How did blizzard manage to let class/talent design get so bad?

[Beefkow]

This guy is 12, fact.

I'm not wrong though

And even in the past when some specs were broken like demo they still fulfilled there roles unlike being a tank with no taunt.

So ya I guess your daft.

I never even directed anything I said towards you nor even knew you were in this discussion.

I never said anything about class design previous to legion and bfa.

I guess you're daft?

[Kithelle]

But it's not. By far the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design. I've never met a high-end raider in this game that thinks spec/class design issues have not been plaguing BFA since day 1.

Then why are there so many threads complaining about story? How bad it is...how they don't like where it's going? High end raiders are kinda in the minority?

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Guess some people just like it boring and easy....high end raid content post Vanilla isn't really either. It's also hard to choose a class/spec when they overall are viable when back in Vanilla you had clear cut winners that completely dominated.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I never even directed anything I said towards you nor even knew you were in this discussion.

I never said anything about class design previous to legion and bfa.

I guess you're daft?

Firstly It’s an open forum you don’t need to direct your post at some one for them to reply to it that’s not how it works.

Secondly this we me pointing to your post As he said I brought it up. I quoted you before which that other guy was replying to.

The statement you made was wrong I pointed that out and some one else thought that meant I was giving a quality to the current class design. I then told them that’s not what I was doing and they came back with some nonsense that i brought up functionality, I quoted your post a second time to prove them wrong. This stuff isn’t hard to follow I mean come on.

[barrsftw]

I mean...it is no secret todays talents are less "rpg" than any other iteration of any other rpg on the market.

Also no secret Blizzard constantly nerfs "player freedom" in customization...constantly...and as soon as someone steps out of the "box" Blizzard intended us to live in...NERF! Instant!

BfA was no different.
I saw snake eyes from rogue being nerfed to the ground.
I saw revolving blades being nerfed to the ground
I saw the fel rush azerite trait being REMOVED from the game.
Pistol shot trait being nerfed by 60%.

Player imagination, as soon as it gets wild...blizzard nerfs. Wow is a rpg no more in that sense.

Enhancement shaman at one point had 3 very distinct ways to play based on stacking certain traits. It was really cool to try them all out.. then they nerfed them so only one was viable. cool.

[Will]

My favourite parts are where

A) blizzard introduces lots of cool new concepts or abilities for an expansion and then tosses them away at the end of the expansion like so much offal,

and

B) blizzard takes away class features that were baseline in the previous expansion and gives them back to us as talents or some similar format. Because yay for investing a talent point or lots of effort in re-acquiring something we already had a year ago instead of giving us something new!

[Zyrinx]

Esports. Fewer knobs means faster balance.

I have a feeling there's a LOT of truth to this.

[Beefkow]

Firstly It’s an open forum you don’t need to direct your post at some one for them to reply to it that’s not how it works.

Secondly this we me pointing to your post As he said I brought it up. I quoted you before which that other guy was replying to.

The statement you made was wrong I pointed that out and some one else thought that meant I was giving a quality to the current class design. I then told them that’s not what I was doing and they came back with some nonsense that i brought up functionality, I quoted your post a second time to prove them wrong. This stuff isn’t hard to follow I mean come on.

Should've been more specific to avoid utter confusion.

Something like, "Using this quote to prove my point."

And apparently quoting someone doesn't mean you're responding to them? Since when? Throwing around insults is not nice either, ever. Calling someone daft doesn't prove anything or justify anything.

Also, i'm not wrong, class design is not functional in BFA and GCD changes is also a backwards change which affects class design negatively.

[nyc81991]

Because ever since WoD they have been doing a stupid ability pruning crusade that people kept telling them was bad and instead of listening they ignored people and doubled down on it. BFA was by far the worst it's ever been. They have no idea what they are doing these days but are delusional and think they know better even though they keep getting proven wrong and losing players because of it.

[Gratlim]

Hmm ... i think one of the biggest reasons people stop playing wow is that nearly every expansion your class / favourite spec feels completely different and looses a lot of the strenghts from the expansion before.
I nearly quit in legion because the ovhauled hunter specs MM / SV felt so bad - and i `m pretty sure a lot of warlock players quit some weeks after BfA hit.

Yes. I even quit during Legion because Legion demonology was beyond broken (Demonic Empowerement spam). I thought the removal of it in BFA would save it but not. We went from Chad the badass Metamorphosis warlock to Bob the imp summoner (and it is not even that many imps anymore).

[Zenfoldor]

My guess is that they ruined gameplay to simplify it for a console release on the PS5. It was much better in Legion. If you ever played a fire mage at the beginning of Legion when you could machine gun spells like there was no tomorrow, that was probably the best gameplay there has been in WoW. It really felt like DMC, it was glorious. They nerfed that right quick, but even the nerfed version was so far ahead of BFA.

