Do people actually like classes in BFA?

[Wyrt]

The GCD change still feels really fucking awful to me as arcane mage. It takes 3 GCDs just to get going at the start of the fight. It's dumb. If they don't want people stacking cooldowns, then don't design the classes to stack cooldowns. It shouldn't be rocket science and sticking cooldowns on the GCD is about the most ass backwards way possible to do it.

Arcane mage also doesn't feel that great in that there's not really any talent options. Arcane is all about burst, so the talent options that don't add to the burst are ignored the vast majority of the time. Mana management also isn't terribly rewarding or interesting in the current game, you just dump it then wait a minute and a half to dump it again.

Enhance shaman still plays much the same as it did in Legion, but it's still far too squishy. Either needs more survivability or more utility to make up for the lack of survivability.

[Kalisandra]

Its probably mostly just casters who want to be as mobile as melee without any downside which was the case in MoP.

I main a Ret Pally. I hate BfA's class design. It's got all the bad bits of Legion and WoD, and none of the good bits. I also play an Ele/Resto Shaman a fair bit, and it's sucks there, too.

While I understand that Demo is good now, I find Destro terribly boring (it was more fun in WoD, though I'm sure quite why), and Affliction just blows now - Affliction shouldn't be about working around a stupid-ass cooldown. I haven't played my Monk enough to have a real feel for how they are now. My Rogue has been gutted, because they were always Sub, and Sub is awful now. My Arcane Mage lacks all the cool stuff from Legion, and also lacks the interesting resource management of MoP or WoD. My Fire Mage is like in Legion, but worse. Same for my Frost DK (where's my Two-handed build option?). My Arms Warrior seems... okay, I guess? My Hunter misses Hati. My Boomkin just isn't fun and is now Feral because I find it easier questing that way.

Overall, I'm not at all a fan of BfA's class builds, and I play both melee and ranged and healers, and sometimes tank for guildies.

On top of all that, I think that having all the abilities past the L100 talent granted by items is bad. It makes our characters not powerful in their own right, but vehicles for their shinies, even more than their gear being the source of most of their stats. They really have have lifted the L100 talent row to L105 where it should be for the 'one row every 15 levels' pattern, and given us another row at L120.

Another thought - the dev team managed to produce a huge number of artefact weapons, each with their powers and builds, each unique to their spec for Legion. Now really they were just a bunch of bonuses and procs, plus an active ability per spec, but they managed that plus the top talent row for Legion. How come all they're putting out now is these azerite traits that are 'one size fits all' for each role, and which aren't active, plus more 'one for all' essences that while they have an active ability, aren't very interesting, by and large? Worse, the essences tend to be such that one is insanely better than the rest for a given spec, so everyone just uses that one, if they have it. Sure, cookie-cutter builds have been the norm for 14+ years now, but it'd be nice if some effort was made to make the things a little less cut and dried.

[Krewshi]

I like the demon hunter dps/rotation.
Hopefully they dont destroy it in 9.0

[Kalisandra]

melee
-gotta deal with faster time to react to more mechanics
-can be kited
+dont rely on casts, so only needing to worry of the basic "you cant move" spells
+can attack while moving, so no need to lose dps while moving out of aoe, usually more tanky

Melee hasn't been more tanky than casters for some time.

ranged
-gotta stop casting to move, usually more squishy aswell so you need to dodge mechanics faster
-you will not beleive how much it fuckign sucks to pvp as a caster sometimes.
(kick, knockback, stun, silence, disoreint.) constantly, to the point you spend most of a fight unable to cast a spell.
+Roots dont work a ton on them
+can avoid a lot of mechanics, and usually have more time to react to some.
[/quote]The caster-melee PvP balance has been way off for years now. They really need to fix it, so that melee can catch casters, but can't just stick to them. Then they need to sort it so that the exceptionally slow melee and exceptionally fast ranged aren't unplayable bad and unbeatably good.

or just be a fucking hunter and get the best of both worlds cause fuck all yall hunters are literlaly insane fuck hunters.

And put a bullet in their heads, yeah.

i do wish we got an actual speedboost, i miss burning rush being baseline, cause while its cool we have our gateways and the return of circle to baseline in shadowlandfs, that is all PREPLANNED movement, we need to be able to go "oh shit i need to move!" instead of "ok time to go to where my circle is"

I miss it on my lock, too. Sure, you can talent for it, but it's not the same.

And I really, really miss Gust of Wind on my Shaman. It made not having casting Lightning Bolt whilst moving tolerable.

- - - Updated - - -

Arcane mage also doesn't feel that great in that there's not really any talent options. Arcane is all about burst, so the talent options that don't add to the burst are ignored the vast majority of the time. Mana management also isn't terribly rewarding or interesting in the current game, you just dump it then wait a minute and a half to dump it again.

