I miss the old days

[Noradin]

Yeah, good times, great memories. Was it a talent choice or glyph that gave us the extra 5 yards on Mind Sear? I remember the first time in ICC on the catwalk, Moar DoTs, Mind Sear, Muahaha, this is glorious, I am a god!!!

I have to agree though. Legion changes started my disillusionment with the design. Not a fan of the void form play. Unfortunately it’s all or nothing, so I’m doing nothing except logging in a few hours a week.

Oh, and Yvaelle, I think I can speak for Kilee too,

Get off our lawn.

Void form killed shadow for me, and thus ultimately killed the game.

[Foolicious]

Wasn't it Cata that introduced the Mind Spike rotation? All I recall is Mind Spike clears your DoT's and kept thinking, what the heck, are they crazy? Adding in a spell that clears the foundation of the class design? We all worked it out and we were fine.

T13 4p introduced it the first time. You wrote a marko that cancelled the buff that made mindblast instant and during shadowfiend you only used mindspike and mindblast. Outside of shadowfiend we used our dots. But it had a much shorter cooldown in cata than it has now. Still a big difference to the wod mind spike rotation in my opinion.
The addition of mindspike in cata was actually fine and reasonable. It was designed for old content/ low life trash mobs to have a source of damage. Also to be able to cast anything in pvp if we got interrupted because it was shadow/frost. We barely used it outside of pvp scenarios though.

[Echeyakee]

T13 4p introduced it the first time. You wrote a marko that cancelled the buff that made mindblast instant and during shadowfiend you only used mindspike and mindblast. Outside of shadowfiend we used our dots. But it had a much shorter cooldown in cata than it has now. Still a big difference to the wod mind spike rotation in my opinion.
The addition of mindspike in cata was actually fine and reasonable. It was designed for old content/ low life trash mobs to have a source of damage. Also to be able to cast anything in pvp if we got interrupted because it was shadow/frost. We barely used it outside of pvp scenarios though.

Yeah, if I recall correctly, 2p reduced CD of shadowfiend and 4p turned it in to proper burn cooldown. Was pretty fun topping the damage on spine with it. But outside of that, the only real use for spike was to remove your dots, when stop damage is called.

WOD spike rotation, on other had, was pure trash, and should not have been allowed to exist.

[Will]

Then if you want those days again play classic, because if classic gets enough success there will quite likely be BC/Wrath after that.

[Lazuli]

Not a fan of the Discords, but that's just me. I'm old

- - - Updated - - -

Not a fan of the Discords, but that's just me. I'm old. Same with everything being on Twitter. While the old days may be gone, there was more to be said for in depth conversations and blogs.

I'm only 30 and I strongly stick to forums.. I just don't like discord or twitter formats. I've still never made a twitter. I use FB that's it.

I never liked IRC

[marathal]

Played Classic last night, wow those memories of being able to damage and heal, lots of things came back to me, reminded me of why I loved the class. Will my view change in the coming months? Maybe, but I am enjoying a throwback to a different time.

[Rhaxus]

@Lazuli same here, there is just a feeling of calm when browsing a forum ( at least to me) while a discord server feels like a constant stream of input which comes less filtered than individual threads

[MoanaLisa]

I prefer forums myself. Information that was useful could be bookmarked or kept around in some form or other. Live discussions on something like Slack, Discord or other platforms out there are fine for what they are but there's no preservation of thought or of history. There's nothing really to be done about it that I can tell. The world moves on and leaves some of us behind.

There's something to be said about the breakdown of measured conversation and a thoughtful post against the instant reaction and then forget it nature of a lot of social media. As goes the conversation, so goes the game I think.

[Icathian]

I prefer forums myself. Information that was useful could be bookmarked or kept around in some form or other. Live discussions on something like Slack, Discord or other platforms out there are fine for what they are but there's no preservation of thought or of history. There's nothing really to be done about it that I can tell. The world moves on and leaves some of us behind.

There's something to be said about the breakdown of measured conversation and a thoughtful post against the instant reaction and then forget it nature of a lot of social media. As goes the conversation, so goes the game I think.

I can't make myself like instant message chats like Discord. IM is fine if you're talking to one person or a tiny group of people like in Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger, but they're terrible for actual communities.

As an example, someone might ask, "hey guys is X trinket good for mages?" then you will get comments like "lol" "dunno" "maybe" "it depends of the fight". Such low-effort comments wouldn't be tolerated in a forum (10char rule etc) but its fine on discord. In 2 minutes that question will get buried and nobody will care. That person will have to make the same question again and again until he gets a decent answer.

That wouldn't happen in forums. The question will stay there forever, and someone out there who knows a lot about trinkets will read it and comment about it. Nobody jumps on discord and searches for random stuff to comment about, people just talk about whatever is the newest topic.

I don't believe this is a problem of "getting old", this is not a good long term way to maintain a community.

Again, it's great for a guild, for friends hanging out and playing together, specially because of the voice chat which is way better and practical than vent/teamspeak. But huge communities? Forums are way better.

[Rhaxus]

snip

well put, especially the part about lost information/engagement with the posted information.

[Mardux]

I can't make myself like instant message chats like Discord. IM is fine if you're talking to one person or a tiny group of people like in Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger, but they're terrible for actual communities.

As an example, someone might ask, "hey guys is X trinket good for mages?" then you will get comments like "lol" "dunno" "maybe" "it depends of the fight". Such low-effort comments wouldn't be tolerated in a forum (10char rule etc) but its fine on discord. In 2 minutes that question will get buried and nobody will care. That person will have to make the same question again and again until he gets a decent answer.

