9.0 General Discussion

[Sondrelk]

I just don't buy that all classes are broken, that is just absurd and I never get examples either. Mine is fine but I think it already is due for a change(Same with the talent system)

Not that all classes are "broken" in the conventional sense, many of them work just fine. The question is whether the way classes are designed is problematic and could do with a fundamental rework.
So not on the level of rotations and what have you, bur rather things like how the talent tree works, and how specs are differentiated from classes and eachother.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

You might be on to something here actually. Some classes work just fine like BM and Fury, but I do agree that the way classes are built could do with a rework, even the examples of good specs I gave seem like they might be jerry built on top of something not so great.
Might also be necessary considering how classes being homogenized should also get a fix with a rework. Not the utility, bur rather the way each spec is built with the assumption that you can swap talents at all times.

I just don't buy that all classes are broken, that is just absurd and I never get examples either. Mine is fine but I think it already is due for a change(Same with the talent system)

It's definitely not all of them but there's a good number where the base concept is just broken and the only fix is to tear it down and redo it. Shaman is the biggest offender that I think most players will agree has been due for a total redesign for actual years now. The moment Blizzard decided Totems were out the class was broken because they didn't do a proper redesign, they just sliced off Totems and called it an expansion.

Hunter's the other one that people are pretty generally starting to come around on needing a redo. Between the issues with Pets to the lack of identity in Marksman and just general blandness of Survival.

And I will argue until the servers close Paladin is another one that is in desperate need of a full rework. Just to make them less dependant on Holy Power for every spec.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

It's definitely not all of them but there's a good number where the base concept is just broken and the only fix is to tear it down and redo it. Shaman is the biggest offender that I think most players will agree has been due for a total redesign for actual years now. The moment Blizzard decided Totems were out the class was broken because they didn't do a proper redesign, they just sliced off Totems and called it an expansion.

Hunter's the other one that people are pretty generally starting to come around on needing a redo. Between the issues with Pets to the lack of identity in Marksman and just general blandness of Survival.

And I will argue until the servers close Paladin is another one that is in desperate need of a full rework. Just to make them less dependant on Holy Power for every spec.

I've played A little bit of Marksmen and I don't really have issue with what it is. Its basically your ranger/archer/rifieman archetype. Its not hard to grasp on that. Some of the mechanics to it might not work well(Doubtful) but I get it more then Survival(They should just turn it all melee go all out on melee attacks themed with animals). As I said above I do think the talent system is looked at...again and well I don't mean adding new abilities each expansion..we know where that got us.


And before someone asks "Arms works or rather warriors I think are "fine" as in they work they function there's nothing terrible but I don't mind a remake.

[Nyel]

Just look at talents. I’d say every spec has 25-50% talents that are either super weak or mechanically dysfunctional. And Blizzard just seems to not care about it. Some classes like Shamans and Monks are plagued by bad talents for years now and nothing really changed.

The entire character progression system needs a major rework.

Option 1: Many passive talents should just be baked into the respective spec (e.g. Echo of the Elements for Shamans, Twist of Fate for Priests etc). We don’t even need compensation, because if Blizzard starts cleaning the talents for each class we could just reduce the amount of rows overall.

Option 2: What they are doing with Potency Conduits is quite nice, but this should be permanent. They should reiterate on artifact traits, Azerite traits and Potency Conduits and maybe just create another kind of talent tree that’s for passive traits that can alter the playstyle (from ST to Cleave, from direct healing to shields, whatever). The options are there, because we do have all that stuff (or had it in the past). They just need to gather all those passive things we’ve had over the years, properly updated it et voila we would have a progression system next to talents: active talents vs passive traits.

Something has to happen, but I’m not sure if Blizzard is willing or creative enough to give us that. I hope so, because classes have become stale over the years and many haven’t changed at all from Legion (or before that).

[Sharby]

Passive talents shouldn't exist imo.

I liked Legion because the artifact gave you guaranteed passive strengths to offset the cost of selecting a talent, it didn't feel nearly as bad. But since artifacts went away the talent system just feels horrid because it makes you choose between arms or legs and the newer systems don't give you jack shit

Hopefully Shadowlands brings us back to the Legion-style. But imo I just want current talent system to be removed/redone.

