What is the actual impact of returning old niche abilities?

[Gardoc]

Things like frost nova, slow fall, counter spell, these have actual uses through out the game on a regular basis.

Fireball on a frost mage will likely never get used.

You're putting words in my mouth. There is a difference between abilities that are good for dps, abilities that have actual consistent utility use, and abilities that you will likely never use. A lot of these "re added" abilities fall into the latter category.

So what dps spell do you cast when you get kicked in frost?

[bloodmoth13]

The fun abilities should return like sentry totem, but most should just stay dead. They shouldnt bring anything back without fixing what was wrong with it. Auras were boring abilities, im genuinely annoyed that they are returning since they have no business in modern wow. If they can make the gameplay interesting then sure but dont just toss them in...

[brt2pp]

Wrong - people need rebuffs when they're combat ressed, buffs can be spellstolen/dispelled, they cost mana & a GCD to reapply. It gives those classes more reason to be brought to content as they supply the buff. They're far from useless, they definitely have an impact on gameplay, if you spend more than a second thinking.

if you would spend in your entire lifetime one second to to listen more experienced people then you, then you would know that those cases that you spoke either never happened (spellstealing buff ... are you joking ? ), or wasn't gamplay intensive , pressing one button by 2-3 people to rebuff cr'ed dps isn't something that affects gameplay much, if anything it's annoying chore to do when you would rather be playing game, also this false notion that "classes more reason to be brought to content as they supply the buff", let me clarify to you that all of classes had their own buff that gave either 2 stat buff or 1 stat buff, they were so abundant that it was impossible to complete raidgroup without having all of them, so that argument also seems to be more of wishful thinking someone that hasn't played in the old days then arguments guided by reason and experience, so please why won't you leave conversation and not spread misinformation anymore ? thanks

[Segus1992]

if you would spend in your entire lifetime one second to to listen more experienced people then you, then you would know that those cases that you spoke either never happened (spellstealing buff ... are you joking ? ), or wasn't gamplay intensive , pressing one button by 2-3 people to rebuff cr'ed dps isn't something that affects gameplay much, if anything it's annoying chore to do when you would rather be playing game, also this false notion that "classes more reason to be brought to content as they supply the buff", let me clarify to you that all of classes had their own buff that gave either 2 stat buff or 1 stat buff, they were so abundant that it was impossible to complete raidgroup without having all of them, so that argument also seems to be more of wishful thinking someone that hasn't played in the old days then arguments guided by reason and experience, so please why won't you leave conversation and not spread misinformation anymore ?

Writing like this proves to me that you're not one of the aforementioned "more experienced players then you", not to mention all the wrong in the post.

Buffs add gameplay. They serve as dispel protection. They need to be reapplied when someone is combat ressed.

Buffs make people bring classes to content. You're guaranteed to see a Havoc DH in every mythic raid team, even when they're underpowered.
This was also the case back in the days, and buffs were given to every class for this exact reason. This is also one of the primary reasons for pruning to happen in the first case.

You clearly are either a not very experienced player, or you've never experienced more than casual content.

[blackblade]

Okay, but the current implementation of talent trees has no flexibility to make fire-frost spec a thing. The talent trees would require a huge rework, and Blizzard already confirmed that any class reworks that happen this expac would be very small scale.

If you're saying its for future-proofing, okay, but damn thats a pretty lackluster expansion "feature" if it won't even serve a purpose until the next expansion.

On the other hand, Holinka is the guy they put in charge of it. Anyone who's lived through BFA's state of PVP will tell you he's not exactly great.

[Craaazyyy]

if you would spend in your entire lifetime one second to to listen more experienced people then you, then you would know that those cases that you spoke either never happened (spellstealing buff ... are you joking ? ), or wasn't gamplay intensive , pressing one button by 2-3 people to rebuff cr'ed dps isn't something that affects gameplay much, if anything it's annoying chore to do when you would rather be playing game, also this false notion that "classes more reason to be brought to content as they supply the buff", let me clarify to you that all of classes had their own buff that gave either 2 stat buff or 1 stat buff, they were so abundant that it was impossible to complete raidgroup without having all of them, so that argument also seems to be more of wishful thinking someone that hasn't played in the old days then arguments guided by reason and experience, so please why won't you leave conversation and not spread misinformation anymore ? thanks

you have no idea what you're talking about clearly.. you probably never heard of dispel protection and covering crowd control

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

For all classes * it's a big part of what identifies you and sets you apart from other classes. Hunters are the ranged class with complete control "mastery" of their companion beast, so for them it's a big part of fantasy to go into their beast (Eyes of the Beast) and move around as their beast. So is their aspects and buffing their ranged attacks. Their traps are iconic and has many different (situational) uses. You can go through the same things for every single class, even the newer classes.

