Why I likely won't return to the game...

[Zer00z]

And if you're saying TBC was good, Hunters were entirely irrelevant. They were awful. Terrible. There were none. So no, you didn't "used" to see them do fine in TBC, they were garbage in arenas the first four seasons, so they got new skills to help them compete.

You must've known a different hunter. They definitely weren't THE BEST but Cherez and Beasteh (Druid/Hunter) got R1 playing Druid/Hunter. We had quite a few on the server that regularly organized carries or sold points.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2nXQZJMVI

but I don't miss rebuffing every few minutes and re-sealing every judgement, I don't miss how simplistic the fights were, I don't miss the grind.

Seal twisting was fun though! :P

[Lap]

There are counters to abilities with similar abilities. There are not counters to many classes or specializations as there were before.

A mage has always been reasonably-well shutdown by a hunter. Even in BC.
A ret paladin has always been weak against mages.

Would you consider a hunter, a mage, and a ret paladin to share similar abilities?

[Zer00z]

A mage has always been reasonably-well shutdown by a hunter. Even in BC.
A ret paladin has always been weak against mages.

Would you consider a hunter, a mage, and a ret paladin to share similar abilities?

They're closer currently than they have ever been before, which is the entire point of what I (and many) deem homogenization.

[Aurabolt]

I thought everyone who got infracted after the first one would've figured it out but hey, this is the internet XD

On Topic:

1. Did you level all 11 Classes as they are now to 90? Do that and then tell me they're "similar". Seriously you can't generalze now especially.

2. Mostly true, which is why I take breaks or level several classes at a time. As for endgame prepwork I skip tiers if I don't feel like doing a certain gear. In BC I skipped Sunwell but did BT. In LK I did Naxx but skipped Uld while it was current, did TOGC but skipped ICC while it was current (mostly because of the mechanics. I did go back at 85 and 90, which helps but the mechanics are still lethal if you're not careful). In Cata I skipped the first and third tiers. Currently progressing through MoP albiet slowly since I'm still getting my geat together.

3. Bullshit. If a caster tries to fight a Rogue the Rogue's gonna win. If a Shadow Priest tries to fight a Paladin the Paladin's gonna win. If a Hunter tries to take a Mage the Mage the Mage has enough tools to shut down a Hunter and the pet at the same time usually. If you don't know how to counter a class that's YOUR FAULT for not learing how, not Blizzard's.

4. Again, you're generalizing. Otherwise my Demo Lock should have Vegneance and my Holy Priest should have a Pet. See, I can generalize too.


Overall it looks like you let what people are saying about WoW decide for you from what I can tell. I see no reason to fault Blizzard for that. You Tube videos and posts from people who want Blizzard to bring back "The Glory Days" (I started in TBC myself, mind you) won't give you the full picture.

[Solidsteel]

Yeah the game has really gone downhill since Cata came out with all the poor decisions and what not, MoP has only accelerated this process. People can say what they what but in the end the sub numbers have been in freefall for a while now. I don't think there is anything Blizzard can do about it without going back on some of their "great ideas" which won't happen. What you will see now is Blizzard milking WoW for everything while they still can. Sub's hit the lowest they've been in 7 years, all of a sudden the cash shop is expanded. Connect the dots people. 6.7 million active players is still a huge playerbase but expect that number to keep falling. As far as PvP balance is concerned it has never been remotely balanced and will never be. WoW is merely a shell of it's prior self.

[Lap]

They're closer currently than they have ever been before, which is the entire point of what I (and many) deem homogenization.

I'm aware of what you 'deem' - and i'm glad you're aware that it is not a new complaint, however I fail to understand how you can relate 'counters' in abilities to 'non-counters' and 'counters' in class without implying moderate diversification, if just by the nature of your definition of homogenisation.

No offense but this all just sounds like you've been banged around abit playing an undergeared mage. While I sympathise, you should consider that heaps of the problems we face in class balance today come from people complaining and making quit threads over their own respective classes and why their class should have x, y and z (in pve and pvp).