I think part of the problem is that it doesn't matter how much mana you have when you're not burning, unlike the old Mastery where you really wanted to sit at 90%+ until your CDs came up. These days you can burn, Evocate, burn again, and only then do you need to slack off. In anything but a raid boss fight it's going to be all over by then, so really you're in your burn phase almost all the time. This also makes mistakes very forgiving, because unless you run completely dry you just ease off a bit until Evo comes off CD. Previously if you were on low mana with no Evo available, your DPS was almost zero while you let your mana come back up, so screwing up was costly.

Also, the way Arcane Missile and Clearcast procs works is braindead. No proc? Don't cast. Proc? Cast immediately. In Legion you could store procs and possibly sit on them if the time wasn't quite right, which was more interesting and more skillful.

[kuhntasmash]

From the classes that I generally play (druid, monk, hunter)
Feral, guardian, windwalker, and brewmaster feel similar enough to what they have previously.

My lay with alot of the moonkins power being shifted away from its dots, straight into Starsurge.
and
Survival hunter feeling like a shell of its legion glory days. R.I.P true mongoose bite.

[Amaterasu65]

Fire feels good if you have the necessary essence, the on-use trinkets and Mechagon wrists. Absolutely powerful during combustion, trash outside the burst window, except of course when the target is below 30% and can use scorch.

Frost feels great, not a fan of noIL build, but the spells work in harmony with each other, they supplement each other. Glacial Spike feels powerful. I think Thermal Void is gonna make a competitive comeback.

Arcane is a one-button spam, needs complete overhaul. I doubt Shadowlands will fix it.

[Kumorii]

Mage is alright, I do want them to move away from CD bursting with downtime as with most classes I've tried. Make it more even in engagement. Adding the GCD change didn't change that except just made it clunky, but that's not a class flaw.

[Kalisandra]

My lay with alot of the moonkins power being shifted away from its dots, straight into Starsurge.

I miss dropping moons on demon's heads.

- - - Updated - - -

Mage is alright, I do want them to move away from CD bursting with downtime as with most classes I've tried. Make it more even in engagement. Adding the GCD change didn't change that except just made it clunky, but that's not a class flaw.

Aside from setting up burst feeling clunky, I most notice the GCD thing when tanking on my Pally. Their self-heal being on the GCD is a real annoyance, especially as they can't have their main damage reduction/active mitigation effect up constantly, so Pally tanks will take big chunky hits every so often, and the heal being on the GCD can make things dicey.

[Amarys]

Yes and no, I guess.

I don't like how they revamp all the specs that were "slow" before. It's like every spec now is just button spam, every GCD as opposed to long 3-4s casts, tactical use of abilities and pooling energy instead of just spamming them like assassin rogues were at one point. Hell even managing mana as DPS is completely gone.

I mean we have 20+ DPS specs now. Why can't at least some be slower paced and tactical?

[Tyris Flare]

It isn't nearly as bad as most people claim, but most of the GCD changes were dumb.

Everyone is going to have a gripe about this or that, but aside from a few outliers, everything plays fine

[Kalisandra]

Yes and no, I guess.

I don't like how they revamp all the specs that were "slow" before. It's like every spec now is just button spam, every GCD as opposed to long 3-4s casts, tactical use of abilities and pooling energy instead of just spamming them like assassin rogues were at one point. Hell even managing mana as DPS is completely gone.

I mean we have 20+ DPS specs now. Why can't at least some be slower paced and tactical?

I have no idea. I was appalled at the way Legion made just about everyone into 'build and spend' specs with secondary power sources. It was one thing about Legion's character design that I didn't (and don't, because we still have that part of the builds now) like.

Having a game where some specs are very much about pooling energy and careful spending it (traditional Feral, some Rogues), some are about managing your energy/rage bar so that you don't run out but don't cap either by using cost efficient abilities when you're low and using inefficient ones when you're capping (Warriors, some Rogues), some are rotations with a few procs to react to (many casters), some are cooldowns+procs (Ret, once), some are insane spammy reactive messes, and some are fairly simple few button rotations and it's about managing mana (Arcane, until this expac) is a great thing. It means there's a playstyle for everyone. But over time the diversity of playstyles has been reduced. It's true for tanks and healers as well. Tanks don't play super-different in terms of what buttons you press, even if the underlying mechanics and such are a bit different. While healers are in some ways more diverse, with Disc now doing it's 'heal with DPS' thing, Mistweavers don't get to fist-weave any more, and Paladins want to be in the melee mob, and even want to hit things, but the healing they put out doesn't feel very unique any more (at least, not to me). Once upon a time, a Paladin stood there and spammed fast, big heals into the tank and as long as you could stop anything from messing with the Pally, the tank would not die. Not having any tools to group heal was a downer, but I feel there's been too much homogenisation of healers and tanks, and too much homogenisation of DPS rotations (even as they've worked to make DPS feel more different in other ways over the last few expacs).

