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

[ThiagoTorres]

My destruction warlock (441) decimates anyone who engages me.

This game is in the best state of class balance in years.

Good joke, are you doing stand up?

[arsomartinera]

My perspective is that they have changed the game in such a way that it minimizes the amount of development time it takes to churn out the next expansion.

Here are a couple examples of why I think this.

1. Leveling from 110-120 gave you nothing but rep and story. Not a new spell, skill, talent point....nothing.
2. Professions nothing meaningful there. No depth at all.
3. Affixes in Mythic+ is a crappy way to make dungeons seem different.
4. Purple gear means nothing.

DafontShowboxAdam4adam

[Bepples]

Besides... even autoattacking mobs on vanilla is imo funnier than doing "whole rotation" while leveling in BfA, so there's that.

Nah, post-cata levelling is far more fun.

Oh im sorry I dont like exactly what you like, my apologies for having an opinion. I dont want to be a warrior, I want to be a woodsman, someone who can use both a ranged weapon and a spear etc, I want to fight primarily with the melee weapon with ranged windows.

And I want to be a utilitarian munitions expert, and only one of these two archetypes a) adhered to the class identity and b) actually had appeal with the Hunter playerbase.

[Polarthief]

Here's how you let it get bad:
- Push a lot of design on the Legion Artifacts, and then remove them.
- Push some design on Tier Sets, and remove them.
- Push design on legendaries, and remove them.
- To replace all of that, you add a tiny, shitty, system that's akin to NLC/getting a few mediocre traits from Legion (Azerite).
- You also completely abandon putting any time into talents and don't bother fixing them during the expansion either.

Honestly, I'm glad tier sets are gone, but it was a nice change of pace every new season that could easily be fixed by removing dead talents for new ones, balancing the dead talents, or I don't fucking know, doing something different for everyone. They just plain got lazy with BfA and it shows since there's very little "new" good content in BfA so it baffles me as to where all that time, that was usually spent on class/spec design, went into. IEs and WFs are going to be abandoned come 9.0, and all they did was piggyback on the WQ and M+ system (and honestly relied even harder on both while not doing anything to improve either). They also piggybacked on Assaults from Legion for both 8.1 and now AGAIN, A SECOND TIME, in 8.3!!!

[Azzurri]

They've spread their self to thin over the years. With basically making each Spec its own class has really made balancing difficult.

Also, simplification went way too far.

[Argorwal]

They've spread their self to thin over the years. With basically making each Spec its own class has really made balancing difficult.

Also, simplification went way too far.

They had complaints since vanilla that "it wasn't fair X favorite spec couldn't partake in the content they wanted" and since TBC have been flushing out each individual spec to be functional.

Just like all the balance/ret/enhance hate on the classic forums. People want these specs to be good.

[Voidism]

My destruction warlock (441) decimates anyone who engages me.

This game is in the best state of class balance in years.

Sure, balance is great... but in my opinion the classes are more boring than ever.

[TheRevenantHero]

Classic fans: Class design is terrible because talent trees are gone and all classes feel the same!
Also Classic fans: If you don't use this build for a mage, you're fucking worthless and you're not invited to the raid.

[Doffen]

There's a lot to be said about either group in terms of subjectivity, but it's not hard to see why Vanilla wouldn't appeal to someone who just wants to login and smash face or slay dragons to see Lewts explode like a piñata.

I really liked your whole post but I just had to quote this because it made me laugh since this is me now and then, and a big reason why I love my Havoc Demon Hunter so much in BfA. I just love to log in, find a mythic+ and start nuking. I do however also like the more rpg way of looking at your character, to minmax and all that stuff, but I have noticed in the recent years that to just log in and start playing without much more thought to it is nice, at least when you have work, family and all that jazz that takes a lot of your time.

Saying that, I do my fair share of theorycrafting these days, that's still a good part of World of Warcraft. And again, great post of yours.

[Vampyrr]

Bruh, dungeon summoning stones didn't work in classic, having a warlock was a big deal.

Classic is the opposite of homogenization lol.

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He's not winning or losing an argument, he's just posting facts and solid points.

