Anyone NOT that hyped for 'return to class'?

[Craaazyyy]

its a step in the right direction.. what i'm afraid of is them unpruning fewer abilities than they should

[united]

Ditch Void Form + Insanity Mechanic and I'll be happy.

Listen to this guy blizz!

[Advent]

Ah yes, the unique playstyle of 'press the cooldowns'.
Don't get me wrong, as a Ret paladin I also miss those days because we're stuck with FUCKING COMBO POINTS since Cata and will be stuck with it until the game dies.

However, as a resource system, Maelstrom is a lot more dynamic and modular than most others and the new Enhance doesn't feel ass to play.
Thus, in my eyes, it's one of the more successful Legion revamps because every other spec just start feeling like shit to play by comparison.

There were many people who liked the way it played, which was why we picked it in the first place. And now it's gone and there's nothing like it. They've gutted everything that was once fun about it and turned the spec into nothing more than a spastic feast/famine stormstrike bot. It's terrible.

[shise]

The point is, you get fireball, but you will not even use it. At least that will be the case of many spells.

But things like paladin auras, they can be handy at times, even if 90% of the time you stick with one.


Specs are fun, but a class is something bigger than just a spec. A good mage will master all 3 specs and know what is best and where. So having common elements across specs makes reminds you of all that potential, you are a mage all in all, not just a frost mage.

If you play a class ONLY for one spec, that is okay, but that means that you can not master that class really if you don´t want to dedicate time to the other specs.

[Ethule]

Except it feels nothing like a Wrath Holy, and if I'm playing a Holy Pally, that's what I want. I want my fast Holy Lights and 100% beacon, mana regen from Judge, and being able to say to a tank that "If it doesn't one-shot you, I've got you", and mean it, because my spells were that fast and that strong.

I didnt mean it felt like Wrath Holy. I ment I feels more like Wrath ret minus divine storm lol. I understand there were more intricacies in wrath like which judgement to use and auras. I was just saying it feels better to use mana as a resource for Holy Dps than Holy power for Ret dps. Sorry I wasnt more clear.

[Kalisandra]

Another thing about 'class' first, then 'spec' - maybe we'll get rid of the silliness where healers specs often have base damage spells that hit harder than they do for their DPS specs. Resto Shamans, for example, have Lightning Bolts and Lava Bursts that hit much harder than Elemental's do. Elemental relies on the mastery effect, the boost to crit damage, and Earth Shock to do more, with the result that at low gear levels Resto sometimes does more damage in a short fight. If healers are to do some damage (and I think they should), and have good base spell damage, then the DPS specs should build on that, rather than having weak base spells to make room for all the various gimmicks.

Pretty sure Holy Pallies with two-handers have Crusader Strikes that land harder than a Ret's Crusader Tickle does, too.

[Gungnir]

There were many people who liked the way it played, which was why we picked it in the first place. And now it's gone and there's nothing like it. They've gutted everything that was once fun about it and turned the spec into nothing more than a spastic feast/famine stormstrike bot. It's terrible.

And I'm one of those people yet you seemingly don't read my post so I'll just devolve it into something you can hopefully read.

Out of the Legion revamped specs, Enhance and UH were the least shit.
That doesn't mean that they're NOT shit, it just means that it's the two specs that offends me the least.

[Kralljin]

Well I liked them but I also liked hunter pet management so I guess I am weird.

I'd understand that argument if there was any way to control totems like pets.
But totems were just sticks, you didn't have a pet bar.

It was a social aspect of it too in raids and dungeons to plan with other shamans on what totems to use so there was no overlap.

That was just really a fringe scenario.
I mean, in Vanilla / TBC, Totems were party wide, not raidwide.
So there, you just checked your group and knew what sort of totems to drop, you were rarely within the same group as another shaman.
In Classic, i'm barely talking about totems with other shaman because i'm never in the same party.


Once totems became raidwide in Wotlk, there was barely any need for totem buffs at all in larger group sizes because other classes already covered those buffs.

