8.2 content: pointless with current class design

[Velerios]

MoP design was about rewarding good gameplay. BfA design is about punishing poor gameplay.

This and MoP was the time before some crappy players complained about the forums how they have too many buttons to play the game with their controller and Blizzard totally agreed with them and began their class pruning. What happened is Enhancement-Shaman and Beastmaster Hunter; Both classes that you probably can play in the upcoming: World of Warcraft: Mobile Edition.

Also: MoP was the first Expansion with the new talent-design; back then they simply cared about the talent-tree and tried to make all of them as viable as possible. And yes, Rewarding good gameplay by having the tools to play well was the most important factor. Now with nearly everything prunned; we need to keep the rotation or get punished. And yes, that's bad design.

Also we still had the Glyph-System; reintroduced in 8.2 as a bad version of it. Everything that included expanding out classes was pruned out again and again. I miss glyphs; and 8.2 is absolutely no replacement; because i know that everything i do here is gone in 9.0! So why should i care?

[rohoz]

This and MoP was the time before some crappy players complained about the forums how they have too many buttons to play the game with their controller and Blizzard totally agreed with them and began their class pruning. What happened is Enhancement-Shaman and Beastmaster Hunter; Both classes that you probably can play in the upcoming: World of Warcraft: Mobile Edition.

Also: MoP was the first Expansion with the new talent-design; back then they simply cared about the talent-tree and tried to make all of them as viable as possible. And yes, Rewarding good gameplay by having the tools to play well was the most important factor. Now with nearly everything prunned; we need to keep the rotation or get punished. And yes, that's bad design.

Also we still had the Glyph-System; reintroduced in 8.2 as a bad version of it. Everything that included expanding out classes was pruned out again and again. I miss glyphs; and 8.2 is absolutely no replacement; because i know that everything i do here is gone in 9.0! So why should i care?

Mop enhancement is the same # of buttons as current, really.
You trade flame shock for flametongue, and fire nova for crash lightning. pretty much it.

Just because your adhd likes seeing tons of shit flash on your screen doesn't make it inherently good

[Haywire5714]

Yes because a lot of the difference in play today has less to do with skill in playing the class and more to do with gearing (ilvl is not the same as proper gear, especially with Azerite traits) and encounter knowledge. Current rotations for most casters demand solid knowledge of movement patterns because many casters are turrets which is the exact opposite of MoP. In MoP the design gave classes many tools to deal with encounter mechanics so they had more time to do more complex rotations. In BfA (and really increasingly since WoD) the encounters are much more complex and you have fewer tools to handle them so a good player who can minimize the disruption caused by handling mechanics (and a good raid that does not force players to waste time handling with things that could be avoided) will do far more dps. Check uptime and see how well it maps out the difference in output.

MoP design was about rewarding good gameplay. BfA design is about punishing poor gameplay.

I don't know where people get this retarded idea that raiding is significantly harder in the current expansion then it has been in every other expansion (since wotlk pretty much), it's simply not true. It's not like guilds are wiping way more then they used to; hell you could even make an argument that raiding has gotten easier, since the classes are such a pathetic joke atm that all you have to do is focus on raid mechanics and any raid team with average players can hit the dps checks with ease.

[rohoz]

I don't know where people get this retarded idea that raiding is significantly harder in the current expansion then it has been in every other expansion (since wotlk pretty much), it's simply not true. It's not like guilds are wiping way more then they used to; hell you could even make an argument that raiding has gotten easier, since the classes are such a pathetic joke atm that all you have to do is focus on raid mechanics and any raid team with average players can hit the dps checks with ease.

Nice 9/9 there, what world rank?

[Niwes]

It doesn't matter how many mechagnomes or naga they throw at us, how many dungeons or zones or raids or features they throw at us, all of it is completely pointless if our characters are not fun to play. Not a single word today about class changes planned for 8.2.

If we have a look at the content patches of past expansions like MoP, they offered less raw patch content than the 8.2 patch but the content was enjoyable to repeat because the classes that we were doing the content with were fun and the content itself was fun. Slapping on a few essences and punch cards isn't going to get anywhere near repairing the foundations of these classes. As a result, I anticipate that 8.2 will be another unsuccessful patch. Blizzard has once again focused its resources in all the wrong areas.

