Why BFA class design is a good thing

[Shinrael]

This is the easiest game I have installed on my computer.

If you can't learn the rotation of 95% of DPS specs in under an hour then you are not only a terrible MMO player but you're also just shit at games in general.

The amount of hand holding that is done and the complexity that is REMOVED as each expansion rolls forward is actually hilarious.


Good troll though.

Except none of the "complexity" has been removed. That's a hilariously abstract statement without any examples. Have you cleared Mythic btw? Asking out of curiousity.

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you are wrong.

You too

[Marc7]

I guess this is subjective, i mained mage, shadow and warrior this expansion and never had any problems to get 90%+ logs.

double icelance was about having a addon for your input and a weakaura telling you when you got the haste to pull it off, not really hard imo.
as for combustion you only needed to pool a bit, one more pyro or not won't make a 100k difference.
shadow priests have a extremely static rotation/prio list that is really easy to execute imo. however i would say here you are right that on high stacks a mistake can cost a lot of dps.

nowadays i can go pull up a guide of any spec i leveled to cap from the class discord and have a good idea on how to play the spec maybe not to its fullest but to a high potential, this was rarely the case in cata and mop for me where it sometimes took hours on a dummy to actually understand when i had to press what button for optimal damage.

But maybe i have simply grown/got more experience and my point of view is twisted compared to a newer player :/
To be fair here, most classes are more or less the same since wod so thats that.

I'm pretty sure the "you getting better" part of the equation is a big part of the pov. You need to be aware of all your cooldowns when doing the fire mage rotation for example. Like when can you press meteor so that's it's off cd for your next burst etc. should you wait for concordance to proceed before going ham, can you press RoP and safely park yourself there etc. Knowing the encounters and tracking all that is way overwhelming for a lot of people, which is something I've come to appreciate trying to help guildies improve. With shadow, sure it's simple, but it keeps getting less and less forgiving as Void Form goes on and with mass hysteria and the stacking haste buff the last seconds of it are always the most important. Again, it's something a lot of people have extremely hard a time doing while also doing all the raid mechanics simultaneously.

[Tradu]

Let’s be honest the blizzard should be focused on retaining players because not many people are starting wow

New players learning the game shouldn’t be a priority

Pretty much this. If new people want to play as well, that's great, but the primary focus should absolutely be on keeping the people already invested playing.

[elynos]

This is the easiest game I have installed on my computer.

If you can't learn the rotation of 95% of DPS specs in under an hour then you are not only a terrible MMO player but you're also just shit at games in general.

The amount of hand holding that is done and the complexity that is REMOVED as each expansion rolls forward is actually hilarious.


Good troll though.

Why then is there such a large discrepancy between 90th percentile parses and 75th percentile parses between players with similar gear

[Tradu]

It's 9 new powers from Azerite (not counting the ilvl upgrade ones). Sure, a lot of them are a bit boring, though so are a lot of the legendary effects too.

Speaking of legendaries, that was a horrible system, basically a pool of talents tied to an RNG loot table, and also conflicting with things such as set-bonuses, as they occupied the same spaces. The Azerite armor system is way more elegant. I am dissapointed in most of the traits so far, as they really should be around the power-level of talents, and I also don't think there should be so many duplicates.

Some classes have really nice, interesting set bonuses, most don't. Usually it's just a dreaded percentage increase on something, such as increasing the duration of combustion by 2 seconds. That is to say, the set-bonus mechanic hasn't been well utilized in Legion for the most part.

Most classes, on the beta, play fine. Some don't at all though, and it's incredibly disappointing that Blizzard won't fix them before a later patch. Of course, that happens every expansion, but usually to a lesser degree than this.

Still, I think adding a new talent row on 120 with artifact and legiondary effects only would have been a good idea, instead of just baking them in into the old trees. they've been able to get rid of a bunch of completely useless talents though, by replacing them with artifact abilities and whatnot.

