Who thinks they made a mistake pruning the abilties

[manoman]

Well yea... gotta say i do miss lots of stuff on my shaman.

[Radianshot]

Having more abilities was both nice and annoying
Nice because I had more buttons for situational stuff
Bad because there was too many buttons and not enough gcds, plus remembering all your buttons on all your alts and etc was hard
Nice because it was fun having a more complex rotation
Bad because it meant rotations were way harder and thus finding better players for pugs was harder
Nice because more abilities covered the strengths / weaknesses of each class
Bad because it meant that every class was heavily imbalanced due to the large number of abilities

and the list goes on..

[Deleted]

Nope, actually one of the best things that ever happened to WoW.

[Craaazyyy]

Well yea... gotta say i do miss lots of stuff on my shaman.

u forgot earth shield.. its only pvp too

oh and then there is no greater healing wave either.. after that they added unleash and now its only a talent.. no elementals, no shocks.. all the utility totems gone.. almost all

[Dastreus]

Mostly yes. Some abilities did need to be made passives or merged into other spells/abilities, though. Fuckin' hot bars on my shaman were insane.

[Craaazyyy]

Having more abilities was both nice and annoying
Nice because I had more buttons for situational stuff
Bad because there was too many buttons and not enough gcds, plus remembering all your buttons on all your alts and etc was hard
Nice because it was fun having a more complex rotation
Bad because it meant rotations were way harder and thus finding better players for pugs was harder
Nice because more abilities covered the strengths / weaknesses of each class
Bad because it meant that every class was heavily imbalanced due to the large number of abilities

and the list goes on..

so basically all the bad things are things that made the game more fun and enjoyable?

[Kathranis]

They messed up where they pruned class/spec flavor, and some classes got hit worse than others but in BfA they're at least going to be bringing back some of what they pruned.

[Gardoc]

Yes, it was a huge mistake that ruined PVP. All classes are now braindead. And btw there was no such thing as a ability bloat. During MOP I used almost every spell on every class. There was always a way how to improve. Now you're just a dmg bot with templates because having choice is too hard for modern WOW player.

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Nope, actually one of the best things that ever happened to WoW.

Yes, that's why every thread on forums is about classes and how they suck and how pruning ruined the game for many people.

[Alex86el]

pruning was definitely a good thing.

then again, it is still wow. there are still abilities that are there just for you to press something.

like dps cooldowns.

wow's playstyle is too much playing the UI and too little, close ot none, playing the battlefield.
they should take lessons from Warhammer Online, Neverwinter Online, Guild Wars 2.
WAR: good balance of the two. not too fast, with strategic abilities to plan.
NWO: most fun combat i've had in an mmo. eyes on the fight, not the UI.
GW2: fun engaging combat. again, eyes on the fight, not the UI.
WoW: waiting for something to proc so i can press something, then press my cooldowns on curve. and twitch play on pvp. yay.

WoW needed you to play piano on the keyboard to be good in pvp, and have the reflexes of a mongoose.
i dont complain because i couldnt do it, hell, i played an engineer mage to rank 13, and i had 44 keybinds at some point.
nevertheless it was a drag.

[ManiaCCC]

"Yet Another Thread" .. but in spite of that.

The real issue is that yes, there were A TON of abilities in the game.
But there was more to our mastery over our class than our DPS rotation.
It was how well we used the wide range of other abilities we had.

Tank had to go AFK for a moment in a dungeon, and someone facepulled.
I was able to prevent a wipe with some quick use of my abilities.
And while, big deal, who cares about a wipe in a dungeon?
One of the other people in the group IM'd me.
"You've been playing a long time, haven't you?"
"Yes," I said, "Why do you ask?"
"Because only someone who's been around for a long time, knows how to do what you did."

That's the real loss in ability pruning, right there.
There was more to us than our DPS.
I complimented a Hunter who joined our guild, when he made clever use of his traps and Misdirect.
It meant he didn't just know how to DPS well, he knew how to use every tool he had well.

We've lost a lot of that.

This, so much this. Anyone saying pruning is fine probably never had this experience.

To add on this, I remember how shamans with good usage of sentry totems made a difference in PvP or right timed grounding totem were godly. Ganged by rogues? Anti-poison totem could screw them hard. Or healer in danger? Put on rockbiter and earth shock to grab aggro, taunt totem on the ground and heal both you and healer so he can continue to keep tank up.

We lost all of this. For no good reason. If at least our damage rotations would be more interesting..but they are? More buttons, sure..but interesting or complex? no way.

[Deleted]

Yes, it was a huge mistake that ruined PVP. All classes are now braindead. And btw there was no such thing as a ability bloat. During MOP I used almost every spell on every class. There was always a way how to improve. Now you're just a dmg bot with templates because having choice is too hard for modern WOW player.

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Yes, that's why every thread on forums is about classes and how they suck and how pruning ruined the game for many people.

Yeah its a shame, Legion could have been a good expansion without the pruning. I think I even had more fun with my classes in WoD. For some people WoW is all about mastering a class, with Legion playing a class has just become brainless button bashing which has ruined the game for me.