Nothing more, nothing less, deal with it.

Haha what on earth. Classes in Vanilla are textbook examples of simple. No class has complexity. Even DH which people say is simple in retail is 20x more difficult than any vanilla class in wow. Using 1-2 button rotations is not complex. Replace shadowbolt with frostbolt and you have changed from lock to mage.

He hasnt used a single fact yet just his opinion, which are wrong

[Codemaster]

I agree with the OP to some extent. When beta testing BFA, I gave some really good feedback on bugs relating to talents and they still made it into retail. The new talent system in itself isn’t bad, it’s simpler and avoids bloat compared to the old talent trees we were all used to.

However, what is really frustrating is the removal of some excellent abilities and providing nothing in return to compensate apart from increase in spell % of x or y which don’t account for the situational use of removed spell z.

Other mechanics introduced to counter this were azerite traits, which in themselves became difficult to manage for developers to fine tune and every few patches another spec is being hit with a nerf bat of sorts because the azerite system is a bandaid fix for a more complex problem.

My example here would be shadow priests or holy paladins, what shadow lost in single target they make up in aoe, what holy lost in aoe “holy radiance” and absorb mastery, they make up with single target...!

Blizzard need to stop reinventing the wheel mid expansion and actually take tester/player feedback on board.

And breathe...
#rantover

[Malix Farwin]

My destruction warlock (441) decimates anyone who engages me.

This game is in the best state of class balance in years.

1.) Is that right because you are starting to change your tune all of a sudden

2.) Are you serious, have you been living under a rock or did you completely skip legion?

3.) Well you are replying to me soooo why it so wierd that i assume you are talking about what i am instead of creating a new argument

4.) Complaints on the forums have always happens with these type of things were you not around for Cata MoP and WoD or what?

[SirBeef]

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

Specs I play:

Prot and Ret Paladin
Havoc DH
Elemental and Enhance Shaman
Fury and Arms Warrior
Frost DK

I am fine with all of them. Some can be a bit clunky with low haste and passive talents, but i don't find them unfun. There have been different iterations of them where they were more fun or exciting, and iterations when they were less. They are not close to unplayable as many have suggested some have been throughout this expansion.

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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.

What do you consider high end. One that pushes mythic content at the forefront of progression or one that casually progress through mythic content months afterwards? I mean because I can see some issues with classes, but nothing that plagues content, and I raid mythic but nowhere near progression. Like we take almost the whole tier the clear a raid and even then sometimes we don't.

[Reinhart11]

Arms Warrior is hot garbage currently in my eyes. No mythic or heroic raid particularly wants you for one of the melee spots. Mythic+ groups on higher key definitely don't want you because there are melee speccs who bring far far far more to the table. In PvP, Arms was never more dependant on a healer. Without a healer, you're an utter joke. And the gameplay is not engaging as well. And its not like you could overcome all these things in raiding, mythic+ or pvp through superb skill and play. The only thing that is good about Arms currently are its mediocre, decent numbers under good circumstances. And numbers are the only thing that is important right? At least in Ion Hazzikostas book.

[Soon-TM]

There is a complete talent system overhaul coming that will be moving away from specs as we know them.

Source? I'd love it, in principle, but...

[Relapses]

Source? I'd love it, in principle, but...

Get ready for the Sphere Grid, m8.

[Soon-TM]

Get ready for the Sphere Grid, m8.

Do you mean something like Path of Exile's "spiderwebs" talents?

[Big Thanks]

Do you mean something like Path of Exile's "spiderwebs" talents?

I asked him for source also. He replied it was just a guess by him

[Kralljin]

Haha what on earth. Classes in Vanilla are textbook examples of simple. No class has complexity. Even DH which people say is simple in retail is 20x more difficult than any vanilla class in wow. Using 1-2 button rotations is not complex. Replace shadowbolt with frostbolt and you have changed from lock to mage.

He hasnt used a single fact yet just his opinion, which are wrong

I'd say it's a bit more difficult than that.

The problem is what sort of content you're engaging.