I'm not perfectly happy with all of the class-design decisions made in BfA, but it's nowhere near as dire as some people like to imply. Getting rid of the legion power-gain systems was a good thing, definitely: you can't pile on such deep progression systems endlessly. It's just frustrating that we aren't seeing, at least yet, anything comparable and NEW in BfA. I would like to note though, that even just the artifacts themselves took a long time in legion to get to the power-levels they are now, and we rolled into emerald nightmare with classes that were not that much more complex than the BfA ones.

I think the newness, or a lack of it, is a big part of the problem. The zones in BfA are fantastic, as is the content (for real), but we go in with, for the most part, nothing new to play with. In legion the situation was COMPLETELY different there, as almost all the classes had changed significantly.

Edit to not spam the thread:



An interesting point there. I'm not sure I agree though, as looking at the difference in performance between similarly geared characters in Legion compared to other expansions (for which there is data, this was in a preach video some months ago, I know, sue me) it's absolutely massive. Some people know how to play the game, others don't, and the output difference between those people is insanely high.

As an example, stuff like optimal usage of Serenity for WW monks is extremely difficult to do, as you need to take into account all of the cooldowns on the fly. A really good player might get it 85% right, getting most of the potential extra damage out of that ability, while a bad player might just pop it and go ham on tiger palm and blackout kick, and the better player will have dealt tens of times more damage than the bad one.

Not just that, we're directly losing a ton of stuff that we've had effectively baseline for 2 years and getting very little in return.

[Mister Cheese]

Your points are moot when they are leaving entire classes broken to fix later.

[elynos]

Not just that, we're directly losing a ton of stuff that we've had effectively baseline for 2 years and getting very little in return.

I’m not losing anything other than a few passives. That should be gained through Azerite gear

[Tradu]

Why then is there such a large discrepancy between 90th percentile parses and 75th percentile parses between players with similar gear

Bad RNG, different assignments, different amount of padding and most importantly: most players are not very good at the game, even if the specs are not very difficult.

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I’m not losing anything other than a few passives. That should be gained through Azerite gear

You're losing an entire secondary talent system in the form of legendaries, a pile of passives/procs, an active ability, set bonuses and the replacement is non-RNG NLC that takes up 3 armor slots and your neck instead of all your weapon slots. Oh, and you're also losing some talents that are being removed to fit in some of the legendaries/artifact traits, which you now have to pick instead of the other talents, instead of having them in addition.

[elynos]

Bad RNG, different assignments, different amount of padding and most importantly: most players are not very good at the game, even if the specs are not very difficult.

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You're losing an entire secondary talent system in the form of legendaries, a pile of passives/procs, an active ability, set bonuses and the replacement is non-RNG NLC that takes up 3 armor slots and your neck instead of all your weapon slots. Oh, and you're also losing some talents that are being removed to fit in some of the legendaries/artifact traits, which you now have to pick instead of the other talents, instead of having them in addition.

We are talking mythic raiders here, people that absolutely kill it in heroic and know their spec well. Then get into mythic and they are just average.

[Tradu]

We are talking mythic raiders here, people that absolutely kill it in heroic and know their spec well. Then get into mythic and they are just average.

Yeah, and even in mythic, there's lots of people who aren't very good at playing their spec, especially not at the same time as doing a boss fight.

[elynos]

Bad RNG, different assignments, different amount of padding and most importantly: most players are not very good at the game, even if the specs are not very difficult.

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You're losing an entire secondary talent system in the form of legendaries, a pile of passives/procs, an active ability, set bonuses and the replacement is non-RNG NLC that takes up 3 armor slots and your neck instead of all your weapon slots. Oh, and you're also losing some talents that are being removed to fit in some of the legendaries/artifact traits, which you now have to pick instead of the other talents, instead of having them in addition.

Sure I’m losing some choice with LEGOs gone, but it was a flawed system. I’m not losing any talents because they are baked into other talents or made baseline. What matters most is my spec is still fun, and it is an improvement on what I had at the beginning of legion.

