I'm maining a class.. not a spec.

[Rucati]

Covenants basically confirm that Blizzard wants you to play one spec and nothing else. So no, in Shadowlands you are maining a spec.

[chakley]

Exactly.

I'm a Paladin. Not a Holy Paladin healer exclusive.

I'm a Mage. Not an only fire spell user, I'm a mage.

It's so annoying.

Here's some holy power for you, so that you can feel the same-y no matter what paladin spec. Also, here's some hybrid tax, cause we wouldn't want Ret to have more utility than Holy.

[msdos]

The high end players are making it clear that they feel entitled to be able to switch skills around randomly whenever they feel like it and be able to go compete at the high end, literally go watch any upload from any of them, Rich, Preach, Asmonger, THD, doesn't matter.

If they fall down on meters, they wanna be able to switch instantly so they no fall on meter no more!!!! Literally any other game you'd play today will tax you heavily for wanting to try a different skill in the end game.
Basically the high end players want to step into Diablo or PoE or whatever, try out a skill, go to end game, then be like, "oh this isn't optimal, i need to switch to this skill now" then switch their main skill, then start killing A8 Sirius and doing Greater Rift 99s like nothing even happened.
It's an embarrassing prospect they're offering up, it really is. People feel too entitled in a game they have no stake in.

You wanna switch skills? Level another character or level another skill, just like literally any other game. Just like literally any OTHER RPG game. Do I need to say it again?

[Wildpantz]

Says who? Why is the 9-12+ hours per week that is commonly put towards mythic raiding not enough for Blizzard to just... leave me alone? There's really no reason to make the lives of mythic raiders intentionally worse, it doesn't benefit anyone.

9-12 hours per week maybe during progress after 2-3 resets its farm and you clear in 1 evening.

[Echo of Soul]

The high end players are making it clear that they feel entitled to be able to switch skills around randomly whenever they feel like it and be able to go compete at the high end, literally go watch any upload from any of them, Rich, Preach, Asmonger, THD, doesn't matter.

If they fall down on meters, they wanna be able to switch instantly so they no fall on meter no more!!!! Literally any other game you'd play today will tax you heavily for wanting to try a different skill in the end game.
Basically the high end players want to step into Diablo or PoE or whatever, try out a skill, go to end game, then be like, "oh this isn't optimal, i need to switch to this skill now" then switch their main skill, then start killing A8 Sirius and doing Greater Rift 99s like nothing even happened.
It's an embarrassing prospect they're offering up, it really is. People feel too entitled in a game they have no stake in.

You wanna switch skills? Level another character or level another skill, just like literally any other game. Just like literally any OTHER RPG game. Do I need to say it again?

Yes, flexibility convenience and homogenization can be extremely damaging to the RPG genre if not handled very carefully.

Over the years WoW has become very bland in this regard. There is nothing unique about any of your characters. Adapting to every situation on the fly will never be as strong as using limited resources in order to make a build that can tackle most challenges.

[Pony Soldier]

This is not an issue for me as my characters are defined by specs, and I never really change specs on me. For example, my Dark Iron Dwarf is my fire mage. He's got a cool name related to fire, and when I want to play a fire mage, I play him. Likewise, my frost mage is say, a night elf, and his transmogged to look like a frost mage, so when I want to play a frost mage, I play him. Both are high level. I find no fun in switching between specs on the same character within the same expansion. I'm not even a major role-player, but I do enjoy playing with certain RP elements in mind like my character is named this, look like this, and is this spec, and that's what he is.

Wow, this is like the exact same way I play the game. I give you my respect.

[TheRevenantHero]

I'm not sure about that.

LFR was at some point the best gear you could get outside of progress raiding, but now with mythic+ being both a challenging and rewarding source of gear, I think LFR could be outright removed and it wouldn't cost major sub loss.

What I'd like to see however is a clearer separation between blue gear and epic gear.
Epic gear should only be obtained through normal+ raiding and mythic dungeons. Not in LFR.

If you remove gear from LFR, you remove incentive to play it. With no incentive, nobody will play queue for it anymore. Considering LFR is how Blizzard justifies spending a lot of time on raids, the subscription count will plummet as casual players have nothing to do and raid quality begins to tank.

[cparle87]

I'm not sure about that.

LFR was at some point the best gear you could get outside of progress raiding, but now with mythic+ being both a challenging and rewarding source of gear, I think LFR could be outright removed and it wouldn't cost major sub loss.

What I'd like to see however is a clearer separation between blue gear and epic gear.
Epic gear should only be obtained through normal+ raiding and mythic dungeons. Not in LFR.

If LFR goes then raiding goes with it. Blizz flat out said that not enough people do organized raiding for it to be worth the investment that goes into making the raids. Every raid they made through Cata they lost money on, from a cost/benefit standpoint. "Mere thousands saw Kil'jaeden, millions saw Deathwing" was a quote I remember from them. Cut LFR and leave only organized raiding within a few tiers we'll see raid instances shrink in scale and number of bosses, more re-used art and model assets, so on and so forth. Look at BC when you had 3 dungeons and a raid all in one complex using the same art, or Cata where half of the second tier was removed and the last tier literally had nothing new artwise.

