Class design in Battle for Azeroth is worrosime...

[Soon-TM]

Something about mages ... one of the most universal class since vanilla... one of the most great class for PvP from TBC,Wotlk,Cata,Panda... basic spell class for all fantasy games... But in WoW... support shit without possibilities. who want mages to his arena or RBG team? truly? who check arena ladder and compare mages with others? Who and why from Blizzard kill this class since WoD? And why is this class still killed after 2 expansions?

Yes, one of the traditionally control/burst-based classes can't control, kite or burst for !@#$ in B4A. Really sad

[Deleted]

It's pretty awful, they're going to launch the game with some classes completely unworked and others feeling like they've been gutted entirely even with war mode to help balance it out. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue, I would prefer to give Blizzard a chance but everyone I know who's beta tested is quite disgusted with all the pruning.

[Valedus]

Do people actually have examples of their complaints? People have been complaining about prunes, etc for months and most of the artifact abilities (for specs that haven't seen huge reworks) are in as talents (usually that replaced pretty garbage talents). Most of the specs I played on beta I enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, I have complaints about things such as the GCD (my main is a paladin, prot has their self heal on the GCD now - example), but what is actually so bad about the class design? Mostly, it seems people complain about pruning. There are still more than plenty of specs that have a ton of abilities, even some returning + other specs are straight up receiving stuff they've never had. I just don't see it.

[MyndZero]

Do people actually have examples of their complaints? People have been complaining about prunes, etc for months and most of the artifact abilities (for specs that haven't seen huge reworks) are in as talents (usually that replaced pretty garbage talents). Most of the specs I played on beta I enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, I have complaints about things such as the GCD (my main is a paladin, prot has their self heal on the GCD now - example), but what is actually so bad about the class design? Mostly, it seems people complain about pruning. There are still more than plenty of specs that have a ton of abilities, even some returning + other specs are straight up receiving stuff they've never had. I just don't see it.

Stuff being made into talents is just as bad as them removing it, because they still are effectively removing it. Having to suddenly pick a talent and disregard two other talents just to get your ability back that you've had essentially baseline for 2 years is not a good change.

In my opinion, you should have ALL your spells baseline, and talents are there to enhance or make trade offs on what you can currently do. E.g, like being able to leap twice in a row as a warrior but it increases the overall CD time. Making an ability able to AOE, make an ability able to combo off another ability (e.g a talent to enable whirlwind > raging blow aoe), or talents that are a new ability, but at the cost of replacing an existing ability. This is how TALENTS should function IMO and used to for the most part, and it worked perfectly fine. =

[Soon-TM]

Stuff being made into talents is just as bad as them removing it, because they still are effectively removing it. Having to suddenly pick a talent and disregard two other talents just to get your ability back that you've had essentially baseline for 2 years is not a good change.

In my opinion, you should have ALL your spells baseline, and talents are there to enhance or make trade offs on what you can currently do. E.g, like being able to leap twice in a row as a warrior but it increases the overall CD time. Making an ability able to AOE, make an ability able to combo off another ability (e.g a talent to enable whirlwind > raging blow aoe), or talents that are a new ability, but at the cost of replacing an existing ability. This is how TALENTS should function IMO and used to for the most part, and it worked perfectly fine. =

This would work very similarly to runes in D3. Actually, that's the one feature of D3 that I wouldn't mind being implemented in WoW...

[Valedus]

Stuff being made into talents is just as bad as them removing it, because they still are effectively removing it. Having to suddenly pick a talent and disregard two other talents just to get your ability back that you've had essentially baseline for 2 years is not a good change.

In my opinion, you should have ALL your spells baseline, and talents are there to enhance or make trade offs on what you can currently do. E.g, like being able to leap twice in a row as a warrior but it increases the overall CD time. Making an ability able to AOE, make an ability able to combo off another ability (e.g a talent to enable whirlwind > raging blow aoe), or talents that are a new ability, but at the cost of replacing an existing ability. This is how TALENTS should function IMO and used to for the most part, and it worked perfectly fine. =

I'm not entirely sure I remember a point in time in which talents didn't give you abilities outright. Even the original talent trees did. Expansions have shifted around what is baseline and what comes from talents for years. I understand it's a little shitty to have to talent into an ability you've had for 2 years, but honestly most of those abilities do not make or break specs. I'll speak from what I know - something like Prot paladin. For example, I'm straight up losing Eye of Tyr, even though there is plenty of space for it in the talent tree to put somewhere. Shitty? Yeah, sure. But Legion prot paladin had 127381237 defensive CD's, so I kinda get it. More often than not, the artifact abilities were essentially just mini-CD's or straight up CD's. It doesn't feel like a prune to me to not have some people have em.

