Developer Watercooler - Battle for Azeroth Class Design Overview

[Lorgar Aurelian]

they can just start by reverting hunter to MoP or WoD and try again. legion was a failure.

I don’t think blizzard ever back peddles like that so I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I was you.

[Marrilaife]

"It will also likely involve reining in the availability of certain utility types, especially those that are so widespread that they rarely provide meaningful contrast between classes." Read: some classes will become mandatory for content like mythic+ by bringing useful utility, while the rest will have to content with useless fluff and being excluded or delegated into "this is a pvp spec / class".

"That contrast causes members of a team to be more dependent on each other to succeed, and encourages different group compositions to approach encounters in different ways." Behold the class stacking abomination that will trump even mythic Tomb of Sargeras in BFA.

[Taeldorian]

Where does it say that though?
I was really exited when I saw this. Class design is one of the most important parts of WoW (for me at least) but that text could mean just about anything.
When you look up vague in a dictionary I would not be surprised to find a link to this very text.

It’s vague in a sense that they’re still working through ideas and all they’re doing is letting us know they’re train of thought. We don’t even have access to beta yet.

However, if you pair this statement which provides us with their line of thinking going into BFA and what they want to do with classes (eg. bring back specific class abilities and focus on making classes stand out) with their other statements of wanting to bring back class abilities and taking the prune too far you get exactly what they’re going for, which would be adding back abilities that felt unique to specs but got pruned.

It’s our job to advocate for our class and spec. If you have an ability in mind that was unique to your class and you think it would be nice to have back then lobby for it. Based on everything here they’re mindset clearly shows that’s their goal.

[Deleted]

Every time, when Blizz devs stating something about "future plans"or Q&A, this song popping into my mind:

[threads]

Not happening. They've already said that they are committed to the Melee Hunter spec and good on them.

I actually enjoy Survival personally. And played right it can be pretty bloody strong in raids and is absolutely disgusting in PvP.

well thats great for you but they basically fucked everyone who already liked SV so a couple of people could use a melee weapon.

[Taeldorian]

A ton of people provide the shittiest feedback possible or don’t provide any at all and then wonder why blizzard doesn’t listen. They have to constantly sift through piles of shit to get to the actual feedback provided by players who give a damn. They probably miss a ton of actual legit feedback because people run around spamming that blizzard sucks and they never listen.

You can look at this thread alone and see quite a few who aren’t interested in providing quality feedback but would rather shit on blizzard and in turn the players.

We had 2 really shitty betas (legion and Cata) where the developers argued with players constantly and turned out to be wrong. Tom chilton specifically told ret Paladins to stop talking about holy wrath because he thinks it’s fun and no matter what it’s staying in the game meanwhile players said it wasn’t fun and it’s either going to be garbage or OP, and now it’s never used at all. This doesn’t mean we should stop providing feedback because sometimes they don’t listen.

If you wanna be stupid though that’s well within your right.

[Aggrophobic]

It’s vague in a sense that they’re still working through ideas and all they’re doing is letting us know they’re train of thought. We don’t even have access to beta yet.

However, if you pair this statement which provides us with their line of thinking going into BFA and what they want to do with classes (eg. bring back specific class abilities and focus on making classes stand out) with their other statements of wanting to bring back class abilities and taking the prune too far you get exactly what they’re going for, which would be adding back abilities that felt unique to specs but got pruned.

It’s our job to advocate for our class and spec. If you have an ability in mind that was unique to your class and you think it would be nice to have back then lobby for it. Based on everything here they’re mindset clearly shows that’s their goal.

So take stuff away and then bring it back in again and call it new? Sorry, but it's hard to be that exited about that.
I'd like the MoP calss design back, less randomness and more control back, please. The same goes for rewards and progression. Less RNG for everyone!

[Aeula]

So basically... butcher any use you'd have for artifact talents by adding them to talent trees. Scrap everything else and wait until the forums start complaining?

[Mhyroth]

I don't understand the stun example.
People will just take the Class/player who has the AoE stun for M+ for example (just like now) so making Classes even more distinctive won't solve the problem of "bring the player not the class" which they've been advocating (but failing to deliver)

Balancing Legendary proccs etc is too complex so no way we keep those. (they even backfired us equipping more so no way they will make them baseline.

[Taeldorian]

So take stuff away and then bring it back in again and call it new? Sorry, but it's hard to be that exited about that.
I'd like the MoP calss design back, less randomness and more control back, please. The same goes for rewards and progression. Less RNG for everyone!

The stuff they bring back can be improved though. If exorcism came back it doesn’t necessarily have to be the exact same thing, it can have some cool new things added to it.

I play Holy/ret currently, ret has hardly any RNG involved which makes it fun for me. I agree with MoP class design for the most part. Some classes/specs were very fucking boring though (ret pally just to name one) however there was a lot less RNG in the rotations.

Holy pally was fun, enhance and ele Sham were fun, lock was fun, survival hunter was fun. Those were the classes I played and I enjoyed them all but others were boring. I know arms/fury was very fun as well.

Who knows, maybe by adding back abilities, rotations will be more MoP-like. MoP did have a good amount of RNG but there were a lot of abilities that helped make the RNG feel less like RNG if that makes sense. There were other things to use if your “RNG” didn’t favor you.