However, besides the gameplay issues, the long term reward structure of BFA is also a big reason why it isn't great. No legendary quest or long term reward is one thing, but also not having set bonuses, thus devaluing raiding and making timed infinite mythic+ grinding the optimal gearing path for end game, by making everything generic. Then by offering 370 gear for a quest to try out new, content which really not match the reward you got from doing the quest, nor which built towards some long term reward or seemingly anything at all...well reward structure could have more completely resolved the early BFA issues, than fixing the gameplay imo. The game wasn't rewarding from a gameplay or a gearing perspective, and those two things are the most important aspects, so yeah.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Should've been more specific to avoid utter confusion.

Something like, "Using this quote to prove my point."

And apparently quoting someone doesn't mean you're responding to them? Since when? Throwing around insults is not nice either, ever. Calling someone daft doesn't prove anything or justify anything.

Also, i'm not wrong, class design is not functional in BFA and GCD changes is also a backwards change which affects class design negatively.

I did respond to you it was the first time I quoted you not the second. Me proving him wrong is also above the part where I called him daft.

As far as class design go all of the classes Function in the rolls they were made for the only time this wasn’t the case was classic.

[Shamalamadingdong]

I can't speak for all classes and specs, but I can speak as a resto shaman. It's disheartening to look at the warcraftlogs leaderboards for healing on many of the mythic bosses and see 3 or 4 resto shaman in the top 500. I know we're talking end-game raiding but that's where I exist. To see, 400/500 of the top healing parses going to holy paladins and 3-4 resto shaman in that top 500 suggests that, even when players min/max and play the spec at the top level, you can't compete for lack of balance. I am tired of being told I should take an HPS reduction just because I have a great CD with Spirit Link. Other classes have nice CDs, revival for monks, tranq can be talented into 2mins, barrier for disc priests, hymn for holy priests, etc. This doesn't even include the disparity in mythic plus and the ability to push keys. Even the recent buff to deluge, and the % increase in healing wave and healing surge don't put us even close to being one of the top 3 healers of choice to bring to a higher key. Again, I am speaking about higher-end gameplay, but this is where you'd think that with all players playing at that level would even out, but it's not even close. It's tough to go an entire expansion or two being at the low end of the totem pole and not being able to get invited to groups, or being declined immediately, even with a 1600 io. And it's hard to push the IO if not invited to groups. I know, i know, you're going to say "run with your guild", but that isn't always possible. Look at the guild recruitment forums, very rarely do I see posts since BFA dropped of a raiding guild looking specifically for a resto shaman, it's always pallies and priests it seems. I've even seen posts saying "LF healer for raiding guild, no shaman".

So I know I am just talking about my own class, but that's is what I know. I have one main because that's all the time I have to play and develop. I certainly have no time to farm the requirements for essences or for the AP or the manapearls to keep an alt relevant.

I wish I could play the class I love that I have played since Burning Crusade and feel good and strong and competitive. One shouldn't have to change classes or specs to be the flavor of the month. There should be enough work on the development team so that the disparities are reduced and regularly assessed. Changes take months, reworks seem to take an expansion. These issues should be addressed and resolved in Alpha and Beta and disparities such as we've seen in BFA should not even get to live. Bandaid solutions like azurite and essences will never compensate for underperforming, clunky, or un-fun-to-play specs.

I don't want to be the god of the healers by any means, but I'd like to see a nice diversity of healing classes on those leaderboards to demonstrate that there is something even close to balance across classes. If you doubt me, just look at the top 500 healers for any and/or all of the EP fights. Even in fights that are stacked, which used to be the resto shaman bread and butter, resto shaman are behind other classes.

I don't have a specific solution other than the devs not waiting so long to give buffs and make changes to underperforming specs and talents quicker and more listening to player feedback during the development lifecycle and live game. BFA has been out for 13 months, why has it taken so long for arcane mages to get this buff? ... which doesn't address the fundamental issues I am told but at least is a start. So I guess my suggestion is the players continue to provide analyses and feedback, which many have, and the devs actually listen and do something. The data from warcraft logs at least doesn't lie and gives a good indication of what players at the top of the classes and specs are doing and perhaps a good starting point for looking at balance.

Just my thoughts. I welcome any and all of yours.

[Big Thanks]

Enhancement shaman at one point had 3 very distinct ways to play based on stacking certain traits. It was really cool to try them all out.. then they nerfed them so only one was viable. cool.

Same happened to rogues and demon hunters bro. Knowing Blizzard and their actions...there is no hope for deep customization in the fiture...at all.

[Awsyme]

I think it was the death of a thousand cuts.

As many others have mentioned, wow is pretty old (ancient by the standards of most games) and has gone through 3 major reboots to try and match other games that existed at that particular time.

The first wave was an evolution of Everquest/D and D - classes weren't balanced particularly well and split (badly) into raw dps or classes with bigger tool kits. And warriors - the first two expansions sort of slowly moved away from this by buffing all the classes and constantly trying to make old talents work. Remember light well for example? Ouch

Then you had the rise of DOTA and a push towards making every class 'heroic'. Lots more movement, lots more self healing across the board etc etc. This reached its peak in MoP and a LOT of players remember this as peak class design.

