Anyone NOT that hyped for 'return to class'?

[Malikath]

Just theoretical as I probably won't play Shadowlands.

I am levelling a frost mage and I enjoy the feeling I am 'frost'. Personally I don't like the idea of getting fireball since I like this feeling of specialisation. I DO think classes can be a tad more complex, just because a) they are too simple (though not that simple as people seem to think) and b) it gets boring having the same spells all the time, I miss getting new spells in expansions. That said, I like the idea of shattering throw for warriors (I used to play/play a warrior a lot), it doesn't 'feel' like it should be a spec specific ability and it's cool and adds depth, complexity and possible counterplay (PvP perspective).

I don't like the whole covenant system as usual there has to be some grindy new feature to boost playtime, it's artifical complexity just like azerite traits.

I think each spec getting maybe 2 or 3 new talents, as well as maybe ONE or TWO spells made classwide will be fun, but I don't want spec homogenization, I like spec identity.

bring back MoP class design.
anything less and the game dies a final death.


that word should be banned, no one using it is smart enough to understand what roles the abilities they're using play for one class, much less in the context of the overall game.

[Biochem92]

So.. what you are saying is that you aren't passionate about spec identity, and you were just arguing and throwing expletives around for the sake of arguing?

I'm not sure if that's a healthy way of going about these things, I suggest taking a step back and relaxing a bit and maybe rethink your priorities or how you approach these things.
Also as said, opinions can't be wrong bud.

EDIT: I also thought you had all day? I'm gonna get lonely here.


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A class is the sum of all its parts and how it's able to interact with the world, having things like a Fireball or Fireblast at your disposal will help you when you've been counterspelled as you've said, or come across a rogue that you don't want to restealth.
For fire mages, having the availability of a frostbolt means a reliable way of slowing your opponent and getting a bit more breathing room.

You shouldn't think of WoW as a game that only takes place within a perfectly controlled single target boss environment where you only use your rotation, as it rarely ever is like that.

What game are you playing? You ever raid? 85% all of bosses in this game are single target with probably another 10% being target this one mob and then move onto the next. Im glad you could find another example on the mages utility, but we both know fireball isnt going to have ticking damage again. It just wont, cause thats been reworked for the Fire mages Ignite. Honestly its fine if you wont play subpar and all that but there are reasons there are specs in this game and if Blizz wants to do away with that Wow will die.

[Schattenlied]

I gotta be 100 with you, outside of being a mage casting fireball because ive been counterspelled out of Frost, what incentive do I have exactly to cast fireball? The converse is true as well. Im not sure if you played endgame back in the day, but in Vanilla and BC you were a spec. If you deviated you were going to be capped. Want to cast fireball as a frost mage, youll just never get invited to anything past ZG and BWL for serious raid groups. Therefore my argument sums up as this, whats the point?

You tellin me you never used fireblast as a frostmage in vanilla/tbc/wrath? Never used Cone of Cold as Arcane/Frost? never used Arcane Explosion as Fire/Frost?

I'ma call bullshit on that. You didn't use them all the time, but they were definitely not useless. Fire blast was your highest priority spell while moving as frost and Arcane because it hit pretty hard, Cone of Cold was a good, strong instant cast AoE snare and did decent AoE damage even when not specd into it, and Arcane Explosion did more DPS than Blizzard even as a frost mage, you used AE if the things you were AoEing in a raid couldn't be snared and didn't have abilities that would kill you if you went into melee range.

Is their usage situational? Of course... Are they useless? Far from it.

- - - Updated - - -

People seem to think that this means the specs are going to be losing something, they aren't, you're gaining things, you won't always use them but you'll have that option available, and that's not a bad thing... Having a reliable snare as a Fire mage in Frostbolt isn't taking anything away from you, it's not taking anything away from Frost Mages either.

Specs are not losing any identity from this, a fire mage will still be a fire mage, just like a Feral Druid right now with the Restoration affinity talent is still a Feral Druid, the existence of the Restoration Affinity talent does not subtract anything from Restoration Druid's spec identity.

[Biochem92]

You tellin me you never used fireblast as a frostmage in vanilla/tbc/wrath? Never used Cone of Cold as Arcane/Frost?

