Is WoW's combat holding the game back?

[ro9ue]

bring back mana management and actual use of CC and you fix most of wow

Yeah, I think WoW's combat is one of it's strongest aspects actually right now. These two things here are the problem, it's the systems around the combat. Mana management isn't a thing anymore. People don't CC in dungeons like they used to. It's not strategic. It's just AOE spam.

They tried that in island expeditions, it was neither impressive nor actually scaleable server side.

I do think they should have used it more though, given it more tries, but it's best not to overestimate new techniques.
When ignored they are often disregarded for good reason.

Yeah I think they just did a bad job with it. It's sort of like when people use Garrisons as to why player housing doesn't work in WoW. That was just a really shitty execution of it.

[BeepBoo]

Tab target + hotkey DDR is an awesome and (in this day and age) unique combat style. I love it. Is it better or worse than action? No. Any combat system could theoretically be engaging and fun. Wow's combat system is far more fun to me than many action combat games, and definitely more fun than ANY fps game. Games where it's easy to make my character do what I want that have skill discrepancy come up in the decision making process/twitch reactions are far more entertaining to me than games where the skill comes up in successfully getting your character to do what you want with relatively simple decisions.

Yeah, I think WoW's combat is one of it's strongest aspects actually right now. These two things here are the problem, it's the systems around the combat. Mana management isn't a thing anymore. People don't CC in dungeons like they used to. It's not strategic. It's just AOE spam.

This is spoken like someone who doesn't do high level M+ keys. You absolutely HAVE to interrupt and use CC routinely, coordinating with your party actively in combat, or... you die.

[M1r4g3]

I voted yes but not because of tab targeting but rather because its not as deep as it should be ever since they removed most of the interaction between stats and some specific mechanics like snapshotting etc. around after mop/wod/legion(depending on the class), it just started feeling more like whack-a-mole rather than reacting to stuff and putting thought into what you're doing(and actually having some time to think unlike the adhd rotations now).

[Grimbold21]

Yeah, I think WoW's combat is one of it's strongest aspects actually right now. These two things here are the problem, it's the systems around the combat. Mana management isn't a thing anymore. People don't CC in dungeons like they used to. It's not strategic. It's just AOE spam.

CCing packs is the definition of strategy. We don't use CC - read long duration CC - anymore because Blizzard made one little thing called Wotlk which arguably introduced but definitely blew out of proportion the extent to which people zerged through dungeons.

It was like any other piece of convenience. Once it's in, you'll have a hard time getting rid of it. And once they did reintroduce any measure of difficulty into 5 mans, they still did it with speeding through content in mind, hence we now have mythic+.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

My issue with WoW's combat is that it revolves around juggling a dozen different cooldowns, so you're not looking at the action in the middle of the screen or the characters. You're eyes are staring at the numbers on your hotbar at the bottom of the screen. It is also very intensive and exhausting.

[BeepBoo]

CCing packs is the definition of strategy. We don't use CC - read long duration CC - anymore because Blizzard made one little thing called Wotlk which arguably introduced but definitely blew out of proportion the extent to which people zerged through dungeons.

CCing mobs on-pull to just reduce the number of people you fight is boring design. It's preemptive, not interactive. You do it before getting into combat or at-pull and then you forget about it until you're ready. It also takes next to no coordination. "You CC diamond, you CC circle, I'll get moon" and then you just do that every pull. No more communication necessary unless you think waiting for pull timers every pack is communication.

[Biomega]

My issue with WoW's combat is that it revolves around juggling a dozen different cooldowns, so you're not looking at the action in the middle of the screen or the characters. You're eyes are staring at the numbers on your hotbar at the bottom of the screen. It is also very intensive and exhausting.

I feel this strongly varies between classes.

They really didn't think their new talent system through enough. Some specs end up with 15 buttons - some with 35. Some juggle one or two cooldowns - some juggle seven. That's not really conducive to a level playing field, and makes some specs just WILDLY more stressful to play (hi there, Shadow Priest). And sure, they're fixing things somewhat as they go, but it's clear that this was all rather half-baked because they ran out of time. Which is annoying, considering that's so much more important to many people than quests or whatever - how your class/spec plays is the CORE of your WoW experience.

WoW's combat is, in principle, great. It's one of the reasons it's held up so well over time - it's absolutely rock solid. It's got its quirks and it works best in specific contexts, but it does what it sets out to do better than pretty much any other game.

[kranur]

There's no reason for WoW to become action combat since it has built it's community as a tab target MMO. There's ESO for action combat and frankly it's a really really good game with many aspects superior to WoW.
Also good luck with ideas like that on these forums, most people here are tab targeting fans because it's a WoW forum. Same thing if you go to ESO forums and tell them that it will be a good idea to turn it into tab targeting ... most people will tell you how horrible it is an shoo you away.
And changing something as fundamental as the combat style will drive people away faster than any garbage system ever added.

[crusadernero]

Combat gameplay in wow is great. Fluid, interactive, feels good to play. One of the strengths with the game. No idea what you are talking about.

Could argue that resource management (mana) could become more relevant, but thats besides the point really. Maybe make it so most (all) classes in some way more often get to use the full toolkit available?