That wouldn't happen in forums. The question will stay there forever, and someone out there who knows a lot about trinkets will read it and comment about it. Nobody jumps on discord and searches for random stuff to comment about, people just talk about whatever is the newest topic.

I don't believe this is a problem of "getting old", this is not a good long term way to maintain a community.

Again, it's great for a guild, for friends hanging out and playing together, specially because of the voice chat which is way better and practical than vent/teamspeak. But huge communities? Forums are way better.

In two minutes that question will be answered in discord, either by checking FAQs or pins. Whereas on forums the answer gets buried in 3 pages of toxic responses (something most mods on discord disallow).

[Echeyakee]

There are servers like that, sure. I remember joining an anime discord that had very broad channels, so there were hundreds of people talking in each one, and the chat was going by about at the speed of a popular streamer's chat. Made any sort of conversation impossible.

But that's an exception more so than the rule, especially when it comes to class discord for wow. Yeah, there are still some bad examples, where information on the actual discord is limited, nobody bothers answering question apart from repeating the same mantra of "use out proprietary tool/website/spreadsheet", even if your problem can be solved in under a minute of paying attention, cough*holy paladin*cough.

Yet most of the class discords are amazing. They will have most of the information you would need neatly arranged in a separate channel or in form of the pins, and have a separate channel where you can ask questions in case you need more help. And the advantage in response time cannot be underestimated. Even reddit takes longer, and that's about as big of a forum as it gets. It's still good when you have a very specific problem, or a single question, but if you need general assistance, getting a reply every other day is not the best way to tackle the problem.

I can't count the amount of times I had direct chats with makers of addons/auras I had problems with, or got class info directly from people who did the math behind it, instead of hoping that whoever replied to the post knew what they were talking about. And the priest forums here are a prime example. It's a dead wasteland with about .5 posts per day, and all of the guides are external links to stuff written by the same people you can get a hold of on discord.

Also I would like to point out that discord is just a newer version of IRC, so get of this "in my old days" and "youngsters today" bullshit.

[theostrichsays]

I will say Druid and Priest were probably the 2 most helpful class forums I found in all my years. Coming back to WoW at the emd of TBC after quitting at the start I picked up Priest and loved every minute for a long time.

On the subject of discord, for guild stuff and LFG for raid and mythic plus i prefer it. For reading guides and conversations that are even slightly in depth i much prefer forum posts. The ability to back track and read without missing 35 messages of nonsense was nice.

As far as priest goes, I liked the theme of shadow void, I dont like the playstyle. If it was a consume X shadow orbs or reduce Devouring Plage by X and gain some stupid number of stats and we still had snap shotting I would like it. But at some level i still enjoy the class, maybe its pvp achieves and memories, idk.

Adding an edit though that i do think most the class discords have gotten better about having seperate places for random conversation and memeing and actual class related things.

[stuen]

I played WoW from 2008 to 2011 and it was so great I hardly get off my computer back then. But now... It is like completely different game, I can't get hooked anymore

[deviantcultist]

The problem with Spriest is the community dispute about the Void direction. Old vs New.

For myself, I've played Spriest for 10 years and the main reason I chose it was the fact that it is the only spec in the game that is truly about "darkness".

The new Void direction does enhance that identity and makes me like it even more for that, yet it inspires mixed feelings in terms of the practical application and how it shifted from the old one.

In my opinion, the best way to go about it is to change Spriest back to how it was for those who miss it and add a new Void class to accommodate fans of that concept.

[tankbug]

The problem with Spriest is the community dispute about the Void direction. Old vs New.

For myself, I've played Spriest for 10 years and the main reason I chose it was the fact that it is the only spec in the game that is truly about "darkness".

The new Void direction does enhance that identity and makes me like it even more for that, yet it inspires mixed feelings in terms of the practical application and how it shifted from the old one.

In my opinion, the best way to go about it is to change Spriest back to how it was for those who miss it and add a new Void class to accommodate fans of that concept.

I agree with the Voidform and old gods influence. It give the spec a strong wow lore connection and identity instead of being a "dark mage". With the tentacles and stuff, it just makes them more gritty, of the consequences of using their power, a warning not to take it too far.

[dcc626]

Then if you want those days again play classic, because if classic gets enough success there will quite likely be BC/Wrath after that.

only problem with that is how long it will take to get to that point. 2020 is a retail year, so 2021 before BC if it happens at all.

[Relapses]

only problem with that is how long it will take to get to that point. 2020 is a retail year, so 2021 before BC if it happens at all.

Possibly. Blizzard did say the framework for TBC would be much easier to implement because they already worked out the kinks making Classic. For all we know, Blizzard is already working on it behind the scenes and we could see TBC during the first content drought of 9.0.

[Kilee25]

I don't think I'd want to loop through all of wow's history again. I have a keen nostalgia for classic, and I'd like to play that again, as well as perhaps eventually some new content for that specific era, but I've no desire to just start looping through the entire chain of expansions a second time. And this is even though I actually feel TBC was a superior game and the best version of Shadow we got.

[enzi]

On the topic of Discord. How do you even find good groups and channels?
There is nothing indexed in search engines. The Discord search in itself sucks. I'm not sure why it's that popular. Boggles my mind. Seriously, it's a weird mix of forum stickies, IRC and teamspeak in the most confusing way possible and nothing expect some stickies, which could be also done in a forum has any relevance for more than 5 minutes.
I just don't see the advantages other than it's free and easy to setup.

On shadow priests, nothing beats the TBC version of shadow priest. Absolutely nothing. It was perfection in PvE.