*
Where "niche abilities" really do make a huge impact is for the hybrid classes. Paladins, Druids, Shamans and Monks.
The ability to do things that are "outside" your current talent spec or role is a huge part of being a hybrid. A Ret Paladin having healing tools available, like we did in WotLK, Cata and MoP were big parts of what it ment to be a Ret Paladin and a big part of why you had them in your groups/raids even if their damage was slightly lower. Same for a Restoration Shaman being able to throw out some damage, or use totems for key situations. Balance Druids throwing out Tranquility to help out with big raid damage?
More than just being good tools to have in your groups and raids these tools ment that players that chose hybrid classes also had another level of responsibility (if they were good/if they chose to) which added another level of depth to your playstyle.
Traditional dps classes (warriors etc) would work to min/max their dps, to squeeze out every last bit. As a hybrid you would almost take on a healer mentality and keep an eye out on your raid frames and throw a helping hand to people who maybe dropped low, pulled aggro or were hit by some mechanics they were supposed to avoid. I can't count how many times I (ret paladin) used instant Flash of Light, Lay on Hands, Hand of Protection, Hand of Sacrifice and all the other tools to save people from dying and potentially wiping the raid. Yes there are encounters where your tools are assigned to specific points, but there are many encounters where they're not and it takes your watchful eye to save people. The feeling of knowing you saved someone, the feeling that you get when you save a raid attempt- maybe even secure a boss kill ...that feeling is better than any "zomfg I was top dps, my penis is huge and girthy!" moments.
For "pure dps" classes these niche tools, utility tools, might not matter that much. But for the "hybrid" classes it matters a lot.

For me WoW became really boring when "niche abilities" and utility tools were pruned, I wasn't a Paladin anymore ...just a holy Warrior- but not as good. So I changed to Warrior because there was no point in playing Ret anymore, what I found was that Warrior is really boring (to me). I do think it's a personality thing though, some people enjoy the mindless dps and some don't. Some like ranged, some like melee, some like healing and some like tanking. For myself I always end up in a support role when playing multiplayer games. Doesn't matter if it's WoW, DotA, Overwatch, Diablo or whatever else. I get the most satisfaction of helping others while doing damage, in other words a hybrid/support role.

[Yarathir]

Other than Eyes of the Beast, I honestly don't really care much.

[Twdft]

Shiv was nice, different effect depending on your second poison. Please let me brew my own poisons again too, that would be sweet. Or at least give us dismantle back.

[gd8]

Because not every ability in an RPG has to be part of your core set of abilities, useful or not.

RPG's have large libraries of stuff that is trash, bad, average, good, amazing and you cant just delete all the bad stuff and think its better when it comes to niche abilities.

Blizz knocked it out of the park backwards completely misunderstanding their own GENRE when they made changes like this. They absolutely destroyed the RPG in MMORPG.

who gives a shit, have you ever thought maybe those RPGs with tons of ability bloat and 70% useless abilities are just poorly designed?

[LordVargK]

Let's see. I'll try to think of a list of abilities, that got pruned from a (PvE) warlock, which would hat a use in PvE:

Curses:
Curse of Tongues for all the casters in M+, would make interrupting way easier.
Curse of Weakness, if preserving Tank life ist more important than the DPS of the warlock (you could not have (Curse of) Agony and CoW applied on the same target).
Curse of Shadows: a flat buff to all magic damage done by the raidgroup.
Curse of Exhaustion: Makes kiting easy, useful in M+ as well as in specific raid encounters

Hellfire: AoE ability with a downside. Not really that useful, I agree. But it gave the class flavor and was one of the abilities shown in the orginal WoW trailer.
Infernal/Doomguard: Sure, it's a CD now for Destru. But Doomguard is gone and with it a very good single target CD.
Demon Armor: Extra Armor and more life. Do I need to say more? Universally good in all situations.
Nether/Twilight Ward: A defensive CD against magic damage. helpful in all situations.
Glyph of Hellsteed: Gave you waterwalking while on your Classmount, useful in open world content. Also had a badass visual effect.
Fel Flame: An instant cast spell, usable while moving, extended some of your DoTs. relevant in Raids and M+
Soul Swap: Useful for copying/transfering DOTs from one target to another.
Soulburn: A ability that let you enhance certian other abilities at the cost of a soul shard. It's effects are mostly passive now (like Seed of Corruption costing a soul shard but applying corruption), which reduces player choice (I would very much like to cast SoC without the DOT effect for free).
Soul harvest (or something like that): channeled spell which healed you and restored soulshards out of combat. useful in M+ before a bosspull.
Dark Intent: Buffs an ally and grants you benefits based on ally's performance.