Totems were also good markers during raids to indicate where people were to stand for ranged and so on.

Good thing that raidmarkers exist.

And yeah movement was an issue but that was part of the challenge.

The problem was that other classes brought the same buffs without that downside.
And even if you want to argue that totem buffs should be unique, you'd still run into the same issue on encounters where you had to split up.

[MiiiMiii]

I really am happy we are getting Totems back as Shaman.

However, Totems are designed for much more slow paced gameplay than what Retail has become. I am worried about how good totems will feel will be in say M+...

In Classic I can happily put down 2-3 totems every single mob I fight because it's worth the investment, but in Retail, killing a mob will die so fast I can't spend 3 GCDs on totems... I wonder how they intend to solve this. My suggestion? Slow down Retail combat too. Why can't fighting quest mobs be an actual challenge in Retail too?

[Kalisandra]

Resto is the only class that gives me some of the old totem feeling with the healing totems and their impact but I still miss it from the other specs.

I miss constant Healing Stream Totem, both as Resto and as Elemental. For Resto it gave some small coverage if you had to move or something, and as Elemental it let you help out with the healing without costing buckets of DPS, and made being the healer in Elemental more viable for 5-mans you sort-of over-geared. Also useful in PvP.

Which is yet another thing that all this pruning has messed up - hybrid DPS has worse passive or Hot self-healing healing than a lot of pure DPS, and tends to have to hard-cast heals. That's a heck of a cost for the ability to give a team-mate 1/3rd of a health bar in healing. Not having all the tools of the healer spec is fine. Having almost none of them is really not, especially when pure DPS often have as much or more utility or CC.

[VinceVega]

i don't like that they go back to class fantasy as opposed to spec fantasy.
Too much clutter. And the Specs are lorewise to different too make them feel like the same class.

[Kieldon]

Not really happy to get even more holy spells as shadow tbh.

[Shadowsgrace]

no, because I to am a Mage main, since TBC, and hate the fact that I don't have access to Blizzard as Fire. Flamestrike as my "sole AoE" is garbage.

[Pheraz]

How long did you play WoW? This needs some context, If you haven't played before the era of Cataclysm I can understand you being skeptical of the idea of "Class" as you've never truly known what a class is, but rather a spec with a few doodads shared among the class. Go to classic, that alone will teach you what a CLASS truly is, not a spec. And hopefully Shadowlands will do a good job at returning class identity.

To me, as someone playing 15 years It feels shit to know I've had over 50 abilities and then am restricted to 15 per spec and the other 5 were removed. It felt like my class was butchered, standardized and according to analytics and data alone, was streamlined, not due to player feedback or criticism.

Okay okay. Hi. I'm playing since the beginning of classic EU.

Most specs were completely useless in classic.

So please... Don't spread nonsense.

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

I have to be honest - I'm on the fence on this one.

I was hoping for a complete revamp of all the classes - but this feels like a simplification of the classes to me.

I'm not buying that them adding spells back to the game, is gonna increase the skill-cap.

[owbu]

Depends on the class. I love the original druid who just has skills for everything and just gets better at doing something if you spec into that role. That they took away most of those skills based on which spec you are in just completely wipes out what druids were about.

On my mage, I'm completely okay to not have fire skills when I'm frost, because I like the fantasy around being a mage who mastered one element.

[DarthMuffin]

I think it depends on the class. I main a mage and it feels odd to me that I end up being so restricted in the spells that I can use, it just doesn't fit with the class fantasy. I've also been leveling a frost DK lately and it's shocking how the character feels more like a battlemage character. I just hit things with my swords and cast a few frost spells, there's nothing "death" related.

On the other hand, I think that some classes with vastly different specs are better served with each spec being relatively unique (shadow priest being a chief example).

[hulkgor]

Just theoretical as I probably won't play Shadowlands.

