Ability bloat: Monk edition.

[dryankem]

I thought the second tier talents would come up in this thread but I don't think anyone would lose sleep if those disappeared (I kind of like chi wave but wouldn't miss it).

Expel Harm could be re-worked to be more of a healing CD rather than a 15s chi generator.

We'll likely lose grapple or have it baked into our CC tier.

[Haven]

I'd remove host of healing abilities from non-healing specs. Expel Harm is awkward to use with its cooldown and Jab-substitute function. WW don't need it, BrM could simply have Extreme Measures make Jab heal him when below 35% HP. Healing Sphere heals for a ton, but why does every spec have it? Most other classes do just fine with 1-2 heals in non-healing specs, level 30 talent plus Afterlife glyph would be enough. Keg Smash is also quite awkward because of its cooldown and being Jab-substitute again, we already have Drunken Haze for the debuff. AoE potential of Keg Smash could be just baked into Blackout Kick. Both "statues" feel awkward as well. Spinning Fire Blossom also feels weird. Does it have a point? Is it there to create a ranged rotation?

[Asune]

even Spinning Fire Blossom? O.o

SFB is incredibly useful as a pvp utility spell.

[Rainbowdash]

I'd remove host of healing abilities from non-healing specs. Expel Harm is awkward to use with its cooldown and Jab-substitute function. WW don't need it, BrM could simply have Extreme Measures make Jab heal him when below 35% HP. Healing Sphere heals for a ton, but why does every spec have it? Most other classes do just fine with 1-2 heals in non-healing specs, level 30 talent plus Afterlife glyph would be enough. Keg Smash is also quite awkward because of its cooldown and being Jab-substitute again, we already have Drunken Haze for the debuff. AoE potential of Keg Smash could be just baked into Blackout Kick.

No no no no no.

Paladins can cast awkward heals. Druids can cast awkward wimpy heals. As a hybrid class, I too want to cast awkward heals. That's not a joke -- I use Healing Sphere in WW and BM spec any time I'm separated from a healer. Having a no-CD heal that I can target at other people is meaningful. It's possible that we have too many heals (T30, Expel Harm, Healing Sphere, Gift of the Ox/Afterlife) but you also have the option of ignoring all of those if you just want to DPS .... so.

Keg Smash is not awkward. You may as well say Rising Sun Kick is a BOK-substitute. If they weren't there, the rotation would just be Jab and Blackout Kick until you fall asleep from boredom. Managing energy/chi to use those on cooldown is a good skill requirement.

[tachycardias]

The term 'ability bloat' is frequently and incorrectly used by the community to refer to many spells. Usually spells that they don't happen to use very often, whether because:
1) they are not skilled enough to know when to use them. Storm, earth, fire falls into this category for you. In this case, you simply need to learn how to use these abilities.
2) it represents a button to push that is inconvenient. Often called clunky. This is an ability like Energizing brew. There is a clear reason for this ability to exist, as it can be used incorrectly and thus differentiate a skilled player vs a poor player.
2) because the ability is frankly underpowered. Spinning Fire blossom for instance. Possibly FoF.

None of these abilities you list are 'ability bloat' except possibly and arguably Spinning Fire Blossom. Usually these a need number tuning or usability tweaks (SEF), not to be removed. Ability bloat refers to abilities that have no role that isn't performed better by another ability. In some cases, it can refer to 'toys' such as eyes of the beast.

All in all I don't understand why people are so eager to get rid of abilities. If you don't use them, then don't use them. At one point Blizzard did mentioned they were concerned about ability bloat, but since then has somewhat shifted their stance to say that removing many abilities at this point would hurt more than help. Their solution is to add abilities more slowly.

Many suggestions i see for removal or baking in to other abilities would severely dumb down the spec, make it less fun, and reduce skill. I mean honestly, remove Keg Smash, Chi wave, EH?

[Haven]

No no no no no.

Paladins can cast awkward heals. Druids can cast awkward wimpy heals. As a hybrid class, I too want to cast awkward heals. That's not a joke -- I use Healing Sphere in WW and BM spec any time I'm separated from a healer. Having a no-CD heal that I can target at other people is meaningful. It's possible that we have too many heals (T30, Expel Harm, Healing Sphere, Gift of the Ox/Afterlife) but you also have the option of ignoring all of those if you just want to DPS .... so.