[Nokster10]

I've played A little bit of Marksmen and I don't really have issue with what it is. Its basically your ranger/archer/rifieman archetype. Its not hard to grasp on that. Some of the mechanics to it might not work well(Doubtful) but I get it more then Survival(They should just turn it all melee go all out on melee attacks themed with animals). As I said above I do think the talent system is looked at...again and well I don't mean adding new abilities each expansion..we know where that got us.


And before someone asks "Arms works or rather warriors I think are "fine" as in they work they function there's nothing terrible but I don't mind a remake.

Your comments are basically "i play x class but i don't know anything about that class so i think it's fine". They are not, it takes a minimal understanding of class mechanics to know that some class design is completely broken, like ele shaman, boomkin, mm hunter, feral, arms until they changed how mastery is applied, monks are just horrifying how badly they are designed. etc
Basically what i'm trying to say is you're ignorant

[Nyel]

Another week of beta just has passed and they still haven’t touched problematic Covenant skills. I mean if they don’t start with that, I don’t know if they even want to do anything about it.

Priest Covenant skills: 4/4 are bad
Shaman Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad
Monk Covenant skills: 4/4 are bad
Paladin Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad
Druid Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad

(This might be exaggerated in some cases)

I don’t know how it is for pure DPS classes, I’m mostly playing hybrids. Maybe that’s why their Covenant skills are universally bad, because it’s hard to create something that is useful for healers, tanks and damage dealers at the same time. Take Priests as an example, for Shadow and Holy every Covenant skill is a net loss. How is that even possible from a design perspective? Monk Covenant skills might not be that bad, but Monks are plagued with bugs and you can’t even properly test them.

When it comes to classes and Covenant skills, it really feels like beta has just begun. But in reality we’re less than a week away from the initial launch date.

Shadowlands looks promising, but if they don’t step up their game with class design, it might be just another wasted opportunity like BfA.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Your comments are basically "i play x class but i don't know anything about that class so i think it's fine". They are not, it takes a minimal understanding of class mechanics to know that some class design is completely broken, like ele shaman, boomkin, mm hunter, feral, arms until they changed how mastery is applied, monks are just horrifying how badly they are designed. etc
Basically what i'm trying to say is you're ignorant

Believe what you want but people hardly give specifics on why x is bad outside of a few people who actually have said it instead of what you just use buzzwords. No I'm not ignorant, when I first asked Sondrelk what he meant on Markman it was more "THIS TRASH." I rather people say more then "THIS BAD" "NO YOU IGNORANT."

[Eurhetemec]

Just look at talents. I’d say every spec has 25-50% talents that are either super weak or mechanically dysfunctional. And Blizzard just seems to not care about it. Some classes like Shamans and Monks are plagued by bad talents for years now and nothing really changed.

This is such a weird point, because it's like WoW exists in a vacuum or something.

This is equally true of virtually every game that has any kind of talent-like system. It was true when talents were in a tree. It was true with skills in Diablo 2 (except it was higher than 30%, way higher). I can't think of a game with a system like this where it isn't basically true.

You're exaggerating re: "super weak or mechanically dysfunctional" too (at least you admit you're exaggerating in your other post, but like, how about don't make everyone's communication shittier by exaggerating?). A truthful, not dishonest claim would be every spec has at least 25-50% of their talents which are mechanically inferior to the other talents in all challenging PvE scenarios.

But find me a game that doesn't. And if you can't, maybe stop getting so upset about it?

[kaid]

Another week of beta just has passed and they still haven’t touched problematic Covenant skills. I mean if they don’t start with that, I don’t know if they even want to do anything about it.

Priest Covenant skills: 4/4 are bad
Shaman Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad
Monk Covenant skills: 4/4 are bad
Paladin Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad
Druid Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad

(This might be exaggerated in some cases)

I don’t know how it is for pure DPS classes, I’m mostly playing hybrids. Maybe that’s why their Covenant skills are universally bad, because it’s hard to create something that is useful for healers, tanks and damage dealers at the same time. Take Priests as an example, for Shadow and Holy every Covenant skill is a net loss. How is that even possible from a design perspective? Monk Covenant skills might not be that bad, but Monks are plagued with bugs and you can’t even properly test them.

