Obsolete classic spell design on retail

[Keilvog]

Recently I've been playing both classic (whenever I'm playing alone) and retail. I personally enjoy both versions of the game and recognize all their differences. I don't intend to discuss those differences particularly.

I've been noticing that some abilities have remained or been brought back to retail (with the unprunning) with their classic design. Although most of them are iconic and I like the nostalgia they bring, several retain a design that I consider obsolete for the retail playstyle (even though they work on classic).

I'm leaving some examples of spells that in my opinion should be subject to a re-design. I also leave a suggestion on how I think the ability could be redesigned (some are just crazy ideas that I think could be fun).

I invite you to do the same. What abilities do you think are outdated today and how would you like them to be designed in order to interact with your kit more?

Shaman's Lightning shield. Used to be helpful while leveling. Now it's probably only useful in pvp? Unless earth shield is the meta.
Idea: Have it designed similar to how it worked in Warcraft 3 - you can cast it on yourself, allies or enemies. Damages surrounding enemies for a duration of time. Can still interact with the spec (providing maelstrom). Give it decent damage with a CD.

Shaman's Flametongue weapon. Useless for elemental and resto shamans. Boring for enhancement.
Idea: Bring some other weapon enhancements back but have them make cool stuff that interacts with your kit. Flametongue increases fire damage (for lava burst and lava lash builds). Stormtongue (?) would increase nature damage (for stormstrike and storm elemental builds). You could even change them mid fight when you Ascend as elemental for example or when you pop your Elementals.

Shaman's Primal Strike. Clearly something is missing with this ability.
Idea: I don't even know. Just remove it? Replace it by old school Unleash Elements.

Paladin's Auras. I'm glad they are back but I just find them boring (still prefer to have them).
Idea: Make them affect your Judgement debuff (kinda like seals do in classic - with cool interactions). Or give Aura Mastery a smaller CD (but less powerful) to make cool plays.

Hunter's Mark. Although they changed it and it is now only useful in PvP I think that a version useful in PvE could be fun to have.
Idea: Off GCD, make it a CD that increases critical strike chance on the target. That would make sense lore wise as with a mark on the target you would have it easier hitting it with arrows at the right spot.

Hunter's Raptor strike. Boring filler that costs focus. Can be cool when it varies though talents but it remains a very dull ability by itself.
Idea: I'd say replace it by mongoose bite entirely. I do understand that not everyone likes their whole rotation to be around pooling resources for a mongoose spree, but it's a cool thing to aim for.

Mage's Fire blast.
Idea: Off GCD could give it some nice flavor for a final burst of small damage - to finish off a mob or to fill it in through your spells.

I understand that if the class is complex enough it is good to have some simpler abilities - maybe Raptor strike is a stretch there as Survival can be pretty complex - but to me some of these abilities just seem that they were shoved back in for the sake of it.

What do you guys think? Do you have other examples/ideas?

[Synical123]

I say we don't touch them. I think they are slowly getting back to a combat/spell system that is preferred by me at least. When you start trying to make every single ability quality of life approved you start to remove flavor and start to turn the game into a boring mess like it has been for awhile. Look at abilities like shadow form for example. The shadow priests shadow form was made specifically for shadow priests and only allowed you to use shadow abilities while you are in form, in order to heal you had to drop form, heal then get back into form. This creates a fun dynamic as well as a nice skill ceiling for shadow priests who are really good at managing mana and swapping forms in and out. But look at it today, it's literally just something you click on after you die and then forget about it, as you can cast anything and everything in this form. Just makes abilities boring tbh.

I think they need to add MORE class specific abilities back into the game (like shadow word death for all priests) in order to add some flavor back into the actual class while allowing you to have some super niche abilities you use under certain circumstances. Not every ability should be good or viable in every single aspect of the game.

[Keilvog]

I say we don't touch them. I think they are slowly getting back to a combat/spell system that is preferred by me at least. When you start trying to make every single ability quality of life approved you start to remove flavor and start to turn the game into a boring mess like it has been for awhile. Look at abilities like shadow form for example. The shadow priests shadow form was made specifically for shadow priests and only allowed you to use shadow abilities while you are in form, in order to heal you had to drop form, heal then get back into form. This creates a fun dynamic as well as a nice skill ceiling for shadow priests who are really good at managing mana and swapping forms in and out. But look at it today, it's literally just something you click on after you die and then forget about it, as you can cast anything and everything in this form. Just makes abilities boring tbh.