Keg Smash is not awkward. You may as well say Rising Sun Kick is a BOK-substitute. If they weren't there, the rotation would just be Jab and Blackout Kick until you fall asleep from boredom. Managing energy/chi to use those on cooldown is a good skill requirement.

It's just that while it's okay to be a versatile class, monk feels... a tad too versatile.

[Juliansfist]

The term 'ability bloat' is frequently and incorrectly used by the community to refer to many spells. Usually spells that they don't happen to use very often, whether because:
1) they are not skilled enough to know when to use them. Storm, earth, fire falls into this category for you. In this case, you simply need to learn how to use these abilities.
2) it represents a button to push that is inconvenient. Often called clunky. This is an ability like Energizing brew. There is a clear reason for this ability to exist, as it can be used incorrectly and thus differentiate a skilled player vs a poor player.
2) because the ability is frankly underpowered. Spinning Fire blossom for instance. Possibly FoF.

None of these abilities you list are 'ability bloat' except possibly and arguably Spinning Fire Blossom. Usually these a need number tuning or usability tweaks (SEF), not to be removed. Ability bloat refers to abilities that have no role that isn't performed better by another ability. In some cases, it can refer to 'toys' such as eyes of the beast.

All in all I don't understand why people are so eager to get rid of abilities. If you don't use them, then don't use them. At one point Blizzard did mentioned they were concerned about ability bloat, but since then has somewhat shifted their stance to say that removing many abilities at this point would hurt more than help. Their solution is to add abilities more slowly.

Many suggestions i see for removal or baking in to other abilities would severely dumb down the spec, make it less fun, and reduce skill. I mean honestly, remove Keg Smash, Chi wave, EH?

Put it down to people just not knowing or incapable of maximising the monk class.

Monks do not have too many heals - heals are our form of defense. If they were removed you'd simply have to give monks another defensive ability to use in its stead. Blizzard aren't going to do much about this supposed ability bloat (which to me is a myth perpetuated by players who want to be more passive).

What I'd like to see more is abilities where you toggle the way it works - so you could have one ability but make it function in multiple ways depending on how you've toggled it. That way you can increase ability diversity but not increasing the number of active abilities. Obviously some sort of restriction would be necessary on when/how often you can cycle through an abilities function styles.

[smokii]

New class, might be hard to lose something, or easy, since we're not used to anything yet, nobody will cry over some ability gone that they have been using for past 9 years.
My list for abilities to disappear:
Energizing Brew (Windwalker, 60 energy every minute) either bake it into our normal Energy Regen, or make it a normal Cooldown.
Fists of Fury - either reworked, damage increased to absurd levels or removed.
Spinning Fire Blossom - used it once, to see how it looks, and removed it from my bars immediately. However it might have its uses in PvP, I'm not sure.
Touch of Death - either its glyph baked in or reworked. Possibly even removed.
Storm, Earth and Fire - I might be newb at using this spell, but it's so clunky that I just skip it. Wouldn't miss it gone, or reworked.
These are from Windwalker point of view mostly.
What are yours?

have to say i disagree with most of what you've suggested

i use all of those abilities a lot;
energizing brew @ 10 stacks - could be changed/updated though, but it's like slice and dice for rogues or inquisition for paladins.

fists of fury - is all about getting the timing right for use within specific boss fights, well used it's pretty decent and the stun is damn useful - i use it pretty much on cooldown and get good dps out of it. i'm not a heroic raider anymore, but it certainly has it's uses. would like to be able to move a little with it though.

spinning fire blossom - admittedly is a bit bland, i use the glyph so i don't have to aim but use it for ranged pulling instead of jade lightning

storm earth and fire - my god man, this is like the best cleave in the game because you can cleave mobs 30 yards apart! bosses like the council in ToT, split yourself across 3 of the bosses and continue your rotation. my only gripe is it's use outside of raiding, as the summoned copies of yourself disappear really fast, they should last until the mob dies, not 3 seconds... i'd be seriously pissed if they removed this. i also tend to use it on the mob i am attacking when a new mobs spawns, then tab to the next target, make another, tab to next target, pew pew. keybinding helps

touch of death is probably the only one i agree with you on, it's useful whilst levelling as you will often meet mobs that have healthpools similar to your own that you can take down easily. it's also damn handy in solo situations where it's a close call and as a tank, popping health cooldowns and 1shotting the last 1% of a raid boss is pretty sweet. very specific ability though, incredibly limited use.

grapple weapon is probably the only ability i don't regularly use, probably because i don't pvp much. as it's a disarm with a bonus if the opponent has a better weapon - but even then, is the effect noticeable at all? is it worth using in pve?