When it comes to classes and Covenant skills, it really feels like beta has just begun. But in reality we’re less than a week away from the initial launch date.

Shadowlands looks promising, but if they don’t step up their game with class design, it might be just another wasted opportunity like BfA.

Most of the people playing monks seem okay with 3 of the four covenants and the last one just being kinda there. The nightfea one looks really good for all specs and the lil venthyr min monk one is weird and a bit random but the throughput is strong on it and its solid for doing what it says it does.

[Eurhetemec]

Shaman is the biggest offender that I think most players will agree has been due for a total redesign for actual years now.

Who are "most players" here? Because it's definitely not "most people who play WoW" or even "most people who discuss WoW on forums/reddits".

Hunter's the other one that people are pretty generally starting to come around on needing a redo. Between the issues with Pets to the lack of identity in Marksman and just general blandness of Survival.

And I will argue until the servers close Paladin is another one that is in desperate need of a full rework. Just to make them less dependant on Holy Power for every spec.

I really don't think these ideas have remotely the broad-based support you are so incredibly sure they do. This seems like ideas where they're popular with some small bubble of people, who just assume they're broadly popular.

[Sondrelk]

Personally I just think that it is just classes and specs as a concept that needs to be looked at. The last (and in a sense only) rework was back in MoP when the old talent trees were removed and replaced with the new talent trees, and while they were an improvement then it is worth restarting that discussion on what classes and specs should be, the game was drastically different back in MoP no matter how much the surface level seems similar.

In short: Is the current system mostly designed for a version of the game where it was raid or die the best for the current version where we have M+, raids, a healthy WpvP scene and a generally higher focus on single-player instanced content like Torghast?

[Revamp Man]

Your comments are basically "i play x class but i don't know anything about that class so i think it's fine". They are not, it takes a minimal understanding of class mechanics to know that some class design is completely broken, like ele shaman, boomkin, mm hunter, feral, arms until they changed how mastery is applied, monks are just horrifying how badly they are designed. etc
Basically what i'm trying to say is you're ignorant

ok hang one a minute

in terms of monk WW is one of the best designed classes
every ability interacts
the mastery isnt dull
the talents are a little messy and SEF needs removed or reworked back to the original version

the tank changes are a bit iffy but they still work well and the healing actually got fistweaving fixed

heck they fixed the one covenant ability that worked against the WW mastery and right now the big deal is the same one that happens in every class with covenant abilities....its bad for one of the specs.

- - - Updated - - -

Another week of beta just has passed and they still haven’t touched problematic Covenant skills. I mean if they don’t start with that, I don’t know if they even want to do anything about it.

Priest Covenant skills: 4/4 are bad
Shaman Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad
Monk Covenant skills: 4/4 are bad
Paladin Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad
Druid Covenant skills: 3/4 are bad

(This might be exaggerated in some cases)

I don’t know how it is for pure DPS classes, I’m mostly playing hybrids. Maybe that’s why their Covenant skills are universally bad, because it’s hard to create something that is useful for healers, tanks and damage dealers at the same time. Take Priests as an example, for Shadow and Holy every Covenant skill is a net loss. How is that even possible from a design perspective? Monk Covenant skills might not be that bad, but Monks are plagued with bugs and you can’t even properly test them.

When it comes to classes and Covenant skills, it really feels like beta has just begun. But in reality we’re less than a week away from the initial launch date.

Shadowlands looks promising, but if they don’t step up their game with class design, it might be just another wasted opportunity like BfA.

the kyrian monk ability rework speeds up the dps rotation for WW and i love it

overall they do need to decide what they are doing with classes

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Personally I just think that it is just classes and specs as a concept that needs to be looked at. The last (and in a sense only) rework was back in MoP when the old talent trees were removed and replaced with the new talent trees, and while they were an improvement then it is worth restarting that discussion on what classes and specs should be, the game was drastically different back in MoP no matter how much the surface level seems similar.

