What if expansions just offered more content and no class and ability overhauls?

[NightZero88]

I'd be very happy with that honestly. Personally I hate that for the MoP, WoD and now Legion I've had to relearn balance druid because our major mechanics change every expansion. First it was you control your bar movement. Then it was automatic. Now it's totally new. Just pick something and stop changing it for Pete's sake.

[shoegazing]

here's a sampling of the feedback on the Legion subtlety rogue class thread from the class feedback forum (the thread is essentially 13 pages of this):

Subtlety in Legion is not more accessible than now. And this is not helping. Its still relatively hard, its single target bot (people dont like this) and now it doesnt even make sense. How is this more accessible? Who are you making this spec for? I want subtlety more accessible. Im willing to sacrifice any mechanic for this, but this is doing the opposite. We lost spec many people loved for what? For spec that every new player will scratch his head at level 36 and then jump over to demon hunter?

Yes, dinosaurs had a niche too. The bench during progression is a niche. Rerolling demon hunter is a niche. Playing outlaw instead of sub is a niche. Somehow, one of these niches has been assigned to "Sub's aoe niche"

In what fresh hell have you ever said to yourself, "Boy, these adds need to die, but not too fast. What spec has a huge ramp up time for their aoe, suffers huge single target loss because of it, and is a class that has another spec which excels at aoe?"

Under these circumstances why not just bring a normal !@#$ing aoe spec? I do not doubt this fictitious niche where sub aoe excels exists in theory, however, in practicality, based on 6 expansions worth of previous data, I can not think of a time where this niche has transcended from some idiot's delusional tweets to reality.

@The people who read our feedback (aka Gordon Freeman, cause he never talks amirite?), you guys really had the chance to break away from the single target x2, cleave spec x 1 rogue with the promise of #classfantasy. You were given plenty of feedback and plenty of warning that this %^-* is not working. This is not a rogue only issue, this is a "l0l we can definitely deliver 36 new specs" issue that falls on you guys, and only you guys. We've given the feedback, we've given the suggestions to fix these copious issues; what we received in return was silence and ignorance.

I genuinely look forward to watching the % class breakdowns in PvE and seeing rogue plummet even further than I thought possible (it's already last), and shaking my head watching the class I've played for nearly 11 years get turned into a !@#$ tier half baked excuse for what we used to be. There is no more skill, there is no more fluidity, it's just hit the %^-* when it comes off cd, don't cap energy (lol at that with these talents), don't cap cp (lol at that with these talents) and don't let (de)buffs fall. There's no more timing, no more pooling, no more brain power requirements.

You are somehow surprised at the passion people have toward vanilla servers and legacy servers and what not, and I don't think it's all rose tinted goggles. Some of it is the fact that we know you aren't just going to "fix" something until it's broken anymore. Literally every expansion you get this idea that everything is broken about every class and needs to be radically changed, !@#$ing no. No it doesn't. There was like minute changes you needed to make to all three of these specs. You could have quite literally just changed the ability names, made them do different types of damage, put these new *sick* animations on them and gave us like a new row of talents that added new ways to play and I don't think you'd hear a word from us other than tuning optimizations. Instead you've disassembled the car, reassembled it, and then swept all the pieces you forgot to put back in into a pile and then said, "done" as you proudly showed us our new piece of %^-*.

Honestly these clowns think they trash our mechanics, throw some shadowy particle effects on top of it, proclaim "tada! class fantasy!" and call it a day.

The only people who seem excited about the rogue rework are those people who don't play rogue as a main.

- - - Updated - - -

and their stated reason for doing it drives me actually insane: "This is not a bug. The thought is that there are so few buttons that require stealth, it's not worth having stealth be a forced separate action bar (it still can be, through macros/addons if you prefer)." [as if players, and rogues in particular, aren't already extremely tilted about the pruning... and by the way, the part in the parenthesis is 100% false, there is no macro conditional without the stance... shouldn't Celestalon know this!?]

the same blue post by the way also included this gem: "There's also discussion about talents. Subtlety is trying to satisfy a wider variety of players than before, and its talents reflect it. Something that "should be baseline" to you, is likely "avoid at all costs" to someone else, and so fits well as a talent."

so yeah, if there's any doubt as to why they're ruining the spec for everyone who currently plays it, there's your answer: it's for the sake of people that don't play this spec.

i think you'd have a hard time finding any rogue mains who are happy about any of this

[HappyCola]

people would call them content patches and rage that they had a price tag

Why do they have a price tag in a game with a high monthly fee? I think many of WoW's problems stem from having to sell xpacs instead of just collecting the monthly fees. For example, they cannot let people experience to content at their own pace, but instead have to push people through the patches so they are ready to buy the next xpac on schedule. Or having to constantly come up with new abilities since there are new levels.

[Pony Soldier]

people would call them content patches and rage that they had a price tag

I actually think this would happen.

I think we're at a point now in WoW especially after Legion where there doesn't need to be any more class/ability overhauls. Let people learn their class without having to worry about relearning again next expansion, please. It's really annoying getting used to something that worked so well for so long just to have it taken away or changed. Blizzard has this horrible habit of fixing what isn't broken.

