there will be 5-10% or more difference between two dps specs, elitist wannabes and min-maxers will always use them and bring the better class to beat the timer more easily. There is always a FoTM class/spec and it changes with each patch. One has to be naive to believe in the opposite.
If you need immunity so many times on a single bossfight, I think it's a bad combat design.

[nowish]

Raidbuffs are the +stamina +str +crit etc. Your are not talking about them, you are talking about old class utilities. Battle shout along with the others gave a flat attack power increase to all. That is a raidbuff. Press a button in every 60 mins (it was 5 mins before, and if I remember correctly there was also a 2 minute version of it), recieve a cookie.
Such skillz, much flavour, wow.

About sim dps: As long as combat logging exists and there will be 5-10% or more difference between two dps specs, elitist wannabes and min-maxers will always use them and bring the better class to beat the timer more easily. There is always a FoTM class/spec and it changes with each patch. One has to be naive to believe in the opposite.
If you need immunity so many times on a single bossfight, I think it's a bad combat design.

Im talking about both.
1 thing which I thought added alot of flavour to the game where you have 2 warriors, fury was the best specc but 1 "had" to go arms as it would give a larget net dps to the raid but sacrifice personal dps. If you don't think decision about raid comp like that was fun, then you probably havent really raided in every expansion up to the point where they removed it.

It doesn't have to be something incredibly skillful to add something with flavour to the game lol.

You also seem to misinterpret what I was saying with the sims. If frost mages are 3% ahead of warlocks, you would bring mages unless warlocks provided a CoE debuff on the target, in that case you would at least bring that 1 warlock to buff the rest of the raid.

Don't you think Im aware of FotM classes ? >.< I raided hardcore for a long time, but it feels better to bring something (maybe buffs/debuffs or other utility) than simply only being a dps machine. To what extend this should be in the game can be discussed, but Im pretty sure the vast majority agree that simplifying an MMORPG is something that takes away the feeling of the experience being "epic".
Battle shout gave rage, horn of winter gave runic power etc. I miss being able to banner + intervene to travel across the room faster, vigi the tank/someone taking care of a certain mechanic. I know it requires more awareness than just sitting there pressing 1 2 3 but contributing in another way than simply pure dps is what I really liked about raiding and one of the reasons I quit as it didn't feel rewarding playing good anymore. The feeling when you clutch vigi / cry to save someone on a progression fight is the best ever... I remember intervening our arcane mages in Totgc to reduce their threat.

What can you do know, leap/charge and interrupt/fear something... guess you can still clutch cry so there's that.

I know we are not specifically talking about these kind of utilities with mere raid wide stats buff that you would bring. But I see this as a step in the right direction to give this kind of flavour back into the game. If you don't see it as flavour thats fine... but I know alot of people enjoy differentiating (spelling?) themselves by not only playing for pure dps. You are either the guy who volunteers to do the shit mechanic and sacrifice your dps, or the one who sits there quietly pressing 123.

Maybe my perspective is just skewed and there is actually lot of things to still differentiate yourself with, in terms of skill.

I also don't think it is a bad combat design to having a fight require alot of immunities to beat, if its early on and it will be less requirements for it as gear progresses (a phase lasting longer due to lack of gear aka dps and thus requiring more instances of the soaking mechanic).

Just think in general it incentivize people to bring non top 3 dps classes/speccs if they brought raid utility or buffed the others dps (like it used to be).

Think more casual guilds might not have this issue though, and bring the player not the class in most cases and doesnt think too much about min maxing (please correct me if Im wrong).

Sorry for rambling on, just got abit excited to maybe raid again after the blizzcon announcements...

[GorkAndMork]

Im talking about both.
1 thing which I thought added alot of flavour to the game where you have 2 warriors, fury was the best specc but 1 "had" to go arms as it would give a larget net dps to the raid but sacrifice personal dps.

Which was not fun. Being buff bot is pretty boring. Seeking buff bot for your raid is pretty boring. Most you can do to add a lot of flavor to the game is to balance specs and make them as unique as possible while at it.

And this "but you have insane buff for the raid!" was and might in the future used to justify no balance changes to a particular spec. This shouldn't happen ever again.