[Wyrt]

I think part of the problem is that it doesn't matter how much mana you have when you're not burning, unlike the old Mastery where you really wanted to sit at 90%+ until your CDs came up. These days you can burn, Evocate, burn again, and only then do you need to slack off. In anything but a raid boss fight it's going to be all over by then, so really you're in your burn phase almost all the time. This also makes mistakes very forgiving, because unless you run completely dry you just ease off a bit until Evo comes off CD. Previously if you were on low mana with no Evo available, your DPS was almost zero while you let your mana come back up, so screwing up was costly.

Also, the way Arcane Missile and Clearcast procs works is braindead. No proc? Don't cast. Proc? Cast immediately. In Legion you could store procs and possibly sit on them if the time wasn't quite right, which was more interesting and more skillful.

Oh yeah, reducing Arcane Missiles to a single stack instead of 3 was such a bad design choice.

[Azerox]

Playing Frost Mage and always have a ton of fun with it.

[Ange]

Not having any tools to group heal was a downer, but I feel there's been too much homogenisation of healers and tanks, and too much homogenisation of DPS rotations (even as they've worked to make DPS feel more different in other ways over the last few expacs).

The alternative of your "to much homogenisation" is that you have 1 TANK and X bad alternatives, you have 1 HEAL and X bad alternatives and you have 1 DPS and X hybrids. There is a game version of WoW that allows you to fully experience the pro's/con's from going with less homogenisation.

The issue is, the game got more demanding and at some point numbers/mechanics matter more than you as the player. While this tought bubble of cool and unique class mechanics is a big topic in the forums the reality is, that even 15 years ago the actual players cut the bullshit and just boosted raids with a core of 10-15 players and just got rid of the unique/special classes and min-maxed the raid-composition.

So it feels a bit strange to see this topic still popping up, when the whole idea was allready killed by the community in the first WoW months a lot of years ago and blizzard had to change the game towards the community demands.

[silverlightning]

I don't. I don't like the GCD change, everything is just the same 1.5 seconds between all skills and it feels boring. class-wise, arms is the same 2 buttons, sometimes you throw in a colossus smash and at the end, the finisher.

Sub rogue is super boring. You have one builder, two finishers and really all you're doing is waiting on the two charges you get from shadow dance to spam that stealth attack over and over and over. Very uninspired.

Enhance shaman is also boring. You're just waiting on stormstrike procs which sometimes proc themselves, so you end up mashing one button repeatedly.

Shadow priest needs to be aborted and redesigned. I can't stand void form.

As for hunter, I'm leveling one right now. I got to 63 as Survival and I thought it was okay. It was taking about 3-5 seconds to kill things based on procs. Then I switched to marksman. Now I can kill things in two hits sometimes, maybe three. There's a huge disparity there especially if you take into account that survival has the disadvantage of being melee. My brother is a beastmaster and facerolls in PVP despite having been playing the game a total of two months and not knowing much about it. There's a proc for Kill Command in Survival that I don't really like as well. Anything that procs repeatedly so you end up spamming a single button isn't something I like and when you use a CD I forget the name of, Kill Command's proc chance goes up and it resets repeatedly, so you spam that too for pretty weak damage, so it's not fun to use.

The classes just seem lazily designed, a lot of them with build up/burn phases. Things don't make a lot of sense right now. There's just a lot of laziness and homogenization. I don't know if this is Ion himself or Activision forcing him to make the design team do stupid shit but playing this game, especially in raids or heroics where you're standing there repeating your rotation to chip away at a gauge of health on a mob, *FOR ME* has been a bore since Legion. These are just my opinions.

[Kalisandra]

The alternative of your "to much homogenisation" is that you have 1 TANK and X bad alternatives, you have 1 HEAL and X bad alternatives and you have 1 DPS and X hybrids. There is a game version of WoW that allows you to fully experience the pro's/con's from going with less homogenisation.

The issue is, the game got more demanding and at some point numbers/mechanics matter more than you as the player. While this tought bubble of cool and unique class mechanics is a big topic in the forums the reality is, that even 15 years ago the actual players cut the bullshit and just boosted raids with a core of 10-15 players and just got rid of the unique/special classes and min-maxed the raid-composition.

So it feels a bit strange to see this topic still popping up, when the whole idea was allready killed by the community in the first WoW months a lot of years ago and blizzard had to change the game towards the community demands.

You will note that I said "homogenisation of rotations". I did not talk about having some melee not have interrupts, and so on. I was talking about styles of rotation.

As for the tanks, again, there's more than one way to build a tank's rotations and cooldowns. As it is the m+ meta, for example, isn't about tank survivability so much as mobility, DPS, and utility. Again, not something I mentioned, though clearly something that they haven't got right in this expansion.

