Complexity of each class ?

[Carbonade]

Hey good folk of MMOC,

As you all probably are, i too am looking very much forward to the upcomming shadowlands expansion, and i am currently in the midst off choosing a class to main, which is proving more difficult that i first thought, i havent played since Cata, so i dont know much about how the diffrent classes and specs play out in general, and in both pvp and pve.

I have been thinking of playing a hunter, as i really like the idea of being ranged without casting, i really hate standing still to cast :P But i now have some doubts, because i've read that hunter are a really shallow class, that is easy to play, which really dont fit my needs. I really hate the idea of high skill floor, low skill ceiling, so that you cannot really excel if you put in the time and effort. So im looking for recommendations for the follow things:

Which classes have the complex rotation, or are the hardest to master in general and do well, or to put it another way, the hardest to parse well in those logs ? WW monks from what i can read have a pretty unique mechaninc in being punished for using the same spell twice, but this class is completly new to me, so is it just considered harder?.

Also for pvp, are there any specs that have lots of those harder/high reward abilities, for example looking at the current hunter, they have roar of sacrifice, which seems to completely nullify a mages combustion, which i think would be a pretty cool play (maybe not hard, i dont know, but high reward for sure)


TL;DR: In shadowlands, which specs are the most complex/hardest to master, and why ?


Also if you have any recommendations for specs you think would fit my playstyle from the above text, feel free to recommend them

Thanks all, hope to have a good discussion

[Mercarcher]

Aff lock, s priest, or feral are probably your highest skill ceiling classes.

DH and Hunter are your lowest.

[Seratox]

Aff lock, s priest, or feral are probably your highest skill ceiling classes.

DH and Hunter are your lowest.

Classes I play are extremely complex and have deep, engaging gameplay.

Classes that tend to kill me are faceroll and can be played with a garage door opener.

[Mercarcher]

Classes I play are extremely complex and have deep, engaging gameplay.

Classes that tend to kill me are faceroll and can be played with a garage door opener.

Dot management is unquestionably harder than a 5 button rotation that is the same in single target and aoe (DH) and a 4 button rotation that swaps their filler for a different filler in AoE (Hunter)

I also play all classes at 120, Still picking my main for shadowlands.

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WW monks from what i can read have a pretty unique mechaninc in being punished for using the same spell twice, but this class is completly new to me, so is it just considered harder?.

Also, forgot this, Blizzard hates Monks, they are a dumpster class in shadow lands only brought because of their 5% buff.

[Carbonade]

Aff lock, s priest, or feral are probably your highest skill ceiling classes.

DH and Hunter are your lowest.

Classes I play are extremely complex and have deep, engaging gameplay.

Classes that tend to kill me are faceroll and can be played with a garage door opener.

Well, sadly what Mercarcher wrote, is exactly what i've read multiple places, demon hunter being the lowest, closely follow by the hunter :/

Even more sadly, both aff lock and s priest is damn stand-still caster specs

[Mercarcher]

Well, sadly what Mercarcher wrote, is exactly what i've read multiple places, demon hunter being the lowest, closely follow by the hunter :/

Even more sadly, both aff lock and s priest is damn stand-still caster specs

If there are any adds on the fight the new surrender to madness allows you to cast while moving and allows surrender to be used multiple times in a fight.

If you want mobility melee/hunter is your bet, if you want complexity that narrows that down to feral.

[Lindon]

By asking us what classes are the most complex you're basically asking us the equivalent of what is more complex "2 + 2" or "2 x 2". You could argue that multiplication is more complex but both calculations are so extremely simple that asking what is more complex holds no meaning.

No class in WoW is especially complex. Complexity comes from the on-the-spot reactions you have for incoming problems.

[Carbonade]

By asking us what classes are the most complex you're basically asking us the equivalent of what is more complex "2 + 2" or "2 x 2". You could argue that multiplication is more complex but both calculations are so extremely simple that asking what is more complex holds no meaning.

No class in WoW is especially complex. Complexity comes from the on-the-spot reactions you have for incoming problems.

I understand what you mean, but surely you understand what i mean aswell, that is why i put a "/harder", surely some specs are harder to play than others

[deenman]

Aff lock, s priest, or feral are probably your highest skill ceiling classes.

DH and Hunter are your lowest.

survival hunter is also at the top,shadow priest with no surrender is pretty easy

[tru]

Play with no add-ons and dot specs will be the harder of the bunch but really none of it's hard

And there's nothing skill or rewarding about sv hunter might as well play braindead bm.

Dotters or bm/arms
From somewhat complex or to the other end Biden

Unless you gonna dig into each system they have added all the perk trees and bs just pick something that fits you thematically and stick with it.

[kaminaris]

You can evaluate how much each spec is complex by studing simcraft APLs:

https://github.com/simulationcraft/s...files/PreRaids

number of lines doesn't mean more complex spec, you actually need to read and somewhat understand that.
But it gives much more insight than some garbo arguments like "3 button spec lul kekw"

[Lulbalance]

To master imo (SL):

PVE
Aff / spriest / feral / Disc

EZ
DK / DH / MW monk / Rest Druid / Destro

PVP (3v3 Arena)

Hardest
Mage / Rogue / Disc / Demo lock

EZ
DH / Frost DK / H Pal / BM Hunt / Destro

Lists like this are largely subjective tbh.

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survival hunter is also at the top,shadow priest with no surrender is pretty easy

Remember that SL spriest is significantly deeper than live spriest in terms of min maxing and choices. Not sure I can see how Surv hunter compares to aff or feral difficulty in PVE though I would agree it's not at the bottom.