In classic, during the leveling phase, you kinda have to use a lot more spells than just your regular dps buttons.
If you're a mage and have like two mobs next to each other, you might sheep one, then attack the other, perhaps start off with a Frostbolt even if you're Fire, you might also use Fireblast to finish it despite being Frost.
Something like Counterspell can also be crucial, because certain mobs have insane heals, so you really should interrupt that.

Even something like AoE grinding requires knowledge of the mobs themselves to grind them properly, just because you can stack up 5+ mobs, doesn't mean you can just AoE them down, if they have range attacks, you're fucked.
Let alone that Mage is basically the only class that can properly do that in classic.

However, in raids, you're absolutely right, the average rotation in Classic is completely braindead and utterly replaceable with every other caster.

It's sort of ironic, something like a class fantasy exists in Classic during the leveling / dungeon phase, but absolutely drops into a hole once you enter the raiding scene because it just shrinks down to your most efficient dps buttons, which usually have neither CD nor alternative, thus you end up with 1 button rotations.

This concept of class fantasy like it existed in Vanilla no longer works because a lot of niches that certain classes usually held became baseline for everybody.
Mages used to be *the* AoE class, now everybody can AoE with varying degrees.

Same goes for something like Summoning people, when it took people 20min to get to a place, Summoning was a huge time save, in BfA, you can be at any relevant place within 2-3 minutes with flying, even then, every dungeon has a summoning stone, so it feeds back into the point above that certain things that made a class special became baseline.

[Eroginous]

I'd say it's a bit more difficult than that.

The problem is what sort of content you're engaging.

In classic, during the leveling phase, you kinda have to use a lot more spells than just your regular dps buttons.
If you're a mage and have like two mobs next to each other, you might sheep one, then attack the other, perhaps start off with a Frostbolt even if you're Fire, you might also use Fireblast to finish it despite being Frost.
Something like Counterspell can also be crucial, because certain mobs have insane heals, so you really should interrupt that.

Even something like AoE grinding requires knowledge of the mobs themselves to grind them properly, just because you can stack up 5+ mobs, doesn't mean you can just AoE them down, if they have range attacks, you're fucked.
Let alone that Mage is basically the only class that can properly do that in classic.

However, in raids, you're absolutely right, the average rotation in Classic is completely braindead and utterly replaceable with every other caster.

It's sort of ironic, something like a class fantasy exists in Classic during the leveling / dungeon phase, but absolutely drops into a hole once you enter the raiding scene because it just shrinks down to your most efficient dps buttons, which usually have neither CD nor alternative, thus you end up with 1 button rotations.

This concept of class fantasy like it existed in Vanilla no longer works because a lot of niches that certain classes usually held became baseline for everybody.
Mages used to be *the* AoE class, now everybody can AoE with varying degrees.

Same goes for something like Summoning people, when it took people 20min to get to a place, Summoning was a huge time save, in BfA, you can be at any relevant place within 2-3 minutes with flying, even then, every dungeon has a summoning stone, so it feeds back into the point above that certain things that made a class special became baseline.

Yes! Playing Classic again reminded me that mobs don't just fall over dead, that you can OOM if you don't watch your mana, that you can die if the mob runs off with 3hp and grabs a friend. Mobs can resist schools of magic completely, be higher level than expected, and have a rotation of abilities beyond just auto attack. People forget the challenge present with just walking around collecting quest items or going to get new spells trained.

Most of that stuff you would invest time into back then have become automated, meaning you don't play that part of the game anymore. Hitting a new level always felt great in Vanilla, not because you got a new talent point or because you finally learned that one special ability, but because getting that talent or special ability usually made your character feel immediately stronger. Even grabbing new ranks of abilities feels good, you can see the difference in your rotation.

The best part? You don't just get everything... you choose what you want to take and doing it across specs didn't break the game, it added value to making small choices. This version of the game just does whatever it's going to do, regardless of who is playing it. No longer can you glance at a character sheet and marvel at someones unconventional choices, there are very few competitive talents in any row on any character, most of them are organized to be similar flavor so you have 3 things to choose from. The actual choice you make rarely results in a substantial difference in anything, especially when it's a passive talent.