In short: Is the current system mostly designed for a version of the game where it was raid or die the best for the current version where we have M+, raids, a healthy WpvP scene and a generally higher focus on single-player instanced content like Torghast?

I'll try to give an example One talent row is Second Wind, Bounding Stride and Defensive stance. I've used Second wind for like forever, I like it and its actually been helpful more then once. Theres going to be people who think I'm crazy but I've done well with it. At worst Bounding Stride is a "bad talent" because I personally don't find it useful but I can see defensive stance's uses in sorta "OH SHIT" moment and try tanking or whatever.

Its an example so people's preferences will vary. Just don't take Avatar away from me or I'll be grumpy.

[Ersula]

the kyrian monk ability rework speeds up the dps rotation for WW and i love it

overall they do need to decide what they are doing with classes

Yeah, I main a Priest & I think the 4 Priest choices are all really good. A lot of people have ranked Death Knight & Paladin as the two best examples of covenant choice design. It feels like this guy is ranking the class abilities not by how useful or interesting they are but by how its not giving him a choice on which to pick

[Revamp Man]

Yeah, I main a Priest & I think the 4 Priest choices are all really good. A lot of people have ranked Death Knight & Paladin as the two best examples of covenant choice design. It feels like this guy is ranking the class abilities not by how useful or interesting they are but by how its not giving him a choice on which to pick

the paladin choices are very interesting
kyrian works for holy and prot very well and for ret its awful
venthyr is really weird and the long CD makes it awkward
night fae it seems like you have 2 good buffs out of 4
necrolord is the only one that in terms of the ret paladin....actually works. It has a good interaction and it is very fun

priest i only hate the fact that shadow doesnt really have a good one and the kyrian one makes you stop playing shadow and you just play a boon of the ascended priest for the duration

[Aeluron Lightsong]

the paladin choices are very interesting
kyrian works for holy and prot very well and for ret its awful
venthyr is really weird and the long CD makes it awkward
night fae it seems like you have 2 good buffs out of 4
necrolord is the only one that in terms of the ret paladin....actually works. It has a good interaction and it is very fun

priest i only hate the fact that shadow doesnt really have a good one and the kyrian one makes you stop playing shadow and you just play a boon of the ascended priest for the duration

Looking at Ret's they seem fine up until NightFae's one, thats the only one I am a bit "Umm ok I guess."

[Nyel]

the kyrian monk ability rework speeds up the dps rotation for WW and i love it

overall they do need to decide what they are doing with classes

I mean, even if we say 2/4 Covenant abilities are good for each class, that still leaves the other 2 as completely undesirable and effectively useless outside of some very personal flavor or I like it but I gimp myself experimentation.

If they can’t make 4 useful Covenant skills for each class, why even bother with such a system? It’s such a hit and miss design, I really don’t understand the purpose of it. They even have the option to let us somehow design our personal Covenant skill with Conduits, yet they only offer one Potency Conduit for each Covenant skill and in most cases it’s not even worth using... I mean why. They seem to put so much time and work into something but stop halfway. There are so many things they could and they choose to do nothing.

The biggest problem might be that most Covenant skills are just acting like use trinkets that you click every 2 minutes - that‘s nice for trinkets but shouldn’t be your new class gimmick in an expansion. Covenant abilities should tie into your class / spec design and make it better, they shouldn’t feel like an obligation or a button you press every 2 minutes just because. That’s where they failed in their design and beta testers complain the most about.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, I main a Priest & I think the 4 Priest choices are all really good. A lot of people have ranked Death Knight & Paladin as the two best examples of covenant choice design. It feels like this guy is ranking the class abilities not by how useful or interesting they are but by how its not giving him a choice on which to pick

The Priest choices for what? Because if it comes to Covenant skills, there’s only one skill for one spec that’s indeed good in PvE (Venthyr for Discipline). All the other options either don’t work with any spec mechanic priest has to offer or are in the end a DPS loss. Overall Priests might have the worst Covenant skills overall and it’s been a major complaint of the priest community for months now. Unholy Nova is no option for any spec in the recent iteration (the only use might be in high Mythic+ dungeons in very rare scenarios where you’re in melee range and AoE bombing), Kyrian is disruptive to every spec as it doesn’t tie into any mechanics priests have to offer. Venthyr is good for Discipline (and Shadow in PvP) and Nightfae is hardly a win in any situation.