[kaintk]

I think they’ve decided that their target audience is people who want to play hours a day endlessly.

As such, they’ve added in a ton of grinding and barriers to playing the fun part of the game.

If you’re a player like me, who views all world content other than leveling as pointless nonsense, but who likes playing alts, switching mains, etc. - the game isn’t designed for me so I’ve left.

This is why Shadowlands, even if it’s decent (it’s not going to be good, let’s just be realistic), won’t spur a revival in the playerbase. The people who play casual hours got utterly burned out in Legion and left BFA in disgust.

and its sad, what blizzard did'nt understand, is that a majority of people love to play multiple alt and leveling them

like you said, the big grinding for each spc just killed the fun playing all the alts like you want

[WowIsDead64]

I love WoW. It's an awesome game overall ( disclaimer for the people who will say "Just stop playing the game if you don't like it" ).

However, one of the biggest issue I have with WoW since Legion is how tedious it have become to play multiple specs. I'm not even talking about alts here. It seems like Blizzard are incentivizing maining only one spec of your class.

Since Legion we have had the following systems which make it a lot harder to play multiple specs of one class:

- Legendaries
- Azerite armor
- Corruption

Unfortunately what we see now is that covenants will go into the same category. The covenant you pick will likely only be good for one of your specs. Some classes will get lucky (like with corruption) and have one covenant be good for all its specs but not all classes will be so lucky. This sucks in my opinion. When I pick I class I don't do it because of only one spec. I want to play all aspects of that class without being "punished" in terms of performance.

One of a reasons, why I don't play now. Overall it's about "We beg you to level alts, cuz we don't have new content" concept of the past. Ok, I followed it. And now I'm attached to my alts and can't just scrap them. And I'm attached to this playstyle too. So, it feels like betrayal, when Blizzard say "Now we have so called content, scrap your alts". It's easier for me to quit and play something else, then to start playing on one class/spec again.

[Palapop]

That is why you got 3 specs. You can do arcane, frost or fire. Simple.
Alternatively, you can focus on just one, if you want.

Where's the problem?

You really fail to see wheres the problem?

Problem is what you said, right now.

As mage, you should be able to play all 3 specs.
But with Legion, BFA, SL "borrowed power" systems, you are MOST LIKELY (usually extremely) underpowered in certain specs.

Like, if your MAIN SPEC is frost (e.g) and you grind frost artifact power/legendary item/azerite gear/essences/corruption/covenant/conduit/soulbind (DAMN... that's A LOT of systems... and AT LEAST 3 of them will be here on SL launch), no one guarantees that all these systems that I mentioned will be as good for your FIRE spec as they were for your FROST.

just an example.

And that's what bothers people A LOT.

People want to play their CLASSES, their MS, OS... alts... w/e....


Why can't we get back the system from pre-Legion where you:
- ding your char
- gear up and play! HAVE FUN!

instead of:
- ding your char
- do required quest chain(s)
- grind daily/weekly chest(s)
- grind artifact power
- unlock essences
- grind essence ranks
- unlock "legendary" cloak
- grind weekly cloak ranks (with 1 of the WORST "catch-up" systems in HISTORY)
- grind corruption gear
- grind right azerite gear.
- AND FINALLY GRIND THE REST OF YOUR GEAR which is being tossed at your face from God knows what direction now.

and now... after 3-4 months of "preparations", you can finally play your character! TA-DAAAAAAA

I was using 8.3 patch as an example.


edit: forgot to add 1 more thing.
You want to re-spec? Or you want to help your friends by changing your role? NP, just repeat EVERYTHING again and you will be able to do it for them in couple of months

[Relapses]

Welcome to the age of "meaningful choice;" where the only meaningful choice you make is the one some random WoW dev made months ago and Blizzard has decided to double down on despite months of feedback that the choice made wasn't nearly as meaningful as somebody else's.

Covenants are fucking stupid.

[shadowmatrix]

You want to re-spec? Or you want to help your friends by changing your role? NP, just repeat EVERYTHING again and you will be able to do it for them in couple of months

This makes me and all the older players laugh, changing specs these days is nothing compared to what we used to go through.

[Swnem]

You really fail to see wheres the problem?

Problem is what you said, right now.

As mage, you should be able to play all 3 specs.
But with Legion, BFA, SL "borrowed power" systems, you are MOST LIKELY (usually extremely) underpowered in certain specs.

Like, if your MAIN SPEC is frost (e.g) and you grind frost artifact power/legendary item/azerite gear/essences/corruption/covenant/conduit/soulbind (DAMN... that's A LOT of systems... and AT LEAST 3 of them will be here on SL launch), no one guarantees that all these systems that I mentioned will be as good for your FIRE spec as they were for your FROST.

just an example.

