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

[kaminaris]

But now you are forced to choose between e.g. Flame On and Phoenix Flames, when you could have both in Legion. Isn't that exciting? Top class design there

That is a weak argument. Same can be said for any iteration of talents.
I'm forced to choose between demonic consumption and nether portal
I'm forced to choose between talentX and talentY when in previous expansions they were in different rows!

So no, that doesn't define class concept.

[Soon-TM]

That is a weak argument.

Maybe you want to reread what you posted. Phoenix Flames wasn't in any talent tier in Legion, it was a baseline skill.

Sure, "class concept" isn't solely defined by the pruned skills, but it remains a huge issue nevertheless for people not as "streamlined" such as myself.

[lummiuster]

interesting source.

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you know a wacom tablet is more accurate than a mouse right

yeah some challenged people need sources to understand trivial things like 1+1=2

[Zyky]

Let me see... as a Outlaw rogue my rotation its:

Adrenaline rush, prepot, invi, ambush, vanish, ambush, 4-5 combo points, Roll the Dice (see if those are my main buffs), ashvane trinket, Blade rush, Guardian of azeroth, BtE, sinister strike sinister strike, Eviscerate. Repeat. 30% reactivate ashvane trinket.

WoW..... i almost told you the whole arsenal of the Outlaw Rogue... guess what. Its the same abilities minus poison and the RoD that i use with my Rogue Csword on Vanilla.

If you are bad at the game that doesnt mean that every other person would play like you. Pff just go and ask a fucking Monk their rotation on DPS.
3 button classes, the best laugh in the whole night.

Pre pot is not a rotation, trinkets are not a rotation, cooldowns are not a rotation. A so Outlaw literally has 4 buttons they REGULARLY hit.

[Soon-TM]

Pre pot is not a rotation, trinkets are not a rotation, cooldowns are not a rotation. A so Outlaw literally has 4 buttons they REGULARLY hit.

Don't worry, there will certainly be some smartass who will blather something about B-b-b-but cLaSSiC luL or something else completely unrelated to the subject at hand.

[Zyky]

Lets ignore that if you are only using your rotation your doing something wrong. What specs only have three button MAX rotations? I won’t lie and say I’ve played them all but from the ones i have not one has been three buttons.

I'll revise my statement to 4 buttons(which is still a joke from what this game used to be). Keep in mind rotations are a sequence of abilities you hit in successive order, long cooldowns do not fall under a "rotation". I'll start with the specs that are actually 3 then move to the ones that are 4. I'll also be going with the current top DPS rotations.

Frost Mage: Frostbolt, Flurry, Glacial Spike(or Frostbolt, Flurry, Ice Lance depending on which build you go) - 3 buttons
Fire Mage: Fireball, Fire Blast, Pyroblast - 3 buttons(you could argue Scorch, but that's execute only so you just swap out Fireball for Scorch)
Arcane Mage: Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage - 3 buttons
Arms Warrior: Mortal Strike, Slam, Overpower - 3 buttons(same as Fire Mage where execute takes the place of Slam and some cases Mortal Strike in rotation)
BM Hunter: Kill Command, Barbed Shot, Cobra Shot - 3 buttons
Frost DK: Obliterate, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Remorseless Winter - 4 buttons
Unholy DK: Virulent Plague, Festering Strike, Scourge Strike, Death Coil - 4 buttons
Destro Lock: Immolate, Conflagrate, Incinerate, Chaos Bolt - 4 buttons
MM Hunter: Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot, Rapid Fire - 4 buttons
Havoc DH: Felblade, Chaos Strike, Blade Dance, Eye Beam - 4 buttons

So 10 of 24 have 4 button rotations or less. There are also 6 more with 5 button rotations(which offer minimal increases). So more than half the DPS specs in game are dumbed down from more complex rotations/situational abilities from even going back to Wrath.

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When I look at my Unholy-DK Details! it shows close to 28 different damage sources

Sources of damage =/= rotation lol. Unholy DK has, and this isn't an exaggeration, 7 sources of passive damage, most of which are PETS. Pets are not part of a rotation lmao. Azerite Passive procs like gutripper is not part of a rotation. Benthic gear procs are not part of a rotation. lol

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So class design discussions should be limited to dps? Good to know.
I mean, that doesn't change because i enter a different raid, that is the peak of Classic Resto Shaman.

Since you want to be a smartass, you're the one who quoted me, I was talking about DPS(Mages specfically), you cut most of my post for your quote to attempt to fit a narrative that you want to push. And that's about all I'm going to say, because it isn't worth talking to someone who's just going to be a troll.

