Complicated Specs?

[Razzako]

The peak of Feral's complexity was WotLK. However, if played well (and with the correct amount of ArPen) you destroyed DPS meters.

WoD was crazier, single target was nuts too.

[vsb]

You can get to the top 90% without using any 3rd party tools or checking guides. That's boring. No choices, no complexity, no fun.

I'm using simulationcraft, I can write my own APLs, I read a ton of guides yet I can't reach 90%, I'm usually parsing 15% to 40%. It's not that easy as you're trying to represent.

[Nerovar]

yep welcome to wow sadly.

they could make some specs harder then others but then no one would play them, so if they then increase their damage to compensate dificulty, everyone plays them.

Demonolgy were super complicsated, and PERFECTLY landing your hand of guldans to get 3 stacks was rough, but if you did you did INSANE dps, so everyone was playing demo, even if only some could pull it off.

this is why balancing is so hard, cause you cant just have all the specs deal the damage damage, they ALSO need to be about the same dificulty to play, have the same utility, and the same survivability.

But if someone tries the complex spec and fail they still have the option to play an easier spec that will probably deal as much damage as the difficult spec with their "less than optimal" playstyle. I mean, do they really do a better job at balancing every spec than back in the days when there was a larger disparity in terms of complexity? I don't think so.

[Jastall]

That depends on what you mean.

If you mean a spec that, when used on a target dummy, is truly complex and very hard to get a hold of? That's basically never existed in this game outside of some instances of snapshotting DoT specs (and mostly just Ferals at that, Aff had it fairly easy in comparison). There aren't really specs like that, no, because WoW has never been a very complex game and the GCD affords a generous amount of time to think about your next move.

If you mean a spec that has enough nuances that said next move isn't immediately obvious in several circumstances, especially in a high-pressure setting like Mythic raids, rated PvP and high keys? I'd say Demo Lock, Spriest to a degree, Survival with Mongoose Bite which you should take, Feral, Elemental's AoE, Frost Mage with some talents, and arguably Sub have complexity that makes them harder to play than the likes of BM, Ret or Fury. Not going into healers of course, which are a totally different beast.

[Nerovar]

That depends on what you mean.

If you mean a spec that, when used on a target dummy, is truly complex and very hard to get a hold of? That's basically never existed in this game outside of some instances of snapshotting DoT specs (and mostly just Ferals at that, Aff had it fairly easy in comparison). There aren't really specs like that, no, because WoW has never been a very complex game and the GCD affords a generous amount of time to think about your next move.

If you mean a spec that has enough nuances that said next move isn't immediately obvious in several circumstances, especially in a high-pressure setting like Mythic raids, rated PvP and high keys? I'd say Demo Lock, Spriest to a degree, Survival with Mongoose Bite which you should take, Feral, Elemental's AoE, Frost Mage with some talents, and arguably Sub have complexity that makes them harder to play than the likes of BM, Ret or Fury. Not going into healers of course, which are a totally different beast.

Would you say these specs are more complex/less complex/or the same compared to previous expansions?

[Nasuuna]

The peak of Feral's complexity was WotLK. However, if played well (and with the correct amount of ArPen) you destroyed DPS meters.

(i play private servers, main alt is feral)

Wotlk isn't that bad compared to power shifting in bc and vanilla (lesser extent due to lack of snapshotting chances)

but in BFA, you have the snapshotting, and the optimal spec involves a second ability you have to snapshot with (bloodtalons), still having savage roar

wotlk had..snapshotting and having to be behind/to the side of the target

[Jastall]

Would you say these specs are more complex/less complex/or the same compared to previous expansions?

Can't say for all as Demo lock is the only one I play with any kind of consistency, but I'd say it is about equal to its complexity in Mists and WoD, where instead of having to watch your summon timers you had to manage Meta which looked complex on paper but if memory serves mostly meant shifting to dump as many Chaos Waves into adds as possible. I also think BfA Demo is the single most fun ranged DPS spec this game has ever produced, so even if it does end up being less complex than in previous xpacks I couldn't care less.

Survival is slightly less complex than in Legion (it's completely different from pre-Legion Survival so no point comparing there) but it gained a lot in terms of fun and design. Legion Survival was a mess of abilities, it felt like an old spec sometimes. BfA Survival is a lot more focused while still being reasonably complex to play with plenty of abilities to weave in sequence, which is what Blizzard should aim for I think.

A guildy that plays Feral since Wrath says that only the WoD version was harder. I have 0 serious experience with the spec beyond hitting a target dummy on a shitty alt during Legion so I can't confirm or deny.

