Are you actually happy with the way class design is heading?

[Letdown]

I beg to differ tbh.
I feel that since at least WoD classes have became quite more and more clunky, un-intuitive and troublesome to play, even despite whole pruning thing. It has mostly escalated in Legion but it was the case too in WoD. It mostly comes down to bad* (imho) talent design. I play this game for over a decade now and didn't have as much trouble ever before as I do now, I am a casual I might add.

So no, don't think they are doing a good job for casuals like myself in any way.

I legitimately don't know how, half the classes are literally 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 1 rotations. Some aren't even that. I agree that there's some specs -- like Brewmaster -- that are inherently noob-trappy, but outside of those few exceptions most of the specs have become pretty braindead.

And even Brewmaster becomes braindead after you get beyond the noob trap and realize you should almost never Purify.

[Evilfish]

Yes and no. I like that they tried to give every spec it's own identity even if they went too far sometimes, but they are just trying to renew a system that's been renewed way too many times.

So, yes and no, leaning towards no.

[Daffan]

Ret will always suck without exorcism.

[Cosmic Janitor]

You can still make a one button dmg rotation for bm.

And more specs are pruned and simplified that you can do that with other specs too now.

Perfect blizzard design

I will roll on the floor laughing if the 1.2 button havoc setup becomes the best one for raiding.

[docterfreeze]

No spec is playing better than it has at some point in the past. This will continue to be my opinion until each class gets 5-10 pruned abilities returned baseline.

Something I noticed after playing my destro lock a bit... with dimensional rift gone in battle for abilities, destro only has one spell they can cast on the move. Have fun in PvP!

[Cosmic Janitor]

Something I noticed after playing my destro lock a bit... with dimensional rift gone in battle for abilities, destro only has one spell they can cast on the move. Have fun in PvP!

Shadowburn no longer replaces conflagrate, so there is at least that.

[ercarp]

Yes... and no.

I think getting rid of the old talent trees was a good call. The current talent system might have less options to choose from, but the options are actually meaningful instead of "1% more crit" or whatever garbage they had back then.

What I disagree with is the recent re-introduction of buffs in BFA. I'm just resisting the urge to vomit as I think about how pointless that decision was.

[Rilas13]

Yeah I am enjoying most things so far. Things I don't like as much are specs that I haven't ever really been fond of so that goes down as more personal preference.

[FAILoZOFF]

Arms and Fury are broken around the GCD, on top of rage and melee. They can't be serious about what is on alpha atm...
> How can one spec have 2 GCD's before they start doing good dps and another 6+ GCD's ? How is that going to work when balancing PVP/PVE/M+ ?

Simple, you pre cast Avatar, hit charge, hit bloodbath as your opening attack then spam recklessness till it triggers Thus far you've burned 5seconds of Avatar (25%) 3.0 seconds of Bloodbath (35%) and 1.5seconds of Recklessness, leaving you with 6.5seconds of Recklessness, 7 seconds of blood bath (this is intentional) and 15seconds of Avatar (which no longer buffs anything but direct warrior damage)

During combat, you'll trigger avatar on a rampage that falls within a window about 5 - 10 seconds prior to Recklessness coming off of Cooldown, Blood Bath must land in the 2 GCDs prior to Recklessness, and you can't clip Rampage anymore with Recklessness so you'll basically have to hope you can dump all of your rage prior to hitting Recklessness so you don't waste a huge chunk of built up rage so basically, Fury is now the most complex DPS class in the game to play optimally.

when you have more CD abilities than actual rotational ones... that's something I'd call a bad class design
I see no good reason why not to "connect" most if not all of them into 1 or 2 (so that you have the flexibility on CD usage and allows for CD wavering) big CD instead of relying on "macroing" 5 of smaller ones
They don't really have a problem with adding additional effects to already existing abilities/CD included ("you" already pop them all at once with a macro anyway), so again, talent choices can still reflect potency of any given ability.

I legitimately don't know how, half the classes are literally 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 1 rotations. Some aren't even that. I agree that there's some specs -- like Brewmaster -- that are inherently noob-trappy, but outside of those few exceptions most of the specs have become pretty braindead.