[Tradu]

Sure I’m losing some choice with LEGOs gone, but it was a flawed system. I’m not losing any talents because they are baked into other talents or made baseline. What matters most is my spec is still fun, and it is an improvement on what I had at the beginning of legion.

You're absolutely losing talents when they take a talent and throw it out to make space for Pyro bracers or whatever(or you lose the legendary effect, either way you lose something). And sure, the RNG of legendaries was shit, but other than that it was an interesting secondary talent system.

[elynos]

Yeah, and even in mythic, there's lots of people who aren't very good at playing their spec, especially not at the same time as doing a boss fight.

So in other words the game isn’t that easy. Because solid players that know their spec well can’t always hack it in high end content

[Naiattavain]

So this is going to get lots hatred but it's right.

I am a legion baby, joining in the legion prepatch and played dps and healers with golden logs at a mythic level raiding by the time TOV came out. So I have some experience but very recent none of this 10yrs+ stuff.

But here's the nugget 99% of the player base have missed with BFA. When I started the game it was completely and utterly overwhelming both in size and complexity, even the basics of clicking spells to key binds to macros to customer elvui setups, add-ons, weak auras, siming pieces of gear, buying a Razer Naga. The list just goes on and on and on.

On top of that you have rotations to learn, boss fights, the nuances of PVE class balance, gear sets and talent selections this game is very, very complicated to a new player.

You can't keep building on top of this foundation of conplexity each patch and expansion because as the player base shrinks new players can't learn at the near vertical learning cure the game has.

They don't stick around and stop playing, at some point the spidersweb of complexity needs to be pruned hard so a new player has the ability to pick the game up comfortably and not have an anurism before uninstalling.

That is why the game has to be pruned to bring new players on board so we still have a game to play in a year's time. Or it can be made more complex and slowly die with a ever shrinking player base because no-one what's to learn a game this hard

rogue class was fine during warlords of draenor. this whole idea fucked up the whole class experience and presentation for rogue. rogue didn'
t really change much because it was neat to play. redoing all the specs has affected the performance and output. honestly i just want wod subtlety back. at least it worked. now i don't even get invites to raid.

[elynos]

95% of the playerbase doesn't give a fuck about or participate in Mythic raiding.


Why are specs braindead but complexity is front loaded into a part of the game that no one experiences?

Over 1100 guilds at 11/11 mythic. That’s 22k players minimum, and then at least double that are in different progression levels in mythic. And there is tons more that want in on mythic but simply don’t have the time.

[Marc7]

Okay, so why are we comparing entry-expansion-level-combat of BfA to end-game-expansion-level-combat of Legion again?

Without the legendaries classes will feel less powerful. True. Less fun? Not necessarily. Especially having in mind that losing the legendaries and their mechanics is compensated by the talent changes, honor talent improvements and azerite gear as well as potential legendary/other type of upgrade further into the expansion.

I really loved Fire Mage in BfA. True, someone who is used to having bracers and artifact and all the bonuses they provide might feel it like a downgrade. But you gotta look at the bigger picture. The most important thing is the overall structure. The final rendition. Where will Fire Mage end up with all the talents changes and Azerite Gear and so on. I tried Fire Mage and I loved it. Enough to make me want to main a Fire Mage again. That has to be a solid proof the system is working. Legendaries and Artifact Traits were meant to power up our characters beyond what is necessary (so as not to feel underpowered before obtaining them). And this led to classes having more power and tools than necessary by the end of Legion. If you just keep adding to that the classes will become way too powerful on their own. Regardless of whether you are a new player or a veteran, the power creep has to be controlled.

I agree with you, for the most part. Currently what we've seen of the azerite gear isn't nearly as deep a progression system as artifacts and legendaries were. There is really nothing comparable in BfA to those systems in terms of gameplay-altering new class mechanics especially when even the raid azerite powers we've seen so far are quite underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, I still think BfA classes seem pretty good, and legendaries were a horrible system. Just, have the azerite traits have more gameplay altering elements and we're fine. Also it's stupid that there is only 1 trait for each spec in the armor: it's not a choice, you just confirm which spec you are playing. It's also kinda disappointing to me that most tiers of azerite bonuses aren't class specific.