[keygy]

you are excluding the Cooldown of every spec, that are a part of the rotation itself, specs like BM that operates in short-burst windows with BW, from my point of view talking about "dumbed" specs picking only the "buttons" that you mean, is not a good argument, a class can have 3 buttons and because talents/debuffs and cooldown can be a lot more harder that a spec that have 6 buttons and one plain cd.

the issues is that i see right now are because we have right now a hollow legion design, what i mean with this, blizzard have reused and scrapped a lot of skills from the artifacts in legion and this is the result of a trash evolution from legion design, if you get 4-5 pasives and 2-3 abilities that are the core of the spec, and in the next expansion, you try to do a shitty job of picking some passives here, removing others there well..you get the BFA design.

I HOPE so much that for 9.0, all the talents and passives from legion/bfa ara send it to the hell and they rework from the scratch every spec.

[darklogrus]

Considering the "Open Rotation" calls for the CD at an exact time. I would consider it part of a rotation.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I'll revise my statement to 4 buttons(which is still a joke from what this game used to be). Keep in mind rotations are a sequence of abilities you hit in successive order, long cooldowns do not fall under a "rotation". I'll start with the specs that are actually 3 then move to the ones that are 4. I'll also be going with the current top DPS rotations.

Frost Mage: Frostbolt, Flurry, Glacial Spike(or Frostbolt, Flurry, Ice Lance depending on which build you go) - 3 buttons
Fire Mage: Fireball, Fire Blast, Pyroblast - 3 buttons(you could argue Scorch, but that's execute only so you just swap out Fireball for Scorch)
Arcane Mage: Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage - 3 buttons
Arms Warrior: Mortal Strike, Slam, Overpower - 3 buttons(same as Fire Mage where execute takes the place of Slam and some cases Mortal Strike in rotation)
BM Hunter: Kill Command, Barbed Shot, Cobra Shot - 3 buttons
Frost DK: Obliterate, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Remorseless Winter - 4 buttons
Unholy DK: Virulent Plague, Festering Strike, Scourge Strike, Death Coil - 4 buttons
Destro Lock: Immolate, Conflagrate, Incinerate, Chaos Bolt - 4 buttons
MM Hunter: Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Aimed Shot, Rapid Fire - 4 buttons
Havoc DH: Felblade, Chaos Strike, Blade Dance, Eye Beam - 4 buttons

So 10 of 24 have 4 button rotations or less. There are also 6 more with 5 button rotations(which offer minimal increases). So more than half the DPS specs in game are dumbed down from more complex rotations/situational abilities from even going back to Wrath..

So I’m just gonna go off of hunters as they are the only dips class I’ve played a fair amount this expan.

For mm there are the 4 spells you listed above as well as, serpent sting, murder of crows, explosive shot, barrage and piercing shot. You could also count hunters mark if you are changing targets a lot. So a maximized rotation would have another 5 buttons.

For bm there is the 3 you listed as well as murder of crows, chimaera shot, spitting cobra, stampede and barrage. I also think bestial wrath still has the lowering cool down thing which would make it rotational but I haven’t really touched bm so I’m not sure. So at max you would have another 4 buttons.

I’m not gonna go though the other classes as I haven’t played them but If they are any thing like hunters then you are soundly full of crap.

[Hofflerand]

For the love of god, please remove set specs from the game. Your talent choices should determine your spec, not just arbitrarily selecting an option in a menu and *presto* now I'm a Frost DK and I have no memory or recollection of being able to cast a death coil.

I play a class, not a spec. Without doubt the worst part of modern WoW is the class design

Agreed. In terms of design and utility, class should come first and the role you play second.

[Naiattavain]

I don't think the content in BFA is bad on a fundamental level, outside of them forgetting to add things back to the game (mat vendors, for example) the primary issue with the game is spec/talent design. Most of the specs in the game just feel bad to play, they just aren't fun. You can blame some of this on the GCD change (which to this day makes no coherent sense to me) but many specs have such little talent diversity you could remove most talents and it wouldn't matter even slightly. There are talents in the game that are so bad, they're a dps loss over taking no talent at all. People will play bad content if the specs are fun to play, but when the specs aren't fun to play then no matter how good your content is people are just going to stop.

I really just don't get the mentality blizzard had going into BFA, they were repeatedly warned by people playing the beta that many specs just felt awful and kept insisting azerite was going to fix it, and that never materialized. And because blizzard doesn't like doing large reworks mid xpac, we're now left with a bunch of specs that likely won't be fixed or fun to play until next expansion, if they're ever fixed at all.