Overall I'd say complexity is not something you'd want to look for in WoW. It's never been a hardcore game where you have to look up half of the rules and effects online to be able to basically function (unlike, say, PoE or Warframe). Difficulty in WoW comes more from the environment; performing your priority list/rotation on a target dummy is all well and going, now try doing it while dodging one-shotting abilities, tracking boss or M+ timers, or executing the myriad moves required of you in advanced PvP. Using Warframe as a contrast, there's tons and tons of different stats and variables you have to track and build for, but the actual gameplay is running around shooting dudes with your overpowered weapons until they die. Only the advanced movement maneuvers and a handful of the hundred+ of weapons and Warframes are at all complicated to grasp in gameplay. What one prefers depends on personal taste.

Healers are probably what you should seek if you want a real workout. I've seen great healers do some feats of skill in my guild, and on Method's Jaina kill I think one of their priests reached something like 80K HPS at one point which is balls-out insane.

[Malkiah]

I don't think Unholy possesses any complexity whatsoever.

as i noted, only with aoe - and only because correctly lining up spreading around pustules and then DnD and SS and epidemic while also not having everything be dead by the time your setup is done while *also* maximizing DnD strike time can be a little tricky.
(note that the final couple specs after the word SOMETIMES are only talking about aoe, not single target)

The overall allure of complex specs (meaning specs that have room to make mistakes and therefor also room to improve) is quite obvious. RPGs are all about player growth.

that's fine in a single player game but you have to consider that an MMO needs to acknowledge the existence of skill gaps otherwise the core gameplay system is untenable.
so having EVERYTHING focused solely on the subjective experience of a single person is an incredibly bad way to design an MMO.

If your "achievement" only lies in outgearing stuff and getting bigger numbers, then that's a really shallow experience to some and not very satisfying whatsoever.

this would be purely subjective, and that's a big part of the problem.
personally? i think having an easy rotation and lack of complexity allows for greater satisfaction when you manage to play notably relative to others in your grouping.
having narrower margins for error means those who are exceptional stand out more, IMO, as opposed to a situation where you can't really tell the difference between good execution or just failing to fail at execution.

Some players want to feel like they're actually improving and overcoming an obstacle. They want to be better at their class than others. They want their class itself to be a challenge and they want to master that challenge.

and those players shouldn't be playing WoW, because this is the lincoln logs of MMOs.

But why would you take away complexity from the part of the playerbase that actually enjoys this kind of challenge? Who benefits from this?

a good philosophical question, and i would think the answer comes down to "how much feedback is given about how easy the game is vs. how much feedback was given about how hard the game was" and that's a question we'll never have the answer to.
but i can pretty much promise you that despite what some people think, dev teams do NOT sit around cooking up ways to troll the playerbase and piss them off, they make decisions based on measurable data.

but given that a HUGE part of wow's core design philosophy from its very inception, and reiterated several times throughout its development, was "let's make a game for people who find EQ too hard" it's questionable whether or not slight iterations on the number of buttons you have available really equates to any meaningful amount of challenge.

[Th3Scourge]

I don't think Unholy possesses any complexity whatsoever. I always know exactly what to do it's just that the overall pace of the game (through GCD etc.) limits the spec in a way that makes you reevaluate if you really want to use spell X instead of Y. But I wouldn't call that depth. It's more like an itch you can't scratch.

Well, yes and no. Complexity? Not really but relative complexity? Yeah, most likely.

Single target, yes, it is quite simple and the most "complex" decision you need to make is when to drop your death and decay if running pestilence. M+ is a much different story, the margin for error on your aoe rotation is quite slim and you're often gcd restricted between dumping your RP, stacking wounds, dropping dnd, and ensuring you can get as many scourge strikes off within the dnd window whilst not capping RP, generating enough stacks of festering wounds to fuel your festermight azerite traits, positioning your pet with helchains etc.

You mention it yourself with the gcd restrictions which force decision making that can can make up to a 10k dps difference in aoe situations.

[Nerovar]

that's fine in a single player game but you have to consider that an MMO needs to acknowledge the existence of skill gaps otherwise the core gameplay system is untenable.
so having EVERYTHING focused solely on the subjective experience of a single person is an incredibly bad way to design an MMO.

