Mists of Pandaria class design/gameplay philosophy

[Vampyrr]

Hey!

I often see people (like myself) saying MoP design is superior to anything that came after it. To those people I was wondering, what made it good in your opinion? What do you miss?

I miss my priest spell like Cascade, also having shadow version of it. Granted, shadow was pretty weak on single target encounters but I had fun. Disc gameplay and healing overall is also something I miss dearly. Also my destro warlock. Hard hitting Chaos Bolts. Vengeance mechanic for tanks!

The combat was "quicker" overall and that's something I miss.

Guess I am the reverse then I hated MoP more than any other expansion so far including WoD and BFA. The story was no good it had 1 good raid and dailies out the ass, that was the start of the spend all your time doing dailies that wow turned into. Making it harder to play alts or main swap.

[Shakana]

All i know is that i didn't play mop. But i know i stopped playing for awhhile cause i didn't enjoy new talent system. Call me old fashioned and crazy but i loved my tree talents.

My gameplay timeline:

BC-WotLK.-Cata-Legion-Now
I loved BC and wotlk. On WotLk i did all, literally i played the expac so hard. I didn't like PVE cata besides Firelands but i loved the PVP, and MoP was when stopped and WoD too, and i have MoP curiosity. I loved Legion, i made my return, and never been so sad as when Legion was gone for BfA.

[glowpipe]

i don't think it was necessarily good. But it was new and refreshing with new talents and shit. Main issue with bfa is that is basically the same since wod. And they gave us a few new things in legion, but took it away again

[kaminaris]

The only thing i like from MoP class design was caster mobility, at least fillers should be castable while moving. But everything else was crap. Balance, nuke-ability, everything slapped to macros, snapshotting, tanks being op.

[Shakana]

The only thing i like from MoP class design was caster mobility, at least fillers should be castable while moving. But everything else was crap. Balance, nuke-ability, everything slapped to macros, snapshotting, tanks being op.

I wish you could cast always on the move. Stopping to cast is one of the reasons that prevents me to play more with casters.

[Powerogue]

I don't remember anything special about MOP class design, though I only played my combat rogue back then.

I think I was too busy tending to my carrots.

Legion was the epitome of class design for me, with the exceptions of BM hunter and shadow priest, which i despised.

[Eggroll]

Guess I am the reverse then I hated MoP more than any other expansion so far including WoD and BFA. The story was no good it had 1 good raid and dailies out the ass, that was the start of the spend all your time doing dailies that wow turned into. Making it harder to play alts or main swap.

Wut? Grinding in MoP was hard compared to Legion or BfA??!?!? I have no idea what drugs you are doing but I don't want any of those...

[Malikath]

Guess I am the reverse then I hated MoP more than any other expansion so far including WoD and BFA. The story was no good it had 1 good raid and dailies out the ass, that was the start of the spend all your time doing dailies that wow turned into. Making it harder to play alts or main swap.

that's a massive load of bullshit.
daily spam began in wrath when reputation was first restricted to daily quests for some factions.

[Relapses]

I wish you could cast always on the move. Stopping to cast is one of the reasons that prevents me to play more with casters.

This was one of the obstacles I overcame when I switched from a melee to caster main in early Cata. It's kind of hard to get used to at first (especially if you've only played melee) but once you do it is pretty rewarding. (For one, you're not always checking out a boss' genitals with limited camera view.) Stutter stepping and pre planning your movement becomes second nature. Just familiarize yourself with what your class can do on the move and practice accordingly. (ie, save instant cast procs for movement, you'd be surprised how far you can move in the span of two GCDs) The only thing I miss about melee is having the jump button as part of my rotation. (Spot the autistic Enhancement Shaman here.)

[Alpharius]

DnD paladins were the crusader archetype, holy warriors wielding sword and shield, dual-wield, 2-hand weapons(bladed or blunt, only clerics had to use blunt by law), or bows(or even guns if a steampunk setting) as a ranged fighter.

wow paladins are poorly made scraped paladin/cleric hybrids that ruined both classes archetypes.

I don't care for dnd or whatever archetypes it holds.