I'ma call bullshit on that. You didn't use them all the time, but they were definitely not useless. Fire blast was your highest priority spell while moving as frost and Arcane because it hit pretty hard, Cone of Cold was a good, strong instant cast AoE snare and did decent AoE damage even when not specd into it, and Arcane Explosion did more DPS than Blizzard even as a frost mage, you used AE if the things you were AoEing in a raid couldn't be snared and didn't have abilities that would kill you if you went into melee range.

Is their usage situational? Of course... Are they useless? Far from it.

Nope in Wotlk I played Arcane because it was a great spec. Frost was all PVP right there and Ive never been convinced PVP= PVE in terms or raw player numbers. Also you could cut out movement with blink in 95% of situations, therefore your gcd spent on Fire Blast was probably better spent blinking and returning to Arcane Blast. Raided heavy mage in the Tournament and the first half of ICC.

[Gungnir]

What game are you playing? You ever raid? 85% all of bosses in this game are single target with probably another 10% being target this one mob and then move onto the next. Im glad you could find another example on the mages utility, but we both know fireball isnt going to have ticking damage again. It just wont, cause thats been reworked for the Fire mages Ignite. Honestly its fine if you wont play subpar and all that but there are reasons there are specs in this game and if Blizz wants to do away with that Wow will die.

That's what I'm saying, the game isn't only about raiding. There's an entire world where you can use those abilities to fairly good effect, especially PvP.
And who knows, they might add back ignite as an innate ability for Fireball for specs outside of Fire, we have no idea of knowing that at this moment as it's still incredibly early and we barely even know anything about what they're intending to do.

Besides, if you don't use those abilities when you play, you don't have to have them on your bars. That's the beauty about having choice, you don't have to use them if you see no use for them.
You also don't need to be worried about Blizzard somehow 'doing away' with specs, specs have always been a thing. They're likely just aiming towards having a more rooted class identity such as we had between TBC and MoP, specs will still be very much defined by what they are as they're called specializations for a reason. They exist to be what you focus upon as a mage, or a shaman, or a warlock etc.

[Pigglix]

How you will use fireball or fireblast to prevent a rogue restealth is beyond me, because when a rogue try to restealth they will stun you and pop cloak to prevent any dmg or pop smoke/ sprint /LoS you.

Really? using frostbolt to slow someone? Just burn it and if it get close use dragon breath/nova or pre cast ring of frost. Or as arcane, instead of being dumb and opening with slow, be smart and do arcane blast + slow. If you get locked, cast frost nova/ ring of ice, problem solved.

Like i said, all those returning abilities to mage and some other classes so far seems utterly pointless. i could get behind if it was cds returning, like mirror image, temporal shield and what not. But not "niche situational stuff" and sell it as feature.

[Schattenlied]

Nope in Wotlk I played Arcane because it was a great spec. Frost was all PVP right there and Ive never been convinced PVP= PVE in terms or raw player numbers. Also you could cut out movement with blink in 95% of situations, therefore your gcd spent on Fire Blast was probably better spent blinking and returning to Arcane Blast. Raided heavy mage in the Tournament and the first half of ICC.

Plenty of people raided as Frost in Wrath, and Fire, also in TBC, and Blink wasn't always available, especially in heavy movement phases of fights.

and Ive never been convinced PVP= PVE in terms or raw player numbers.

Ok? Let's say this change is made entirely for the sake of PvP (it's not, but for the hell of it let's pretend), does it harm PvE in any way shape or form? Not even slightly, so it's a non-issue.

[Biochem92]

That's what I'm saying, the game isn't only about raiding. There's an entire world where you can use those abilities to fairly good effect, especially PvP.
And who knows, they might add back ignite as an innate ability for Fireball for specs outside of Fire, we have no idea of knowing that at this moment as it's still incredibly early and we barely even know anything about what they're intending to do.

Besides, if you don't use those abilities when you play, you don't have to have them on your bars. That's the beauty about having choice, you don't have to use them if you see no use for them.
You also don't need to be worried about Blizzard somehow 'doing away' with specs, specs have always been a thing. They're likely just aiming towards having a more rooted class identity such as we had between TBC and MoP, specs will still be very much defined by what they are as they're called specializations for a reason. They exist to be what you focus upon as a mage, or a shaman, or a warlock etc.