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Also take into consideration the druid spell Symbiosis.
This literally shares a pool of spells around and can be counted towards further homogenisation of WoW... but it's mad fun and can be used in clever and unique ways.
Symbiosis is not killing WoW, the increasingly annoying yet dwindling player-base is.

[lunchbox2042]

The new talent system has been a major headache this expansion. The moment one talent becomes picked by the majority it gets nerfed into the ground until another gets picked by the majority. It's just a never ending cycle of overnerfing and buffing to create the same illusion of choice we had before.

[Siddown]

Even the illusion of choice is preferable to no choice. I "could" use another talent configuration if I so desired, even if I never did. I love whoppers. 99% of the time when I buy candy from the store, I buy whoppers. I would still be upset if the store started selling only whoppers. Even if I choose the same thing every time, at least it was my decision.

What really gets me about the talent changes though isn't really the lack of choices. It was the removal of the opportunity to fail. Blizzards intent with the talent trees is that you can choose whatever you want, even pick at random, and it will have no significant impact on your performance in the game. Some people like that. I don't. It was just one of many points of failure blizzard removed from the game, and as a result, to me the successes were cheapened by a lack of chances to fail.

But the difference now is each Spec gets unique spells/abilities, this didn't used to happen before. So even if someone choose an odd spec, they used to have to dump lots of filler talent points into "must have" passives (extra damage, extra crit, extra mana regen, etc.). Back in the days before there was a "Are you sure you want to save these talent points?" warning, the only differences you'd see in PvP specs was when someone choose the wrong talent by accident.

So you have just as much choice now as you did then, the only difference is a lot of the choice is in choosing the spec, not in picking talents.

[Reinholder]

Even the illusion of choice is preferable to no choice. I "could" use another talent configuration if I so desired, even if I never did.

You can still do that today. Just now instead of 'choosing'/assigning 41/51 whatever talent points you pick six talents that you can actually use.

Here's an old vanilla talent calculator to show what you're missing from the good old days:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie...ry_select_id=7

To me choosing whether or not to take shadowstep/burst of speed/cloak and dagger is more interesting that deciding whether to spend 5 points to improve my poisons. Choosing whether to take bladestorm or shockwave is more interesting than choosing whether to spend 5 points in sword specialisation or axe specialisation (really was that a choice? Who equipped an axe and thought it was a good choice to take 5 points in mace specialisation anyway).

Look over the old trees again and see what you're missing. There is very little actual choice there. A majority of people picked the same talents that had been theory crafted to produce the best results. Some people may have shifted a point here or there but it made little difference. Occasionally someone would run some oddball combo but it was rare and usually short lived.

People look back on the 'glory days' like it was some golden era of WoW perfection overlooking the problems. Ask someone to quantify what was so great about things then and they'll probably struggle and/or point to things we still have today. The difference between then and now is that then the game and the experience was new to them. Five or more years later the new car smell is gone.

Sadly, I received my first ever infraction while posting in this thread, for trolling. All of the 'I'm leaving and here's my whinge before I leave' threads are trolling imho.

[Rucati]

You must've known a different hunter. They definitely weren't THE BEST but Cherez and Beasteh (Druid/Hunter) got R1 playing Druid/Hunter. We had quite a few on the server that regularly organized carries or sold points.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2nXQZJMVI

Somehow I knew as I was typing that you would bring up one of the 3 Hunters that managed to do well during TBC. People said Rogues were absolute trash in 5.0/5.1 but Reckful got rank 1 on a Rogue in half blue gear, guess Rogues were fine and didn't need any buffs. Oh wait, no, they were absolutely horrible.

Just because one person does well doesn't mean the class is balanced, but it's pretty apparent from this thread you post in circles (there are no counters, except all the counters... Right) and have no idea how PvP works.

