Why have they stopped giving each class lots of new abilities each expansion?

[PenguinChan]

I'm hoping in the future Blizzard begins to treat the talent tree or maybe a side system to help alleviate this. There are builds or skills you can add onto your playstyle and make it way more spammy but at the detriment of lots of action bar slots taken up. Then you have ways to just go the passive route and push maybe 3 or 4 buttons all the time. But not all classes or specs get this luxury.

Ret paladin definitely suffers from this. You can choose additional abilities but half their talent tree is either very situational utility, uninteresting passives, or long boring cooldowns.

[Pandragon]

Basically needing 3 keyboards to use all your abilities (default keys plus mod macros) is ridiculous and not fun. More abilities does not equal a fun and engaging rotation. They need to focus on making rotation fun to do, and actually making abilities we already have fun rather than useless in most situations.

[OFiveNine]

Because they're amping boss fights rather than classes. Bosses are far more difficult now while we have less abilities to manage.

[Thelyron]

Basically needing 3 keyboards to use all your abilities (default keys plus mod macros) is ridiculous and not fun. More abilities does not equal a fun and engaging rotation. They need to focus on making rotation fun to do, and actually making abilities we already have fun rather than useless in most situations.

This has literally never been the case. Even at its most "bloatiest", this hasn't been the case.

[DechCJC]

Maybe i'm the exception, but between having target, focus and arena 1/2/3 macros - I genuinely can't figure out how to bind any more abilities, there are no free slots. I'm really struggling to think how I'm going to manage with covenants.

I don't like borrowed power much either, but they can't just endlessly add abilities or just keep removing them when there's too much. I think where we're at right now is absolutely fine.

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This has literally never been the case. Even at its most "bloatiest", this hasn't been the case.

I mean, even right now it's erring on the need for more action bars than are available for me.

[Nutri]

Because the developers are too incompetent nowadays to actually add new, interesting abilities that they can balance properly.

Conjure me four new abilities for each spec in the game. Make them interesting and balanced too please. I'll give you a few days to get the numbers right.

Lets talk again December 14th? Will that do? January 15th would work for me too if you need a bit more time.

[Swnem]

If you've ever played FFXIV you would know why ability bloat is bad. Some of their rotations last minutes, multiple minutes of different buttons. WoW's strength is its approachability, that goes away if you have to play a grand piano style rotation.

Also, WoW (as slow as some claim it to be) is faster paced than FFXIV so that even more moves toward a need for a smaller number of buttons.

While i think wow's combat is much more responsive, i love having multiple skills and i don't consider WoW's basic rotations to be better at all.

I agree with you OP. The fact we are getting new skills is the reason why i returned.
WoW takes players for granted and has been trying to plan for infinite expansions, which will never happen and it's come at the cost of fun and excitement. There are multiple ways to handle multiple skills and ffxiv is actually a good example of how to do it. SWTOR is too though. Both games have far more enjoyable rotations to me.

If all you want is to face roll 3 or 4 buttons, then you might like WoW better.

I dare anyone to watch this and not feel pumped:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jaGxC7wnBDo

Also, it's pretty unfair to say it has minute long rotations. One can say the same about WoW if you include cooldowns, which is what you are doing. This video proves there is no "minutes long" rotations. The only thing you could say is that some resources fill slower than in WoW. That i can agree with, but i don't find it a problem.

[TJ]

Conjure me four new abilities for each spec in the game. Make them interesting and balanced too please. I'll give you a few days to get the numbers right.

Lets talk again December 14th? Will that do? January 15th would work for me too if you need a bit more time.

Sure mate, I get paid hundreds of thousands to do their job for them

[Nutri]

Sure mate, I get paid hundreds of thousands to do their job for them

Well you come across as someone who has insight about their competence, you surely must have some knowledge if you can belittle them.

How about just one balanced spell for just a single spec then? Toss one out here.

[enderzone]

Well you come across as someone who has insight about their competence, you surely must have some knowledge if you can belittle them.

How about just one balanced spell for just a single spec then? Toss one out here.

I think a better solution to having one spell be balanced across multiple game modes would be to have unique locked talents and spells for the different modes of game play. One tree for raiding, one tree for pvp and one tree for mythic +.

That said customization of characters has never really had any value to me over performance and I would design a system designed around being easy to balance over it. I don't know if people would enjoy my vision of the game though to be honest.

[Kehego]

Because if they keep giving you new stuff eventually you'll have to much, or your old stuff will become obsolete

Hence why they implemented borrowed power so they're able to implement what REALLY -REALLY- works well into your core class.

I remember how fun it was in tbc
removing arcane shot from my bars, only having r1 serpent sting for rogues, good stuff.

Before cataclysm, you could play DK with a /castsequence macro because the rotation was 100% static.

Again, thanks for corruption again blizzard. Thanks for instant poison that does <2% of my damage. I sure needed that.

[Rinaul]

This is the same as borrowed powers and people have complained about it. It's still the same thing but saves time since a lot is kind of a universal thing for classes such as HoA. So I mean even if they gave ya what ya want them they'll still complain about it. No pleasing folks but tl;dr they haven't stopped.

[VinceVega]

FF14 class design is MILES ahead of WoWs....bloat or not.

Opinion base is not fact. I played both and for me it feels like ff14 is incredibly boring. Long ass rotations. Static bloat. No variation.
Nothing in FF14 is "Miles ahead" in any way shape or form.

[Ersula]

I hoped that BfA was an exception, but with Shadowlands, it seems to become a trend not to give classes fun new abilities. In the past, you could count on Blizz giving you like 4-8 new buttons to press that did something awesome per expansion, but all tat has really happened now are that talents they removed in the past are given back.

New abilities are fun. Why have they effectively stopped making them?

Because I'm already using every slot on both extra bottom bars, duh. This question made me so goddamn angry. We should have <10 abilities max at any time

[TJ]

Well you come across as someone who has insight about their competence, you surely must have some knowledge if you can belittle them.

How about just one balanced spell for just a single spec then? Toss one out here.

I think everyone has an insight into their competence since every modern expac has been criticised more heavily than the one before it and the subs drop lower and lower from over 12 million. Also the reliance on cash shops and "offers" to try and entice people to keep playing.

[Kehego]

I think everyone has an insight into their competence since every modern expac has been criticised more heavily than the one before it and the subs drop lower and lower from over 12 million. Also the reliance on cash shops and "offers" to try and entice people to keep playing.

damn maybe you should launch your own mmo with all the insight you have

[crusadernero]

What are you even talking about? The classes got enough buttons and abilities now, especially after the pre patch for SL.

No idea where this thinking of "more buttons makes it better" comes from, especially when talking about wow. Look at classic wow.. Highly popular, many deem it to be the best version of wow. Lots of abilities that can be used, how many are really needed when fighting raid bosses? Not many.

There needs to be a middle ground to this. They cant ofc remove everything and just have 3-5 buttons to click, but not to much eiter.

[TJ]

damn maybe you should launch your own mmo with all the insight you have

Damn yeah, nice.

[MrKnubbles]

?? Got it your delusional... cuz i sure as hell got a new ability in SL.

Tell me what you got and if you think it's going to stick around longer than 1 expansion.

[Talrath]

nah they got to actually put some effort on rotations instead of changing about 10% of the rotation over the span of 10 years.