Legion - Some Questions From a Possible Returning Player

[Deleted]

Hey there guys/galls,

First of I want to apologize; this will be a substantial write up from my part, I will try to format it as good as possible but my writing tends to get a bit tedious, so please bear with me.

I've had pretty much an ongoing WoW subscription from the end of TBC till mid WoD, quit after a long sustaining feeling that Blizzard was more and more monetizing the game, making just awful decisions and too conceited, because of their we-know-best attitude, to either revert them or alter them in the sake of better gameplay. Now that some of my former guildies poked me to give WoW another chance, Im kinda hesitating, but I first want to be fully convinced that this expac is worth it's money before handing over another payroll to Blizz.

If I come back, I will probably focus on PvPing again, so that's why I'm posting on this sub-forum. I have some questions about the current state of (Legion's) PvP which I would like to ask you guys here. For the record, I'm actually not too concerned if certain classes/specs are unplayable whilst others are practically one-shotting you, these things can get fixed by just altering some numbers, I am however more concerned about the intrinsic PvP mechanics/dynamics which, knowing Blizz, will remain for the entire expansion. So here are some of my questions:

• Did damage become less burstier or is it still mainly the burst damage that kills people? Reason for this is that I got the feeling that in the last 2-3 expacs burst was pretty much the only way people died, resulting in a meta where CDs were just being trade. I remember back in wotlk where I could punish a comp immediately if one of them incorrectly positioned while in recent years I got the feeling it wouldn't matter since I had to wait till X and Y of my cooldowns were off CD and enemy still had cooldown Z.
  
• Regarding the above question; is it still just an arms race? From my point of view they pretty much gimped every part of PvP and only managing cooldowns remained. I know cooldowns are important but I perceived that everything else just got watered down for the sake of simplicity and easy accessibility.
  
• Do casters actually cast again? Sorry for asking this, but after two expacs where all spells were pretty much instant I have to ask this. I don't want to come back to my caster and find myself shooting procs and instant spells while once in a minute pump out a 0.7 sec flash heal or something.
  
• Is Blizzard still catering to the lowest common denominator? Are they actively balancing their PvP around, of what is still remaining, the competitive level? Or are they again making everything accessible for everyone; removing, in their opinion, too steep learning curves resulting is depthless mechanics and predictable gameplay?
  
• How is class/spec differentiation? I got the feeling they wanted to give every class pretty much everything: giving certain classes fears while they never had one, others a root, another one a silence and another one a stun while historically their kit never included one. Stripping away some the “uniqueness” of the certain classes/specs. This, personally, is very important for me.
  
• I observed they once again overhauled the classes, what's your opinion on how they did it? I probably share the unpopular opinion that the removal of spells were necessary, as for me, I believe that: #spells ≠ difficulty of the game. From my point of view in the past the changes to the class designs felt haphazardly and unfinished, lacking certain depth they once had.

Thank you for reading and I hope you can give me your opinion on these matters. I hope I didn't sound too pessimistic, I just want to come back to a game which still strives to improve instead of being at the end of it's product-life-cycle, which is just cash-cowing as much as possible before the inevitable.

[Rucati]

All of my answers will be from the perspective of 3v3, from a player that's usually around 2200+ every season since BC. I'm currently playing Disc Priest and Outlaw/Assassination Rogue, it's possible other classes might have a different perspective I suppose.

[*]Did damage become less burstier or is it still mainly the burst damage that kills people?

It's super bursty right now. The only comp that really focuses on CC is Rogue/Mage/Priest(Paladin), most other comps are basically just target someone and blow CD's on them. As a Disc Priest I basically feel like I'm just dead if I get targeted most of the time, get stunned, trinket immediately I'm at 70%, juke one kick I'm at 60%, juke another kick I'm at 40%, start casting, Blood Elf silence I'm at 15%, hope they have no more stuns or die. Not always in that order, but more or less. On my Rogue if I pop all my CDs I can usually get a healer to about 30% before they're allowed to play the game, if I have someone helping me they'll die if they don't get massive peels. Of course, 3v3 is usually about peeling, but the absurd amount of burst that can be put out every minute means it usually doesn't help.

The majority of 3v3 games seem to end within about two to three minutes because healers just can't keep up. If you attack healer then it's first stun forces trinket, second stun forces major defensive CD, after DR they die next stun. If you attack DPS the first CC on healer forces trinket, second one the DPS dies. There are of course comps that last way longer, Hunter/Rsham/Prot Paladin for example can turtle for 10-15 minutes easily and win in dampening, but most other comps fall behind eventually.

[*]Regarding the above question; is it still just an arms race?

I mainly covered this before, but it's really a question of who has the most burst and who has the most instant peeling potential. If your opponent pops CDs and you don't focus completely on peeling you're basically dead. I imagine this season you can probably reach 2k by just popping every CD and the lower rated players won't know how to react properly and will just fall down.

[*]Do casters actually cast again?

Some of them, yeah. SPriests, Ele Shamans, Fire and Frost Mages, Boomkins and Warlocks all cast quite a bit now. Granted some of them can do it while moving or have aura mastery for a while, but you can at least interrupt them. From a healing perspective Priests, Paladins and Shamans all have to cast a lot, Druids do in some situations but they've always been about instant cast hots, and then Monks cast one spell that has permanent aura mastery and can be cast while moving, so not sure if that counts.

[*]Is Blizzard still catering to the lowest common denominator?

Probably too early in the season to tell. At the moment though since the game is pop every CD and your opponent pops every CD as well it seems to be the lowest common denominator. That could change, not sure, kinda doubt it. This is Blizzard after all, every game they make is for a casual audience.

[*]How is class/spec differentiation?

Things actually feel pretty good, at least from my perspective of the two classes I play. The two Rogue specs I play feel very different, Assassination is all about bleeds, poisons and rotting people, while Outlaw is about big crits over and over with lots of CC. I actually really like the way they feel. Priest seems very different to other healers, not in a good way, but at least it's different. I can't speak to every class and spec, but they do certainly all seem different.

[*]I observed they once again overhauled the classes, what's your opinion on how they did it?

They kind of dumbed it down too much imo, for the most parts my action bars are pretty empty. My Priest has about 7 skills I actively use and my Rogue probably has a couple more than that, not counting them since I'm not on WoW right now but it certainly feels like it's simpler than it used to be. I guess though they did that to make each spec feel different. My Outlaw Rogue has Blind while Assassination doesn't, so there are just different buttons for each spec instead of more buttons overall. While before every Rogue spec had like 15 buttons, now they all have 9 but each spec does different things, if that makes any sense.

Overall though this expansion is actually a lot of fun. I really like both classes that I'm playing (though Disc could use some buffs..) and it feels pretty solid. The only big complaint I have is that if you aren't Horde it's hard to be competitive. Orc and Blood Elf are both so good whereas Alliance racials are completely useless. Pretty much the opposite of last expansion, not too sure why they haven't realized they need to remove racials from PvP, but whatever.