How did blizzard manage to let class/talent design get so bad?

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

Since PvP started adding new abilites. Blizzard don't want people getting overwhelmed with too many buttons to press. So PvE gets lame playstyles with 3 or 4 button rotations.

[Swnem]

Ok, so what about someone like my old demo lock? I loved Meta lock and i LOATHE the new demo lock. I absolutely hate the new design of it and hate that my toon MAGICALLY woke up one day and had forgotten meta to become headmaster at a school of imps

MMO's are ever shifting games. You know things won't stay the same forever.

Your character doesn't "forget" things. It is not alive. It gets redesigned.

[avx81]

I can't stand BFA and I can't stand Classic. Had a lot more fun during Legion. Class design is down the tubes. Class balance is during the tubes. I can't even bring myself to login in about a month now.

[reploid]

Since PvP started adding new abilites. Blizzard don't want people getting overwhelmed with too many buttons to press. So PvE gets lame playstyles with 3 or 4 button rotations.

Yeah I mentioned that in my post, its also because they were shoving warmode down our throats. Wanna play a semi decent complete class? Enable warmode, otherwise feel like you’re level 20 with only half your abilities unlocked.

[Sosua]

Easy, they catered to noobs and casuals whining about "My Class doesn't have X", then they whine the classes are all becoming the same. Gotta satisfy the kids who are used to getting a medal for last place...

[bullseyed]

A lot of what you say is subjective opinion.

Correct. Properly named this thread would be "I don't like class design in WoW" and it would be nice if they renamed threads like this to match the actual contents.

[Zyky]

I don't agree with that. Why would a FROST mage need to cast arcane blast and fireball? Don't confuse simplefying the game with pruning. Pruning was mostly harmless and that is the nostalgia speaking. When they went full reset lets simplify classes in Legion was when s**t hit the fan.

I mean did you not play the game at any point between Vanilla-Wrath lol? There were plenty of situations where a Frost Mage would cast Fireball or Fire Blast or when Arcane Explosion was better AoE than Blizzard. It literally makes zero sense that you just "forget" how to cast all these spells when you play different spec. This is one of the reasons why Classic is so popular, you actually have a repertoire of spells that are useful in different situations, making the game more complex(rather than "oh there's aoe? Let me hit my 1 AoE spell.")

[Alvito]

But it's not. By far the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design. I've never met a high-end raider in this game that thinks spec/class design issues have not been plaguing BFA since day 1.

Which are still opinions. It might be shared by some, others would disagree.

[kaminaris]

Yeah, you are right. DPS speccs are fine except feral, enhancement, Arms, arcane, elemental, havoc, fire (compared to legion), shadow, destruction, demonology, beast master, frost, unholy, subtlety, assasination and retribution. But yeah, the rest is fine! I guess.

Fire is nice, shadow is ok, destro is ok, demonology is the best spec ever done, nothing holds a candle or is even remotely close to current demonlogy with a huge gap considering all 15 years, frost is ok, unh is ok, sub is gud, assa is boring as ever, retri is fine. Here, debunked.

[Alvito]

I mean did you not play the game at any point between Vanilla-Wrath lol? There were plenty of situations where a Frost Mage would cast Fireball or Fire Blast or when Arcane Explosion was better AoE than Blizzard. It literally makes zero sense that you just "forget" how to cast all these spells when you play different spec. This is one of the reasons why Classic is so popular, you actually have a repertoire of spells that are useful in different situations, making the game more complex(rather than "oh there's aoe? Let me hit my 1 AoE spell.")

It would be nice if all specs had a way around being spell locked. The fact that some dps and some healers do, but now all isn't great. Hell lock outside even hit tanks in various ways.

[Kralljin]

This is one of the reasons why Classic is so popular

And once you enter the actual endgame content, you realize how wrong this statement is.

Here i am sitting on any Boss in MC spam and either Chain heal on a random target that has lost HP or constantly start to re cast Healing wave in order to snap that exact moment when the Tank lost HP.

So
Much
Fun

Like seriously, once you actually apply the game content of the current game onto the class design of Vanilla, you realize how much of this actually falls through.

So many abilities have lost their point because that niche no longer exists.

Yeah, you are right. DPS speccs are fine except feral, enhancement, Arms, arcane, elemental, havoc, fire (compared to legion), shadow, destruction, demonology, beast master, frost, unholy, subtlety, assasination and retribution. But yeah, the rest is fine! I guess.

I can't speak for every dps here, but as someone who has mained Elemental since TBC, i can say that the post 8.1 Elemental ranks among my top versions of the spec in a long time.

Why? Because it has a simple standard rotation and you can add more variety / complexity into it (like Icefury).
Different, more niche builds exists, like SE+PE.

On top of that, the skill ceiling on certain Multi dot Encounters is pretty high, but extremely rewarding and fun.

And most importantly: It actually feels like i'm a fullblown Dps and not just some inferior version of a mage.

[Vasoka]

Let me put it plainly. Even if you've seen around 10k comments by internet apes jumping on the hate bandwagon and repeating how much they hate "class design", this is still probably less than 1% of the people who actually play WoW - thus, "the majority", couldn't be further from the truth.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

They removed water breathing from shamans for no reason and it has been all downhill since.