And that's what bothers people A LOT.

People want to play their CLASSES, their MS, OS... alts... w/e....


Why can't we get back the system from pre-Legion where you:
- ding your char
- gear up and play! HAVE FUN!

instead of:
- ding your char
- do required quest chain(s)
- grind daily/weekly chest(s)
- grind artifact power
- unlock essences
- grind essence ranks
- unlock "legendary" cloak
- grind weekly cloak ranks (with 1 of the WORST "catch-up" systems in HISTORY)
- grind corruption gear
- grind right azerite gear.
- AND FINALLY GRIND THE REST OF YOUR GEAR which is being tossed at your face from God knows what direction now.

and now... after 3-4 months of "preparations", you can finally play your character! TA-DAAAAAAA

I was using 8.3 patch as an example.


edit: forgot to add 1 more thing.
You want to re-spec? Or you want to help your friends by changing your role? NP, just repeat EVERYTHING again and you will be able to do it for them in couple of months

Don't expect me to defend borrowed power systems cause i hate them, but i don't see a problem in focusing on one of the specs and therefore you being stronger with it than the other ones.
That has always been the case, even without borrowed power because of different stats.

The "mage" class does not actually exist and tbh i don't think it ever did. You always had to specialise. The specs are the real classes. Classes are the fantasy umbrela for 3 of them on average.
I will always prefer having 36 actual classes rather than 12. It would be rather boring.

[Zmagoslav]

I, on the other hand, play a spec... not a class. I tried holy and protection but they are just not my cup of tea.

If you want to just play a class, with no spec identity, then go play a pure DPS class.
Those are usually "nudged" into playing the flavor of the month/year spec, thus losing the "play a spec, not a class"-choice entirely.

[gutnbrg]

If LFR goes then raiding goes with it. Blizz flat out said that not enough people do organized raiding for it to be worth the investment that goes into making the raids. Every raid they made through Cata they lost money on, from a cost/benefit standpoint. "Mere thousands saw Kil'jaeden, millions saw Deathwing" was a quote I remember from them. Cut LFR and leave only organized raiding within a few tiers we'll see raid instances shrink in scale and number of bosses, more re-used art and model assets, so on and so forth. Look at BC when you had 3 dungeons and a raid all in one complex using the same art, or Cata where half of the second tier was removed and the last tier literally had nothing new artwise.

this is just 100% not true, theres no way. I alone pugged kil'jaeden so many times that i had to have played with 1000 different people alone. Theres no chance mere thousands saw kil'jaeden unless i pugged with the majority of them...

[Relapses]

...and others main a specc. So who do you cater to as a dev?

Personally I am mixing it up. My main definitely is specc locked (to prot), but as a rogue...yeah...that is a rougue and I changed speccs constantly. Same with my warlock. Druid is locked to feral...etc

Blizzard has a hard-on for giving people who try to "figure out" their game a massive middle finger. It's why they removed Reforging. It's why they removed DoT snapshotting. It's why they pruned everything after MoP. And now that they're giving us back shit they took away expansions ago as "content," while still introducing so many moving, interlocking systems that there will never truly be a "best" anything (even though there will be). I admire their desire to deconstruct their playerbase but it's not going to work in SL and I doubt it will ever play out the way they think it will. Blizzard is seemingly designing the game for the community they want to have instead of the one they actually do have.

[Kaver]

...and others main a specc. So who do you cater to as a dev?

Personally I am mixing it up. My main definitely is specc locked (to prot), but as a rogue...yeah...that is a rougue and I changed speccs constantly. Same with my warlock. Druid is locked to feral...etc

The thing is: You can cater to both. You don’t have to ruin the experience of someone who mains a class to make to experience of someone who mains a spec better. Having e.g. easier spec changing in the game wont hurt someone who is just playing e.g. a ret paladin. They will just play one spec and have fun with it no matter what.

As I see it Blizzard are locking away content from the Players. And I don’t know why they do that. Just let us play the game like we want. If I want to go Outlaw for a dungeons and then Assa for a raid then I should be able to do that without having to go through barriers of multiple artificial pointless systems or feeling crippled.

[orsraunia]

Valid concern OP. I feel the same.

They can easily "fix" this by removing the class abilities from covenants and making them available as talents, giving us a new talent row. Covenants have enough going on to feel different and meaningful, even without a unique class ability. Additionally, something like this would make balancing easier for them and would save us enough frustration. Their persistence of not going down that path is troubling to say the least.

[Caerrona]

Valid concern OP. I feel the same.

They can easily "fix" this by removing the class abilities from covenants and making them available as talents, giving us a new talent row. Covenants have enough going on to feel different and meaningful, even without a unique class ability. Additionally, something like this would make balancing easier for them and would save us enough frustration. Their persistence of not going down that path is troubling to say the least.

It doesn't need to be fixed though... I'm not frustrated by picking a covenant because I am a functioning member of society and can make choices.