In a perfect world, yeah, I'd say everyone should be able to grab them in their talent trees. Should they all be baseline? I'm not so sure, I somewhat agree with Blizzard saying that we would eventually end up with bars and bars of buttons (which I agree is unhealthy for the game). But there is a middle ground here.

In fact, my guild recently asked if I was going to be playing Prot or Ret, and honestly I'm worried about playing Ret next xpac. Why? Because there are like 4 rows where you can take an active ability, and if that ends up being the best spec, I'd rather bash my head into the wall. Having like 8-9 buttons to press for totally arbitrary reasons doesn't feel good to me nor does it feel exciting, and I don't really find it to be a solid measure of "skill" that people rant about when pruning happens. But meh, IDK.

[Craaazyyy]

I'm not entirely sure I remember a point in time in which talents didn't give you abilities outright. Even the original talent trees did. Expansions have shifted around what is baseline and what comes from talents for years. I understand it's a little shitty to have to talent into an ability you've had for 2 years, but honestly most of those abilities do not make or break specs. I'll speak from what I know - something like Prot paladin. For example, I'm straight up losing Eye of Tyr, even though there is plenty of space for it in the talent tree to put somewhere. Shitty? Yeah, sure. But Legion prot paladin had 127381237 defensive CD's, so I kinda get it. More often than not, the artifact abilities were essentially just mini-CD's or straight up CD's. It doesn't feel like a prune to me to not have some people have em.

In a perfect world, yeah, I'd say everyone should be able to grab them in their talent trees. Should they all be baseline? I'm not so sure, I somewhat agree with Blizzard saying that we would eventually end up with bars and bars of buttons (which I agree is unhealthy for the game). But there is a middle ground here.

In fact, my guild recently asked if I was going to be playing Prot or Ret, and honestly I'm worried about playing Ret next xpac. Why? Because there are like 4 rows where you can take an active ability, and if that ends up being the best spec, I'd rather bash my head into the wall. Having like 8-9 buttons to press for totally arbitrary reasons doesn't feel good to me nor does it feel exciting, and I don't really find it to be a solid measure of "skill" that people rant about when pruning happens. But meh, IDK.

but old talents were different compared to the current ones.. most of the talents that were abilities you were always using(well at least in a specific scenario you were making a build for), so that made them kinda baseline

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That is not true.

Sub received two active talents and only one is working properly on beta at the moment.

The fisher price design of Legion class design is not going to carry over into BFA as the players will make sure that doesn't happen. The late changes in BFA beta is an indicator that devs have accepted passive game play is not acceptable from players.

nah it will carry over.. and it will be worse than Legion..

[Thenatural]

Do people actually have examples of their complaints? People have been complaining about prunes, etc for months and most of the artifact abilities (for specs that haven't seen huge reworks) are in as talents (usually that replaced pretty garbage talents). Most of the specs I played on beta I enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, I have complaints about things such as the GCD (my main is a paladin, prot has their self heal on the GCD now - example), but what is actually so bad about the class design? Mostly, it seems people complain about pruning. There are still more than plenty of specs that have a ton of abilities, even some returning + other specs are straight up receiving stuff they've never had. I just don't see it.

Don't bother, people read about and learned the term, "Class Design" and now have to try to shoehorn it into every single threat so they don't get accused of being a blizz white-knight.

I don't doubt that the initial GCD changes and rollout of the first few alpha builds were jarring, but at this point it's people complaining just to complain.

I, for one, would rather have some specs be off at the start of an expansion than have a bunch of issues with content.

[cocomen2]

We all alrdy know that blizz didnt give a *** about some classes-specs (ench shamy+shadow priest), but i mad on their balancing team - these asspull numeric balance :
Your skill does 233.7% attack power or other skill heals you on 331% spell power ........ as if 330% was to low and 340% its fc OP.
Now today we got new GCD changes -http://www.wowhead.com/news=283908/c...le-for-azeroth

Hunter
All Specs
Disengage No GCD
NEW Binding Shot 1.5s GCD
NEW Exhilaration 1.5s GCD
Beast Mastery
Bestial Wrath 1.5s
Intimidation 1.5s
Aspect of the Wild 1.3s
Stampede 1.5s


i am ok with GCD 1.5 or 0.5 , but what the hell is 1.3s WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

[Nyel]

Do people actually have examples of their complaints? People have been complaining about prunes, etc for months and most of the artifact abilities (for specs that haven't seen huge reworks) are in as talents (usually that replaced pretty garbage talents). Most of the specs I played on beta I enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, I have complaints about things such as the GCD (my main is a paladin, prot has their self heal on the GCD now - example), but what is actually so bad about the class design? Mostly, it seems people complain about pruning. There are still more than plenty of specs that have a ton of abilities, even some returning + other specs are straight up receiving stuff they've never had. I just don't see it.