That's not what I requested. I'm talking about giving players the option to play specs that are more complex than others instead of equalizing them to a really low level (I think it has never been as easy as it is now to pick up a new spec and perform relatively well). I think they managed to do that quite well up until Legion. I played both simple and more complex specs and both were viable and fun to play although they provided very different experiences.

this would be purely subjective, and that's a big part of the problem.
personally? i think having an easy rotation and lack of complexity allows for greater satisfaction when you manage to play notably relative to others in your grouping.
having narrower margins for error means those who are exceptional stand out more, IMO, as opposed to a situation where you can't really tell the difference between good execution or just failing to fail at execution.

How does that make any sense? I mean, if you take away complexity from a spec, there's going to be less player input and less thought involved in the actual process of playing the game which means that things like gear, RNG etc. become a bigger factor. This actually makes it harder to tell the difference between a good player, a bad player and a mediocre player.

a good philosophical question, and i would think the answer comes down to "how much feedback is given about how easy the game is vs. how much feedback was given about how hard the game was" and that's a question we'll never have the answer to.
but i can pretty much promise you that despite what some people think, dev teams do NOT sit around cooking up ways to troll the playerbase and piss them off, they make decisions based on measurable data.

but given that a HUGE part of wow's core design philosophy from its very inception, and reiterated several times throughout its development, was "let's make a game for people who find EQ too hard" it's questionable whether or not slight iterations on the number of buttons you have available really equates to any meaningful amount of challenge.

But why does this philosophy have to be applied to every spec in the game when they previously managed to have both simple and complex specs in the game? Even if we assume that they had more people giving feedback about the game being too hard (which I find hard to believe), wouldn't it be more clever to still have certain niches in the game for players that are more interested in the aforementioned aspects?

[kubaje]

I'm using simulationcraft, I can write my own APLs, I read a ton of guides yet I can't reach 90%, I'm usually parsing 15% to 40%. It's not that easy as you're trying to represent.

You may not reach the 90 because you're playing wrong in general, not because you can't figure out how your class works. And ofc a ton of other factors that are not you knowing how to play your class.

[Alvito]

Feral is still retarded with the rotation in terms of mastery, timing, and overall complexity.


Issue is, no matter what, you will just be asked 'why aren't you moonkin?'

It is rather annoying when the far easier spec on a class is the stronger one in almost all aspects of the game. Of course if you look at what are certainly some of the easier specs they are often some of the high performers.

[McFuu]

I'm using simulationcraft, I can write my own APLs, I read a ton of guides yet I can't reach 90%, I'm usually parsing 15% to 40%. It's not that easy as you're trying to represent.

I would actually really like to see what you are doing because 15-40% is the range I expect from proper geared, poorly playing players. 50-75% is the you know how to play but are missing gear or stats are wrong/wrong Azerite.

[Niwes]

So, I was watching some older (WoD) Q&As featuring Ion Hazzikostas that I thought gave some really interesting insight into how the team approaches class balance (since Ghost Crawler left the team). In one of the Q&As Ion gave some reasoning as to why they decided to excessively nerf Demonology Warlocks despite knowing that it will probably crash the spec into the ground and I thought it was really interesting in regards to the current state of class design.
He said that they don't want players to play Demonology Warlocks as they they were (at that point) the most complicated out of the three Warlock specialisations and they didn't want the most complicated spec to outperform the easier specs because that could lead to players feeling the need to actually "learn" the spec by looking up guides etc. in order to be a successful WL. They also said that they were going to rework Demo because of that in the future.

Could this reasoning be at least partially at fault for the many issues players have with the current state of class design? After all it makes sense to remove/rework complicated specs and simplify them if their goal is for players to gravitate more towards easy specialisations.
Are there, in your opinion, any complicated specs left in the game at this point?

a few points here (all just my oppinion):

1. first and foremost: blizzard make classes easy in the first place to lower effort and costs to balance and maintain them. its all cost effective development now. all classes are streamlined. all classes base on the builder/consumer pattern. all classes have flat mechanics for easy knob adjustments, to not get the beast behaviour, dependent on encounters, they had in the past. its a QoL for THEM, and its ($$$) the main reason before everything else.

2. that said, ions argumentation also sucks on different levels.

first: a core dps class has 3 specs that all fullfill the same role. ppl can easy switch if one is too complicated. so, all they have to do is makin sure the specs are doing around the same dmg. the bad thing here is, that a guy that put more effort into the complex spec, isnt rewarded, bc he do the same dps as the easy one. the good thing is, it do not force ppl to play the complex spec bc it does more dps. so, of both variants this is the better one. why ? because ppl at least HAVE a complex/fun (when you like that) spec at least. and thats waaaay better (even when its not rewarding) as to say „all specs sucks for you bc of others are idiots“. or in short: you have choice. choice is ALWAYS good (as they so often stated with their talent system).

second: they told everyone and her mother in past this mantra: easy to learn, hard to master. this mantra seems lost since a good while. it just doesnt make sense to let ppl choose between 3 specs that are all the same easy to play (for core dps classes). that makes zero sense. and it do not work, as BfA shitstorm shows.