[elynos]

Don't most of you delusional fanboys think this game still has 5 million players. (HINT: IT DOESN'T)


I'll humour you though, troll.


What percentage of 5 000 000 is 22k?

well its more like 100k that participate, but it's still a small percentage. I'd say at peak legion was 8mil around Jan when antorus was new. Regardless the game should be based around mythic. Why cause that 100k won't play if there isn't some hardcore gameplay. Most people in this game are casual, you should never tune the game for casuals, you give them options like lfr, pet battles, etc.

[Leodok]

I do agree there's too much complexity in the "hard stuff" (raids, "actual" PvP, etc). Not in the content itself, but in extra layers of systems, very often created by players.
But simplifying the classes is not a good answer to that. It takes away from the actually fun part, while keeping the boring, "intimidating to new players" one mostly intact. You'll still have to download addons and all of that.
Besides, it hurts the "easy" content a lot, because, well... just playing your class is most of the non-lore fun you can have with a big part of it.

I can't say if the BfA changes are good or bad until I actually play it (people have been complaining about pruning for years and I'm still fine with how complex classes are). But the point that "classes need to be pruned to make the game easier to get into" is just not a good one.

[Rendark]

You too

Only one can be wrong. If both are wrong then there's nothing to be wrong about.

[Shinrael]

Because a 75th percentile person will still kill the boss. Because this game is stupidly easy.

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When my rotation consists of the same monotonous builder, spender and proc gameplay then yes. Complexity has been removed.

When I have less options to deal with 90% of my situations - complexity has been removed.


It used to be - "Oh shit X is happening, good thing I have a way to deal with this. I will use it because I'm a good player".

Now its just - "Oh shit X is happening, I have no way to deal with this. I will die."




Making braindead specs and loading all the complexity into "MYTHIC RAIDING" is some of the most moronic design I've ever experienced. Less than 5% of the playerbase experiences it.

Yeaaaah. I am pretty sure I already told you these statements are hilariously abstract without an actual EXAMPLE? Wanna try again? When did gameplay not consist of "same monotonous builder, spender and proc"? Oh right, when there were no builders and procs, just mana spenders! And when your mana drops to 0, you wand or auto attack the boss till it dies Great engaging gameplay, amirite?

And what situations and what options would you sir be refering to? Enlighten me. "X is happening, good thing I have a way to deal with this." "Y is happening, good thing I have a way to deal with this." "Z is happening, good thing I have a way to deal with this." Good thing you have a way to deal with EVERYTHING, amirite? Whoever needs to try to avoid mechanics, think in advance, plan WHEN to use their utility instead of just having a counter to everything on demand without the need to use your brain....

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Only one can be wrong. If both are wrong then there's nothing to be wrong about.

Good job, you just proved your entire post (as short and meaningful as it was) is utterly pointless and silly.

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I agree with you, for the most part. Currently what we've seen of the azerite gear isn't nearly as deep a progression system as artifacts and legendaries were. There is really nothing comparable in BfA to those systems in terms of gameplay-altering new class mechanics especially when even the raid azerite powers we've seen so far are quite underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, I still think BfA classes seem pretty good, and legendaries were a horrible system. Just, have the azerite traits have more gameplay altering elements and we're fine. Also it's stupid that there is only 1 trait for each spec in the armor: it's not a choice, you just confirm which spec you are playing. It's also kinda disappointing to me that most tiers of azerite bonuses aren't class specific.

Well I do hope and expect to see more intriguing traits as the expansion unfolds. Blizzard always tends to do it with trinket and set bonuses as well. In the beginning of the expansion they are weak and don't alter the gameplay that much but later on end up completely messing up everything around (as in one item can change your entire rotation). This was not so much the case with Legion because it had those Nighthold trinkets and the Legendaries. But let us see.