I get the argument for PVP being a big deal, its very fun and quite possibly the best form of PVP in video games at least in my opinion. But believe me, there is virtually no chance they undue all the progress with fire. Its possibly the best worked caster DPS spec and simultaneously the only class that still has its old school appeal stretching back to Vanilla (Fireball, Pyroblast, and then Ignite away). The only things that have changed were Ignite and Fireblast allowing for instant procs of Pyroblast.

- - - Updated - - -

Plenty of people raided as Frost in Wrath, and Fire, also in TBC, and Blink wasn't always available, especially in heavy movement phases of fights.



Ok? Let's say this change is made entirely for the sake of PvP (it's not, but for the hell of it let's pretend), does it harm PvE in any way shape or form? Not even slightly, so it's a non-issue.

I literally knew noone to raid as Frost in Wotlk, literally not one person. Could not shatter bonus on bosses and since that was the main mechanic of the tree it was a invalid spec. Fire was good but Arcane was broken, did not play Mage in TBC so I couldnt tell ya. Also they tried the duel meaning for spells (one pvp, another pve) created a very complicated system in wow that was non intuitive.

[fatgunn]

A class is the sum of all its parts and how it's able to interact with the world, having things like a Fireball or Fireblast at your disposal will help you when you've been counterspelled as you've said, or come across a rogue that you don't want to restealth.
For fire mages, having the availability of a frostbolt means a reliable way of slowing your opponent and getting a bit more breathing room.

This all well and good for mages who can choose to not use these new spells for the most part. But for several of the other classes re-adding these spells will be detrimental. They will have to be dealt with and most importantly be balanced around.

• Warlocks will have to manage curses.
• Shamans will have to keep up with their totems. In an environment like M+ this will be even worse.
• Death Knights will have to manage their pets. Again another annoyance for M+ players.

I'm all for them bringing back things like Eyes of the Beast and Demonic Circle. But that doesn't mean they have to go through and bloat every spec's spellbook for no reason.

Also the slide from Blizzcon showed Ritual of Doom coming back and....just no, please.

[Schizoide]

IMO obviously, but I have had max-level characters of every spec since WoTLK and IMO, many specs were the best in Legion/BFA they've ever been. Fury and enhance came out the best by far, but also balance, BM, ret, outlaw, and ass. Vengeance and havoc improved in BFA too.

Some are worse; I really dislike shadow for the past two expansions in particular, and feral feels terrible. Survival (BFA not Legion) would be awesome... if it wasn't a hunter spec. But most of the rest are either pretty good or the best they've ever been.

Some of that was the focus on spec identity we got in Legion; every spec was looked at both mechanically and thematically. Nearly all benefited from it.

[Doffen]

So.. what you are saying is that you aren't passionate about spec identity, and you were just arguing and throwing expletives around for the sake of arguing?

I'm not sure if that's a healthy way of going about these things, I suggest taking a step back and relaxing a bit and maybe rethink your priorities or how you approach these things.
Also as said, opinions can't be wrong bud.

EDIT: I also thought you had all day? I'm gonna get lonely here.

How considerate of you. I am passionate about the game and how it plays. Like I said earlier and in other threads, I don't care what it's called as long it plays nice. Some classes makes more sense when it comes to class design and class niche abilities, like paladin and druid, while for mages it makes less sense. I am an Arcane Mage, or I am a Survival Hunter(my main half of BfA) where having kill shot and hunter's mark makes no sense, while both fits well for the two ranged spec.

I lied about all day, only 8 hours a day. Work, sleep and WoW man. But I'll be here, don't worry

[Pigglix]

@fatgunn the DK pets werent permanent if you werent deep in the unholy tree if i remember right, so i assume this will remain the same, being mainly used as a dps cd than a perma pet, for frost and blood.

[Schizoide]

@fatgunn the DK pets werent permanent if you werent deep in the unholy tree if i remember right, so i assume this will remain the same, being mainly used as a dps cd than a perma pet, for frost and blood.

