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

[Roujeaux]

If the WoW Game Director got on camera and said "We went too far with class design. We gotta make some changes.", then it's safe to say player's concerns about class design isn't just a matter of subjective opinion. There are things that are objectively off and need attention.

[kaminaris]

If the WoW Game Director got on camera and said "We went too far with class design. We gotta make some changes.", then it's safe to say player's concerns about class design isn't just a matter of subjective opinion. There are things that are objectively off and need attention.

Did you actually listen to what did he say afterwards? If you don't like current class design then you will be extremely dissapointed next expansion.

[shade3891]

I really like the way Heroes of the Storm has talents to create different builds for the same character. If they only did that with WoW per spec.
It is not like any spec in wow has more than six main rotation/priority buttons. (And ofcourse they should tailor the talents around those.)

[Roujeaux]

Did you actually listen to what did he say afterwards? If you don't like current class design then you will be extremely dissapointed next expansion.

I did. Did you actually read what I just posted? Because you seem to be assuming I'm saying something that I didn't actually type.

[kaminaris]

I did. Did you actually read what I just posted? Because you seem to be assuming I'm saying something that I didn't actually type.

Well then you didn't. All he said was it was a mistake to remove some flavor spells and warrior stances. If you expecting some major changes, you will be dissapointed.

[MasterOfNone]

what about ret? affli? frost mage? frost dk? mm hunt? sp? how do you feel about these?

sp? lol they dont need a buff. they are fine. they are so good right now that 8.3 is giving them somewhat of a nerf....not sure what you are talking about

[rohoz]

Maybe people who preferred more traditional WoW and less Diablo have already taken their leave, so the only remaining folks are those who actually enjoy Diablo 3: Forced Multiplayer Edition. !@#&ing Path of Exile has (way) more ACTUAL character customisation than WoW, and it's an ARPG ffs.

it's also a solo game where you can play your special snowflake spec by yourself.

"traditional wow" where everyone specced the same damn talents huh? sigh. I mean I know you don't know what you're talking about but you don't have to make it so obvious

[Roujeaux]

Well then you didn't. All he said was it was a mistake to remove some flavor spells and warrior stances. If you expecting some major changes, you will be dissapointed.

Except that's not all he said. He said the prune was successful in certain ways but also very controversial, that there were abilities removed such as flavor abilities that in hindsight they realized shouldn't have been removed. He specifically cited button count as a motivation for the prune, and expressed a desire to restore such when feasible.

He also admitted they've overspecialized the specs, and that going forward they'd like to pull back from making individual specs feel so much like mini classes in favor of overarching class identity.

Now, it's difficult to image adhering to such ambitions without a rework of some kind, but he didn't specifically mention massive overhauls. Neither did I in my post above. YOU did.

And so here we are, reviewing the fine points of reading comprehension.

[Wondercrab]

The more baffling part to me is that this is the only expansion where we've seen almost no mechanical class changes in any of the major content updates. It's bizarre. I can only hope that this means they're focused on major revamps in 9.0, but then again I hoped the lack of changes prior to 8.2 was due to the essence system giving classes a ton of extra stuff as well. I really don't know what they're thinking or what the plan is at this point. I've definitely never felt more disillusioned with the design process.

[Kralljin]

I'm dumbfounded at how awful BFA talent/class are compared to Legion.
Legion had a bad start too, but they worked hard, redesigned a lot of specs and turned out in a great endgame. It look like nobody gave a shit in BFA, half the talents are completely useless since release and some specs are borderline unviable for mid-tier content.

Because Blizzard pulled the plug on BfA after 8.1 in terms of class design, that was the only patch that attempted to do something besides the random % buff for a spec or slight talent buff.

If you compare it to Legion, there they re balanced talents in almost every major patch, the class change list for 8.2 is very small by comparison.

Like, they realized they fucked up and that fixing this mess is just too much work in order to salvage it and simply kicked the can down the road for 9.0.

