What is the actual impact of returning old niche abilities?

[Khrux]

I cba reading 7 pages, so apologies if this has been said already.

The biggest impact of returning old niche abilities or making current talents baseline is the gap they create in the current talent trees.

Paladin's Hammer of Wrath.
Thats currently a talent on the lvl30 tier, if that goes baseline it needs to be replaced - New talent!

Paladin's Consecration.
Currently a talent on the 60 tier, if that goes baseline it needs to be replaced - New talent!

Paladin Auras.
The entire 60 row for Holy is 3 auras - Devotion, Sacrifice & Mercy. At least Devotion will be one of the originals going baseline - New talent or talent row!


Thats just one class and a few examples of how baseline talents or cross spec abilities will impact them. Kill shot means BM & MM's psuedo executes will likely need to go away, meaning changes to both hunter specs talent options.

There is definitely some fluff crap coming back that I won't even put on my bars, but some baseline abilities will considerably change your current talent rows at bare minimum.

[valky94]

Paladins are getting their execute back. Spriests still have their own but it's a talent. I don't see in whose ass you pulled that "only warriors should have execute" literal bullshit from.

What other execute like abilities hunter had? The fuck you talking about?

BM has a talent that causes KC to do more damage to low HP targets which is an execute except it doesnt add a new ability to bars, same goes for MM which has a talent that increases AS damage to targets above 80% and below 20%

[vsb]

I don't see any value in most of those abilities. I don't miss them (neither I missed buffs). I loved Legion design which made specs truly different (so you could enjoy new gameplay without switching main) and focused on the core task.

That said, I don't see much harm in those abilities either. Just wasted development time.

IMO they should focus on making all talents competitive and obvious in any situations. Also they should extinguish necessity of simcraft from gameplay. WoW should be game about dragons, not about excel.

[Kaver]

A lot of people seem to be praising Blizzard for a massive directional change on class development.

All we've seen at Blizzcon is that they're re adding a bunch of pruned abilities to classes.

Abilities that were pruned for a reason because 99% of the time you never had a reason to use them.

In addition, they're giving some cross-spec abilities back as base line.

Lets look at mages for example. Let's say Frost mages get access to Fireball again. What reason does a frost mage have to actually cast a fireball? Their talents and masteries don't impact fireball at all. It would just be a straight dps loss. As a result, it is still never going to get used and may as well continue to be spec locked.

Blizzard would have to completely redesign masteries, stats, and talents in order to promote the use of abilities that don't currently benefit from your stats or specs. Yet, they've made no indication of doing so at Blizzcon. Not examples, not even (from what I recall) a statement saying they're reworking this stuff.

So what gives? What is so special about returning old abilities that still won't see use with out other major changes?

1) They are not just going to add a lot of “useless” spells. They will give the specs back a lot of class defining utility for example.

2) Of course they are going to redesign the specs. They have said this multiple time. They are just not going to do large spec overhauls like they did with e.g. the survival hunter in Legion.

3) It is no surprise that you use Mage as an example because it is kind of “the worst” case with easy visual difference between the specs. But it is not only about giving a frost mage fireball.. it’s also about class defining utility. For example: a fire mage can currently use frost nova and Icevlock so why shouldn’t they also be able to use other frost abilities.

For other classes the differences between the specs are more subtle. For example, it makes perfect sense that all Rogues will be able to use poisons.

[Yhvh]

An ability being niche doesn't means that is useless... Only means that you're not - required - to have it in your bars for you regular pve performance. Soloing, pvping, para-tanking... all of these are fun things to do with niche abilities.

Maintenance buffs, on the other hand, they ARE useless spells... Because you're required to have 24/7 without any real decision making.

[Pheraz]

I think it's nice for paladins and shamans

But I dont think it's nice for subletly rogues. I mean... those shadow theme is pretty neat if you ask me. sure the gameplay is currently a bit faceroll. But why add poisons there?
Doesn't make much sense to me.

Same for frost mages and firebolts... Just... Why?