It would be great for frost and blood to get a 2min cooldown pet cooldown. Just don't make it the same ghoul unholy already gets, that's all. Frost lich tossing frostbolts and a bloody fetish absorbing blows? Yes, thanks! Another ghoul, just for 20s rather than permanent? Not so much.

That's the heart of it really, cosmetics matter. I like it when my frost DK does frosty stuff.

[fatgunn]

@fatgunn the DK pets werent permanent if you werent deep in the unholy tree if i remember right, so i assume this will remain the same, being mainly used as a dps cd than a perma pet, for frost and blood.

Ah, DK is probably the class I played the least. That isn't as bad then.

[Bigbazz]

Moving away from the current model is good, they have turned each class into 2-4 classes with 5 buttons each... In the past classes had about 900 abilities, your talents and ability use dictated your gameplay bias/style.. It was fun when a Fury Warrior could legitimately play with a single 2hander, or when a Prot Warrior could equip DPS gear and legitimately play while dual-wielding.

Blizzard put a lot of restrictions into the game to force you to play exactly how they want and removed all the fluff/flavour abilities to streamline each spec into its own unique class playstyle, to use the Warrior as an example again a Fury Warrior can no longer function using 1handed weapons because they made certain abilities require 2handers.

I definitely think the old model of specs being more like styles of a single class is better than being full classes themselves... That said, I don't think Blizzard is capable of following through on this, it's going to be a fucking disaster and I look forward to only playing Shadowlands during the launch week(s), like BFA.

[Schizoide]

Like I posted earlier, most of those abilities were traps for newbie players. A prot warrior in DPS gear did poor DPS, even though he could use a lot of the same abilities as a fury warrior.

I'm all for giving fury single-minded fury back, and letting frost DKs and enhance shamans use 2H weapons. I'm all for gladiator returning to prot. That stuff is cool, that flexibility.

Back in the day both frost and unholy DKs used an ability called blood strike to, well, use blood runes. It had no other purpose. Was that meaningful design? Nah.

Back in the day both fury and arms used heroic strike to bleed off extra rage. Again, was that meaningful design? Or did it indicate that rage income wasn't scaling properly with haste on gear? What was gained by them sharing an ability to not waste resources, rather than getting more abilities to generate and spend them?

There are tons of examples like this.

[Thetruth1400]

I have a 120 or 110 of every class in the game and I rly liked the new 'spec defines the gameplay' idea

Well good news then, that isn't changing, you're just getting more options within your class to make you feel like, for example, a complete Mage, not just a Frost mage who apparently knew from birth they only wanted frost and never even looked at any other school of magic.

I say with 99.99999% confidence that you're core rotation and cooldowns will still be completely around the frost tree, only now you'll also have something to do if you get spell locked out of frost instead of standing around with your thumb in your butt until the CD wears off or if you have a situation arise where you'd like to run around casting Arcane Explosion.

TL;DR: The returning abilities are to flesh us out as classes, not redefine and / or remove specs.

[Gungnir]

I get the argument for PVP being a big deal, its very fun and quite possibly the best form of PVP in video games at least in my opinion. But believe me, there is virtually no chance they undue all the progress with fire. Its possibly the best worked caster DPS spec and simultaneously the only class that still has its old school appeal stretching back to Vanilla (Fireball, Pyroblast, and then Ignite away). The only things that have changed were Ignite and Fireblast allowing for instant procs of Pyroblast.

Adding an ignite mechanic to Fireball isn't really undoing any progress for Fire, it's just adding a tool to Frost and Arcane for those who feel like using it. It's only logical that fire damage should have some form of lingering dot effect.

And we did get the Hot Streak mechanic, which is what allowed the instant procs of Pyroblast.
I still miss the WotLK version of it, where you had Fiery Payback to spec into, where the lower the health you got the faster the Pyroblast cast and damage albeit adding a small cooldown. Sure it was a minor thing, but it was incredibly flavourful where it cemented you as this volatile caster that got more deadly the more you pushed him.

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This all well and good for mages who can choose to not use these new spells for the most part. But for several of the other classes re-adding these spells will be detrimental. They will have to be dealt with and most importantly be balanced around.

• Warlocks will have to manage curses.
• Shamans will have to keep up with their totems. In an environment like M+ this will be even worse.
• Death Knights will have to manage their pets. Again another annoyance for M+ players.