[Malikath]

I don't care for dnd or whatever archetypes it holds.

excuse me? was i talking to you?

[Jamais]

You guys have really short-sighted memory...

MoP was one my favourite times in WoW, but i clearly remember all the drama and qqs (and i spent MUCH more time on forums back then).

Extreme button bloat, abundance of CC (MoP was the time where qquing about staying in 15+second chain ccs was at it's peak), overpowered PvE items in PvP...

As for skill...i played shaman, all three specs:

Elemental: PvE - CL spam wins the meter (while it looked cool, it was brainless), in PvP have 3 Flame Shocks rolling and proceed to obliterate enemies with 3 Lava Burst procs (i still have screenshots of 3shotting people)

Enhancement: macro everything into Ascendance and remove enemies in 2 seconds FROM RANGE.

Restoration: smart heals doing your job for you...

What was fun for you was probably frustrating for other players...

MoP was a beautiful expansion, with good raids and nice questing, but it did lose 4 million (!!!!) players during it's life span.

[Caperfin]

If you ask me the Talents where at their best at that point.

[Malikath]

You guys have really short-sighted memory...

MoP was one my favourite times in WoW, but i clearly remember all the drama and qqs (and i spent MUCH more time on forums back then).

Extreme button bloat, abundance of CC (MoP was the time where qquing about staying in 15+second chain ccs was at it's peak), overpowered PvE items in PvP...

As for skill...i played shaman, all three specs:

Elemental: PvE - CL spam wins the meter (while it looked cool, it was brainless), in PvP have 3 Flame Shocks rolling and proceed to obliterate enemies with 3 Lava Burst procs (i still have screenshots of 3shotting people)

Enhancement: macro everything into Ascendance and remove enemies in 2 seconds FROM RANGE.

Restoration: smart heals doing your job for you...

What was fun for you was probably frustrating for other players...

MoP was a beautiful expansion, with good raids and nice questing, but it did lose 4 million (!!!!) players during it's life span.

lol, it was also the last expansion with any kind of plateau where the loss that began with the cata pre-patch class changes was even slowed.
and seriously? "button bloat"? fuck off, we aren't playing WoW on our fucking phones.

furthermore, if you were in a group CC was easily counter-able.
as for it being "OP" i played both high end PVE and PVP on all the classes, from that experience from BC to WoD's absolute failure of service MoP was the most balanced the game ever was for PVP and PVE with many classes having passive defensive mechanics that helped to curtain the post-wrath zergfest that killed interest in PVP altogether.

[Shakana]

This was one of the obstacles I overcame when I switched from a melee to caster main in early Cata. It's kind of hard to get used to at first (especially if you've only played melee) but once you do it is pretty rewarding. (For one, you're not always checking out a boss' genitals with limited camera view.) Stutter stepping and pre planning your movement becomes second nature. Just familiarize yourself with what your class can do on the move and practice accordingly. (ie, save instant cast procs for movement, you'd be surprised how far you can move in the span of two GCDs) The only thing I miss about melee is having the jump button as part of my rotation. (Spot the autistic Enhancement Shaman here.)

I have played most melee since i remember. I really agree with looking at bosses tomatoes is quite annoying. I mean, camera view is really bad. When i'm on DH on small places with meta (like Tol Dagor for example) it's like my character's body is going to pop out of the walls. Not joking, they are really big in Meta for m+ is just awful! The places are too small, and you already have the being close to mobs factor to do damage. I love magic and beating up someone with a damn weapon in their faces so i go both ways really. Ye i just like a class that can as well be a bit ranged-melee. Also feel fragile as damn hell when i'm playing a caster. It's like, i see something coming towards me and i'm like Oh shit oh shit ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnn

[Jamais]

lol, it was also the last expansion with any kind of plateau where the loss that began with the cata pre-patch class changes was even slowed.
and seriously? "button bloat"? fuck off, we aren't playing WoW on our fucking phones.

furthermore, if you were in a group CC was easily counter-able.
as for it being "OP" i played both high end PVE and PVP on all the classes, from that experience from BC to WoD's absolute failure of service MoP was the most balanced the game ever was for PVP and PVE with many classes having passive defensive mechanics that helped to curtain the post-wrath zergfest that killed interest in PVP altogether.