Let's talk about min-maxing. Imagine they design the game the way that classes sacrifice personal DPS for a meaningful raid-wide buff. Then why the hell min-maxing raid leader would bring more than one of this class. Here ya go, got a useless class, because there are more players at a particular class than there're raids. And if you bring back party buffs (like party-level windfury) the nightmare of going after perfect raid setup commences.

[nowish]

Which was not fun. Being buff bot is pretty boring. Most you can do to add a lot of flavor to the game is to balance specs and make them as unique as possible while at it.

Hate to break it to you, but you can never balance speccs 100% accurately, so if you were to add buffs to the classes, thats another thing you have to take into consideration apart from pure dps, when thinking of setups. That's basically my point.

Fun is relative to what you are trying to accomplish... If you dont play for progression and only want big numbers for yourself, sure I can see how it is boring not being that number one spot, then again what if your class is not that strong this expansion regardless and you would do shit as either spec (just a tiny bit more as x than y). But doesn't change the fact that it brings a bit more depth into the game.
Wether that's good or bad is a personal preference.

More things to do and keep track of = fun for me.
Less things to do (aka 123) is very lackluster.

Been mainly speaking about pve, but even in pvp buffs made a difference. Decision making if you should rebuff or purge their buffs etc.
I guess you can argue that it locks comps instead of opening up options, if they bring certain buffs that might overlap. But mostly comps cant work if they share the same kind of cc and such... I donno starting to ramble again...

[GorkAndMork]

Hate to break it to you, but you can never balance speccs 100% accurately, so if you were to add buffs to the classes, thats another thing you have to take into consideration apart from pure dps, when thinking of setups. That's basically my point.

Fun is relative to what you are trying to accomplish... If you dont play for progression and only want big numbers for yourself, sure I can see how it is boring not being that number one spot, then again what if your class is not that strong this expansion regardless and you would do shit as either spec (just a tiny bit more as x than y). But doesn't change the fact that it brings a bit more depth into the game.
Wether that's good or bad is a personal preference.

More things to do and keep track of = fun for me.
Less things to do (aka 123) is very lackluster.

Been mainly speaking about pve, but even in pvp buffs made a difference. Decision making if you should rebuff or purge their buffs etc.
I guess you can argue that it locks comps instead of opening up options, if they bring certain buffs that might overlap. But mostly comps cant work if they share the same kind of cc and such... I donno starting to ramble again...

Yeah, then buffs become part of "balance" and buff bot specs are never changed slumbering good 20-30% behind top specs. And are played by only fans of the spec and desperate for PvE-gear PvPers.

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Fun is relative to what you are trying to accomplish... If you dont play for progression and only want big numbers for yourself, sure I can see how it is boring not being that number one spot, then again what if your class is not that strong this expansion regardless and you would do shit as either spec (just a tiny bit more as x than y). But doesn't change the fact that it brings a bit more depth into the game.
Wether that's good or bad is a personal preference.

Hate to break to ya, but 80+% playing this game want to be better than others. This includes in-raid DPS competition. That's why there're so many FOTM rerollers, huge site dedicated to DPS logs with rankings and DPS meters which show who's last and who's first. And all these people would absolutely HATE being a buff bot.

Not to mention that buff bot will most likely just press 123, because min-maxing his performance doesn't really matter. He gets into raid just to press buff button once in X minutes.

[Rafalga]

I had to point out just one thing in this video. From the comments;

It's Alpha so all haters out there can just go back to your mothers basement and chill!

Some people never learn how blizz does shit even after all these years.

[nowish]

Yeah, then buffs become part of "balance" and buff bot specs are never changed slumbering good 20-30% behind top specs. And are played by only fans of the spec and desperate for PvE-gear PvPers.

20-30% behind top specc? Could you specify from what expansion or where this was present, because this sounds very unfamiliar to me. I did not do 30% less dps than a fury warrior if I played arms in ICC for instance.
Another thing that I thought of , though that did not apply to legion due to artifcat weapon. Is that I remember that we used to have rouges who played different speccs, to make use of the different kinds of weapons that dropped, like 1 handed swords for combat and daggers for assa, to avoid loot being thrown away and it would net overall more dps than having both combat for instance. Fury warriors 1 playing TG 1 playing SMF to distribute loot better. Granted this can only be applied to certain classes.

Im not sure how it will be in BFA, they are gonna make us use normal weapons right?