[bluesock]

Even more sadly, both aff lock and s priest is damn stand-still caster specs

While affli seems to stay more turret going in shadowlands, shadow priest is becoming a little more mobile from what we see so far. DoTs you can cast while moving, Shadow Word: Death is insta cast, as well as Void Bolt. There is a baseline Mind Blast proc that makes it insta cast. While there is still standing still, it is a little more mobile than before. While sp is no fire mage, it is surprising decently mobile right now.

But you don't have any mobility buttons. The only ones are your defense cd (dispersion) or a PVP talent (Grater Fade), which is also defensive. If you want to PVP you'll get a blink as well through Venthyr, which is the go to covenant if you want to PVP, but not particularity good in PVE (if things stay as they are).

[Metrox]

Classes I play are extremely complex and have deep, engaging gameplay.

Classes that tend to kill me are faceroll and can be played with a garage door opener.

My favorite reply of the week!
My picks for classes that "punish" the user if mismanaged are: Feral, and then most other Dot specs.
Feral has just been adjusted all over the board the past few expansions. My dot classes (which to me includes bleeds...poisons...curses) do okay and just get better with practice by me. Feral can be great and then a dumpster fire on the next mob if I miss an attack. It's not like you have Absolute Corruption and then have one less thing to worry about.

That said, I have a friend that started playing a rogue in this expansion for the very first time in his long wow efforts. He took to it immediately and plays no dot class of any kind before this rogue. So I guess it's just what seems sensible for you and what seems like an effort. For me...Auction Mule is easy for me. All else is what I can't figure out easily.
Stay safe and have fun!

[StillMcfuu]

I only play 3 classes that I can speak about in extreme detail, but I have all classes at max level. I'll throw the 3 classes I play.

Rogue: assassination is the hardest, but a lot of people think its the easiest, mainly because its easy to understand but hard to master. There are a lot of skill interplay and getting that last 20% or so damage from the class means making zero mistakes. Drop envenom buff, mistime TB and have to choose between reapplying or getting out another envenom, things like this will kill your DPS.
Sub: Definition of hard to learn, easy to master. Once you get past the weird dance and symbols, mfd, etc gameplay, its a pretty rhythm spec where you keep circling through the same 2 ten key rotations. Its like playing a song on a piano. Its strangely enjoyable, but ultimately once you learn what to play at what time there's no challenge.
Outlaw, it's wack a mole with a little priority system. Your performance may also be entirely rng. Its the simplest of the specs and suffers from being improved by tapping your next attack while waiting for the gcd.
Shaman: enhance: likely still going to be comically easy.
Ele: the hardest part of ele is not moving. No seriously, don't fucking move an inch, just cast. If you need to move make sure the position you go to requires the fewest steps to get there and that you don't have to move again for as long as possible. This is the hardest spec in the game for 90% of players because of that.
DK: Unholy, its pretty easy, but can be interesting, you either pool runes, or you set up a window to deal damage and burn runic power, but not let your runes cap... while also not letting your runic power cap... most of your damage is done by your pets anyway though, so great play is rewarded with only a small increase over good play.

Those are the dps classes I tend to play. Honorable mentions would be frost mage, its got a little flavor, legion arcane was definitely the hardest most rewarding mage spec but it was gutted for bfa, and now in SL its pretty much a one button spec. No really, go look, rotation is spam missiles with a buff up, it makes DH's pretty simple meta window gameplay look like your solving the fucking davinci code.

[Kehego]

you can make every class a 3-5 button class if you want
all classes have a level of complexity when it comes to min/maxing that you won't read on the forum

[Mercarcher]

survival hunter is also at the top,shadow priest with no surrender is pretty easy

The hardest part of playing survival is finding a group.

[TheRainman]

Well, sadly what Mercarcher wrote, is exactly what i've read multiple places, demon hunter being the lowest, closely follow by the hunter :/

Even more sadly, both aff lock and s priest is damn stand-still caster specs

Honestly - a class to be on top and another on the bottom, but don't let an arbitrary ranking system fool you... There isn't any class in wow that has a high skill ceiling. Play what you enjoy, or find engaging, and leave it at that.

[Frimelda]

I actually want to piggy back off this discussion instead of making my own. So I want to play a DPS that has a sort of 'piano' style of gameplay that isn't just mashing the same like 3 skills. Which fulfills this in Shadowlands the most? Preferably ranged but melee is ok too.

[Soluna]

Classes I play are extremely complex and have deep, engaging gameplay.

Classes that tend to kill me are faceroll and can be played with a garage door opener.

Are you a Hunter/DH main and are salty about the guy who said that they were easy to play? Wtf dude, DH and Hunter are literally the most faceroll classes. Yes, affliction and shadow priest, as well as feral are hard because you have to manage dots, something most classes don't do today. Affliction has 3-4 dots to manage, on top of keeping uptime on debuffs on enemies, as well as buffs on themselves that are very punishing if they are dropped in shadowlands, on top of having to decide when to soul drain for 3-4 seconds, and if they interrupt the channel, they lose massive dmg.

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Well, sadly what Mercarcher wrote, is exactly what i've read multiple places, demon hunter being the lowest, closely follow by the hunter :/

Even more sadly, both aff lock and s priest is damn stand-still caster specs

I am sorry but you cannot expect high skill ceiling with instant cast classes that play from ranged. It's like wanting the cake for display purposes, but also to eat it.