[PaladinBash]

Yeah they took away heaps of useful Ret things over the years. Hell they even took away shit from the fucking beta that they added. Never mind Hammer of Wrath or Judgement sprints, they took away that cool Tyrael teleport because "hurr durr mobility abilities shouldn't do a trifling amount of damage that you'd never actually use it for". Y'know, except Heroic Leap and the gorillion DH ones. Hell you think Monks use that fucking flying kick for the sick DPS gains? Ability pruning hurt a lot of specs but it absolutely shat on an already 'well balanced' spec like Ret. When they had taken away almost everything, they added some in the beta to take them away just so they could ruin the spec a bit more.

[Dizzeeyooo]

You understand that pvp was in tatters (and still is) largely to the abcility bloat and cc bloat? Its still bad but its better than it was...

wow, pvp was in tatters before they began pruning class abilities left right and centre, lets investigate that claim shall we?

MoP, the last pre-prune expansion

Season 14 (MoP)
http://www.arenamate.net/arena-rbg-t...fs/archive/s14
1164 US gladiator spots > 232,800 people actively playing arena in US

Season 15 (MoP)
http://www.arenamate.net/arena-rbg-t...fs/archive/s15
1659 US gladiator spots > 331,800 people actively playing arena in US

seems ok, less people then in wotlk but its obviously difficult to compete with the most popular (in terms of participation numbers) pvp expansion ever, right?

WoD, the initial prune expansion

Warlords Season 1
http://www.arenamate.net/arena-rbg-t...ve/warlords-s1
1302 US gladiator spots > 260,400 people actively playing arena in US

Warlords Season 3
http://www.arenamate.net/arena-rbg-t...ve/warlords-s3
1213 US gladiator spots > 242,600 people actively playing arena in US

ouch, no end of expansion pvp participation jump and less people pvping at the end of the expansion vs at the start, pretty unusual, numbers are not completely terrible however

Legion, the lets give every spec a maximum of 20 buttons in their spellbook and call it class fantasy since people hate pruning expansion

Legion Season 3
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20755686108
128 US Alliance gladiator spots + 168 Horde gladiator spots > 296 total US gladiator spots > 59,200 people actively playing arena in US

lol - yep, pruning abilities sure is fixing pvp and making it more enjoyable to participate in, look at all that Legion pvp participation

[Aleksej89]

WoD and Legion pruning was awful!
Im okay with removing some rotational abilities, such as shaman DPS having like 3 almost identical shock spells or hunters having several focus generating abilities that are very similar.

If blizz wanted to remove certain abilities from PVP then they could just have made them not work against pvp targets and in BGs and arenas.
PVE players really do not want to have their beloved spells removed from raids/dungeons/questing just cause they are trouble in PVP.

But blizz also removed a TON of utility, niche, situational and flavor spells from many classes - hunters and druids being the prime example.
Blizz has completely gutted the Hunter class to the point where i abandoned the class after main-ing it since vanilla/tbc.

Situational, niche and flavor spells are exactly what makes a class feel unique and in-depth and immersive.
Players who love such spells (tranquilizing shot, distracting shot...) absolutely hate to see them removed, and players who do not like such spells never bothered putting them on their action bars to begin with.

But dumbass blizzard ended removing 90% of such spells even though they caused no unwanted bloat.
Heck if you tell me a class has a bloat of utility, niche, situational and flavor spells i will pick that class over any other that is bare-bones.

[sykoex]

As long as they replace them with new and interesting abilities such as Shield of Vengeance then it's okay.

[manoman]

u forgot earth shield.. its only pvp too

oh and then there is no greater healing wave either.. after that they added unleash and now its only a talent.. no elementals, no shocks.. all the utility totems gone.. almost all

Earth Shield is a totem now and only in PvP a seperate spell... also i did not cross out elementals because they are available for Elemental Shamans. But whatever. Because of Blizzards inability to keep shamans somewhat consistent i switched my main to a priest.

[Craaazyyy]

Earth Shield is a totem now and only in PvP a seperate spell... also i did not cross out elementals because they are available for Elemental Shamans. But whatever. Because of Blizzards inability to keep shamans somewhat consistent i switched my main to a priest.

its not a totem.. totem is called earthen shield and it does a completely different thing really

also its not like priests are consistent

they've been hit with pruning as much as shamans

[Azzurri]

I think the button bloat was real, but I do also think they took it a little too far in Legion.

I play an ele shaman and I still have a lot of key binds. My MMO mouse Ctrl1-6 EleB, lavaB, lightningB, Chain Lightning, Earth Quake, and Earthshock. My 1-4 are Fire ele, flame shock, frost shock and 4th is Icefurry.

Those are just a few and I have another 10-15 other keybinds that I use a lot too. But those are my main ones.

[Ielenia]

such as mage remove curse deep freeze searing pain on lock mana burn on priest and many others

I know Blizzard pruned a lot of abilities, but you still have the comma and period keys on your keyboard, don't you?

OT: I think the prune was necessary, since every expansion adds at least one new ability to each spec in the game, so it does reach a time of bloat. We would end up without room in our hotkey bars. (They might have pruned a tad too much, though...)

[arrez]

Every time i see people say "professions don't matter now" it reads "I can't get broken tier 1 craftables that are leaps and bounds ahead of raid gear"