I can only hope that Blizzard learns a valuable lesson from how unsuccessful 8.2 will be and really focuses on class design moving forward in 9.0. They need to go back to basics, strip away the Heart of Azeroth, the Azerite traits, the punch cards and all the other gimmicks and get the foundations right. That is the only way that they will win players over at this point.

i even dont know if 8.2 will be unsuccessful or not, but that aside, i agree to every single word written here. at least for around 60-70% of the specs.

i HAVE classes that i like. i am fine with frost mage, since they did not change much. i am ok with laser chicken druid owl. i am very ok with fury warrior. these and 3-5 another (also tank and heal) specs, i am totally fine with. all others suck super hard.

especially hunter never felt that slow and clunky/lame. ret is super boring and slow. shaman is movement horror, def horror and half assed built, even when ok‘ish fun-wise. prot tank sucks more than ever, playwise. feral and rogue too. dk even more. dh is relatively ok. and so on. this is all just my taste. but if there are other ppl out there, like that less specs, as me, than this shows how hard blizz failed.

so, i agree to op for most part.

[rohoz]

"We want to be fully customizable and we don't want to have to get tier/legendaries to be viable"

"We want tier and legendaries back"

[Neuroticaine]

They still spam a lot of instant spells... shit Fire mage today is more mobile then fire mage in mop.

It's still besides the point... I'd take MoP fury over BfA fury any day.

And good lord was MoP demo a lot more fun then "pet management simulator".

My dude, the only thing wrong with Demo right now is numbers. BfA Demonology is the best the spec has ever been. They had the right idea going into Legion, but definitely fucked up the execution. Current Demonology playstyle is everything the spec should have ever been.

It's like the only thing they've done right this expansion.

Well, they also made Affliction a little better than the absolute mess it was in Legion, but meh.

[Casperite]

I dont know what kind of content you’re doing, but it doesnt feel fun to play any of the classes you mentioned compared to how they used to feel in a content filled xpac like MoP. Everything was smooth then, you could tailor the class to play «your way»

I found MoP to be the least enjoyable expansion to date and only expansion I didn't sub whole time, so I don't know what kind of content you did that made that garbage expansion at all fun to play. See how subjective opinions are different and don't really matter to others?

[Onikaroshi]

My dude, the only thing wrong with Demo right now is numbers. BfA Demonology is the best the spec has ever been. They had the right idea going into Legion, but definitely fucked up the execution. Current Demonology playstyle is everything the spec should have ever been.

It's like the only thing they've done right this expansion.

Well, they also made Affliction a little better than the absolute mess it was in Legion, but meh.

I much prefered mop demo instead of Zoo Manager light sorry, turning into a demo was awesome and a lot of that has been lost on DH's meta being a CD.

[Haywire5714]

Nice 9/9 there, what world rank?

I don't need a 9/9 to know that classes have been simplified (as pretty much everyone acknowledges at this point) and raiding hasn't changed in difficulty by any significant margin (based on wowprogress, and watching streams, and mythic raiding in previous expacs). I just need to not be an idiot like you.

[InfiniteCharger]

The problem with classes in WOW is that Blizzard keeps changing them and how they play every expansion. This started around MOP and has been ongoing every since. Now instead of classes getting permanent new talents and abilities you get loaner abilities via artifacts and azerite. It was nice in legion because the power curve was quite steep, but without that power curve these temporary abilities and effects are boring. Your class is supposed to be the main way you experience the game and it should be relatively stable and predictable, even with its flaws. D&D based classes are not supposed to be balanced to begin with and these constant changes are just making people not like playing because nothing stays in place for more than one expansion. The developers should have had a long term roadmap for all potential talents and abilities for every class worked out on paper going 5 or 10 years into the future. They don't have that and hence they keep redesigning the classes as they go which they shouldn't be doing in a 25 year old game. Fewer new abilities and talents but ones that have real impact are all that is needed to keep classes interesting. Maybe even more swappable talent trees that you can customize would even be a good option. But this loaner model based solely on artifacts gets old quick.... Everything in WOW should be building up to an "endgame" type expansion where afterwards there may or may not be any new major expansions and classes will generally stay in their endgame state going forward. I mean in game our characters are the equivalent of legendary heroes of old to begin with.

[Velerios]

"We want to be fully customizable and we don't want to have to get tier/legendaries to be viable"

"We want tier and legendaries back"

The issue is that they only removed Tier-Sets because they want to save money; not because of gameplay-reasons. instead of making 1 set for every class they now need only to make 1 set for every armor type. So we get less gear, less customization and in general less.