[Siddown]

In all honesty, I get what the OP is saying. Classes definitely are a lot more similar than they used to be, and a lot of that was due to PvE. Most people reading this probably weren't playing during early Vanilla (say MC and start of BWL), but a lot of specs had absolutely zero to offer a raid. All Druids were Resto since only Resto has Innervate. All Shaman were Resto due to Mana Tide. All Pallies were Holy and were effectively decurse machines, etc.

Unfortunately, PvP suffered as a result, and now every class has self heals and similar abilities across the board (at least a lot more than they used to). Not that Vanilla was better, I think anyone who thinks that is just wearing rose colored glasses, because you could easily get global'd in Vanilla by plenty of classes and it seems that people forget that Rogues literally could infinitely stun lock someone ("infinitely" meaning more than enough time to kill any character in the game).

I wish they'd strip down the classes and start from scratch for PvP by concentrating on a smaller number of core abilities, but I know that will never happen so I don't worry about it too much.

[Itisamuh]

While I can understand your reasoning, I think the chess balance of arena matches has been gone since Wrath came out. Ever since then, burst has been too good, and starting with Cataclysm healing got too good as well. Now both aspects are even worse, and so is crowd control. And you are right, the more abilities they add to the game, the less unique classes feel. However, the bigger reason for my not playing is the subscription cost and grinds required before you can enjoy the game.

[worsthitmanNa]

I stopped reading at one shot by a destro lock.

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While I can understand your reasoning, I think the chess balance of arena matches has been gone since Wrath came out. Ever since then, burst has been too good, and starting with Cataclysm healing got too good as well. Now both aspects are even worse, and so is crowd control. And you are right, the more abilities they add to the game, the less unique classes feel. However, the bigger reason for my not playing is the subscription cost and grinds required before you can enjoy the game.

Wotlk was burst and rng burst no expansion had damage on that level. You didn't even have legendaries as excuse during wotlk. Damage was that crazy.

[Siddown]

Re: Old Talents v. New Talents.

So I did some Googling and found the PvP spec I used to use on my Rogue back in Vanilla after they fixed the Seal Fate bug (it used to give you two free Combo Points instead of one, so everyone used it). A few people ran combat, but the 21/8/22 spec was pretty popular for backstab rogues that also wanted Imp Sap (back then Sap pulled you out of stealth), Cold Blood (free crit) and Prep.

http://wowvault.ign.com/talentcalcul...?templateid=83

Almost everything in there is passive, plus there are some wasted talents that really didn't get used all that much (2/2 Imp SS needed to get to Imp BS being a perfect example, this did allow you to weapon swap in case you couldn't get behind an enemy, but it was basically useless for PvP). Putting points into Murder, or Imp Gouge just isn't my definition of "fun". Really, this entire spec centers around Imp Sap, CB and Prep. If you want those three abilities, you need to select a bunch of passives to get there.

In MoP a most of those passives would be built into the spec (Sub in this case for the most part) or are baseline for the class. I really think people are romanticizing the old talent trees and completely forget how much of them were just filler.

Re: Playstyle

Difference of opinion on talent trees aside, I will say that I did enjoy the play style more.

Maybe it's because I'm a noob, but there weren't so many options back then and the class was a lot more streamlined, and I liked that. When you were in stealth, you had three options: Cheapshot, Ambush or Sap. Back then Premed had a cast time and it was higher up the Sub Tree, so it wasn't obtainable and Garrote was a no-no because of the bleed which would break Gouge (and 2/2 Imp Gouge was crucial to the playstyle).

On offense, you had Backstab, Kidney Shot, Gouge and Eviserate (back then SnD wasn't something you'd really do). For defensive CD you had Sprint, Vanish and Evasion. Aside from when you decide to use Cold Blood (generally with a 5 CB Evis), Kick or Prep, that was all you had to worry about. Oh, and using Distract while someone was running down the Chain to MC was also fun because occasionally they'd run off and die in the lava.

Maybe I'm in the minority on this one, but I really enjoyed that simplicity.

[serenka]

a lot of infractions on this thread...

[Viscera]

I can't figure out if you know the game has changed in the past 5 years or not...