[Grimbold21]

This is such a weird point, because it's like WoW exists in a vacuum or something.

This is equally true of virtually every game that has any kind of talent-like system. It was true when talents were in a tree. It was true with skills in Diablo 2 (except it was higher than 30%, way higher). I can't think of a game with a system like this where it isn't basically true.

You're exaggerating re: "super weak or mechanically dysfunctional" too (at least you admit you're exaggerating in your other post, but like, how about don't make everyone's communication shittier by exaggerating?). A truthful, not dishonest claim would be every spec has at least 25-50% of their talents which are mechanically inferior to the other talents in all challenging PvE scenarios.

But find me a game that doesn't. And if you can't, maybe stop getting so upset about it?

Technically Fire Nova is mechanically inferior because it is dysfunctional. It does not work >>properly<< without a Flame shock spread ability.

Moreover, this has been a trend for a while now. The inferior talents might even seem appealing from a design PoV, but just end up weaker, so what's the point.

[Eurhetemec]

I mean, even if we say 2/4 Covenant abilities are good for each class, that still leaves the other 2 as completely undesirable and effectively useless outside of some very personal flavor or I like it but I gimp myself experimentation.

If they can’t make 4 useful Covenant skills for each class, why even bother with such a system? It’s such a hit and miss design, I really don’t understand the purpose of it. They even have the option to let us somehow design our personal Covenant skill with Conduits, yet they only offer one Potency Conduit for each Covenant skill and in most cases it’s not even worth using... I mean why. They seem to put so much time and work into something but stop halfway. There are so many things they could and they choose to do nothing.

Here's the real problem though - if two Covenant abilities are even slightly better, like, 5% better, maybe less, across even a few common situation, people like you say they're "good" and people like you say the others are "gimping yourself".

It's like, if we make it unrealistically simple, if the first Covenant ability does 100 damage, and the second does 98 damage, and then the third does 93 and the fourth 92, people making your argument are going to say those third and fourth are "gimping yourself" and "shit" and "trash-tier" and "pointless".

If we then put some kind of rider or extra stuff on each ability, even if, say, the fourth one has a pretty cool rider, and the first one has a pointless rider, we're still going to get told the first one is "good" and the fourth one is "trash".

And this is what it boils down to - if abilities are theorycrafted to be even slightly better than other abilities, a whole vocal chunk of WoW players just say "These are good, the rest are trash and pointless".

It's just not as simple as stuff like "There are so many things they could and they choose to do nothing." - That's just bollocks. It's intellectually lazy bollocks. It's not a genuine criticism, even. It's not valid. It's just pointless sneering. Can they improve things? Yeah but do you think they aren't trying? Clearly you do think that, and it's ludicrous. That's what's really pointless here - Blizzard actually making an effort to try and give us choices, because however good they do, people will just reject anything but the best couple of choices (numerically, not even in terms of real in-game effectiveness, in a lot of cases), and the rest will be treated as trash.

People complain about homogenization, or not having choices, but those ways are the only ways to "fix" this problem.

- - - Updated - - -

Technically Fire Nova is mechanically inferior because it is dysfunctional. It does not work >>properly<< without a Flame shock spread ability.

Moreover, this has been a trend for a while now. The inferior talents might even seem appealing from a design PoV, but just end up weaker, so what's the point.

And? So what?

I already agreed that that's the case. But I can't think of any games where it's not the case, where you actually have any significant number of choices. Any game where you have as many choices as WoW, some stuff is going to end up being less effective. In the longer-term, yeah that stuff needs to be buffed or removed (or other stuff nerfed or whatever), but acting like it's some sort of shocking failure that means WoW's devs are unusual or "bad", is just ludicrous.

And "for a while now"? Try "since Vanilla".

If all you mean is that one talent is mechanically dysfunctional, sure, it probably is. But if that's the bar, then it's more like 5% of talents or less that are actually "mechanically dysfunctional".