In BFA we are getting a lot less RNG. 3 main slots can’t titanforge, no random legendaries, etc. Will see what the classes look like when beta opens up and provide feedback from there.

[Kluian05]

It sounds like "bring the player, not the class" is now being thrown out the window ... Blizzard why are you repeating past mistakes? This expansion design philosophy seems broken.

[makketota]

I don't understand the stun example.
People will just take the Class/player who has the AoE stun for M+ for example (just like now) so making Classes even more distinctive won't solve the problem of "bring the player not the class" which they've been advocating (but failing to deliver)

Balancing Legendary proccs etc is too complex so no way we keep those. (they even backfired us equipping more so no way they will make them baseline.

Plenty of ways to balance that. Have the class with the AoE stun be the worst in the game at AoE damage etc, we also don't know what other classes will bring yet.

[Weeps]

Please, Blizzard...

If you're going to keep voidforms for Spriest, please... do something about the insanity decay rate when/if Void Torrent is taken out. The class will simply not work without its function as is.

[Corroc]

Sounds good but honestly I'd rather hear some specific examples of what they are planning on doing. Most of what they said doesn't excite me to look forward to anything, it's just broad philosophies that most of us already have heard a thousand times over.

I would've liked to hear stuff like:
• Their thoughts on how Survival Hunter played out - I feel like in the community it's viewed largely as a failure
• What specific utility abilities they need to bring back - IE Smoke Bomb. And also how they view Talents vs PVP talents. Seems like a lot of utility moved to PVP trees, and that hollowed out PVE utility.

Funny thing about survival is that most of the people base their opinions on what they hear. Reading the forums I thought survival was really hard and complicated spec to play. Then I had to do the survival artifact challenge and I actually found survival fun spec to play. Ok if you play wow with default UI and dont want to optimize your gameplay at all then I would understand how survival can come up as difficult spec.But couple weak auras to show buff durations and its actually not that hard. Its kinda like arcane mage with burst and non burst phases with small duration between them. The only actually clunky thing about the spec is trap usage since the way traps work. There is no easy way to use it even with @cursor macros.

[splatomat]

well thats great for you but they basically fucked everyone who already liked SV so a couple of people could use a melee weapon.

This.

Also, if they were going to insist on fundamentally changing Survival, it should have been to give Hunters a new ROLE (Tanking). Instead it just gave Hunters another DPS spec that I cannot remember anybody actively clamoring for. (Hunter Tank spec = polearm wielding hunter who rides his pet bear/boar/ostritch/crab/whatever into battle like a mounted knight).

I would like to see Shadowpriests get their support abilities back. Heck, I'd like to see a viable SUPPORT role make the trinity a quadrinity. That's a pipe dream, though.

[kaid]

A ton of people provide the shittiest feedback possible or don’t provide any at all and then wonder why blizzard doesn’t listen. They have to constantly sift through piles of shit to get to the actual feedback provided by players who give a damn. They probably miss a ton of actual legit feedback because people run around spamming that blizzard sucks and they never listen.

You can look at this thread alone and see quite a few who aren’t interested in providing quality feedback but would rather shit on blizzard and in turn the players.

We had 2 really shitty betas (legion and Cata) where the developers argued with players constantly and turned out to be wrong. Tom chilton specifically told ret Paladins to stop talking about holy wrath because he thinks it’s fun and no matter what it’s staying in the game meanwhile players said it wasn’t fun and it’s either going to be garbage or OP, and now it’s never used at all. This doesn’t mean we should stop providing feedback because sometimes they don’t listen.

If you wanna be stupid though that’s well within your right.

A lot of the problem is people often the same ones ask for diametrically opposed things without blinking an eye. So you get people complaining about the new level scaling being to slow and the refer a friend getting nerfed xp wise but in a different thread go off how amazing the vanilla server will be for the true leveling experience. It is no wonder with stuff like that devs sometimes throw up their hands and just have to make a choice one way or the other on their own.

[Eleccybubb]

well thats great for you but they basically fucked everyone who already liked SV so a couple of people could use a melee weapon.

A lot of SVs ranged stuff was baked into MM and BM. MM has Lock and Load as well as Black Arrow for example.

You still have two perfectly playable, easy and strong specs there to play.

I won't deny a minority like Survival but I'd rather them improve the spec more than just give up and go back to it being ranged. I like having that choice in if I want to be a Melee or Ranged Hunter.

HOWEVER. I wouldn't mind if it went back to a Ranged spec. I like both playstyles of the Hunter class.

[iamthedevil]

Traits as talents... that's some bullshit.

[elgarta]

My biggest hope is that basic playstyle options come back, like Brewmasters being able to use 1h again, fury being able to equip 2x 1h and (unlikely) having access to more abilities to 2h enhance. At least while leveling, it can keep things fresh. I don't care about endgame for it, I just want my warrior to run with fists again

[Erbel]

they can just start by reverting hunter to MoP or WoD and try again. legion was a failure.

Won't happen. They like MM being the clunky utility-less shitfest it is now instead of how fun and utility-packed it was in MoP and WoD. It was only because of MM that I was actually able to enjoy Ashran.