Pruning, remember when this game was so popular because it required skills.

[minteK917]

Me neither.

I decided it was time to deliver the truth about this game to all the god damn WoD and MoP babies already.




Look at this Graph carefully first. As you can see WOW was at its most popular during Wrath of the lich king. Now lets see about that huge amount of skills that brought all those nerds to the yards.

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=105151

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=121407

So yeah, go pruning go.

[Nhiosis]

Wth are you talking about? Wotlk had arguably the most complex specs wow has seen to date.

[minteK917]

Wth are you talking about? Wotlk had arguably the most complex specs wow has seen to date.

Most of the specs were literally face rolling shit. Sorry to break it to you. Should i link TBC too? How about the Warlocks in black temple? Pruned enough for you? Hunter dps being a single marco to match auto attack speed, list goes on. Complexity never made this game popular, it was faceroll shit from the start. If anything filling action bars with rotation stuff did the opposite.

[lexonio]

The game requires skill now. Skill does not come from a sheer number of abilities, it comes from careful positioning and using abilities at the right time.

[Aceveda]

Most of the specs were literally face rolling shit. Sorry to break it to you. Should i link TBC too? How about the Warlocks in black temple? Pruned enough for you? Hunter dps being a single marco to match auto attack speed, list goes on. Complexity never made this game popular, it was faceroll shit from the start. If anything filling action bars with rotation stuff did the opposite.

In wotlk you had different ways of dealing damage and you had tons of situational/niche abilities to use, its not just rotations that makes WoW interesting or require skill.

Legion improved rotations, but nothing else. It certainly doesn't feel like an MMORPG anymore. Spellbooks are so dry of non-damaging abilities you might aswell call WoW a moba.

[Lodreh]

I didn't realize skill = hitting a button right when DBM tells you to.

[Mafic]

Most of the specs were literally face rolling shit. Sorry to break it to you. Should i link TBC too? How about the Warlocks in black temple? Pruned enough for you? Hunter dps being a single marco to match auto attack speed, list goes on. Complexity never made this game popular, it was faceroll shit from the start. If anything filling action bars with rotation stuff did the opposite.

You are flat out wrong and thanks for confirming you didn't play in WotLK.

A Sub Rogue in WotLK > Legion Sub.

Legion Sub is a tunneling mongloid spec that teleports into casters faces. A Sub Rogue in WotLk utilized Shiv, expose armor, hemo, backstab, different poisons, and had options of different talent builds (eg Waylay).

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In wotlk you had different ways of dealing damage and you had tons of situational/niche abilities to use, its not just rotations that makes WoW interesting or require skill.

Legion improved rotations, but nothing else. It certainly doesn't feel like an MMORPG anymore. Spellbooks are so dry of non-damaging abilities you might aswell call WoW a moba.

This.

Legion is about doing damage rotations.

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Wth are you talking about? Wotlk had arguably the most complex specs wow has seen to date.

Yup.

The complexity was unique and it was stripped with Cata which forced players into one tree first.

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The game requires skill now. Skill does not come from a sheer number of abilities, it comes from careful positioning and using abilities at the right time.

WoW isn't a MOBA.

Positioning really matters in arena and it is not even close to complex like positioning that MOBAs require.

[ComputerNerd]

The complexity was unique and it was stripped with Cata which forced players into one tree first.

The talent tree argument was and is still rubbish.
There has always been a right way to spend most of your points.
Lots more points to spend did not change anything.
There was still an optimal way to spend the vast majority of them, and the structure of that then significantly reduced your options for how to spend the remaining.
That is something the game did not fix then, nor can it ever.
There will be a numerically superior choice anywhere there is a choice.

[Mafic]

The talent tree argument was and is still rubbish.
There has always been a right way to spend most of your points.
Lots more points to spend did not change anything.
There was still an optimal way to spend the vast majority of them, and the structure of that then significantly reduced your options for how to spend the remaining.
That is something the game did not fix then, nor can it ever.
There will be a numerically superior choice anywhere there is a choice.

Not for PVP (old talent trees).

You are using a PVE argument for why the old talent trees did not work when it never applied to PVP.

[Ravnac]

So yeah, go pruning go.

Multiple gladiator (S1 to S-last-Season-of-Cata) and triple rank 1 (S3, S7, S8) gladiator on multiple chars here. If you do not recognise, that there are a ton of abilities gone you better call jesus to give you back your eyesight.

Just an extract:
WotLK as Restoration-Druid:

Abilities
Rejuv - still here
Regrowth - still here
Lifebloom - still there
Healing Touch - still there
Entangling roots - still there
Remove Curse - gone/merged into one button
Remove Poison - gone/merged into one button
Abolish Poison - gone
Hibernate - gone
Nature's Grasp - gone/automatically cast on Ironbark
Faerie Fire - gone
Hurricane - gone
Bash - now talent
Maim - gone
Tiger's Fury - gone
Pounce - gone
Ravage - gone
Rake - gone
Shred - gone/changed to mangle
Lacerate - gone
Feral Charge (was talent) - now Talent with others
Demoralizing Shout - gone
Enrage - gone
Taunt - gone

A minus of about 15 abilities.