MyndZero mentioned some things already but on top of that you lose basically every "class" progress you made in Legion:

- artifact traits & skills (yes, some carry over but most are getting removed)
- legendaries (half of the Legion legendaries had better effects than basically every Azerite trait I've yet seen)
- pruning (basic skills turned into talents like Shadow Priests's Shadow Word: Death; some skills that get entirely removed; the GCD issue)
- losing T-Set bonuses

You lose 4 pillars of "Legion" class design and you get 1 (maybe 1.5 if we count the "baselining" of some artifact traits and skills as talents). Overall you lose like twice the stuff you get in exchange for that.

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This would work very similarly to runes in D3. Actually, that's the one feature of D3 that I wouldn't mind being implemented in WoW...

Would love to have that specific Diablo system in WoW! The rune system would be really cool to have here - we have it with some class skills (where skill 1 turns into another version via talent).

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The easiest explanation is that the Azerite armor was supposed to be so much more to fill gaps in classes. When that fell through they had to go back and actually work on classes.

However, I view it as a good thing that Azerite armor is a failure in that it forced them to rework several specs and gives them a blueprint for many more specs.

That's the problem when you develop a new game system and have absolutely no clue on how to do it. The whole Azerite system was abysmal from the minute they revealed it during Blizzcon - and it is abysmal until now.

[SpookyMoonz]

I like it. I'm almost convinced they do it just to troll idiots

so could you explain what you like about it? I don't think you have any actual argument, I just think you said some stupid shit to try to stir the pot.

but I'll give you a shot, big guy.

[Dizson]

It's fine now because most people don't play the beta, but once they realise their class isn't fun anymore or its unbalanced then I will dare you to check blizzard forums.
No one asked for pruning but here we are, because blizzard thought making an MMO more diablo and hots even Overwatch like is a good idea, maybe they want wow to be on mobile soon too. But jokes aside they should really get their shit together. All would have been fine with some classes getting reworked while others keep their artifact skills + weapons stats applied to spells. I think what they did was outright stupid and is now showing to be a massive failure. We will see, but they have to patch this shit fast.

[Deleted]

We all alrdy know that blizz didnt give a *** about some classes-specs (ench shamy+shadow priest), but i mad on their balancing team - these asspull numeric balance :
Your skill does 233.7% attack power or other skill heals you on 331% spell power ........ as if 330% was to low and 340% its fc OP.
Now today we got new GCD changes -http://www.wowhead.com/news=283908/c...le-for-azeroth

Not sure, but isn't Aspect of the Wild also reducing the gcd? (though the tooltip doesn't indicate it)
Hunter
All Specs
Disengage No GCD
NEW Binding Shot 1.5s GCD
NEW Exhilaration 1.5s GCD
Beast Mastery
Bestial Wrath 1.5s
Intimidation 1.5s
Aspect of the Wild 1.3s
Stampede 1.5s


i am ok with GCD 1.5 or 0.5 , but what the hell is 1.3s WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

Not sure, but isn't Aspect of the Wild also reducing the GCD? I know it's not in the tooltip but I'm sure it does in it's current Legion iteration.

[Mafic]

It's fine now because most people don't play the beta, but once they realise their class isn't fun anymore or its unbalanced then I will dare you to check blizzard forums.
No one asked for pruning but here we are, because blizzard thought making an MMO more diablo and hots even Overwatch like is a good idea, maybe they want wow to be on mobile soon too. But jokes aside they should really get their shit together. All would have been fine with some classes getting reworked while others keep their artifact skills + weapons stats applied to spells. I think what they did was outright stupid and is now showing to be a massive failure. We will see, but they have to patch this shit fast.

I think the backlash with BFA prepatch may be the worst of all prepatches we have seen thus far. This may even top the Cata/WotLK prepatch to be honest in terms of negative backlash.

[Dystemper]

Don't bother, people read about and learned the term, "Class Design" and now have to try to shoehorn it into every single threat so they don't get accused of being a blizz white-knight.

I don't doubt that the initial GCD changes and rollout of the first few alpha builds were jarring, but at this point it's people complaining just to complain.

I, for one, would rather have some specs be off at the start of an expansion than have a bunch of issues with content.