If they could just come out with expansions that just has more content like new story, new zones, level cap being raised, new quests, new visuals/animations, new features, MORE CUSTOMIZABLE OPTIONS FOR CHARACTER CREATION, etc. without having to relearn my class for the 10th time I would probably have a happier time with WoW. I mean I'm welcome for some small changes in the classes but when it totally messes up my rotation and understanding of the class to point where I feel like I just made the character that's when I consider it being too much of a change. It's just that I spent so much time learning how to play my class, so much time and effort was put into it and then to have Blizzard just completely overhaul it to the point where everything that I've read up on has become completely useless now and all that time spent learning about my class has become a waste of time. It's just really annoying.

[Deleted]

I nether understood why they change them so often... keep them the same, it's the same class. Maybe instead of revamping every class every expansion put time into new classes OR add mechanics that change gameplay, like class quests that give a "special" rotation for the expansion after doing a certain quest...

[Deleted]

It's anecdotal evidence, but I've quit raiding and canceled my sub based on a disappointing half a year experience on alpha. I mained a Hunter, but the way they disassembled the class and made it into an abomination that's neither fun, flexible or challenging to play, and is in every which way imaginable a downgrade from live, pushed me over the edge. I know a few others who are quitting for the same reason.

It's not a small matter. It's a question of "What am I paying for?". I'm being asked to ship the expansion fee and constant subscription fees on a game that's progressively being made worse. Nothing of value is improving. In fact with the scaling challenge modes, wildly random item levels, and world drop legendaries, I'm getting the feeling that they're getting ready to not adding any more new content at all, and hope that the last addicts left in the game will just farm the same dungeons and raids over and over for the 'perfect item set'.

The game is in maintenance mode now until it dies off, but it's still not an excuse for them to create an expansion that's going to be worst one yet. If they created a new MMO with these classes, we'd just say that the classes are all a ******** joke, but I could forgive them for just not getting it right. What is outright baffling is that they had many of their classes in a good place, meaning someone previously had already done excellent design work, but now they just tore down the walls and replaced them with a turd.

[Deleted]

Sounds like every expansion for a rogue /s

Sounds like every expansion for Shaman /s

fixed that for you

[Gadzooks]

That's one thing I've always wished for.

I mean, I'm all for bugfixes and quiality of life improvements to the classes, but I've always hated the complete overhauls that come with every expansion.

I'd much rather they invested that time in creating more content.

Quests and content aren't created by the class design team. There'd be no savings, and they'd probably lay off or move the class designers to other games.

The cynical answer is, it's for job security for the class designers.

The real answer is probably "because they can". They've always treated the game as one big experiment, and started over each expansion.

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

The Changes to my class is why im not interested in playing any more

[Raiju]

fixed that for you

shaman had noticeable changes around wrath, but yes they've been pretty stagnant.

enha looks pretty polished for legion, though.

[Deleted]

The older I get the less I want to re-learn the game every time. Particularly when its for no good reason beyond the legendary weapon gimmick. Take sub for instance it was practically perfect, the most rewarding per performance spec in the game and they changed it entirely to suit the weapon dynamic in Legion ... no sub Rogue wanted that but here we are.

[Hofflerand]

I like class changes because there's always stuff that can be improved and I find it exciting to learn new things. But of course sometimes I disagree with the specifics.

[Howard Moon]

Quests and content aren't created by the class design team. There'd be no savings, and they'd probably lay off or move the class designers to other games.

The cynical answer is, it's for job security for the class designers.

The real answer is probably "because they can". They've always treated the game as one big experiment, and started over each expansion.

You are probably right on all three points. And that is kind of unfortunate, IMO :/

[breadisfunny]

Game need to change to keep people interrested. If the classes would be the exact same thing today as in vanilla. No one would play anymore.

that's a false dichotomy. he never mentioned vanilla.

[Radaney]

*slow clap builds to a standing ovation*

That said, I'm one of few who were happy with the consistency in rogue design. I'm looking forward to what changes and what stays the same with Legion.

Don't look forward to Rogue in Legion, for your own sanity.

[Desparil]

I honestly like class/ability overhauls it keeps classes somewhat "fresh".

[Twdft]

Sounds like every expansion for a rogue /s

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

[Deleted]

I would actually preffer more patches than more expansions, all the changes to classes, talent trees , professions etc makes me sad

[Niroshi]

I wouldn't be playing WoW anymore. One of the most interesting aspects to me of expansions is to see where classes go, if they never had overhauls we would feel the stagnation pretty quickly. Especially if we were stuck with WoD mechanics for the life of the game.

[Relapses]

I wouldn't be playing WoW anymore. One of the most interesting aspects to me of expansions is to see where classes go, if they never had overhauls we would feel the stagnation pretty quickly. Especially if we were stuck with WoD mechanics for the life of the game.

But Arcane Mages doing 2x more damage than everything else in the instance is so much fucking fun.