Originally Posted by
Monoxide
You have a huge misunderstanding of what people are talking about on this topic.
People want classes to be classes, and specs to be what that word actually is, specializations. So if you're playing a Warlock, you should have some basics that are always present, like demons, dots, and fiery destruction. Then, when you pick your specialization, like Demonology, your Demons and that aspect of your class are enhanced, but you're not losing your dots and fiery destruction. You won't be as strong of a dotter as an Affliction Warlock, and he won't have as strong of Demons as you, but you both have the basics. This example can be used with many classes, like Mages, you shouldn't lose Frostbolt because you chose to SPECIALIZE in Fire. You're not a Fire Mage, you're a MAGE who specializes in fire.
You misunderstand the complaints about the classes and what people mean when they talk about homogenization. I'll give you some more examples. Classes are currently pretty boring, and they just feel...empty. The reason for this is that people cried "bring the player, not the class", so Blizzard made design decisions to make classes less unique. You saw it in things like Mages and Hunters getting lust, Paladins getting strong AoE heals, Rogues getting AoE DPS abilities. Hell, I saw a topic on here about a month ago or so of people really upset that Rogue AoE got nerfed, and that it was a "core" part of their class. It's amazing to me to read something like that considering Rogue had no AoE for what, four, five years? They had Blade Flurry (which was a 2 minute cooldown), and that's it until they got Fan of Knives in Wrath.
I know a lot of people are going to read this and say "well, yeah, you should bring the player and not the class", but that's a bad way of viewing the game. I'm sorry if that hurts to hear, but it's true. Huge class stacking still exists. Guilds still do it all the time, so the goal wasn't achieved. We still have issues of certain classes just blowing ahead of the pack, and yet we had to sacrifice class uniqueness in the process.
We keep going through this process where each class is given cool and fun abilities, and then the season ends and we lose. Yes, expansions are looked at as seasons now. You can see that in the design philosophy of each expansions big features (garrisons, class halls, etc). They build the game that each expansion they can do whatever and then after the expansion is over it doesn't matter anymore. They view classes the same way.
The way classes are designed now is just depressing. If you're new(er) to the game I guess it's probably not even noticeable. I logged onto my Druid, who I made in Wrath, and it was so foreign. I had a mana bar but I really don't know why. I was spec'd Balance, and so many abilities that I had before are just locked behind other specs. I can't do cool things like before, like saving a group with a clutch Tranquility. Back to the mana bar though, I don't really know why I have one. None of my spells cost mana, the only exception is Regrowth. Regrowth costs mana and nothing else does, *and* it's now the only healing spell I have.
It's hard to describe, and I probably didn't do a great job of it, but classes have been destroyed. You don't play a class now, you play a spec, and there's 5 other specs that can do the cool thing you used to be able to do exclusively, and now each class is just boring. Most DPS classes now are also "generator>generator>spender>generator>generator>spender" as the entire rotation, with a 3 min CD thrown in there. It just feels bad to play retail right now.