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Hate to break to ya, but 80+% playing this game want to be better than others. This includes in-raid DPS competition. That's why there're so many FOTM rerollers, huge site dedicated to DPS logs with rankings and DPS meters which show who's last and who's first. And all these people would absolutely HATE being a buff bot.

Not to mention that buff bot will most likely just press 123, because min-maxing his performance doesn't really matter. He gets into raid just to press buff button once in X minutes.

Im all for dps whoring and getting ranks during farm if you want to go there. That has no place for progression raiding though. And you sitting and aoeing adds while the rest singletargets doesnt really "make you better" than other people, pretty ignorant to think that.

You literally had people with certain buffs/debuffs, to min/max the raid dps, why the hell would said person not min max his own performance, really counterproductive don't you think?

We can just end the discussion here, you have no idea what you are talking about.

[Aggrophobic]

I don't really see the point.
I'd rather have more spells and abilities to use in my actual rotation or as ulitities when needed.
Just pure buffs that you click after ever wipe seems so pointless, doesn't it?

It's the same with food, runes and flasks - They really add nothing to the game.
Potions are better then or short buffs that you need to use in the right situation.

[Bigbazz]

20-30% behind top specc? Could you specify from what expansion or where this was present, because this sounds very unfamiliar to me. I did not do 30% less dps than a fury warrior if I played arms in ICC for instance.
Another thing that I thought of , though that did not apply to legion due to artifcat weapon. Is that I remember that we used to have rouges who played different speccs, to make use of the different kinds of weapons that dropped, like 1 handed swords for combat and daggers for assa, to avoid loot being thrown away and it would net overall more dps than having both combat for instance. Fury warriors 1 playing TG 1 playing SMF to distribute loot better. Granted this can only be applied to certain classes.

Im not sure how it will be in BFA, they are gonna make us use normal weapons right?

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Im all for dps whoring and getting ranks during farm if you want to go there. That has no place for progression raiding though. And you sitting and aoeing adds while the rest singletargets doesnt really "make you better" than other people, pretty ignorant to think that.

You literally had people with certain buffs/debuffs, to min/max the raid dps, why the hell would said person not min max his own performance, really counterproductive don't you think?

We can just end the discussion here, you have no idea what you are talking about.

If you look at TBC then for sure Arms could easily be 20% behind Fury. Look at some Fury numbers, on a low armor boss maybe a well geared Fury Warrior is doing 2400 dps while an Arms Warrior is doing maybe 1800-1900? It was largely down to stuff like haste scaling, Rogues and Furies scaled amazingly with haste (Bloodlust, insanely OP haste pots with 400 haste rating, Dragonspine Trophy, LW drums) while Arms scaled poorly with Haste (because of 0.5s hard cast on Slam with auto swing reset).

Enhance weren't 20% behind Rogues though (so long as they had their 20m cooldown Fire Ele) but they also didn't scale as well with haste (3s ICD on Windfury, shared between both weapons) and had no real cleave/aoe. Fury Warriors were also roughly equal with Rogues so long as threat wasn't an issue... In that instance you could easily say that pre T6 for the most part it didn't make a lot of sense to take a Rogue, they didn't have especially good dps in T4/T5 and didn't bring any buffs at all. The old game world was all about buffs, min-maxing your raid/group comp to provide the highest dps was the best strategy since the goal was "raid dps" and not "my personal e-peen".

So taking an Arms Warrior for Blood Frenzy and having him equip Solarians Sapphire (extra 70ap for whole group). The Enhancement Shaman is gonna put down Windfury instead of grace of air, or take up the job of totem twisting (which could cause mana/gcd issues that may restrict his dps sometimes).. maybe your Shaman also equips annihilator (vanilla armor debuff weapon) in the offhand, one of your Warlocks is gonna use Curse of Recklessness (armor debuff) for the melee instead of Doom for himself..

But the end result was the goal, raid dps.

[nowish]

If you look at TBC then for sure Arms could easily be 20% behind Fury. Look at some Fury numbers, on a low armor boss maybe a well geared Fury Warrior is doing 2400 dps while an Arms Warrior is doing maybe 1800-1900? It was largely down to stuff like haste scaling, Rogues and Furies scaled amazingly with haste (Bloodlust, insanely OP haste pots with 400 haste rating, Dragonspine Trophy, LW drums) while Arms scaled poorly with Haste (because of 0.5s hard cast on Slam with auto swing reset).