I'm all for them bringing back things like Eyes of the Beast and Demonic Circle. But that doesn't mean they have to go through and bloat every spec's spellbook for no reason.

Also the slide from Blizzcon showed Ritual of Doom coming back and....just no, please.

If you don't want to use a Curse then you don't have to use a Curse. I for one would love to have curses back as being able to do something other than just spam rotation is a net benefit in my opinion. But, again, you don't have to use them as they're all very CC oriented but might be very much in handy in certain situations where you only need to apply them once.
For example, say you're assigned to blowing up adds on a fight. Let's say one of those adds needs to be interrupted. You can just throw on a Curse of tongues once and alleviate the issue for the entire raid, on top of only spending a GCD for it.

Totems are a bit of a 50/50, I don't think they have much of a place in the later expansions, but I loved the power of Windfury or Tremor back in Vanilla/TBC for example.

DK specs likely aren't getting pets back, as they didn't have pets before.
Frost and Blood only ever had Army of the Dead, which is very autonomous and do their own thing so I don't believe you have reason to worry there!

And Ritual of Doom was always just a flavor thing, it was never actually used to stuff other than trolling newbies, which granted was quite fun. It falls in the same line as Eyes of the Beast really. Besides, we still don't know the extent of what's being added back, so it's a bit needless to worry and speculate just yet.

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How considerate of you. I am passionate about the game and how it plays. Like I said earlier and in other threads, I don't care what it's called as long it plays nice. Some classes makes more sense when it comes to class design and class niche abilities, like paladin and druid, while for mages it makes less sense. I am an Arcane Mage, or I am a Survival Hunter(my main half of BfA) where having kill shot and hunter's mark makes no sense, while both fits well for the two ranged spec.

I lied about all day, only 8 hours a day. Work, sleep and WoW man. But I'll be here, don't worry

And I'm of the same stance where if it plays nicely then I'll like it, I will say that in my case where I do a bit of everything, having some tools that have been lost along the way does make specs feel a lot nicer for me personally.
I also don't think you have to worry about them adding stuff like Kill Shot or Hunter's Mark to SV luckily, as it would be entirely nonsensical due to being a very APM heavy melee spec. They might look into adding some form of execute ability for SV if they add Kill Shot, but again that's pure speculation, I have no idea where exactly they're going with this just yet as they haven't really released any information.

I'm just glad that they're finally admitting that their pruning was fairly overdone on a lot of the classes, not having traps on BM or MM at the start of Legion was pretty detrimental to the feeling of the class for example. As you put it, it didn't really make sense as a Hunter to no longer have traps.

[Schizoide]

TL;DR: The returning abilities are to flesh us out as classes, not redefine and / or remove specs.

That's just like, your opinion, man. I hope you're right, but until we see what they have in mind I'm skeptical.

[Schattenlied]

Could not shatter bonus on bosses and since that was the main mechanic of the tree it was a invalid spec.

That's just untrue, Fingers of Frost was a thing in WotLK.

Also they tried the duel meaning for spells (one pvp, another pve) created a very complicated system in wow that was non intuitive.

That system is still used to this day... Many spells receive nerfs in PvP that are not divulged to the player in game (usually damage but also occasionally healing and duration)... Take Sub Rogue's talent Soothing Darkness, for example, it says it heals you for 3% HP per second while in stealth or Shadowdance, it is not divulged to the player that this healing is reduced by 66% in PvP, In Legion (may have undone in BFA I don't know, haven't played my Rogue much since Legion destroyed it) Crimson Vial (30% heal over 6s, 30s CD) also received a 50% nerf in PvP that was not told to the player, they just had to discover that for themselves.

However, simply doing something like giving fire mages Arcane Explosion does not suffer from this, it merely exists... They may have different uses in PvP and PvE but how they function will remain consistent between them, so it's not a problem.

- - - Updated - - -

That's just like, your opinion, man. I hope you're right, but until we see what they have in mind I'm skeptical.

Specs have always existed and have always had their "fantasy", all they did in Legion was remove things that used to be baseline, so I don't understand why you would be skeptical of it... You should be losing nothing, only gaining things.