And even Brewmaster becomes braindead after you get beyond the noob trap and realize you should almost never Purify.

I mean, I feel like this game has gotten so much harder than ever, at least in terms of dexterity/fast decision-making, there very well might be just 3 skills but you better be pressing them all in right order or your output is going to suffer pretty heavily.
I prefer slower paced gameplay focused rather on planning and such, so I often joke around saying that current WoW feels too much like some sort of "guitar hero" game to my liking.

I think getting rid of the old talent trees was a good call. The current talent system might have less options to choose from, but the options are actually meaningful instead of "1% more crit" or whatever garbage they had back then.

talent tres served their purpose, but we are far over it considering we no longer "play" a given class but rather specific spec, not saying old talents were in any way shape or form perfect, far from it, but they weren't as bad as some people make them look, especially considering how whole game was back then
that doesn't change the fact that "new" talents are even frorse from perspecive of whole classs/spec design

What I disagree with is the recent re-introduction of buffs in BFA. I'm just resisting the urge to vomit as I think about how pointless that decision was.

that's something I agree with, but people are people, and rather dumb
I don't think this deserved all of the joy many people are displaying regarding reintroduction of it, pretty much same in a different way I felt for, for instance introduction of paladin [Divine Steed] a blunt 3s duration, 100% sprint ability; nothing revolutionary in the slightest and people still praised whole idea that paladins will be able to "mount in combat" and how awesome it was. No it wasn't. That's just a fkn graphic and if you take it away its just a boring fkn sprint. Its comprehensive how dumb people are but its the way it is.

I agree with this on paper but more often then not the talent rows are so garbage designed that you may aswell have no talent choice at all because all but one option is uther trash

that's, I belive, the main reason why I feel that current class design is such crap
for a decade we have had that really just that what you just described, and I mean that each- let's say ret pala was pretty much exact same as any other one except for gear. Sure there were talent's but they were a small ones, im most cases there were only 2 specs per spec, PvP and PvE one

[fiestatastic]

Would love to see the quote saying esports is the reason for gcds being added.

And it will never be a top esport, but it doesn't have to be as big as Dota and LoL etc to be worth doing. That's like saying indie games aren't worth making because they aren't as big as AAA games.

- - - Updated - - -



This has never been the case. Game changes and class design changes still happen in Beta. I have no idea why a small group of you is convinced that beta means 0 changes are coming and it's just numbers and bug fix changes.

It's because you're mistaken.

The reason why people think they only do bug fixes in beta is because that's what they do in beta. You might be confusing the first few months after official xpac launch with beta, because they've never changed something during beta, which is why those people think that.

[Machismo]

As a lock, I think they made Demo better. It may be largely visual with the placement of the imps, but it feels smoother than it used to feel. I'm still on the fence with affliction, but then again, it hasn't been changed much. At first I liked switching SB out for Drain Soul, but I think I may have liked DS better. I'm still trying to get used to the talent tree, but so far, I'm not too happy with it.

[Emerald Archer]

It's because you're mistaken.

The reason why people think they only do bug fixes in beta is because that's what they do in beta. You might be confusing the first few months after official xpac launch with beta, because they've never changed something during beta, which is why those people think that.

That explains why they just did a bunch of class changes hey.

"They've never changed something during beta"

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...5#post49309355 Yikes

Inb4 "buh buh buh it dun count cause beta just started"

"They've NEVER changed something during beta"

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...ta-Build-21796
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...ta-Build-22018

"NEVER"

Make sure you actually look at it properly before going "It's just number tuning". Would be a bit embarrassing if you ignored the ability reworks and even an added ability.

[Polarthief]

I legit don't think I can find a spec in a worse place than Balance Druid on the beta right now.