[Palapop]

sp? lol they dont need a buff. they are fine. they are so good right now that 8.3 is giving them somewhat of a nerf....not sure what you are talking about

we were talking about class DESIGN here. not about numbers.

[Relapses]

One look at your post history indicates you think Blizzard is the second coming of Jesus.

If you'd actually read my posts instead of labeling me a Blizzard white knight, you'd see that I am frequently critical of the current game. What I'm against are rote "WoW is dead," type posts that do very little to provide legitimate actionable feedback for developers. (Believe it or not, "your game fucking sucks" isn't nearly specific enough for the devs to do anything about.)

Regardless I was just pointing out to you that opinion can indeed be fact. Vanilla also isn't the pinnacle of design but at least it was a fucking MMORPG.

I'm not going to debate the spectrum upon which an opinion becomes fact. I'll leave it here: No matter where you stand on the quality of the current game design, WoW is still the most profitable and longest lasting property in the MMO market. If there wasn't some inherent quality about the game which kept players coming back, we wouldn't still be posting on this forum.

[rohoz]

"their arrogance"

Fuckin lol

Surely blizzard, a triple A game manufacturing company, doesn't know more than y'all on this here fansite.

[DrayygoSham]

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.

Hello, here i am. I killed every BfA Boss within the HoF (EU-Alliance), even Uunat. Shaman is fine, MM is fine, Assa Rogue is fine, Ret is fine, UHDK/Frost is fine-ish, DH is DH and Boomie is fine besides never using Starfall.

This Post ist not about Class-Balance, that could be better. But gameplay-wise all these classes are fine (and many more, but i dont play all of the classes, you know).

[Asaliah]

Too many DPS classes are exactly the same (never played as a shaman):

Energy/combo points: rogue/monk/DK/ret pal/demon hunter

Caster: mage/shadow priest/warlock

Energy: warrior/hunter

Actually you have only 3 different gameplays/classes in the game as a DPS

[rohoz]

Enhancement Shaman is now a budget Fury Warrior. Fill a bar -> spend it.

Elemental is the same. Fill a bar -> spent it.

- - - Updated - - -



See - your precious little boy Ion admitting his failure with class design.

https://www.wowhead.com/news=292386/...-with-ion-hazz

Can you please learn how to read and understand, past the elementary school level?

[nexellent]

Because every expansion since mop has continuously removed core class abilities until we got to legion where they took 99% of all design out of classes.

[rohoz]

Because every expansion since mop has continuously removed core class abilities until we got to legion where they took 99% of all design out of classes.

I was unaware that sentry totem was part of your core gameplay.

[LionSinMaikeru]

I know what you mean and how some think we should go back to just having 12 classes rather than 36 or whatever it is if you consider every spec to be a class of their own. But i do prefer to have all these 36 viable classes. I enjoy playing as a frost mage or fire mage or arcane mage and have each of the disciplines more fleshed out than a let's say... multi-art mage that doesn't go as deep on each discipline?

It's up to the devs to figure out what they want to do. But we basically can't have both. I myself, like what we have now.
Btw, i wouldn't look at it as the mages forgot the spells, cause they come back if you change spec. It's more putting it away cause it's not necessary and is just bloat on your bars.

...what are you talking about? We literally did have both back in the day.

There was a magical thing called a talent tree (not the sad illusion of one we have currently) where you could specialize your character's class into a specific direction.

So you could be a normal Mage with Frost, Fire, AND Arcane abilities and then choose to put points in a specific tree and gain new Arcane, Fire, or Frost abilities and/or improve your existing ones.

[kaminaris]

Too many DPS classes are exactly the same (never played as a shaman):

Energy/combo points: rogue/monk/DK/ret pal/demon hunter

Caster: mage/shadow priest/warlock

Energy: warrior/hunter

Actually you have only 3 different gameplays/classes in the game as a DPS

Too many dps classes used mana before, they worked the same, if you want to compare it this way, its a progress because previously we had just one.

Funny enough, warlock demo is not even close to mage or spriest
hunter bm does not feel like warrior
Nor DH feels like monk/rogue