[Kaeth]

About the only ability I could see being removed is Touch of Death for Windwalker. For a soloing Mistweaver, it has its uses. It's perfect for Brewmasters while soloing or to one-shot an add in a pinch.

But for a Windwalker, RSK (at least with TeB active) is higher damage per Chi. Touch of Death scales with STAMINA, and its usefulness for the class' dps specialization declines rapidly as you acquire gear. I (uh oh, here comes an anecdote) never use ToD as WW (though for some stubborn reason I still have it keybound), but as BrM I still use it frequently.

But this is about button bloat, a topic which generally concerns rotational abilities and throughput (or survivability, for tanks) cooldowns. As was said multiple times already, the niche utility skills and crowd controls that you personally don't use can stay off your bar. Other people very likely use them for something. You can't claim those are "bloat" if your hidden motive is to get something else in exchange; if you just don't like an (entirely optional, non-throughput/survivability) ability, you don't have to use it. I don't even have Disable on my bar for PvE, but I'm sure PvPers make good use of it.

(And any suggestion to remove SEF makes me sad. That's my absolute favorite Windwalker ability in the game. Combine with SCK or RJW on clustered non-trivial adds for "The Buzzsaw Effect." *joygasm*)

[dryankem]

Ability bloat is about the rotational abilities, however we are going to lose some CC capabilities as well.

I still feel like a likely candidate is Expel Harm (either becoming more of a 1min+ healing CD or just outright losing it) and having our tier 2 talents adjusted a fair bit (likely introducing a passive option and making those into longer hybrid CDs). BrMs may lose jab altogether and reduce the cd of keg smash.

[Moozhe]

I think Windwalker abilities are pretty much all useful and none need to be replaced altogether. I only think certain abilities need to be tweaked.

The only ability I think is bloat right now is Touch of Death. In PVE I go through most boss fights without ever using this ability. I think that's a problem. I think it simply needs to work differently on boss targets. For example, abilities like Storm Bolt deal 500% damage to targets who are permanently immune to stuns. Most likely the reason they haven't done it is because it could lead to a confusing tooltip. Here's the current tooltip:

"You exploit the enemy target's weakest point, instantly killing them.

Only usable on non-player targets who have equal or less health than you."

So it would have to change to:

"You exploit the enemy target's weakest point, instantly killing them.

Usable on non-player targets who have equal or less health than you.

Usable on boss level targets under 20% health, but deals damage equal to your maximum health and incurs a 20 second cooldown."

That's confusing as hell. It also no longer "instantly kills" the target. I like it from a mechanics standpoint since it would give us an execute. But when you factor in the PVP set bonus which also modifies the behavior of Touch of Death, you have one ability trying to be too many different things at different times.

Another idea is they could keep the instant killing mechanic but simply allow it to do 500% as much damage. For example, instead of a ~700k Touch of Death it would be a 3.5mil Touch of Death against boss targets. But that's also confusing to write, you can't simply say it will do "500% damage", you have to also stipulate that the target health requirement is below 500% of your current health. So it would be like this:

"You exploit the enemy target's weakest point, instantly killing them.

Usable on non-player targets who have equal or less health than you.

When used on boss level targets deals 500% damage and is usable on targets under 500% of your health."

Now it's still an instant kill ability, but it is actually usable on PVE bosses. Although most 25-man raids do somewhere around 5mil raid DPS so it's still going to be tricky to get the full effect out of it. It might need to be more like 750%. That seems like a lot (4-5mil hits?), but classes like Warriors frequently do 5-10mil damage from their Executes alone so it should balance out.

[Raugnaut]

Monks do NOT suffer from ability bloat atm. Removing Fire Ground Flowers was bad enough, no more removal of abilities.

[Saltycracker]

If you are ever at range of a boss due to spread out mechanics, Spinning Fire Blossom should be your first button to hit. Not only does it keep your uptime high, but it spends chi which builds Tiger Eye Brew stacks.

[Kaeth]

The only ability I think is bloat right now is Touch of Death. In PVE I go through most boss fights without ever using this ability. I think that's a problem. I think it simply needs to work differently on boss targets.