[CrawlFromThePit]

why is that a bad thing? give me an ability i can use in specific situation, instead of nothing at all, no one force u to use, but i'll be damn sure i'll use mine whenever i can, no matter how rare that 'can' will be

Yo, context bro, can't just pick a part of the sentence and decide to change what it means. I never said it was a bad thing, useless doesn't mean bad. The only bad thing is not changing the talent system, it could be designed to support the new (actually old but forgotten and now back) philosophy of class over spec. I mean if Frostbolt is given to all mage specs there should be a reason to use it. In vanilla as a fire mage you could start a fight with frostbolt to slow the mob and do more dmg before they get to you, in retail as a fire or arcane mage the game is so goddamn easy you can explode the mob before it starts moving and obviously you're not gonna use frostbolt in dungeons/raids. So your "rare moment" is "inexisting moment". We need an actual reason to use it otherwise it's useless, not bad, just useless. I would rather have it and never use it than just not have it at all, I agree with you on that. But some skills like this need a reason to be used, it's not like DK ghouls, it's there and does its thing, frostbolt takes the place of another spell you would be otherwise casting so it needs a reason to justify not doing the spell of your spec even if it's just for 1 cast. If the game's balance changing so it will be less like a mobile game and more like a MMO so we can find a use in slowing mobs with Frostbolt as we start a fight? If that's the case then cool, if not then we need something else.

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BM has a talent that causes KC to do more damage to low HP targets which is an execute except it doesnt add a new ability to bars, same goes for MM which has a talent that increases AS damage to targets above 80% and below 20%

Oh yeah, those very fun passives that don't change the gameplay at all. What everybody fucking loves, rofl.

[bullseyed]

Paladins are getting their execute back. Spriests still have their own but it's a talent. I don't see in whose ass you pulled that "only warriors should have execute" literal bullshit from.

What other execute like abilities hunter had? The fuck you talking about?

Perhaps you should do some basic research before posting then.

[bullseyed]

but just ended up being boring flat % based stat increases

All your comment actually says is that you don't like RPGs. There are many other game types out there that you may enjoy.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Perhaps you should do some basic research before posting then.

I know about the boring passives that don't change gameplay, I was asking about abilities.

[Irian]

All your comment actually says is that you don't like RPGs. There are many other game types out there that you may enjoy.

It's impressive that that's what you get out of that comment. That's a ton of conjecture and not a lot of reading comprehension.

What I was actually implying from that post is that I wanted more raid buffs that were more unique and interesting than 5% stamina and 5% intellect. We used to have shit like Symbiosis, Demonic Pact, Focus Magic, Windfury Totem and Dark Intent, not this half-baked crap.

[bullseyed]

No reason to care? I care a lot about getting Challenging Shout back on my Protection Warrior. How can you not see the value of an aoe taunt for a tank?

We get it, you're pro-homogenization. You want to remove all class identity, like giving every tank an AoE taunt.

Most players disagree with you. They want class identity, which means things like warriors being a single target taunt vs another tank having an AoE taunt (but no single target one). Similarly, every class should not have an execute, that should belong to just one class (warrior).

However, there still must be balance. That means if warriors do the most DPS from 20% to 0%, they must do the worst damage from 100% to 20% to offset the DPS gain at the end of the fight. Perfect balance. However, if a boss has a gimmick like a short execute phase, warrior DPS will be bad, but if it has a long execute phase, warrior DPS will be great.

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It's impressive that that's what you get out of that comment. That's a ton of conjecture and not a lot of reading comprehension.

What I was actually implying from that post is that I wanted more raid buffs that were more unique and interesting than 5% stamina and 5% intellect. We used to have shit like Symbiosis, Demonic Pact, Focus Magic, Windfury Totem and Dark Intent, not this half-baked crap.

Can you cite a source on priests (stam buff) and mages (int buff) having Windfury Totem please?

[valky94]

Yo, context bro, can't just pick a part of the sentence and decide to change what it means. I never said it was a bad thing, useless doesn't mean bad. The only bad thing is not changing the talent system, it could be designed to support the new (actually old but forgotten and now back) philosophy of class over spec. I mean if Frostbolt is given to all mage specs there should be a reason to use it. In vanilla as a fire mage you could start a fight with frostbolt to slow the mob and do more dmg before they get to you, in retail as a fire or arcane mage the game is so goddamn easy you can explode the mob before it starts moving and obviously you're not gonna use frostbolt in dungeons/raids. So your "rare moment" is "inexisting moment". We need an actual reason to use it otherwise it's useless, not bad, just useless. I would rather have it and never use it than just not have it at all, I agree with you on that. But some skills like this need a reason to be used, it's not like DK ghouls, it's there and does its thing, frostbolt takes the place of another spell you would be otherwise casting so it needs a reason to justify not doing the spell of your spec even if it's just for 1 cast. If the game's balance changing so it will be less like a mobile game and more like a MMO so we can find a use in slowing mobs with Frostbolt as we start a fight? If that's the case then cool, if not then we need something else.