As for it 'being killed' way back in vanilla, that was because a lot of DPS specs simply weren't, and were never intended to be raid DPS specs. They were PvP specs, or specs adequate for levelling so you didn't have to level as a healer, or they were support specs (though these were more of a thing in BC), so of course once the raids got more difficult these specs were sat unless the raid needed that one special thing that they brought. This would even have worked if only one in twenty-five players liked the idea of playing a Retribution Paladin (instead, it's a very popular character type, most iconic paladins are clearly Ret, and many people like playing the holy knight that kicks ass), or of playing a Shadow Priest. However, that's not how it worked out.

And healers - well is they weren't homogenised, they would be good or bad in different situations. As it is, they're sort of homogenised, and some do something really well and everything else okay, while others are just 'okay' because either their niche is done better by someone else, or their niche is never needed. You seem to want all healers to be identical to solve this. I want them to be better in their stand-out roles, and perhaps a little worse at everything else. There should be no question that when a fight needs grouped healing, you should bring a Resto Shaman. As it is, Paladins manage pretty well at this, and the strong spread healers are often as good or better at grouped healing, so why bring a Shaman? In MoP or WoD you brought them for the grouped heals and the cooldowns, now you bring them for one, possibly two CDs and that is it.

[therealbowser]

You'd be surprised. From what I've seen most people love BfA classes, so there's pretty much zero hope that they'll ever improve them.

I mean I don't know where I stand on everything. It would be more accurate to say I loved Legion classes and BFA didn't change much (thankfully).

For instance, before Legion I couldn't touch discipline or especially combat rogues. Now I can't play anything else on those classes because I love their changes so much. BFA has a lot of problems, but I don't feel like the class designs, at their core, are one of them.

All of this said, there is room for improvement... Shadowlands bringing back old abilities and weakening the walls between specs by having more abilities that they all have, are huge steps in the right direction. I mean, this alone implies that there is not only hope, but a guarantee that Blizzard will improve on them... whether the changes are good or bad remain to be seen, but hey, I'm hopeful.

Blizzard's biggest problem over the years has been fixing things that weren't broken, so if they are leaving classes alone... this is fine.

[Thrillhouse918]

I've said this a number of times and made a point to ask it in every Q and A thread for those livestreams...but we haven't had a new talent row in 2 expansions (last was in WoD). We have actually LOST talents overall because some talents were axed to make room for our old Artifact abilities or traits (e.g. Wake of Ashes, Poison Bomb, Ebonbolt).

We effectively get weaker as we level. Our stats go up but we have no new shiny to pick, no new way to change our rotation.

I'm firm in the belief they need to 'bake in' some iconic talents and give us some new ones. Give Ret pallies Wake of Ashes baseline, for example. Rogues could use Marked for Death....I mean we're supposed to be these stealthy fighters that take out high value targets. Even in the case of Outlaw, they only enter combat when its to their advantage, according to the spec description.

I keep trying to find positive with the classes but there's always some glaring issue with their design that makes it unenjoyable.

[Ange]

I want them to be better in their stand-out roles, and perhaps a little worse at everything else.

Some classes allready peak at that design direction.

Look at Disc Priest, while they are not the first choice for a general heal spot, because there are better heal specs with much more forgiving class mechanics and the skill difference for your average healer is basicly no issue.

But, Disc Priests broke many times the raid progression balance, the scaling with items and pvp had also dominant niche comps for this kind of healer.

The truth is, people choose intentionally the mediocre heal spec with the least amount of learning curve and at some point this specs are getting buffed to be competitive.

You dont play a DH as melee, if you want to differentiate yourself from other players by playing better.
You play a Brewmaster as tank for the same reason and the popularity of druids as M+ healers is again, not because of the classfantasy or unique rotations - those specs are very easy to perform well for your role and the skill floor is so low, that you dont even have a learning curve.

[Zeons]

Some classes allready peak at that design direction.

Look at Disc Priest, while they are not the first choice for a general heal spot, because there are better heal specs with much more forgiving class mechanics and the skill difference for your average healer is basicly no issue.

But, Disc Priests broke many times the raid progression balance, the scaling with items and pvp had also dominant niche comps for this kind of healer.

The truth is, people choose intentionally the mediocre heal spec with the least amount of learning curve and at some point this specs are getting buffed to be competitive.

You dont play a DH as melee, if you want to differentiate yourself from other players by playing better.
You play a Brewmaster as tank for the same reason and the popularity of druids as M+ healers is again, not because of the classfantasy or unique rotations - those specs are very easy to perform well for your role and the skill floor is so low, that you dont even have a learning curve.

Druid healer with catweaving and hot stacking has a low skill floor? Get out.