But you still had the old talent trees. And levels were still going up so blizzard felt the pressure to add more and more 'things' for a spec. There's a great blog out there by one of the class designers who talks about how internally they found by mists that a lot of classes had simply too many buttons to press. He compared Arcane which had... 3? 4? Something like that to the warlocks who had to juggle FIFTEEN - for identical dps. This got fixed but you can see a massive push afterwards for the game to be simplified and stripped back to basics. Which happened with the new talent trees we have atm. Which are built to allow players to quickly make big choices rather than having to painstakingly work their way through a lot of +1% to x picks.

Or... that was the plan.

In reality by now class design has turned into a kind of weird clusterf**k. Highlights include:

- Talents feel unrewarding as we got stuff taken away at the end of legion with nothing really added to replace them at max level.
- Ilvl is irrelevant. The rise and rise of secondary stats (and the removal of main stats on jewelry) mean a perfectly balanced and socketed ring of 400 can be more valuable than a 450 badly itemized one. And suddenly you have a REALLY complicated system of gearing that seriously penalizes casual players. If you don't sim and let's be honest - a lot of players don't you are doing yourself a major disservice by equipping higher level gear assuming its 'better'. But that IS a natural reaction. Oh and throw into that Blizzards refusal to back down on reforging which was a beloved mechanic that offset the worst aspects of secondary stats. Because they wanted you active and grinding... And then there's benthic gear - where a socketed perfect itemized item can be better than mythic gear...
- Azerite was created as a system to replace the legion weapons. Ion and co decided around legion that players needed a goal to work for during play rather than just letting players gain them from levelling. And again - noble but dumb goal because Dps is now related to luck. If you get the right gear you're golden. If not? You're seriously screwed. Also the sheer description of a lot of it is impossible to judge without a lot of prior knowledge. Is +70 versatility better than +70 mastery? Or +5 haste every second building to 100 then collapsing down? Is a flat damage burst better than a bonus to crit? Who knows? Not you unless you pay a sim site. And some of this is REALLY unintuitive. The Disc priest's best azurite trait is a shadow one. So you need to switch to shadow, select the ability then swap back to disc to keep picking.
- Oh - and then there's just the core problem that end game has fundamentally changed over time but Blizzard are very nervous at changing the core features of a class. An example here would be the introduction of mythic+ - heavy movement and aoe burst heavy. If your spec doesn't do those? Move along. And there isn't really a way of talenting into mythic needs. You can't really add more movement healing to shaman for example.

So we're at a stage where a bunch of design decisions have been made without blizzard fundamentally wanting to take a step back and radically shake up class design. And all it's done is add more and more complexity without fixing problems about HOW each class works within the present environment. Its a crapshoot whether your class is doing well or not atm.

Which leads to the real problem imo. Blizzard was reluctant to change anything in beta (bad) but, worse, have systematically refused to fix broken specs mid expansion. They've seen things go badly and simply gritted their teeth and told the player base 'we'll fix it come 9.0'. Basically telling the player base if there's a problem it'll be years before its fixed (if at all).

And that? That is a major problem which is hurting the game.
There's

[Lurker1]

But it's not. By far the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design. I've never met a high-end raider in this game that thinks spec/class design issues have not been plaguing BFA since day 1.

It really is i love how elemental shaman plays in BFA.

[Jotaux]

Whats odd to me is the raid buffs. They decided to give raid buffs to the already consistently strong classes. Mages are so strong that being lower than #1 is enough for people to declare them useless.

[kaminaris]

Yes. I even quit during Legion because Legion demonology was beyond broken (Demonic Empowerement spam). I thought the removal of it in BFA would save it but not. We went from Chad the badass Metamorphosis warlock to Bob the imp summoner (and it is not even that many imps anymore).

Well that's just your opinion, I consider pre legion demonlogy the worst spec ever, as it was clunky, didn't feel right at all. And current demonology the best spec that has been ever creating in entire game history. It is so good nothing can even hold a candle.

And legion demo was just mediocre boring spec.

[Palapop]

Ret and frost mage feel better than ever to me, and SP is my main and dont really think it's bad, can't speak to the others. This entire thread is all subjective opinion though.

Then, at what point you play those specs? To me, they are ultra boring. Frost is nothing buy hitting frostbolt and then icelance when it procs. And that's pretty much it.

Ret? lol... ruined spec since end of WOD.
Pve = not a single utility that would give the reason to others to inv us.
pvp = root/slow/root/freeze/dazed..... pop wings? np, cc and run away and it's gg vanilla warriors have better mobility than rets in BFA.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

They simplified the game too much to make it more appealing to the wider MOBA crowd. It just so happens that WoW is an MMORPG, not a MOBA. People looking to play MMO's are not interested in a MOBA play style, otherwise they'd be playing...you guessed it, MOBAs...

Opinions are subjective. Whether or not you like class design depends a lot on your class and then whether or not you care for the design of it. I think many of them are not quite right myself but I'm not fooling myself into thinking that my opinion is some fact. Personally I think the problem with class design indicates bigger problems that extend beyond just classes and specs. That's another opinion and another thread.

"A lot of people say..." is not any sort of confirmation that something is factual.

Class design being bad is a fact, not an opinion.

[kaminaris]

Class design being bad is a fact, not an opinion.

The only fact is, your opinion is not a fact. Class design is purely subjective.