For the uninformed:
- Balance got a rotational ability from the artifact that generates a decent amount of its resource (which is similar to Rage).
- Said ability got removed and slapped on the talent tree, next to two passives that also generate resource, so the resource generation has slowed down DRAMATICALLY.
- All traits flat out removed. Nothing got baked in AT ALL. Same with Legendaries.
- One talent that was never picked in any situation (and we have a lot of them) was slightly changed. Two talents we always picked (mostly due to a specific legendary existing that no longer does) were nerfed.
- We used to have Blink (like Mages), but that was removed for a talent that modifies our Dash ability.
- Besides the above changes, nothing else was changed, nothing new was added, it honestly feels awful on the Beta right now.

I don't know how bad other specs are, but in regards to Balance, they just didn't give a shit. Oh and this is a spec that has been underperforming horribly throughout Legion (on single-target fights).

[Ashcrack]

I lost faith in blizzard's class design when they completely revamped survival for legion making it into a melee spec. Now they're making it some weird hybrid where only one of your abilities is melee range I think? But you still have a melee auto attack? While removing any complexity from legion survival in favour of making a spec just as simple as BM? Why couldn't they have kept survival as ranged while differentiating it from marksmanship with the bombs and traps we have now. I just don't think you should be able to remove a spec from the game that has for the majority of WoW been a ranged spec. Why throw out 12 or so years of iterating on a spec to start all over...

[kran1um]

Yes I like where its going im the few that is 100% for it. Old School.

People will hate it because since WotLK it was pull whole instance aoe fest, quick get out of bad spells or defensives to stay in bad. Heals use one button, there is no stand out class or talent, nothing unique to choose from, blizz puts what talents are best instead of the player. People hate change.

I say its the best thing they are doing is moving it back to BC days. Where people have to work for their dps, tanking and healing; where you needed certain classes in your group to do things. Use sheep and saps for more than 4 mobs days. Make the GCD's where you just cant spam a couple buttons, you have to think about procs. Get rid of the WotlK - Legion fanboys where there is no thinking was involved, just smash whatever lights up and one button macros.

Hell now all they need is a hairball that pushes one button and have all the talents grayed out but one.

[Harbour]

The thesis is the the large part of specs became much more boring after playing them on live. At least the healer specs. I hate them all. They all felt butchered, broken and underwhelming. And i don't care if i don't have a good gear - the numbers don't matter while the gameplay itself without tier bonuses and artifact traits is fucked up, and new Azerith system doesnt help like at all with its boring shitty "add damage/shield" features.

[kran1um]

So, what your saying is, the systems the had in place that made the game great for the majority of its lifespan. Ya, lets just dump those so the game is slow. Great idea!

By the way, I've played since mid vanilla. High end raiding in BC. It should be terrifying to anyone who played then to think they want to go back to that shit. One button spamming classes ftw I guess!

To each as own. I like to see someone sheep something other than a critter once in awhile, since BC, why is sheep even on a mages bars? should have made it a pvp talent only, its never used since BC.

I mean if its gratitude into playing with one hand spamming one button and not tab-target sundering, sheeping mobs so they dont destroy you, having a rogue single clear a room so the raid can get by, having risk vs reward opportunities thnn take the easy way out and complain, its people perogative. But for us REAL 'high-end, vanilla players' we want some gratitude on gameplay instead of the easiness of it.. Arent we the same people who hate how easy it is and LFR scumbags?... I mean...the fence isnt that high for both aspects of gameplay.

[Nozuka]

It was a nice feeling to get new spells with new expansions. Getting to a new level and BAM, new spell.

These days we seems to be loosing spells with every expansion. That sucks.

[Arbs]

Indifferent

[MightyWarrior]

Just cancelled my subscription after trying beta. All they've done is taken away your artifact traits, given you a couple back as a new feature, slowed down your classes, made them clunky, maybe given you your artifact ability back, as a talent replacing another or removed it completely.
As a Fury Warrior, it takes 4.5 seconds to charge in, pop your cds and then play. Don't get me started on how long it takes to fill your rage bar. *yawn*
BFA is gonna crash harder than WoD, at least WoD had somewhat decent class design, even with no content there was fun stuff to do, BFA? Who wants to slowly press 3 buttons? They're giving us vanilla servers for that, WoW should be improving, not going back in time.
Goodbye guys, been fun yo