[Ange]

I mean did you not play the game at any point between Vanilla-Wrath lol? There were plenty of situations where a Frost Mage would cast Fireball or Fire Blast or when Arcane Explosion was better AoE than Blizzard. It literally makes zero sense that you just "forget" how to cast all these spells when you play different spec. This is one of the reasons why Classic is so popular, you actually have a repertoire of spells that are useful in different situations, making the game more complex(rather than "oh there's aoe? Let me hit my 1 AoE spell.")

Did you just compare old hard-cast-to-DPS balance with latest instant-cast-everything caster mechanics? Limiting spells per spec was a balancing action, because interrupting 1 spell did nothing when 100% DPS could be done with instant-casts.

With your limited PoV why some changes had to happen in WoW, maybe it is a good idea if you stay in Classic WoW and remain "unhappy" with retail WoW's silly design choices.

[horbindr]

sure they are lazy in that they basically rotate a couple abilities from baseline to talents and back for most specs. and they tend to change things for the sake of changing them. and obviously going from end of legion to start of bfa was an embarrassment.

but overall i'd say most of the specs i play (mostly tanks) have improved with the legion overhauls.

[pinglong]

Console release.

[gd8]

Yeah, you are right. DPS speccs are fine except feral, enhancement, Arms, arcane, elemental, havoc, fire (compared to legion), shadow, destruction, demonology, beast master, frost, unholy, subtlety, assasination and retribution. But yeah, the rest is fine! I guess.

half of your list is quite subjective. I play elemental (a top tier spec), BM, unholy, assassination, destruction, and demonology regularly and enjoy all of them and all of them are viable. havoc is boring to play despite being extremely strong but they seem to want to keep demon hunter as a highly accessible easy to play class so probably not much to be done about that

I can't speak for every dps here, but as someone who has mained Elemental since TBC, i can say that the post 8.1 Elemental ranks among my top versions of the spec in a long time.

Why? Because it has a simple standard rotation and you can add more variety / complexity into it (like Icefury).
Different, more niche builds exists, like SE+PE.

On top of that, the skill ceiling on certain Multi dot Encounters is pretty high, but extremely rewarding and fun.

And most importantly: It actually feels like i'm a fullblown Dps and not just some inferior version of a mage.

this. no idea where he pulled elemental from

[Sfoda]

Guess it comes down to how you define class design. I play BFA and I "feel" like everything is good with the classes I play. IMO, Azerite armor traits and essences add lots of customization to w/e playstyle I want. For example as a havoc DH, I can play either Demonic Appetite, Momentum, Fel blade or Blind Fury builds.

[bullseyed]

I mean, it should be obvious that class design was guttered and pruned transitioning from legion to BFA.

You lose 5 things and gain 1 thing, that's not fun.

Also, a lot of people are saying class design is purely a subjective opinionated topic. It's actually both objective and subjective.

GCD change is bad design or backwards, fact.

Classes were pruned from legion to BFA, fact.

Class design is nonfunctional in BFA, fact.

This guy is 12, fact.

- - - Updated - - -

shadowpriest is somewhat okay aside from some clunkiness but ya there's a good handful of specs that aren't great rn but there's plenty of good ones to choose from too and that goes with basically any expansion/patch. you could always go play classic where there's only like 3 dps specs that are even viable at all and aren't even fun to play

The fact that you struggle with pressing keys doesn't make a class clunky though.

People who struggle with their rotation should just ask a good player to redo their binds/addons/weakauras.

[cparle87]

ehm no...
blizz flat out admit that one of worst f8ck ups in BFA is class design, it is subjective like LFG for example where no side has clear winner, but class design is confirmed already to be the biggest sh8t in bfa
everyone point out that it started in legion, and forget that gutting spells started in WoD
Seriously i never met someone who can't wait to play a rpg game to gain lvl to lose power and abilities, can u name any name anywhere beside wow where the more u lvl the less abilities u have? at least i did see 1 person (so far) who actually like pruning, also i'm willing to bet he just want to be special snowflake for attention since the majority hates it, and if he does like it why the f8ck he plays a RPG game, where its base rule is u gain power and abilities the more u play/lvl, not lose them
and ret is the worst even compare to vanilla days, at least in vanilla it was boring (just right click) but still had its massive utility + insane survive, now u have far higher dps (also to be fair, even an afk hunter has more dps than vanilla paladin...) but ~ 0 utility

So unless u consider ur headcanon is more legitimate than blizz own words, class design is not 'subjective', it is fact as pure sh8t

Did you even bother to read what I wrote before you typed up a spiel of badly written vitriol to throw at me? I said nothing about current class design. I said that any fix or change Blizzard done could be considered just as bad, or worse than it is now, because opinions are subjective. For example, they could change a class and you yourself could love the hell out of it and it could be your favorite main to play in years. And there could be posts on these very forums to the tune of "the class was pretty bad but not terrible but now you've completely ruined it and it's unplayable."