This ''playing WoW on mobile phones'' drama needs to die off. You are just exaggerating and overdramatazing. All my bars are full in BfA, and i use most of them in both PvP and PvE (with my core rotation having 5-6 buttons, depending on talents - just about right, i much prefer paying attention to boss mechanics and movement, which was stated as developer's intent btw!)

Post wrath zerg fest in PvP? Shadowmourne melees and destro/ele would love a word with you...

And yes, MoP was overstuffed with buttons, with every class being capable of literally everything, which, as i said earlier was one of the most constant complaints during the expansion.

[Malikath]

This ''playing WoW on mobile phones'' drama needs to die off. You are just exaggerating and overdramatazing. All my bars are full in BfA, and i use most of them in both PvP and PvE (with my core rotation having 5-6 buttons, depending on talents - just about right, i much prefer paying attention to boss mechanics and movement, which was stated as developer's intent btw!)

Post wrath zerg fest in PvP? Shadowmourne melees and destro/ele would love a word with you...

And yes, MoP was overstuffed with buttons, with every class being capable of literally everything, which, as i said earlier was one of the most constant complaints during the expansion.

you'd want it to, but it isn't going anywhere since celestalon's admitting playing it on a tablet and the primary announcement for blizzcon last year being a phone game.
so deal with it, cause as is you're full of bullshit claiming that BFA's pruned shit-heap takes up all available bars on even the basic WoW UI without using modifier keys.

yeah, that's kinda what i was referring to, maybe if you played the game more then the forums you'd know what caused the wrath item scaling to go off the rails, it was the casualization of normal mode and splitting all raid difficulty into heroic to appeal more to scrubs.

in your opinion, meanwhile there are many in the thread, such as myself, who think you're full of shit claiming there was bloat when there wasn't
also, the """de-homogenized"""(which is another false claim as many classes are literally copies of others now right down to utility and rotations being straight-ripped from other classes) dumbed-down gameplay intended by the developers to lower the skill-ceiling enough for lower-skilled players to be able to compete with anyone who actually gives a shit about learning their classes.

which claiming that WoD improved anything makes me laugh at you when all it did was remove abilities from classes, classes were far more diverse with shit like dark intent and symbiosis actually linking characters mechanically.

so not only is your opinion ignorant, your claims are both factually wrong in terms of gameplay and erroneous as to developer intent.
BFA is peak homogenization, and that's why everyone with a working brain hates it.

[Syegfryed]

Well, i can most certainly name two things i didn't like:

1.Talent trees.
Not the MoP talent system itself, which i think is good, but the fact that they flat out removed any spec specific talent was just awful.

Honestly, i'm always surprised that a lot of people do not mention this, but the MoP talent itself were quite awful because there was literally 0 variance between specs.

i didn't think is something that bad, in fact i liked, it feels like a talent tree for your class, it could be more diverse

now you have different trees for your spec harder to balance and at lest i feel a bit bad for other spec having something i could use, think the first one is more fair, let the spec abilities in the spec.

i even imagined some talents being the same across the classes, more generic and you could chose what you want

[Nephys]

I think that what people liked from MoP classes was because it actually felt like devs put their hearts into their work, they didn't care about what was right or balanced, they just did what they felt it was awesome, and so the players actually felt that awesomeness while playing, but of course its not the perfect execution. After that they tryed to make classes "right", and "balanced" so it felt like they lost their heart, they were balanced yeah, but they didn't have that special touch to them, looked like they were made by machines not people.

In my opinion the next step in design evolution is to have a bit of both, the balance that we have today and the love that there was before, I also felt this evolution during lol.

[Doffen]

it was the pinnacle of class homogenization.

This is how I feel as well. People say it had depth, what depth is there when every spec plays the same? You could have 5 different ranged specs, play one, log the next and so on and push the same bindings and gain the same result. Classes were too alike, which is something that goes against what class design is all about.

Gameplay, as more of a subjective topic, sure, I can see why people think it was awesome. But you could play one character and get the whole experience.