3. if their goal is, that ppl gravitate around simpler specs, they are very stupid. or better: shortterm thinking. bc the less choice ppl have, the more obvious and easy they can do max dps, the more they are instant finished with their learning curve. and bored! its the best way as a company, to shoot yourself into the foot.

all in all its BS from Ion. but not because he ist stupid (this guy is far away from being stupid), but because its the lawyer answer to not say „we make more money with this design, and have too less of a budget for wow to maintain better stuff“.

[chooi]

Relatively speaking of course, try playing Assa vs Outlaw in M+ or cleave encounters:

Both specs can perform very well but Assasination on Cleave/AoE requires you to perma-track dots on multiple targets with constant target switches and good decision-making (e.g. is the mob gonna die in the next X sec or not?) while Outlaw is pretty much "LUL just press Blade Flurry" and keep tunneling on primary target. Guess what spec is the top M+ rogue spec atm?

That being said, WoW was never a complicated game in general. But there were always specs/classes that had to work more than others. Or think of MoP Vengeance tanking when tanks who wanted to min-max DPS were always living on the edge by taking big hits on purpose. IMO Cata and MoP were the pinnacle of "easy to learn, hard to master" but also very enjoyable class design.

[FelPlague]

But if someone tries the complex spec and fail they still have the option to play an easier spec that will probably deal as much damage as the difficult spec with their "less than optimal" playstyle. I mean, do they really do a better job at balancing every spec than back in the days when there was a larger disparity in terms of complexity? I don't think so.

correct, but thats not how the wow community works, if something is complex but has more damage, people will play it, even if it actualty costs them dps cause they are bad.

welcome to demo in wod, the perfect example

[Kill Broccoli]

Are there any complex specs left in the game?[/B]

Depends on the definition of complex.
Most of the specs rotation are very easy and straightforward, complexity comes from other sources, heavy movement boss, specific spells/buffs (bos, monk combo buff) or precise timing/proc management (procs on ret, affli dotting etc).

Id' say that no spec are complex at base to mid level while they become much more harder to properly manage at high level.

[Loveliest]

What's a complicated spec? A complex rotation that requires you to really focus on a lot of things to get it right?
To be fair, I get why people would choose to pick easier specs.
I'll use myself as an example - my friends were doing Mythic on Alliance so I came with my naked warlock alt. I leveled him as destro, but I don't like how it plays. So I switched to demo just before doing an Underrot. My friend who mains a lock told me pick this talent and this talent and I had a buttload of buttons. The pug tank picks the side with the two War matrons instead of the one without. So I banished the hex head thing and was trying to keep an eye on the timer, because that thing can easily wipe you. I had to avoid the matrons so I don't get slashed because the pug shadow priest we had already died to them and they seemed to focus charging in my area only. I had to stun and watch out for the preistess casting. Then keep an eye out if I get a debuff / root from the spear guy to use CD/healthstone. And rez the tank when he died.
On top of this, trying to do a sort of rotation that wasn't imprinted in my muscle memory felt like too much.
Chances are, my dps would go down with a complex spec because I wouldn't have time to properly dps when I have to dodge, run, cast stuns and move out of crap constantly. Sure, keep doing it and try to get better but why would I? what would be the point of actually picking a more complex spec? Would the satisfaction of doing it right be so much greater than being top dps on an easy spec? Genuinely? Because as far as I can tell, being top dps on a 2-button spec feels way more rewarding than being 3rd dps with a complicated spec.

[ddsad2212]

There seems to be a mind in blizzard that they will do everything they can to stop players having bad experiences in their game. They have managed this but it's also removed a lot of the truly great moments. People had incredible fun with a massively complex Surrender to Madness shadow priest? Nerf it to stop players having a bad time when they mess it up. Its a shame but it feels like a pillar of their design at this point.

[Relapses]

There seems to be a mind in blizzard that they will do everything they can to stop players having bad experiences in their game. They have managed this but it's also removed a lot of the truly great moments. People had incredible fun with a massively complex Surrender to Madness shadow priest? Nerf it to stop players having a bad time when they mess it up. Its a shame but it feels like a pillar of their design at this point.

There was nothing "incredibly complex" about S2M. At higher stacks it was a mini game against your internet connection.