I think they need to add MORE class specific abilities back into the game (like shadow word death for all priests) in order to add some flavor back into the actual class while allowing you to have some super niche abilities you use under certain circumstances. Not every ability should be good or viable in every single aspect of the game.

That Shadow Form example is great! I totally forgot about it. I agree with you 100% on that, it doesn't make sense today. I would even prefer if THAT was the "void form" CD instead of just something you press once and that's it. At least I wouldn't need to look shadowy all the time and mess up my transmog hehe. Plus I don't like the "void" look anyway, with all the tentacles and stuff.

In any case, I think you are not entirely disagreeing with me. I am not saying that they were wrongly added back to the game. I am all about bringing more stuff in, more depth, more flavor. I just think that many of these abilities were added just for the sake of it. They do not contribute to your playstyle. If you look at the original post, I never say to just remove the ability (well, ok I do say that for the Primal Strike example). I give an idea that might make it more interesting considering how we play the game these days. In fact, some of the examples would increase the skill ceiling of a particular spec - for example using the Lightning Shield idea in between your AoE rotation.

- - - Updated - - -

Not every ability should be good or viable in every single aspect of the game.

This is an extremely fair argument though.
However, it might be true for some of those examples but it still isn't the case for, say, Flametongue Weapon - this ability is not good or viable in ANY aspect of the game.

[Unholyground]

I don't mind those shammy ones, I agree Flametongue could be made more interesting, like maybe have your auto attacks build up a small fire damage over time passively too to make it feel more impactful and have lava lash spread it to all targets.

[Adoxe]

Not every ability needs to be a useful amazing thing. They're fine as is.

[Nnyco]

It really feels like they just pulled random spells out of their ass for shammy just because everyone gets 'new' old spells, so shammy should get some too... like... primal strike?

[Eggroll]

It's an MMO - not an RTS. Flavor abilities are important for world building and class fantasy.

There is no need to trim down stuff just for efficiency's sake. It's a GAME, not a program that needs to process data as efficiently as possible for someone's end of month goal.

Also, gimme back my buffs, all of them, pretty pls.

[Fistfighter]

The unpruning in shadowlands is one of the stupidiest class design Blizzard has ever pulled off.

Shaman, for example, has so many bloated and useless abilites, Enha is literaly unplayable to me now.

most specs got completly useless abilities that are either never going to be used, or have such a niche use that they only bloat your key binds 99% of the time, or they are gonna trap new inexperienced players into using them, and losing tons of potentional dps.

I was OK with them adding back fun utility abilities, or fringe cooldowns, but why does every spec need the basic shit dmg spell from some other random spec?

[Lulbalance]

The unpruning in shadowlands is one of the stupidiest class design Blizzard has ever pulled off.

Shaman, for example, has so many bloated and useless abilites, Enha is literaly unplayable to me now.

most specs got completly useless abilities that are either never going to be used, or have such a niche use that they only bloat your key binds 99% of the time, or they are gonna trap new inexperienced players into using them, and losing tons of potentional dps.

I was OK with them adding back fun utility abilities, or fringe cooldowns, but why does every spec need the basic shit dmg spell from some other random spec?

Just because you don't use them while doing dailies or whatever it is you do in wow that makes you want less buttons, doesn't mean others don't want them. Fireblast for example has a few pretty important uses for mages in pvp.

[oldgeezer]

It really feels like they just pulled random spells out of their ass for shammy just because everyone gets 'new' old spells, so shammy should get some too... like... primal strike?

Primal strike is especially useless for elemental, agreed. If anything, they should have brought some flavour stuff back, like waterbreathing.

[Keilvog]

It's an MMO - not an RTS. Flavor abilities are important for world building and class fantasy.

There is no need to trim down stuff just for efficiency's sake. It's a GAME, not a program that needs to process data as efficiently as possible for someone's end of month goal.