You do realize that when the game goes live and a bunch of the classes play for shit that people will leave the game in drove instead of "sticking with it" for a undetermined length of time. They paid 60 bucks plus 15 a month for a expansion that most of the classes feel boring and shallow? Yeah thats not going to sit real well. You watch BfA will flop harder then WOD ever did and we will see Devs getting fired in record numbers. I Dont even think Ion will make it 2 months after Aug 14.

Azurite armor is a big failure thats why they are scrambling to fix the classes after Ion said numerous times they are happy with how all the classes are playing and dont expect to do any major overhauls .

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I think the backlash with BFA prepatch may be the worst of all prepatches we have seen thus far. This may even top the Cata/WotLK prepatch to be honest in terms of negative backlash.

The forum melt downs are going to be Epic to be hold. How much you want to bet they have held off fixing the official forum problems so they can be taken down and stay down for repair.

[Icathian]

What I can't stand is the fact that classes gotta be dependent of external factors to be able to function. The moment that I heard about Artifact weapons in Legion I thought "Ok, then what's gonna happen when they're not relevant anymore?". It's just so stupid to gutter specs just to give them back a few things through systems like that.

Blizzard fell into a hole and they have no idea how to get out of it now. They can't just copy and paste everything into the Azerite system, but without some moronic system to boost specs, all specs become shallow after so much pruning.

While all this is happening, they tell players to wait for a patch, then wait for the next xpac etc. They just lure players into keep playing so they can get their 180$ /y in subs plus new xpacs.

The only thing that can kill WoW is WoW, and they're walking in that path for quite a while now and until the last player leaves the game they will continue to milk cash for as long as they can.

[Jastall]

but old talents were different compared to the current ones.. most of the talents that were abilities you were always using(well at least in a specific scenario you were making a build for), so that made them kinda baseline

Which made the entire system kind of pointless. Apart from a handful of niche or meme builds, the old talent trees might as well have you just select a spec and get everything in its cookie cutter tree baseline until the next patch/expansion shuffles things around and gives you a free respec. I have issues with how Blizzard handles the MoP+ talent choices in practice, but they at least provide choices in most cases.

And I think they start to get the hang of it, at long last. Some specs (such as Fury) have talent choices that are interesting and where nothing feels like it should be a baseline part of the spec. Everything is there to enhance a good existing spec. That's how talents should be. It is a goal they have not achieved yet and might never, but one worth pursuing nevertheless IMO.

[Icathian]

Which made the entire system kind of pointless. Apart from a handful of niche or meme builds, the old talent trees might as well have you just select a spec and get everything in its cookie cutter tree baseline until the next patch/expansion shuffles things around and gives you a free respec. I have issues with how Blizzard handles the MoP+ talent choices in practice, but they at least provide choices in most cases.

The talent tree system atm is a joke for most specs. In every row there's at least 1 talent which is garbage, so that alone gives you not many things to pick.

Most of the good ones just makes you switch between ST/AoE. 1 boss fight is ST so you pick X talent, the other is a council fight so you pick Y. If you don't do it right you're just gimping yourself.

It's still cookie cutter BS. You can still go to Icy Veins or whatever, slap whatever works best for what you're gonna be doing and be done with it. It's really not much different as the previous system.

[Jastall]

The talent tree system atm is a joke for most specs. In every row there's at least 1 talent which is garbage, so that alone gives you not many things to pick.

Most of the good ones just makes you switch between ST/AoE. 1 boss fight is ST so you pick X talent, the other is a council fight so you pick Y. If you don't do it right you're just gimping yourself.

It's still cookie cutter BS. You can still go to Icy Veins or whatever, slap whatever works best for what you're gonna be doing and be done with it. It's really not much different as the previous system.

That's not true anymore as of BfA. The majority of rows are now dedicated to one aspect; you have the burst AoE row, the resource generation row, the mobility row, the pure ST row, so on and so forth. For most specs I tested at least. Whenever one is straight up better is a question of tuning, not design. Even in Legion there were some builds for some specs that did better than one expects on some fights, albeit that also hinged on switching leggys around.

And hey, choice between two talents is still more choice than we had back then.

[Craaazyyy]

That's not true anymore as of BfA. The majority of rows are now dedicated to one aspect; you have the burst AoE row, the resource generation row, the mobility row, the pure ST row, so on and so forth. For most specs I tested at least. Whenever one is straight up better is a question of tuning, not design. Even in Legion there were some builds for some specs that did better than one expects on some fights, albeit that also hinged on switching leggys around.

And hey, choice between two talents is still more choice than we had back then.

choices that you are forced to make based on what boss you are fighting arent really choices