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My issue with WoW's combat is that it revolves around juggling a dozen different cooldowns, so you're not looking at the action in the middle of the screen or the characters. You're eyes are staring at the numbers on your hotbar at the bottom of the screen. It is also very intensive and exhausting.

well as a ret paladin its often been about blowing every consiveable CD quickly and pop off. If stuff died in that period, great. if not, well back to.. nothing but waiting for the CDs to come off.

[ro9ue]

This is spoken like someone who doesn't do high level M+ keys. You absolutely HAVE to interrupt and use CC routinely, coordinating with your party actively in combat, or... you die.

It used to be a foundational element of the dungeon gameplay experience and not only found in high level M+ keys. And imo the way it's used in the modern game in those scenarios feels more cheesed than anything.

[Lex Icon]

don't think they could pull off their main focus(instanced pve) with anything else to the same degree.

[Kalisandra]

I'm with the majority on this. Some aspects could use some work - make mana matter somewhat, some specs need a bit of work (as always), but overall the combat system has great flow, and feels very solid and fluid. In fact, WoW's combat is what brought me back last time I took a break. I'm not a great fan of 'shooter' style combat outside of first-person shooters (and I dislike them as multi-player games), and the other tab-target games I tried just didn't match up. WoW's just that much more polished. Okay, BfA and Shadowlands were polished turds, but they were polished and it wasn't the combat system that let them down.

[Jester Joe]

I'm honestly more offended that you called MoHun a "souls like". When, ya know, it came out 5 years before Demon souls.

Either way, the combat is fine, it's just different styles for different games.

Blizzard can and should improve the visuals so it's easier to actually make out ground effects and everything though.

[Khaza-R]

Action combat + online latency is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention navigating the visual clutter in raids. If its something you're interesting in then I'm sure Riots MMO will be up your alley.

WoW's combat is probably its most consistent and enduring feature. Changing it would be a massive mistake.

[BeepBoo]

It used to be a foundational element of the dungeon gameplay experience and not only found in high level M+ keys. And imo the way it's used in the modern game in those scenarios feels more cheesed than anything.

I'm not sure why you think it's cheesy. It requires a lot of coordination to do and has to be done IN THE MIDDLE of combat rather than preemptively. Things can quickly devolve into a shit show if you make a mistake, and a lot of things will just out-right 1 shot you. It is essentially mandatory that you use your entire group's CC well in high level content. You cannot succeed otherwise.

The thing with that type of gameplay is... most noobs don't like having to kick things or they die, and if they DON'T die because they don't kick something, it's not punishing enough for them to care.

There's no middle ground with noobs of wow. For the most part, they don't want to learn (or be forced to learn). That's not an issue with dungeon design so much as it is an issue with the player base actually wanting to faceroll their content 99% of the time.

well as a ret paladin its often been about blowing every consiveable CD quickly and pop off. If stuff died in that period, great. if not, well back to.. nothing but waiting for the CDs to come off.

That's definitely not how we play now with the changes recently. Maybe in pvp where chip damage is near-inconsequential?

[Soikona]

In Vanilla you needed skill and experience to kill bosses. Don't push this useless crap called Shadowlands and Dragonflight need's coordination!!!
You have more addons to swift kill bosses now days unlike classic and TBC.

I thought this argument was put to bed when classic came out and everything was zerged….

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I'm honestly more offended that you called MoHun a "souls like". When, ya know, it came out 5 years before Demon souls.

Either way, the combat is fine, it's just different styles for different games.

Blizzard can and should improve the visuals so it's easier to actually make out ground effects and everything though.

Yea it’s like the difficulty is seeing blue on darker blue more so than the content itself.

[Steelcryo]

Action combat in WoW sounds absolutely awful.

New World went that direction and even with the whole game geared around that style of combat, it's still "meh".

Adding it to WoW would be a disaster. WoW's combat is great because of tab targeting.

[reanimatez]

My issue with WoW's combat is that it revolves around juggling a dozen different cooldowns, so you're not looking at the action in the middle of the screen or the characters. You're eyes are staring at the numbers on your hotbar at the bottom of the screen. It is also very intensive and exhausting.

I think this is one of the biggest issues with the game that ends up gatekeeping a lot of new players, besides not having any real in game resources that teach you how to play your class/spec. No idea how they can fix this without pruning and taking a combo/action combat based approach. There’s just so much going on that you shouldn’t be having to tunnel your action bars and resources to play optimally

[Vampyrr]

Again that proves you need experience and skill, You just shot your self in the foot right now.

But ppl still full cleared most everything while being bad. When people went back in with experience and skill it was 30s boss fight zergfest super boring stuff.

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In Vanilla you needed skill and experience to kill bosses. Don't push this useless crap called Shadowlands and Dragonflight need's coordination!!!
You have more addons to swift kill bosses now days unlike classic and TBC.

All you need for vanilla bosses is to be semi-awake theres 0 coordination or skill needed. With your 2 button rotation you just push abilities as they line up and dont stand in bad and the boss falls over.

[WowIsDead64]

I completely forgot about that.
Maybe with different AI something fun can be done! In future.

I don't mean harder combat, where every mob is much smarter and performs things like avoiding your attacks and interrupting your casts. We already have lots of this crap, like mobs having several spell schools, that makes interrupting ineffective, or some mobs on Dragon Isles, who use defensive spells, exactly when you charge Evoker's chargeable spells. We don't need overtuned game. I talk about mechanics like Conquesting, i.e. mobs not attacking player, if they see, that they don't have any chance to succeed.