Also, gimme back my buffs, all of them, pretty pls.

Fair opinion. As I said, I play Classic and I love it. I am all about having abilities that are there for the flavor and feel of the class.

Some of these ideas that I mentioned wouldn't make you lose that. Take the Lightning shield idea for example - still faithful to the class, even more to old school Warcraft. Wouldn't be optimal to use it all the time as you would still rather be pulling off Chain Lightnings, would however be used in niche situations but in a cool way. Not a passive ' you hit me you take damage' way.

I mean to say that although I like both, Retail is not classic WoW. It evolved into a different thing and so should some of these abilities.

[Crutos]

In some cases I feel like a lot of class and ability design is still the same as it ever was.
most specs in this game have very little meaningful synergy or effects happening during play. I get that every spell in the game can't do damage and 1, 2 or 3 other effects as well but I feel there could be more of it.
As an affliction warlock your corruption could affect shadowbolt, if you talent for it.. Otherwise you don't really have any interaction.
Assassination rogue can talent blindside and get ambushes usable out of stealth, pretty neat but that's also about it.
etc.. for multiple classes.
I know that there's a pretty deep pitfall here into the "builder, spender, proc" playstyle that almost every spec in the game is now designed for, and most "proc" abilities are either not worth using or can't be used outside of the proc window which is kinda bad imo. I think in order to counter-act this pitfall the "proc" abilities could outside of this window have some other effect that still makes it worthwhile to use..

What I think I am saying is that I want abilities to have more interaction with the playstyle than just being pretty things that does damage. It would certainly make things more interesting.

[druchii5]

With all the buffs/auras some classes got back, I'm still super bummed out they didn't return Mark of the Wild for all Druids specs. I loved seeing random players in the world and buffing them in Vanilla.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Mage's Fire blast.
Idea: Off GCD could give it some nice flavor for a final burst of small damage - to finish off a mob or to fill it in through your spells.[/INDENT]

It already does that for fire I guess, but it's also not needed for frost and arcane. You can already use it like that as arcane and frost since it deals more damage than a frostbolt/0-charge arcane blast if you queue it while casting one of these it will even hit before a bolt spell.

I will not deny that the unpruning for mages was mostly a colossal failure with the exception of AE (which is just very convenient for frost/fire), but at the same time non-hybrid classes have rather deep/diverse specializations which obviously also means that adding generic spells outside of their niche rarely does something unless they would further expand on it - forcing it into that niche and in the same turn defeating the purpose of generic class spells. The same can be observed in hunters and warlocks. At the end of the day I think they could have done a way better job, but tacking on other effects like you proposed comes with downsides if you aren't carefull (which you weren't). If you make Fireblast off the GCD, then that would just resulting in everyone keeping it on CD for free DPS, which also means you would just macro it into frostbolt/arcane blast. That is why it isn't off the GCD for those specs.

In general the unpruning was badly thought out by Blizzard and they should have looked better at what makes sense and what doesn't. Instead they just went at it like they had to fill a quota and didn't bother to do sensible adjustments, because they already married it to other systems (like the leveling experience pre spec selection). It's just another example of piss poor planing really.

[Pony Soldier]

The unpruning in shadowlands is one of the stupidiest class design Blizzard has ever pulled off.

Shaman, for example, has so many bloated and useless abilites, Enha is literaly unplayable to me now.

most specs got completly useless abilities that are either never going to be used, or have such a niche use that they only bloat your key binds 99% of the time, or they are gonna trap new inexperienced players into using them, and losing tons of potentional dps.

I was OK with them adding back fun utility abilities, or fringe cooldowns, but why does every spec need the basic shit dmg spell from some other random spec?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has this opinion. I too found enhance shamans lame as hell as it feels like they went more backwards with it rather than forward adding new spells or at least updating the old ones like lightning shield and the weapon enhancement spells. Seriously feels like I'm back in Cataclysm or something.

I also agree that a lot of classes got a lot of useless abilities because of the "unpruning". Most notably warriors where for some reason as fury and arms they give you shield block and shield slam. Um, we can't use those abilities without shields and those two specs don't use shields so...why? Also mages, specifically fire mages who were given back frostbolt. Why would I even use that spell? I could use it to slow down enemies I guess but I do enough damage where I never feel like I need to. I do like the return of spells like Mirror Image and Arcane Explosion but not the spells that are clearly for a different spec.