And for talents (that affected gameplay a lot)
Dispel-Protection - gone
OOC (was talent) - now baseline
NS (was talent) - now baseline
Swiftmend (was talent) - now baseline
Living Seed (was talent) - now baseline
Revitalize (was talent) - gone
Tree of Life (was talent) - now talent/revamped
Wild Growth (was talent) - now baseline
Insect Swarm (was talent) - gone
Nature's Grace - gone

Weapon-Switch (e.g. switching for spirit-staff with less spellpower) - gone
Bandaging - gone/worthless? (not sure about this one, haven't touched arens in WoD)

And what did we get? Ursol's Vortex, a ress, Efflorescence, Ironbark and Affinities that give back (some) abilities taken before.

So just looking at the (Restoration)Druid there is a huge difference in amount of abilities. So if you watch a good video from for example Sonny, a druid that utilised nearly the whole toolkit available, you can't not see the difference.
Sure, the overall skill and awareness of people doing pvp has increased a lot (for example fake-casting was only used by higher rated players whereas you see fake-casting on 1800ish teams from cata on) but the toolkit as well as the skill-cap has decreased substantially.

Not for PVP (old talent trees).

You are using a PVE argument for why the old talent trees did not work when it never applied to PVP.

Exactly. In PvE there have always been multiple specs for different setups and modes (2v2, 3v3, 5v5) and no single one was "the best".#

/edit: Just realised that I compared with BC instead of WOTLK, so another factor are multiple ranks of spell iirc and some other shit

[Mafic]

There were not set in stone PVP builds with the old talent trees. Hybrid builds were very common in BC/WotLk PVP

Blizz didn't like hybrid builds in PVE which is why they were nerfed quickly. But PVP featured a lot of hybrid builds and only one was nerfed quickly (AR/prep).

[barrsftw]

Seems like the same natural bell curve to every game ever created. I don't see the point.

[babyback]

Wth are you talking about? Wotlk had arguably the most complex specs wow has seen to date.

Excuse me? I've played a mage since vanilla and in WOTLK it basically came down to arcane blast spam when you had good gear.

Healing on a shaman was more or less chain heal spamming. Warrior came down to spamming heroic strike and using Bloodthirst and WW on CD.

WoW has never really been complicated and it never will be.

[Nhiosis]

Excuse me? I've played a mage since vanilla and in WOTLK it basically came down to arcane blast spam when you had good gear.

Healing on a shaman was more or less chain heal spamming. Warrior came down to spamming heroic strike and using Bloodthirst and WW on CD.

WoW has never really been complicated and it never will be.

Yeah not everyone did for sure. But from the pov of a pvper which I should have clarified, there was a whole lot more to do. Mages for example could utilize all 3 spell schools making them infinitely more interesting and dynamic (imo) destro lock which I played, had multiple spell schools, dots, nukes, procs, soul burned abilities, each pet had more utility and abilities, survivabilty cool downs, etc etc.

[Leyre]

Wth are you talking about? Wotlk had arguably the most complex specs wow has seen to date.

You could literally put every single fucking ability a blood dk had into a single macro and never die

[Ravnac]

You could literally put every single fucking ability a blood dk had into a single macro and never die

Excuse me? I've played a mage since vanilla and in WOTLK it basically came down to arcane blast spam when you had good gear.

Healing on a shaman was more or less chain heal spamming. Warrior came down to spamming heroic strike and using Bloodthirst and WW on CD.

We're in the PvP-Forum. This topic is about PvP. Players. Versus. Players.

WoW has never really been complicated and it never will be.

Guess that's why everyone has multiple rank one titles and everyone raids in serenity/paragon.

[Protean]

Wth are you talking about? Wotlk had arguably the most complex specs wow has seen to date.

Hunters literally had a 1-click macro for playing. Warlocks were spam shadowbolt.

Feral was complex, but not even near as complex as it was in Cata/MoP/WoD.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

[Aeula]

From what I've seen, your typical class/spec rotation is more complex in Legion. But you have less situational and/or fun abilities. So playing your class (in some cases) requires more skill than in WoD, but all those cool situational abilities that you made use of once in a blue moon are gone.

[Deleted]

pruning mostly means in wow that additional abilities that just replaced others when they procc got removed and isntead the procc now applies to the original ability.

things like hammer of wrath. it was just sth that at some point replaced some of your judgements in your rotation. nothing more.

cs and hammer of the righteous. its now one button, if you are st you use the hamemr iwthout consecrate and if you aoe you will use consecrate and thus make hammer aoe. compeltely logical and saves up a button AND added meaningful complexity.

also there is a difference between complexity and numerousity. it was many buttons, that mostly got integrated into one makro (def and burst cds)

and therefore many classes werent complex, they just had numerous buttons.

actually some classes are now more complex with fewe buttons.

enh shaman for example: it makes a lot of difference if you correctly stack rescource, but somehow stay at 50%, and its very complex even if it has fewer buttons.

before enhancer had more buttons but basically smashing stormstrike and flamelash was all you did to get 90% of your dps.

[Saberstrike]

^ P. much this.

It was especially bad with hybrids.

"Hmm, I'm a feral druid; I think I'll stay caster form and spam wrath for dps!"

While I miss feral / enhancement being great healers at <lvl60 5-mans, I can't help but agree with that most classes became better off with this more focused specialization.