I could add about every Talent warlocks had in MoP; Mannoroth's fury (Bigger AoE radius), Kil'jaeden's Cunning (Cast while moving), AoE Drain Life, etc. But while those were pruned, they were not the OG abilities that defined a warlock. They were pretty awesome (and broken) nontheless. Shoutout to the Demonology tanking glyph!

Not an ability but:
SNAPSHOTTING. Also known as the only thing that makes Dot classes not entirely braindead to play on single target bosses.

I've not included the abilities, which were once baseline but are now (sometimes mutually exclusive) talents, because they are technically still available for PvE, just not always. I've also excluded the Demonology spec and all it's lost abilities, because who am I to expect Blizzard to come up with original Ideas which don't involve making an entire class with two specs by deleting one warlock spec from the game (and not really replacing it until an entire expansion later).
But yeah. I would be very happy with getting back any of the aforementioned spells, which all have uses. And i probably forgot about 50% of all useful pruned spells, because I started WoW late WotLK, so I can only think of spells that I used after that.

[Niroshi]

Man some of you guys seem genuinely lost. Abilities don't need to be rotational to be nice to have, and it isn't hurting anyone to bring back stuff like Eyes of the Beast. Not everything was removed because it had huge problems, some of it was removed because Blizzard was just being shortsighted or dumb.

[Gungnir]

People do not seem to understand that there's a game outside of a patchwerk bossfight.

As a fire mage, I'd fucking KILL to have a reliable, spammable slow back like a frostbolt.
In PvP, I'd kill for shit like having arcane explosion back.

[chrisnorris]

I don't see much impact unless massive class overhauls take place.
speaking to a x guildie last night he was super hyped because hunters get 2 abilities back. I didn't get it.

I am not excited about it unless its earth shatteringly good.
like making fury play how it did in wrath. that would perk my interests

[Nefarious Tea]

the dot against stealth classes

Fireball doesn’t cause a dot by itself. The fire mastery does, because you cast fireball. Ergo, no dot and no anti stealth for arcane/frost

[Frostyfire14]

As a druid im scared. I don't need more keybinds.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

As a druid im scared. I don't need more keybinds.

How many do you currently have? 5 or something like that for your primary rotation and then maybe 3 more for cds and other things?

[Niroshi]

As a druid im scared. I don't need more keybinds.

Druid hasn't lost much to return, Mark of the Wild, Healing Touch, Hurricane, Nourish/Cyclone/Thorns for PvE players are the big ones I can think of. Most everything else is intact isn't it?

[Gungnir]

How many do you currently have? 5 or something like that for your primary rotation and then maybe 3 more for cds and other things?

As a boomkin, you've got 3 buttons to press.
5 if you count the fire-and-forget dots which doesn't really matter since you only use them once every 20 seconds or something.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

who gives a shit, have you ever thought maybe those RPGs with tons of ability bloat and 70% useless abilities are just poorly designed?

Who decides if an ability is useless though?
Eyes of the Beast was used by hunters to pull mobs out from buildings or areas in dungeons and was very useful for that. In Classic I'm constantly using it on my hunter when playing alone and playing in groups.
Instant Flash of Light (talent for Ret Paladins) used to save yourself and others from dying, very situational but very useful.
Light's Hammer (talent for Ret Paladins in MoP, iirc) was a rather bad talent for damage, but you could use it for helping out healing when your raid was stacked up- which I and the other Ret in our raid did on at least 4 encounters in Mists of Pandaria. We also used Holy Prism for the Shamans fight in Siege of Orgrimmar.

Just because something is very situational, very niche and rarely used at all ...doesn't mean it's useless or doesn't deserve a spot. Maybe it's only useful in 1 of 50 situations, but that one situation you'll be glad to have it ...and you'll remember it for a lot longer than the abilities you spam 6210 times per raid.