Can somebody explain, why pruning is so necessary?

[Tome]

Blizzard says it's to remove clutter of spells that can instead be baked into one spell. I'm fifty-fifty on this. A lot of 'useless' abilities is usually what got the flavour to the class (Sentry Totem, Far Sight, Water Walking,) at least in my opinion.

I personally think Blizzard is trying to push the Esport scene slightly with World of Warcraft, making more simple spells and, less of them, with clearer visuals.

They denied it was to make it easier for newer players, to not confuse them, but I don't quite believe that myself.

[Seefer]

This. I bet they have stats showing that the average player simply cannot handle the rotation complexity they currently have. As a result, Blizzard designs raids that are easy for the best players, but impossible for average players.

I think this may be a big reason the game has so many former players -- people tried playing it and found that sucking, especially in front of other people, is not fun at all.

Or it could be that people (such as myself) find it stupid to have 30 abilities (I have 3 bars of 10) and only use 5 at most regularly and the rest just kind of sit there and MAYBE once in a while use them.

[Osmeric]

They denied it was to make it easier for newer players, to not confuse them, but I don't quite believe that myself.

They're making it easier not for newer players, I think, but for players without high skill caps. I doubt the game has many new players now, although the movie may change that, at least temporarily.

[Seefer]

I personally think Blizzard is trying to push the Esport scene slightly with World of Warcraft, making more simple spells and, less of them, with clearer visuals.

Watched Asmongolds video huh?

[Jazzhands]

Every MOBA out there makes characters with only 4 spells and 1 passive and they have more depth than most of wow's classes.

So yea, pruning is heavily necessary.

Also it makes balance easier, which is also needed right now

Individual classes in MOBAs aren't deep. Now, when you add in team comp and item builds, that's where the depth happens. Not to mention, MOBAs aren't MMOs, comparing different genres doesn't work too well usually.

The balancing thing is true though.

[Kuntantee]

I am inclined to believe that pruning is more about opening room for future abilities rather than eliminating the homogenization.

[PuppetShowJustice]

This. I bet they have stats showing that the average player simply cannot handle the rotation complexity they currently have. As a result, Blizzard designs raids that are easy for the best players, but impossible for average players.

I think this may be a big reason the game has so many former players -- people tried playing it and found that sucking, especially in front of other people, is not fun at all.

Now that I think about it, some of the rotations might actually be a bit much. I mean, I'm a vanilla veteran with multiple realm first titles and when I boosted a Druid to 100 when I bought Legion it took me a lot of reading tooltips, placing hotkeys, writing macros, and looking up guides on how to play my new spec of choice. There's nothing really wrong with that per say, but imagine for a second that I didn't have the existing decade of game familiarity and the knowledge of where to look for outside help when I got to the point where I needed more information.

And as you pointed out, other people are quick to call you out if you're playing poorly.

[Mafic]

I am inclined to believe that pruning is more about opening room for future abilities rather than eliminating the homogenization.

I don't think so. Look at all the new talents and skills added in WoD and most of that is being pruned in Legion.

[Deleted]

I am also on the fence regarding pruning. I get the reason that there was some kind of bloat in abilities resulting from constant addition of spells over the course of all the expansions. Some abilities lose their usefulness if the gaming system gets an overhaul.

But I think they are going overboard with pruning. I like to have a handful of abilities in my standard kit, plus some CDs I use on a regular basis, some emergency buttons, and some utitily powers. I can comfortably handle 2 action bars with my left hand on a standard keyboard, plus 3 action bars which I click with my mouse. With my G15 (which I don't use on my laptop currently), I could handle 18 keybinds on the programmable keys and an additional number's row.

Before WoD, I could fit all my abilities on these action bars, including profession shortcuts, favorite mounts and pets and some toys/on use items. With WoD, I got empty space on these, although I got quite a lot of Draenor-specific things (garrison perk and feather, for example). I expect Legion to become worse with all the empty space. And I don't like having more than 1-2 empty spaces on my action bars.

I especially don't like to be stipped of abilities which are not obsolete. I use remove curse on my mage. I have used amplify and dampen magic in all variations over the course of the game. I was switching mage armours depending on the situation I was in. I was using spells of all scholls, for example when my main school was locked or when I needed them for a specific reason (arcane-immune mobs in Karazhan, anyone? or using arcane spells because I was the only mage in Karazhan and with a lock and shadow priest, a curse of elements would not be that effective. Fire-immune mobs in Classic and BC.... slowing mobs with a frost bolt before frying them with my fire spells, combining fire and frost aoe, arcane explosion as a frost mage when you had to bomb on the move etc.) I also don't get the reasoning behind tanks losing taunt in a DPS spec or healers losing rez when they are in a DPS spec. Especially the rez thing is stupid beyond belief. And don't tell me about mass rez. This thing will only be an adequate replacement when they remove the 10 min CD.

For me, having many abilities / spells is one of the core trademarks of an RPG, especially having many spells which are very situational. While in such a game as D&D you at least have the luxury that at least one person in the group will be able to use a speciall skill, in WoW you also have to cope with some situations without a group. Pruning does not help here.

[WowIsDead64]

They are pruning so players focus more on the mechanics of a raid encounter than worry about DPS rotations or utility. The problem is outside of a raid environment it dulls the specs.