I am levelling a frost mage and I enjoy the feeling I am 'frost'. Personally I don't like the idea of getting fireball since I like this feeling of specialisation. I DO think classes can be a tad more complex, just because a) they are too simple (though not that simple as people seem to think) and b) it gets boring having the same spells all the time, I miss getting new spells in expansions. That said, I like the idea of shattering throw for warriors (I used to play/play a warrior a lot), it doesn't 'feel' like it should be a spec specific ability and it's cool and adds depth, complexity and possible counterplay (PvP perspective).

I don't like the whole covenant system as usual there has to be some grindy new feature to boost playtime, it's artifical complexity just like azerite traits.

I think each spec getting maybe 2 or 3 new talents, as well as maybe ONE or TWO spells made classwide will be fun, but I don't want spec homogenization, I like spec identity.

No. Quite the opposite.

Main example would be the warrior. I like being A warrior on Classic (as i was in vanilla). You can tweak your build to be dedicated to one aspect, or you can hybridize and be able to do both. Also, no reason for a fury\prot\warrior to have completely different kits from one to another.

So yea, i'm more of a "Class" guy than a "spec" guy. Specs are supposed to add flavour and specialize a kit... not being completely opposite from the others.

Honestly, f**k spec 'identity'.

[Solence]

Yup all part of their long con. Slowly making the game worse for years so they can give people old things gas as new.... Next can we talk about how the earth is flat?

Nobody cares that you believe the earth is flat. I still stand with my notion that bringing back stuff that they removed beforehand and calling it a big feature is pretty selfexplanatory. Instead of fixing the specs, they will only bring old stuff back. Whooho lets control our animals instead of improving our 3-4 button build-spend rotations accross all classes. The expansion has even less features than BFA und it looks like it will be the first filler expansion after another one. All the hype around them giving us back what we want could have easily been made in a major patch (like 8.3) but they kept that shit till the next expac since it would have no features at all otherwise clearly.

[Kalisandra]

I didnt mean it felt like Wrath Holy. I ment I feels more like Wrath ret minus divine storm lol. I understand there were more intricacies in wrath like which judgement to use and auras. I was just saying it feels better to use mana as a resource for Holy Dps than Holy power for Ret dps. Sorry I wasnt more clear.

I played Ret back in LK, and I was pretty good at it, and yes Holy Power as it was first introduced in Cata sucked. Actually, just about everything to do with Ret sucked hard in early Cata (I did half the levelling as Prot because it actually killed shit faster and of course never, ever died). However, by the end of Cata Ret was pretty good. TV hit very hard, the Holy Power system worked well, we had WoG and Selfless Healer, and decent survival tools, the most mobility we ever had (by having both PoJ and LAotL), and our interrupt. MoP cost us some of this, and of course everything felt bad early on because of poor secondary stats, but it wasn't anything like as bad as early Cata, and mid-late MoP was really rather good, aside from all the automatic random CC in PvP (and somehow the CC trim that was supposed to happen only hit Rets, and was mostly because they were foolish enough to let Holy have Repentance). It's been all downhill since then. Slower rotations with gaps built into them. Less CC. Fewer survival tools. Less Utility. Less and weaker off-healing. Lower mobility.

None of this is the fault of Holy Power. No, it's not as flexible as Rage, or Energy, or Maelstrom. That's fine - classes and specs should be different, and the problem isn't with Ret having a build/spend system (similar to but not the same as the Rogue/Feral one). The problem is with Blizzard moving (especially in Legion) everyone onto a build/spend system, so basically the only difference now is how flexible you choice of when to spend is. BfA has backed off that a bit, but not is good ways, overall.

There's no guarantee that Blizzard will get it right this time, but I'm hopeful. It's a bit of a change in direction, and while it could crash and burn, continuing in the direction of the past few expansions was certainly going nowhere good.

- - - Updated - - -

no, because I to am a Mage main, since TBC, and hate the fact that I don't have access to Blizzard as Fire. Flamestrike as my "sole AoE" is garbage.

Didn't it used to go that you cast a Flamestrike (maybe two of different levels), filled with a Blizzard, and repeat? I remember it being amusing that my Mage set people feet on fire, and then froze their ears off.