Old Unholy Rotation (WotLK)

[Deleted]

Totally unneccesary move from Blizzard to change every single specc to reaction/priority based. For example, i really liked the Frost-DW armor penetration build with glyph of pestilence. Really tight rotation with a 1 sec frame at the end of the cycle to refresh deseases by pestilence. In essence it wasnt the hardest thing to play the rotation correctly, but applying it to every single situation in every boss fight was the skill cap; and i liked it that way.

[matters]

The rotation in woltk for unholy was literally that, a rotation

You could go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

rinse and repeat for most of the fight

Didnt really have to react to anything

This was true for the WotLK Prot Paladin with the 969 rotation. I honestly think people just miss the old days rather than actually think the old days were 'better'. Quite literally as a prot paladin in Wrath you could perform a rotation (and i am not speaking about what is deemed to be a rotation these days, you would have a button to hit EVERY gcd, making it a true rotation) and it was mind numbing. Any true rotation, in my opinion, requires a lot less skill than having to think on your feet and respond to procs, CDs and trinkets ICDs.

[Shiira]

The word "rotation" has become very misused recently, as far as I know nothing uses a true rotation any more.

[Deleted]

Besides, define "Old Unholy Rotation (WotLK)" please, DK received so many changes and hotfixes during wrath, that the meta changed at least twice during a content patch. Whoever played unholy from day one Naxx til cata prepatch was a moron anyways ...

[Itisamuh]

Regardless of PvE rotations and all of that, I found DK MUCH more fun in WotLK before they changed the rune system.

[Schizoide]

Unholy didn't use a rotation in WOTLK either, except for a brief period where we skipped the Reaping talent. It was a priority and single-target played similarly to now, just without dark transformation so rampup wasn't extreme like Unholy at low gear levels today. AE was mindless, you just spread diseases and GG... but it was very high damage so that made it fun. Again it was mindless, but you didn't need to game your resources to get Death runes so that was better too. Changing Scourge Strike to 1U was a mistake too. I dislike pretty much all of the core Unholy changes made in Cataclysm, and have tried to avoid playing the spec whenever possible ever since.

The old run gen system was way more locked than today; you would commonly cap runes since both generated simultaneously. I prefer the current system.

[Nnyco]

i remember you could make a single macro with /castsequence and add your entire rotation to that, how was that skillful again?

[Shiira]

i remember you could make a single macro with /castsequence and add your entire rotation to that, how was that skillful again?

You can get away with a lot of things if you're fine with doing suboptimal damage, what's your point?

[Schizoide]

Yeah, you can macro all your abilities now, but just like back in WOTLK (except that brief period without Reaping) you would substantially hurt your performance.

[Wewlad]

I don't know what is so skillful about the priority-based system. It gives a lot more breathing room than the strict rotations did.

Not to mention they changed the rune system for Cata as well which flipped the entire table over.

[Aeriel]

I don't know what is so skillful about the priority-based system. It gives a lot more breathing room than the strict rotations did.

Not to mention they changed the rune system for Cata as well which flipped the entire table over.

With a rotation you can eventually run a spec on muscle memory while in the kitchen making a sandwich. Priority systems actually require that you observe more than one thing.

[Shahad]

I don't know what is so skillful about the priority-based system. It gives a lot more breathing room than the strict rotations did.

Not to mention they changed the rune system for Cata as well which flipped the entire table over.

It does not give breathing room. You very easily GCD cap as Unholy nowadays, and the GCD is lower too. Either way, the amount of downtime a spec has is not synonymous with it's skill cap. Otherwise DW Frost would be the hardest spec in game or something.

[Shiira]

Priority systems take more effort to play optimally because you have to make decisions and make the best of a dynamic playstyle.

With a rotation you know ahead of time what you're going to be doing for every second of the encounter when you're patchwerking, what's challenging or interesting about that?

[Erolian]

Priority systems take more effort to play optimally because you have to make decisions and make the best of a dynamic playstyle.

With a rotation you know ahead of time what you're going to be doing for every second of the encounter when you're patchwerking, what's challenging or interesting about that?

Not that I really have a preference but to say there can be nothing interesting or challenging about following an exact yet semi complex pattern would be like asking why people enjoy dancing or playing musical instruments. There are actually games that have been fairly popular based around a similar type of situation like guitar hero or DDR. Clearly the dk rotation wasn't as complex in a lot of cases but the general idea obviously does appeal to a lot of people.

[Shiira]

The concept is not as fundamentally uninteresting as I may have implied with my previous post, but comparing following a rotation in wow to playing a musical instrument feels a bit like comparing riding a tricycle to formula one racing.

[Wewlad]

It does not give breathing room. You very easily GCD cap as Unholy nowadays, and the GCD is lower too. Either way, the amount of downtime a spec has is not synonymous with it's skill cap. Otherwise DW Frost would be the hardest spec in game or something.

You can say it doesn't give breathing room how many times you want, but when I play the game it is a whole different matter.

Priority-based systems is just fluff that makes you think it's more complicated. But all you're doing is becoming reactive rather than proactive.

I would prefer a system where I know what to do ahead of time in a strict manner, and if I fuck up it's entirely my fault.

[Deleted]

Anyone suggesting any rotation in WoW is anything close to hard deserve a firm kick to the nuts/puss. There never was a hard class/spec and there will probably never be...

[Shiira]

Unholy has relatively little wait time and is pretty close to gcd capped most of the time.

You may need to rethink your ams usage.


edit: No spec is hard to play at a mediocre level, it's getting gradually closer to 100% of your potential damage that's the hard part.

I would prefer a system where I know what to do ahead of time in a strict manner, and if I fuck up it's entirely my fault.

Then play a class that doesn't have random procs to deal with and don't spec talents that involve randomness. You'll still have time to think about what you're going to do ahead of time, it just won't be the same sequence of abilities over and over.

[Challenge]

Priority-based systems is just fluff that makes you think it's more complicated. But all you're doing is becoming reactive rather than proactive.

I would prefer a system where I know what to do ahead of time in a strict manner, and if I fuck up it's entirely my fault.

Wow is not 100% priority, no class is. Thats what you are implying. Every spec has a base rotation.

- - - Updated - - -

Also some specs are normally quite difficult to play to its max potential and has been that way pretty much forever, demonology is the first one to pop to my mind.

[Nnyco]

You can get away with a lot of things if you're fine with doing suboptimal damage, what's your point?

the thing was, it wasnt even suboptimal. the old ratotion was just 1234123412341234