And as replacement ofr artefact, tier sets, legendaries and so on we got: Azerite Armor; the probably CRAPPIEST thing blizzard ever created; and don't forget that they actually created Ashran and Silithus-PvP.

Now blizzard again changes nothing to classes in 8.2 and gave us a WORSE Glyph system. Only that here scribes can't even earn money and we get what we need; nope, instead of bringing back glyphs and value to scribes, we get MORE RNG.

So now we even get new abilites with an RNG-Factor. What we actually need is less RNG, more abilites and discarding mechanics that nobody really likes (i look at you voidform).

[kaminaris]

In BfA when I die more often than not it's not because I played poorly it's because I just didn't have a button to press and accepted my fate.

This is exactly that, you just played poorly.
People are complaining they dont have defensive/utility cooldowns, really?

So what? Bring back 1 minute CD immunity for 10 seconds so we can be immune 10% of whole fight? Cheese out every possible mechanic?
No, just play better, plan better or quit the game if its too hard for you.

[rohoz]

The issue is that they only removed Tier-Sets because they want to save money; not because of gameplay-reasons. instead of making 1 set for every class they now need only to make 1 set for every armor type. So we get less gear, less customization and in general less.

And as replacement ofr artefact, tier sets, legendaries and so on we got: Azerite Armor; the probably CRAPPIEST thing blizzard ever created; and don't forget that they actually created Ashran and Silithus-PvP.

Now blizzard again changes nothing to classes in 8.2 and gave us a WORSE Glyph system. Only that here scribes can't even earn money and we get what we need; nope, instead of bringing back glyphs and value to scribes, we get MORE RNG.

So now we even get new abilites with an RNG-Factor. What we actually need is less RNG, more abilites and discarding mechanics that nobody really likes (i look at you voidform).

rofl, you think they removed tier because of the artwork? Not the cries every tier? "MY TIER SET SUCKS, PLEASE BUFF???1111" every tier? Short memory.
You have way more customization now with azerite, it's not even remotely close. 6 primary+3 tertiary+3 defensive options >>> 4 set tier. It's not even close.

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Classic rohoz being disingenuous. What's new?

People didn't like Legendaries because of their acquisition. People LOVED the customization Legendaries offered, granted you had the ones you wanted.

Tier gear is better than Azerite in every way. Their RNG acquisition is the same except you can get some Azerite gear outside raids.

At least you don't have to re-grind the traits out when you get higher iLevel tier gear.



Fuck BfA is such a good expansion hey. Ion is a genius. So good how they're backtracking on almost every single one of their design choices from the start of the expansion! Good shit!

You don't have to "regrind" if you, idk, actually play. Let's also not forget netherlight crucible and having to grind. Also, if we're being honest (you aren't), you didn't have to "regrind" when 5 ringed azerite pieces were introduced. You had to earn something new for the first time, lol.

just say you don't like the thing and go. Your "reasons" are nothing but the soggy results of a nostalgia circlejerk. Use actual numbers.


and for the record, people didn't "love customization" offered by legendaries. They "loved getting bis" and never changing their shit. Don't be a fucking lying ingrate.

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This game is laughably easy now. You can get 80%+ parses whilst pulling your dick with your other hand.

Dota 2 has more depth than this shit-show now.

maybe, but you're acting like customization in WoW was ever deep. This is straight up the most choice you've EVER had. Numbers don't lie

And for difficulty, you got your 9/9M? Link to armory? Link to previous ce/world 100 kills?

[Neuroticaine]

I much prefered mop demo instead of Zoo Manager light sorry, turning into a demo was awesome and a lot of that has been lost on DH's meta being a CD.

While I acknowledge the sentiment, it was only ever a tiny portion of Demonology's existence, and Meta never played NOT awkward as hell.

[Onikaroshi]

While I acknowledge the sentiment, it was only ever a tiny portion of Demonology's existence, and Meta never played NOT awkward as hell.

I never found it awkward for the 2-3 expansions it existed (like that anyway, it was a CD for demo for awhile too), sure you needed addons to play it to full extent, but you need that now too.

[rohoz]

I don't need a 9/9 to know that classes have been simplified (as pretty much everyone acknowledges at this point) and raiding hasn't changed in difficulty by any significant margin (based on wowprogress, and watching streams, and mythic raiding in previous expacs). I just need to not be an idiot like you.

So you have no idea, then. Gotcha.