This is why I loved how they were before. Even though I hated the "pruning" at first I grew to actually like it and understand why it was done. There was so many useless abilities the classes had that we hardly or never used so why clutter up the action bars with them? Just trim it down to the main spells relevant to our spec and that's it. Classes started to have an identity instead of just being a disorganized mess. But this is what people wanted. I guess the class problems have been solved.

[admeteora]

One of the reasons I am having a hard time coming back to the game even though I really want to enjoy wow again is mostly because of the abilities they so desperately want to "fit in" the class gameplay and rotation.


I feel like classes were given a set of abilities before that fit a class style, lore and give each class a personality. The player would then figure out how to derive a rotation from the tools given. Now it feels like they don't design a class anymore, they design a rotation. Everything has to fit, it has to be used in a very designed and specific time. It's a mistake!

In my opinion, the game would so much more fun if the rotation felt less constrained and optimized. If the rotations were more up to the player to figure out between a set of abilities, talents, items, gear passives etc... More freedom

Where a player could come up with silly interactions and playstyles that they could make their own rather than this very obvious optimized pre determined gameplay that they give every class. I understand that there will always be an optimized way to play a class but i don't think devs should create this optimized rotation, they should focus on making a class or spec feel complete and let players design the optimized gameplay.

It might be just me on this one though

[Hellobolis]

get whirlwind back.

looks at revenge:
-costs less range
-hits more targets
-does more damage
-can cause rotation procs
-applies deep wounds

but yeah, sure glad i got whirlwind back. i bet it'll be super useful for when i gotto hit targets behind me or something, yeah that's definitely a situation that happens!

[Keilvog]

It already does that for fire I guess, but it's also not needed for frost and arcane. You can already use it like that as arcane and frost since it deals more damage than a frostbolt/0-charge arcane blast if you queue it while casting one of these it will even hit before a bolt spell.

I will not deny that the unpruning for mages was mostly a colossal failure with the exception of AE (which is just very convenient for frost/fire), but at the same time non-hybrid classes have rather deep/diverse specializations which obviously also means that adding generic spells outside of their niche rarely does something unless they would further expand on it - forcing it into that niche and in the same turn defeating the purpose of generic class spells. The same can be observed in hunters and warlocks. At the end of the day I think they could have done a way better job, but tacking on other effects like you proposed comes with downsides if you aren't carefull (which you weren't). If you make Fireblast off the GCD, then that would just resulting in everyone keeping it on CD for free DPS, which also means you would just macro it into frostbolt/arcane blast. That is why it isn't off the GCD for those specs.

In general the unpruning was badly thought out by Blizzard and they should have looked better at what makes sense and what doesn't. Instead they just went at it like they had to fill a quota and didn't bother to do sensible adjustments, because they already married it to other systems (like the leveling experience pre spec selection). It's just enougher example of piss poor planing really.

You definitely got me on that GCD mage part. That was thought of on the spot to be honest. But others, like the Lightning Shield one, I gave them some extra thought.

Nevertheless, some of these generic class spells could still be useful for all specs, take the shaman cases for example. Lightning shield and flametongue could be useful for all specs (at least DPS wise). They could be tweaked to bring something nice towards resto too - utility wise. They wouldn't be abilities you would absolutely need to use to do your job, but would separate you from the average shaman if you do it properly.

[Eggroll]

I mean to say that although I like both, Retail is not classic WoW. It evolved into a different thing and so should some of these abilities.

It is still an MMO - more or less. When the redundant Diablo3 devs joined the WoW team at the end of MoP, they pruned away anything they didn't understand. They didn't understand the difference between an action rpg and an mmo - and the dev lead let them get away with it, sadly.

[Shaetha]

Look at abilities like shadow form for example. The shadow priests shadow form was made specifically for shadow priests and only allowed you to use shadow abilities while you are in form, in order to heal you had to drop form, heal then get back into form.

They probably changed it because they wanted that to be a druid thing.