Current (Live) Tooltip:

You exploit the enemy target's weakest point, instantly killing them.
Only usable on non-player targets who have equal or less health than you.

Another suggestion to update it:

You exploit the enemy target's weakest point, dealing damage equal to 100% of your current maximum health.
Usable on non-player targets who have equal or less health than you, or are below 20% of their maximum health.
If Touch of Death fails to kill the target, the cooldown is instantly reset [or reduced, or set to some value].

Yup, ripping off the annoying hunter Execute mechanic (almost verbatim), but with a melee class which won't have an issue with travel time delays.

Alternately, the new mechanic could be added in its entirety to the Windwalker passive, just so Brewmasters don't start to out-dps warlocks.

[PetersenIII]

Most ability bloat would be fixed if every class had a pve and a pvp stance to be honest.

I'm not sure how this would fix ability bloat, but it sure as hell would be nice to stop my PvE experience getting fucked up because of shit I don't even play.

[Hinalover]

I personally can see them fixing a few spells. I know Celestalon has talked on twitter that they would like to make it so that talents changes automatically without pulling down a new icon onto your bars each time you switch a talent in that tier. This would mean that the tier 30 and tier 60 talents (and maybe the Tier 75 abilities) would change automatically and help slightly with the bloat.

I can understand the reasoning people say Spinning Fire Blossom. It's implementation has been kind of wonky to say the least and there are very few fights where it can be used properly.

One that I can see a slight adjustment is combining Transcendence: Transfer. I can see them combining that ability with Transcendence, or at the very least changing the spell between Transcendence (the act of placing a Transcendence down) and the transfer button; all in one icon slot). This would free up a slot that you would not need in the future.

I can also see them changing Tiger's Lust in such a way that it would keep it's movement removing ability but replaces Roll in some way. That way all of your Tier 15 abilities work with your Roll icon and thus not have to worry about an icon slot for Tiger's Lust.

[Tokas]

I really, /really/ hope you're wrong. I have 3 action bars and I can key bind every button but one on each bar. I like having those 33 buttons bound to abilities. The problem is when I have more than that number of things to bind. Like on a 100-button shaman (hyperbole). That was the biggest thing I hated about Guild Wars (the first) was that it only let me have 8 abilities. Fuck that. I'm not playing a damned ARG (not that there's anything wrong with them, I love a good click-and-slash), I booted up an MMO, I want to /play/ an MMO.

And before the chorus of "What about other people who can't/don't want to bind 33 buttons?!", I can't speak for others. I speak for myself, what I like, and why I like it that way.


EDIT: On-topic, I only really play my brewmaster, and about the only button I can't figure out how to use right is Zen Meditation, but I'm sure that's a personal problem.

EDIT 2:


Wrong. Final Verdict replaces Templar's Verdict.

http://wowpedia.org/Final_Verdict

I was talking about level 90 talents, not 100.

- - - Updated - - -

energizing brew @ 10 stacks - could be changed/updated though, but it's like slice and dice for rogues or inquisition for paladins.

w....what?

[Rainbowdash]

grapple weapon is probably the only ability i don't regularly use, probably because i don't pvp much. as it's a disarm with a bonus if the opponent has a better weapon - but even then, is the effect noticeable at all? is it worth using in pve?

You'd be surprised how many things can be disarmed. Any non-boss humanoid mob, basically.

[Stuffs]

Disable, Spear Hand Strike, Paralysis.
One of these is enough, IMO. Good candidates for a merge and bloat cull.

Grapple Weapon
Can't say I used it to much effect. Maybe I'm just terrible.

Wut. Snare, interrupt, CC? Its not like they even overlap, like FSK and Roll. I could understand it if it people had to choose between Crippling Poison and Kick or some bollocks, but the game is nothing like that.

Oh, my bad, well we will (might) be getting Chi Explosion, which seems like it makes our rotation way shorter for all 3 specs.
If level 100 talents stay this way, I'll never even try Vital Connections and Serene Mists.

- - - Updated - - -

http://www.wowhead.com/talent-wod#n

As it stands I only expect to see people get Serene Mists, outside of fights like Galakras with insane amounts of AE.

[Tokas]

As it stands I only expect to see people get Serene Mists, outside of fights like Galakras with insane amounts of AE.

See? We already have different opinions on talents. Working as intended!