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Oh yeah, those very fun passives that don't change the gameplay at all. What everybody fucking loves, rofl.

ye but how killshot any better than that? how is replacing aimedshot with killshot for 20% of a fight better than those talents

[Irian]

Can you cite a source on priests (stam buff) and mages (int buff) having Windfury Totem please?

Serious question: do you have trouble with english? I'm not trying to be mean, I just seriously don't get where you're missing what I'm trying to say here.

You don't notice a handful of throwaway tiny stat buffs compared to old, more interesting raid buffs and debuffs that used to exist before they removed them all.

[bullseyed]

It's not even close to 99%. Kill shot isn't useless. Auras, totems, curses and poisons are useful almost all of the time.

Killshot is useless and should not return. Adding another keybind that has to be used under 20% but is otherwise unable to be used is bad design. The only workable solution is to macro it in to another ability so that the same key can be used. And if you do that... there is no point to it existing.

Further, they could instead just make your abilities do more damage under 20% to achieve the same end. But if they do that, your damage over 20% will be nerfed to compensate to maintain balance. So even adding that is pointless.

RPGs are a closed loop math equation, so adding any abilities like killshot are pointless.

[Kurve1776]

All these people going back and forth about how useful / useless the skills are. That's not the point. The point is flavor. They're just fun, a concept that's long-lost to people, apparently.

[CrawlFromThePit]

ye but how killshot any better than that? how is replacing aimedshot with killshot for 20% of a fight better than those talents

Killshot doesn't replace aimed shot, you use both because killshot has a cooldown. It's just an extra thing that's fun to press in a specific moment, it changes what you do. the boring passives don't change what you do, hence why they're boring.

[Gungnir]

Oh boy - thanks for showcasing that you most likely never seen a raid difficulty higher than normal if you are serious.

Let me show you what buttons you have to have keybinded if you want to play at a decent level (i am not even maining boomie)

Solarwrath, Lunarwrath, Moonfire, Sunfire, Stellar Flare, Treants, Star Surge, Starfall (at least for huge pulls in M+), Wild Charge (Caster), Wild Charge (Boomkin), Wild Charge (Cat), Sprint/Tigers Dash, Regrowth, Renewal, Swiftmend, Bear Stance, Boomkin Stance, Frenzied Regen, Roots, Massroots, Taifun, Bash, Celestial Alignment.

Yes, you might not have all these abilities at the same time (such as Frenzied Regen and Swiftmend), but you need a place for them at your bars and a hotkey to use them if need. And Yes, you need all of those abilities. I dont even tell you about Wild Growth and stuff. And its purely for PVE. So yes, if you press only 5 Buttons as Boomie, i consider you a LFR Raider and thus your opinion to everything class balance/performance/difficulty related is worthless.

Ah yes, I too remember to use Wild Charge and Tigers Dash in my PvE rotation.

If you didn't realize this, we're talking about the PvE rotation. You've got Wrath, you've got Starfire and Starsurge. Congratulations, you can now do Patchwerk fights.

[CritFromAfar]

the dot against stealth classes

Also a different type of magic school can be used to juke without locking out the main magic school if it fails. After Blizz removed cross-spec schools of magic people had complained about being locked out of their main and only magic school. It lessened once people realized juking was still possible, but for a while Disc priests were the only PvP spec that could switch magic schools without getting completely locked out of their main spells, and it gave them a huge advantage over most other caster classes. They could get locked out of shadow and just switch to holy and keep healing. It made surviving larger groups in BG's harder because if you got locked out of your one and only magic school you couldn't even cast anything to survive.

[ZazuuPriest]

id almost consider reinstalling if they unfucked Disc and Shadow