This is, what I'm afraid of the most. They're turning Wow into Wildstar. And I quitted Wildstar due to exactly this reason - challenging dungeons, but everything other is...mehhh. I'm against raid or die concept. I'm casual player and I want exactly the opposite - I want bosses to be easy, but class rotation to be hard, so there will be incentive to improve - do dungeons/raids again, again and again, doing it better, better and better. Nobody forces you to use all your buttons all the time. If you only grind some mob in outdoor - simply don't bind anything, you don't need. Leave it for players, who need it. Leave room for options and improvement.

This might be the most amazing statement I've ever read on this forum. I don't even know what to do with this.

I would make a video, where some music plays, ability icons are moving from up to down and you have to push buttons at right moments. Better you push - better your DPS is. But I'm too lazy.

As for the suggestion that they simply "don't add" abilities. Sure. Stagnation is great for the game! Look how much people are loving Hellfire Citadel right now!

Changing abilities, renaming, changing icons - it's ok. But remove abilities only to add them back later? Do you know, how it's called?

[Pull My Finger]

What blows my mind is how some people seriously believe that they're "smart" because they can "handle" a certain number of buttons on their WoW character action bar, and they're convinced how there are all these other people who are intellectually totally inferior and overchallenged by the "complexity" ... how can people delude themselves like that? Holy fuck.

[Deleted]

Now that I think about it, some of the rotations might actually be a bit much. I mean, I'm a vanilla veteran with multiple realm first titles and when I boosted a Druid to 100 when I bought Legion it took me a lot of reading tooltips, placing hotkeys, writing macros, and looking up guides on how to play my new spec of choice. There's nothing really wrong with that per say, but imagine for a second that I didn't have the existing decade of game familiarity and the knowledge of where to look for outside help when I got to the point where I needed more information.

And as you pointed out, other people are quick to call you out if you're playing poorly.

Then you need in-game situations which teach people how to play their character properly, or people should stop being jerks to new players and show them some tricks of the trade. Not removing abilities which directly contribute to a fun gameplay.

[Mafic]

This is, what I'm afraid of the most. They're turning Wow into Wildstar. And I quitted Wildstar due to exactly this reason - challenging dungeons, but everything other is...mehhh. I'm against raid or die concept. I'm casual player and I want exactly the opposite - I want bosses to be easy, but class rotation to be hard, so there will be incentive to improve - do dungeons/raids again, again and again, doing it better, better and better.

Looking at the changes at WoD..everything was designed to push you into a raiding environment as efficiently a possible and spending little time as possible going out in the world for profressions, dailies, etc. Everything was in your garrison and you just had to focus on raiding.

Legion is pretty much still going to do the same thing but with a different splash of paint. Hopefully Legion is not as tunnel vision with raid or die like WoD was....

[Deleted]

Every MOBA out there makes characters with only 4 spells and 1 passive and they have more depth than most of wow's classes.

So yea, pruning is heavily necessary.

Also it makes balance easier, which is also needed right now

Than for Heaven's sake, go play a MOBA and leave my RPG the way it meant to be!

[MasterHamster]

Because after 6 expansions where people constantly expect new flashy abilities, eventually you'll end up with too many and the ones you have would lose their significance, overall impact on gameplay and flavor?

Why does this have to be explained?!?

[Osmeric]

Than for Heaven's sake, go play a MOBA and leave my RPG the way it meant to be!

This is not a useful or on-point thing to say in a discussion about why Blizzard is doing something.

[Raiju]

Feral spirit & Bloodlust are defensive cooldowns?

[WowIsDead64]

Because after 6 expansions where people constantly expect new flashy abilities, eventually you'll end up with too many and the ones you have would lose their significance, overall impact on gameplay and flavor?

Why does this have to be explained?!?

All useless and obsolete abilities were removed in WOD. Now Blizzard started to remove useful too - that's the problem.

I personally don't want Wow to turn into this. Those, who have played Wildstar, know, how dungeons are felt there: like in console games many things are happening there, so you simply don't have time for rotation. That's why...you don't have any rotation - just 4 buttons to mindlessly spam them.

[Sinyc]

There is really hot discussion about whether ability pruning is good or bad happening now. Some players are against it. Some support it. But can anybody, who supports it, explain me, why it's so necessary? I still can't understand it.

Because more buttons =/= fun, and more buttons =/= skill.

Literally can't it explain it in simpler terms for you than that.

[Mafic]

They are not going to "add" new abilities in future expansion.

Lets take a look at Rogues as an example:

Added Shadow Blades in MoP. Removed Shadow Blades in WoD. Comes back in Legion as a DPS cool down Sub specific.

Here is another example:

Added Shadow Reflection in WoD. Legion removes this as a talent option and turns into an artifact talent for Sub. Probably removed in future expansion X. Comes back in expansion Y that follows expansion X.

They are re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic giving the illusion they are "adding" to the game with each expansion. You know the saying in magic if you know one part of the trick is fake the rest of it falls apart? This is what happened with WoD pruning. We saw how it didn't improve the game and even the new abilities in WoD that were added have been pruned in many cases in Legion.

The illusion has been shattered.