Developer Watercooler - Battle for Azeroth Class Design Overview

[Thundering]

Class Uniqueness and Utility
One area we’re trying to focus on across all classes is to better emphasize what makes each class unique and provide greater distinction among their various capabilities, especially when it comes to utility—tools that fall outside of core role functions like damage, healing, or mitigation.


What do you think will happen to us paladins?

[Sett]

What do you think will happen to us paladins?

Take whatever they give warriors/priests and give us something that performs half as good.

[Schattenlied]

Nothing good...

[Reith]

This quote: "Pursuing this goal will likely involve adding some new abilities (or re-adding previously removed abilities) to give classes a more unique signature where needed" makes me think they might re-add things like Selfless Healer and Hand of Purity, although obviously they can't re-add everything they removed. We'll see.

[Sigxy]

This quote: "Pursuing this goal will likely involve adding some new abilities (or re-adding previously removed abilities) to give classes a more unique signature where needed" makes me think they might re-add things like Selfless Healer and Hand of Purity, although obviously they can't re-add everything they removed. We'll see.

I was already happy over the fact that we're getting Devotion Aura back (Would be nice to have a choice of what auras but, one step at a time I guess), so if they actually promise more of the old abilities, I'd be super happy. Old version of Holy Wrath was one of my favorites that damaged and stunned all demons/undead around.

[DrMcNinja]

Take whatever they give warriors/priests and give us something that performs half as good.

Nah they'll give Arms a full rework cause it's too similar to judgelossus smash.

[Kithelle]

Take whatever they give warriors/priests and give us something that performs half as good.

They would never do something like that...don't be silly!...oh wait.

[Swampmoose]

I was already happy over the fact that we're getting Devotion Aura back (Would be nice to have a choice of what auras but, one step at a time I guess), so if they actually promise more of the old abilities, I'd be super happy. Old version of Holy Wrath was one of my favorites that damaged and stunned all demons/undead around.

Unless they add multiple auras, bringing back one single aura that boosts armor by 10% is about as exciting as watching paint dry. At that point it's just a passive. Always up, out of sight, out of mind.

What do you think will happen to us paladins?

They'll make some changes people are happy about, and some that people hate. MMO-C will be flooded with tears about the latter for 2 years until the next xpac before the cycle repeats.

[Reith]

They'll make some changes people are happy about, and some that people hate. MMO-C will be flooded with tears about the latter for 2 years until the next xpac before the cycle repeats.

They don't have to revert it back to a previous expansion, but if they make the right choices, I think most people will be fairly satisfied even on here. Hammer of Wrath, for one thing. Blade of Justice at more than 12 yards. They don't really have to add a lot, they can do a lot by doing a little, tweaking things that need to be tweaked in the talents and abilities. It'd be extremely easy, if I were advising them anyway. I know exactly how I would do it to make the spec better, I could explain more in-depth if you want. Just don't want to make a giant paragraph right this second lol.

[tru]

Well it seems easy to say if you like your spec now this may be the first xpac you don't have to totally relearn it / they wont massively change something you enjoy...
having said that
If a spec you have loved for so many years has been shit to you for legion...well expect more of the same going into BfA.

I personally have been the most unhappy with legions class design out of every xpac that I have played. Going forward into BfA... im at a loss. I honestly don't know what to do. I don't have high hopes that they will actually change stuff. For instance giving ret its own identity instead of borrowed ideas. This may very well be the first xpac I haven't played at launch or played at all...im kinda getting to that age where im just about done with wow anyway. And I will not play legion 8.0 class design. Its the most important thing to me.

[Sett]

Nah they'll give Arms a full rework cause it's too similar to judgelossus smash.

hrggdhfghbgbdfhg because I can actually see that happening.

[Lothaeryn]

Well it seems easy to say if you like your spec now this may be the first xpac you don't have to totally relearn it / they wont massively change something you enjoy...
having said that
If a spec you have loved for so many years has been shit to you for legion...well expect more of the same going into BfA.

I personally have been the most unhappy with legions class design out of every xpac that I have played. Going forward into BfA... im at a loss. I honestly don't know what to do. I don't have high hopes that they will actually change stuff. For instance giving ret its own identity instead of borrowed ideas. This may very well be the first xpac I haven't played at launch or played at all...im kinda getting to that age where im just about done with wow anyway. And I will not play legion 8.0 class design. Its the most important thing to me.

Ret's design has actually been one of the best I've seen since Wrath. It has quite a few gaps though. Cata's RNG rotation was a terrible design choice, which they improved upon in MoP, WoD was ok, but boring. Legion, while mastery is complete shit, still feels like a solid spec that CAN do damage. Could talent design be better? ab-so-fucking-lutely. But compared to shit we've had in the past, its not half bad.