The only solution I can see going forward is to roll back some of the massive redesigns they've done over the years and restore classes to what they used to be, and then tune the numbers. Because when we do lose azerite and essences, we're going to be left in the exact same situation we're in now, specs that feel incomplete and clunky to play.

i agree with you; the spec i play is rogue subtlety and i don't play as much as i used to because it just feels bad. bad of the bad class spell books talents design. your on the money when it comes to this blizzard is just stupid because they are loosing one of their best customers.

[Beefkow]

i agree with you; the spec i play is rogue subtlety and i don't play as much as i used to because it just feels bad. bad of the bad class spell books talents design. your on the money when it comes to this blizzard is just stupid because they are loosing one of their best customers.

Isn't sub rogue the least represented spec/class in pve?

You hardly see sub rogues anymore, except for high rated arena.

[Dystemper]

Simple, cost cutting.

[dcc626]

they relied on each expansions features to make classes feel whole, instead of making complete classes and building on top of that.
like coming from legion as a fire mage, i felt the loss of all the legendaries i had and used, and bfa gave nothing in return.

they wont do both. they can make classes complete and not add things on top like legendaries and such. because no matter how good the class is, people will complain later that things were taken away.

everyone wants everything. its just not possible. they wont keep adding layer upon layer from xpac to xpac. balancing is hard enough as it is.

[Beefkow]

That is a weak argument. Same can be said for any iteration of talents.
I'm forced to choose between demonic consumption and nether portal

Because both of those talents we're already baseline to begin with.

If feels horrible to have to choose between something we already had previous expansion.

What you said about demonic consumption and nether portal is irrelevant, none of those talents were previously baseline in legion. You didn't lose anything.

[kaminaris]

Because both of those talents we're already baseline to begin with.

If feels horrible to have to choose between something we already had previous expansion.

What you said about demonic consumption and nether portal is irrelevant, none of those talents were previously baseline in legion. You didn't lose anything.

In case you didn't notice, talent were redesigned and realigned before. So in previous expansions going with your logic, "you lost something".
Having two talents you were able to pick at the same time in MoP, were exclusive in next expansion and so on. But you got other choices for talents that either didn't make sense or nobody ever picked it.

[Beefkow]

In case you didn't notice, talent were redesigned and realigned before. So in previous expansions going with your logic, "you lost something".
Having two talents you were able to pick at the same time in MoP, were exclusive in next expansion and so on. But you got other choices for talents that either didn't make sense or nobody ever picked it.

But guess what.

In WOD and legion, I never had to repick a talent that was previously baseline, the talents were either redesigned or stayed the same, which was fine.

But to pick something that you already had previous expansion is just painful.

Shadow word: death is a good example. Was a nice part of spriest's toolkit but it ended up pruned and put into a talent tree, huge F if you ask me.

At this point, just bring back the old talent trees, blizzard can't make the effort to balance talents. There are still ratios at 99% to 1% in a single talent row, it's ridiculous.

[Kralljin]

At this point, just bring back the old talent trees, blizzard can't make the effort to balance talents. There are still ratios at 99% to 1% in a single talent row, it's ridiculous.

In case you didn't notice: They aren't balancing the talents because they ditched BfA in terms of Class design after 8.1.

They promised Enhancement for example a rework in 8.1, what did it get? Talent re balance, they just saw they ran out of time to do any significant work that will be most likely be undone by the next expansion anyway.

Compare it to Legion, where they actually kept buffing talents throughout the expansion.

Also, the old talent system would just bring you a massive deja vu where the majority of talents basically are currently backed into your spec.

No talentsystem works if the creator has no intention of putting any effort to improve / balance it.

[Big Thanks]

How do you expect to have good talent trees if we get 7 choices between a frankenstein monster of different categories.

We have Rows exclusive to:
-PvP
-Single Target
-AoE
-Utility

Its total bullcrap.
We only get 7 choices, sometimes for spells/abilities we already had in previous expansions!!!!!!! How is this acceptable?
Someone explain to me how is acceptable to place in a talent tree something we already had previously baseline.

This is monkey business.

[Beefkow]

How do you expect to have good talent trees if we get 7 choices between a frankenstein monster of different categories.

We have Rows exclusive to:
-PvP
-Single Target
-AoE
-Utility

Its total bullcrap.
We only get 7 choices, sometimes for spells/abilities we already had in previous expansions!!!!!!! How is this acceptable?
Someone explain to me how is acceptable to place in a talent tree something we already had previously baseline.

This is monkey business.

Some people find it fun having to log on to your character the first time the expansion releases and find out that half of your stuff is gone.

But what am I talking about, fun is subjective!