And if you're saying TBC was good, Hunters were entirely irrelevant. They were awful. Terrible. There were none. So no, you didn't "used" to see them do fine in TBC, they were garbage in arenas the first four seasons, so they got new skills to help them compete.

Was this part written to invalidate your post? Because that's what it did.

[Siddown]

Hunters in TBC were odd. S1 was the season of 5v5 since it was worth more rating and since Survival Hunters had a huge HP pool and entrapment, good Hunters could do quite well in 5v5. Plus they completely owned BGs, which is what most people remember. Those two factors are why most people woulc claim they were overpowered despite the fact they just weren't all that good in competitive arena.

[Deleted]

I like it how all these threads can pop up and mods won't do shit...and when we say ye sure man we don't care we get infracted...good going! Let's make 1 megathread where people can cry out and whine about the game and keep it there

[bergmann620]

• Classes no longer feel special or have signature abilities. Sure, warlocks have green fire and druids shapeshift but everyone seems to have a VERY similar counter or cooldown to one another.
• The game is overwhelming to keep up to date with (both information and gear) compared to other non MMO / possibly mmo PvP centric games. Truly "learning" a class requires playing it at max level, with gear changing, patches having drastic remakes of classes far more often than I remember, etc it just isn't possible without dumping huge amounts of time
• There are NO counters or balances in the game. Everything is generally similar in terms of ability, utility, output, etc (See: Homogenization). Previously mages countered melee, warlocks countered mages, rogues countered clothies, etc. It was just accepted and created a draw for a player towards a specific class.
• HOMOGENIZATION: EVERY class offers EVERYTHING and does EVERYTHING. It's annoying, it's stupid. All of the classes at this point (aside from the healer/tank/dps spec differences) are very similar and there isn't anything really exciting or interesting to draw me in to a specific class

1) This is somewhat true, but this is what will happen in a game that more and more has to be balanced around small-group content. Chances are, in a 40-man raid or BG, you will have every base covered, even if every class/spec combo has something unique. When you have to attempt to balance for 10-man PvE or 3-man PvP, things will need to be homogenized a bit, or too many comps will be left in the cold.

2) Completely true. Even worse, there is no in-game guidance whatsoever. You're lucky if you comb out the details in the patch notes. The bad thing is, this only hampers those that care about being decent on their characters.

3) Refer to #1.

Cheesing in this game is absolutely ridiculous now. BM hunters kill in an instant, Ret paladins kill in an instant, Destro kills in an instant. They all seem to offer NOTHING for PvP outside of a CD blowing cheese that (a good majority of the time) can negate any cooldowns or counters the opposite class has. With my rogue, moreso than ever, I feel that I am completely screwed if one of these specs catches me without full defensives. They can cheese anyone they'd like as long as cooldowns are up 100-0 in seconds, usually in a stun or CC.

Even my frost mage feels that way. Previously a chaosbolt/conflag from a destro, BM wrath, or mage shatter rotation was downright scary. It definitely set people back and you avoided it at your best... but it didn't flat out global (or near global) people. Now they do. Equal gear, equal playing field, and the cooldowns and combos certain classes can blow up with are freaking nuts.

It appears that PvP is at its most imbalanced in terms of stupid burst and burst setups. No longer do duels or arenas play like chess matches with counters, reactions, and offensives. They're just pure burst battles to see who can cheese who the fastest. It's pretty damn stupid.

[/QUOTE]

It has felt that way forever, any time your're not playing the FotM. The solution to the problem, in my eyes, would be to come up with a ranking system that ranks you according to how well you do compared to every other team with the same comp. Sure, X/X/Y might get pwned by every Y/Y/X team ever, but that doesn't stop them from being the best X/X/Y team in WoW. Even if there are tons of the current FotM comp, there will still only be one best group. This might even HELP the diversity of PvP, as it would encourage playing the under-represented comps.

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Seal twisting was fun though! :P

Did you just let your Everquest badge show?

[Baracuda]

Good points. But Blood DK and Demo Lock are kind of anti-melee imo.