[rda]

maybe, but you're acting like customization in WoW was ever deep. This is straight up the most choice you've EVER had. Numbers don't lie

This is blatantly false.

We lost tons of abilities. We lost many stats (I'll single out resilience / PVP power as an illustration but there were many others as well). We lost many gem types (including meta) and many places for gem slots. We lost many places to put enchantments. We lost profession perks (belt buckle, shoulder scribe enchant, leg leatherworking enchant, alchemy double flask, etc). We lost glyphs (ffs! they are similar to what they are doing in 8.2 with HoA sans "active" abilities which are all big cooldowns, so not terribly active - and we had them before as just one more thing, on top of everything else, without any big grandstandings). Half of what we have is locked under the warmode button - and from that half we can only choose a miniscule amount, which is about the same variety as we could choose in Legion (very small) and much less than we could choose in WoD and earlier. Etc.

The amount of customization we have now is like 30% of what we used to have. As you say, numbers don't lie. Seriously, this is just math. Do it.

[rohoz]

This is blatantly false.

We lost tons of abilities. We lost many stats (I'll single out resilience / PVP power as an illustration but there were many others as well). We lost many gem types (including meta) and many places for gem slots. We lost many places to put enchantments. We lost profession perks (belt buckle, shoulder scribe enchant, leg leatherworking enchant, alchemy double flask, etc). We lost glyphs (ffs! they are similar to what they are doing in 8.2 with HoA sans "active" abilities which are all big cooldowns, so not terribly active - and we had them before as just one more thing, on top of everything else, without any big grandstandings). Half of what we have is locked under the warmode button - and from that half we can only choose a miniscule amount, which is about the same variety as we could choose in Legion (very small) and much less than we could choose in WoD and earlier. Etc.

The amount of customization we have now is like 30% of what we used to have. As you say, numbers don't lie. Seriously, this is just math. Do it.

Glyphs were never optional, you had the best or you got the best. Same with professions. Same with gems. Glyphs changed the way you played yes, but you also just bought all the good ones and there was no interplay, there was a best setup or you were wrong. Same with gems, same with professions. Belt buckle? You either got one or you were wrong.

Customization isn't "you have it or you don't", it's about having a choice to make. For instance, if you compare let's say MoP to now, you *may* have 1-2 more situational spells in your rotation, but your gear very very rarely differed from someone else, since you all got the same trinkets, rings, pieces of tier, weapons ideally. Compared to now where you can actually play different subspecs of the same class without any sort of egregious dps loss.

Azerite allows you to tailor your playstyle much more than you ever could before. It's not an opinion either, it's the objective truth. You not liking a system doesn't detract from what it is, a more customizable system.

Losing your +15 stats or whatever it was to chest enchant in MoP times means absolutely nothing because that was another spot where you didn't actually have anything to choose from. You either got extra stats or you didn't. Same with gloves, cloaks, bracers, necks, spellthreads. You just got them, there was nothing customizable about it. What you were gonna choose, between +mainstat to gloves and no enchant? Meta sockets+sockets in all of your gear didn't really change the way you played, either. Tell me, when the legendary meta gem was unlocked, did you ever have to think about what to put in your helm slot, or did you just put in the legendary meta gem? Did the gem you put in your belt change the way you played in any form or fashion?

The fact is, pre-azerite, you had very few actual impactful choices to make. You either had tier or you didn't.

[rda]

Glyphs were never optional, you had the best or you got the best. Same with professions. Same with gems. Glyphs changed the way you played yes, but you also just bought all the good ones and there was no interplay, there was a best setup or you were wrong. Same with gems, same with professions. Belt buckle? You either got one or you were wrong.

Customization isn't "you have it or you don't", it's about having a choice to make. ...

I just don't understand why you are writing this.

Yes, customization is about having a choice to make. All the things I mentioned that we used to have were providing these choices. We don't have these choices anymore. That means we have less customization.

"For instance, if you compare let's say MoP to now, you *may* have 1-2 more situational spells in your rotation, but your gear very very rarely differed from someone else, since you all got the same trinkets, rings, pieces of tier, weapons ideally." --- right. Ideally. In reality, you didn't have your ideal gear for most of the time where it mattered. You were fluctuating between a myriad of non-ideal states, choosing between them the best on paper / the best you could perform to / the one you liked most, etc. That's customization. Now what you choose? You choose ilvl plus maaaaaaybe a couple of azerite powers that happen to outpace ilvl. There's no comparison.