But considering that Blizzard has practically stated "bring the class, not the player" is their design goal, ret is royally screwed, I seriously doubt ret is even going to play half as decent as it did in Legion. Wake the Ashes is definitely not going to be baseline and it WILL be a talent, meaning it will probably compete with another actually useful talent which will fuck our dps rotation over badly.

If they could give us better mobility, we might even have a shot as a tertiary dps option in pvp!

[Vanderhuge]

cata's rng rotation was a terrible design choice

INTERNALLY SCREAMS IN INITIAL 80-85 LEVELING EXPERIENCE

For the Ret side, just really want all that hammer-y goodness back. Hammer of Wrath? Check. Final Verdict animation? Check. It would be nice for each spec to have some cool niche aura for raids, although we're probably just going to get Devotion Aura and "like it". As for actual gameplay, since it's almost a surefire bet that we're losing Wake of Ashes, we're going to need some help in the HP generation department. Divine Purpose baseline would rock - then they could focus on making that 100 talent tier Avenging Wrath focused. One of the talents could be allowing HoW use during Wings, similar to the past. Another could reduce the effect of AW and give a permanent damage/stat boost for sustained damage. There's a lot they could do with it that would be so much better than Holy Wrath.

[Vintersol]

HoW and LaotL and i would be happy.

[Swampmoose]

They don't have to revert it back to a previous expansion, but if they make the right choices, I think most people will be fairly satisfied even on here. Hammer of Wrath, for one thing. Blade of Justice at more than 12 yards. They don't really have to add a lot, they can do a lot by doing a little, tweaking things that need to be tweaked in the talents and abilities. It'd be extremely easy, if I were advising them anyway. I know exactly how I would do it to make the spec better, I could explain more in-depth if you want. Just don't want to make a giant paragraph right this second lol.

The day I come on here and someone isn't bitching about something, I'll eat my socks I agree that a bit of tweaking could go a long way. Things I've noticed so far in my limited time this xpac are 1) the difference in dps between wings and no wings seems way too drastic 2) play alone seems dull outside of wings (too slow) 3) movement is still weak in quite a few situations (I don't care about PVP anymore so no comment there) 4) I feel kind of useless to the raid as a whole outside of my dps a lot of the time.

As for Hammer of Wrath, I guess I understand the nostalgia there for some people, but I don't care about it one way or the other. I dislike executes, it hit like a wet noodle when I was really into the game, and blade fills the ranged holy power generator role. Blade could definitely have it's range increased slightly, but I don't think there needs to be a 2nd ranged HoPo generator.

[Alixie]

Just let me keep Divine Purpose. This is the one spec where I enjoy RNG. Makes me nostalgic for tier 10.

[Reith]

3) movement is still weak in quite a few situations (I don't care about PVP anymore so no comment there) 4) I feel kind of useless to the raid as a whole outside of my dps a lot of the time.

Ret was *the* freakin' support spec for MoP and it felt amazing. Maybe I wasn't topping DPS all the time (and I had my share of good DPS), but I felt useful in every single fight. Selfless Healer was a literal life saving talent that worked amazingly well for Ret. Hand of Sacrifice was almost always helpful. If your raid needed more healing in a specific circumstance for a short time, you could prepare for that accordingly without sacrificing much DPS, like if a healer went down in the middle of the fight or something. Best time to be Ret for sure, I don't care what anyone says.

If they gear ret talents mainly towards utility with 1 or 2 rows for damage stuff, it'll be hard for them to do that wrong.

[GreenJesus]

I was already happy over the fact that we're getting Devotion Aura back (Would be nice to have a choice of what auras but, one step at a time I guess), so if they actually promise more of the old abilities, I'd be super happy. Old version of Holy Wrath was one of my favorites that damaged and stunned all demons/undead around.

It doesn't matter because literally everyone is getting an aura and we basically got the worst one (10% armor).

[Schattenlied]

Nah they'll give Arms a full rework cause it's too similar to judgelossus smash.

They would never do something like that...don't be silly!...oh wait.

hrggdhfghbgbdfhg because I can actually see that happening.

They did it... They removed Arms' Colossus Smash mastery and replaced it with a bleed (though colossus smash still exists, it's just not their mastery, and on a much longer cooldown.)

Fuck Blizzard, seriously.

[Reith]

They did it... They removed Arms' Colossus Smash mastery and replaced it with a bleed (though colossus smash still exists, it's just not their mastery, and on a much longer cooldown.)

Fuck Blizzard, seriously.

Oh my fucking god. No. They better change our mastery. This is bs.