Enhance weren't 20% behind Rogues though (so long as they had their 20m cooldown Fire Ele) but they also didn't scale as well with haste (3s ICD on Windfury, shared between both weapons) and had no real cleave/aoe. Fury Warriors were also roughly equal with Rogues so long as threat wasn't an issue... In that instance you could easily say that pre T6 for the most part it didn't make a lot of sense to take a Rogue, they didn't have especially good dps in T4/T5 and didn't bring any buffs at all. The old game world was all about buffs, min-maxing your raid/group comp to provide the highest dps was the best strategy since the goal was "raid dps" and not "my personal e-peen".

So taking an Arms Warrior for Blood Frenzy and having him equip Solarians Sapphire (extra 70ap for whole group). The Enhancement Shaman is gonna put down Windfury instead of grace of air, or take up the job of totem twisting (which could cause mana/gcd issues that may restrict his dps sometimes).. maybe your Shaman also equips annihilator (vanilla armor debuff weapon) in the offhand, one of your Warlocks is gonna use Curse of Recklessness (armor debuff) for the melee instead of Doom for himself..

But the end result was the goal, raid dps.

Sure I can concede that point if we speak vanilla / tbc even though that was not true for the entirety of the expansions, I was thinking more of wotlk / cata style though (ignore spine and ignore buff on nef abuse by druid bleeds), where the classes were abit more balanced and still gave unique buffs/debuffs.

Speaking specifically about tbc arms, Arms didnt kickoff in terms of dps until tier 6 content if Im not entirely wrong, when you got Cataclysm's Edge I think it was?

But I have never cared about rankings the slighest so Im really biased in that regard. I guess Im still stuck in the "what's best for the guild" mentality as that is what an mmorpg is for me.

[GorkAndMork]

Im all for dps whoring and getting ranks during farm if you want to go there. That has no place for progression raiding though. And you sitting and aoeing adds while the rest singletargets doesnt really "make you better" than other people, pretty ignorant to think that.

You literally had people with certain buffs/debuffs, to min/max the raid dps, why the hell would said person not min max his own performance, really counterproductive don't you think?

We can just end the discussion here, you have no idea what you are talking about.

DPSers compete outside of DPS whoring which is just pathological end of spectrum. Pretty ignorant to think that there's little competition between DPS players in a raid. It's laughable to think that players don't care about their personal rank on a DPS meter in progression raiding.

> You literally had people with certain buffs/debuffs, to min/max the raid dps, why the hell would said person not min max his own performance, really counterproductive don't you think?

Because most of your perceived usefulness is a buff. Which is not fun or interactive. You press a button and you have done your job best way possible. 0.001% of raid DPS isn't big enough motivation to try hard. Possibility to get 99 percentile in logs or top rank on a DPS meter is.

As for ending the discussion then sure, you condescending tone gets boring at this point. And you just keep repeating your made-up-fairy-tale-world arguments again and again.

[khadaryan]

Each class should have one spec with buff/debuffing (like enhancement and ret), aoe buff procs (like several artifact powers) or 30s to 60s CDs.
Nothingl mandatory (1-2% overall buff/debuff)..and every buff should be viable.

Its a viable option for supporting, without rewrite the game.

You can pick a full spec or the spec with 5% lower dmg/healing but the burst aoe buff/def.

[GorkAndMork]

Each class should have one spec with buff/debuffing (like enhancement and ret), aoe buff procs (like several artifact powers) or 30s to 60s CDs.
Nothingl mandatory (1-2% overall buff/debuff)..and every buff should be viable.

Its a viable option for supporting, without rewrite the game.

You can pick a full spec or the spec with 5% lower dmg/healing but the burst aoe buff/def.

Yeah, I agree. They should make buff balance and personal performance balance into separate things. It looks like they're going that way right now, and not making certain specs pure buff bots intentionally butchering their performance.

A bit worried that some classes get utility and defensive buffs. That means design and balancing goal is to either that those classes will deal up to ~5% less damage without being fully buffed, or deal 5% more damage being fully buffed. Which may translate into bigger balance issues than in Legion (one more variable affecting DPS spread, along stuff like unequal scaling with item level, class mechanics issues, encounter's design etc.)

[Softbottom]

Oh man if they brought back heroic strike....