Anyone NOT that hyped for 'return to class'?

[Schizoide]

I'm all for unpruning the cool stuff they removed or moved to PvP talents like anti-magic zone, cyclone, some of the paladin auras, eyes of the beast, ritual of doom, etc.

I'm not for unpruning abilities that have no clear place in the game today, if left unchanged from what they were.

From the stuff listed at Blizzcon:
- Raise Dead makes no sense for frost/blood if it summons the same ghoul unholy already has, just on a cooldown and short duration.
- Hunter's Mark makes no sense as it was, a GCD you had to spend before every single target.
- Frostbolt makes no sense for arcane or fire mages. Give arcane slow back, that would be a good unprune! And fire doesn't need a snare.
- I don't want totems as passive sticks you need to blow a GCD on before every single pull.

Now for all these things, if they're reimplemented in name but not functioning like they did before, they could all be cool. Frostbolt could do something interesting for Arcane and Fire, some sort of synergy with their arcane/fire spells that makes it interesting and compelling to use, adding real gameplay. We just don't know what they have in mind.

[Dadwen]

I'm all for unpruning the cool stuff they removed or moved to PvP talents like anti-magic zone, cyclone, some of the paladin auras, eyes of the beast, ritual of doom, etc.

I'm not for unpruning abilities that have no clear place in the game today, if left unchanged from what they were.

From the stuff listed at Blizzcon:
- Raise Dead makes no sense for frost/blood if it summons the same ghoul unholy already has, just on a cooldown and short duration.
- Hunter's Mark makes no sense as it was, a GCD you had to spend before every single target.
- Frostbolt makes no sense for arcane or fire mages. Give arcane slow back, that would be a good unprune! And fire doesn't need a snare.
- I don't want totems as passive sticks you need to blow a GCD on before every single pull.

Now for all these things, if they're reimplemented in name but not functioning like they did before, they could all be cool. Frostbolt could do something interesting for Arcane and Fire, some sort of synergy with their arcane/fire spells that makes it interesting and compelling to use, adding real gameplay. We just don't know what they have in mind.

Hunters mark rocked for keeping a Stealth target from escaping (or making rogues using a major cool down to get rid of it).

[Schizoide]

Yes and if they keep it for stuff like that, and don't make you spend a GCD to mark every single target, that's all good.

[bloodmoth13]

Me too, classes, not specs.

We don't need 36 dfferent variations of "selective but impactful utility", 12 utility kits, shared across each of the classes 2(DH)/3/4(Druid) specs is plenty.

I consider specs as classes at this stage tbh, hence the slip of the tongue, and i see reverting the legion progress as diluting the specs.
Also each spec should have different utility from others of the same class otherwise you will just pick the highest dps one everytime.

[Osmeric]

Because its working so well, so far?

I think you're going to find that the failure of BfA has nothing to do with pruning.

[Ajko]

I've been a warlock main for almost a decade....

Curses suck.

lock since vanilla. curses and demons are only two things representing warlock. if you wanna biggie hittie firie spellie, roll fire mage

[Kalisandra]

You can do that already, there's no penalty for using a dagger in your offhand as Outlaw.

Huh. Interesting.

I assume this happened when they changed everything to refer to Attack Power, not weapon damage?

[Bigbazz]

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.

Traps for new players are fine, there is a pathway to learning and improving as you play the game and you don't need your hand held at every second, the old game is full of it and people seem to do just fine, it was never a real "problem".

Also, Prot Warrior in DPS gear didn't do poor DPS at all, worse than Fury Warrior sure but especially in TBC and early WOTLK (before dual spec and devastate requiring a shield) a DW Prot Warrior could put out some serious numbers, and that was during a time period when it was completely normal because you couldn't just respec between bosses. If your guilds Fury Warrior was tanking a Karazhan, maybe you had some alts in the group and on some bosses the tank went DPS, on those fights the alts would be crushed by the DW Prot Warrior, especially fights like Shade of Aran with low armor, I'm talking 2000 dps Prot Warriors.

Letting players carve their own way is fun, it's a video game and it's meant to be fun.. Holding the players hand at every step and placing in stop signs and restrictions only results in limiting the potential for the player to create enjoyable experiences.

[Kalisandra]

I think that contributed to it, sure. But it's more that they had to balance 36 classes rather than 12.

And similar to the "curses suck" warlock, I played a shaman since vanilla and believe you me, totems suck. Being forced to waste a GCD before every. Single. Pull. Just to summon a passive buff. They suuuuuuuuuuck. Making totems active abilities that actually do something, and on cooldowns/utility so you don't use them every single pull, that was a great change. I dread going back to the way it was before.

Totems back when you had to summon each one using a GCD were annoying, yes. One GCD for the whole collection though, that was fine. I manage fine on my Elemental now using Totem Mastery. One click, then start casting your opener. Big deal.

[derpkitteh]

I was talking about the player character, not most Mages.

Lore-wise, we are supposed to be in the story. And we can change specs.

Lore-wise specs don't exist.

well, that's simple. we're just that good.

that is the one way they show us being archmages, that we are masters of frost, arcane, and fire. but true archmages do like khadgar and use them all at once.

that is another important thing to point out.

specs do not exist as they are in game lore-wise. like, if i can play guitar irl, that's my "spec". i can't just immediately switch to playing piano and be perfect at it.

lore-wise, most mages do know a bit of frost, fire, and arcane. but only exceptional mages master it to the point that they can, as per the example, put down the guitar and start playing the piano perfectly as well, and then switch to the violin and do that perfectly too. that's basically what our character does when you change "spec", you're just deciding to use frost spells only instead of fire for now.

[GMZohar1]

[QUOTE=kamuimac;51863912]because it may shock you some peopel enjoy current class design when you dont need razor naga to even play on semi decent level and dont feel like you are playing the piano .

it may shock you but more people would rather have lots of buttons. which is why the change is happening.

[Kalisandra]

Why do you care if your frost mage has fireball in his spellbook? That was a good prune, because it's a trap for unsophisticated players.

There were a ton of bad prunes, but removing spells you should never, ever, use was the right thing to do.

And how about Arcane then? Right now the only two non-Arcane spells it's got are Frost Nova and Ice Block, and Frost Nova is clearly only in there for gameplay reasons as it's thematically quite inappropriate.

Oddly, the other two specs have a huge range of Arcane spells, which would seem to dilute their spec's unique feeling, but apparently it's okay for a Fire or Frost Mage to really be an Arcane Mage who happens to do damage with a different colour. Also, Arcane could really use Fire Blast (which Frost gets to have for some reason).

[Schattenlied]

i see reverting the legion progress as diluting the specs.

And I see the Post legion system as diluting the class.

Also each spec should have different utility from others of the same class otherwise you will just pick the highest dps one everytime.

Disagree, just balance them properly and this is a non-issue. The overwhelming majority of people don't min-max like that anyways and never have.

- - - Updated - - -

Huh. Interesting.

I assume this happened when they changed everything to refer to Attack Power, not weapon damage?

No, because weapon damage for outlaw/combat only ever mattered with your main hand (aside from Killing Spree but I'm not sure people even really use that anymore, but that was resolved with the AP instead of weapon damage change anyways).

[Kalisandra]

Sorry, your fireball wont ignite shit if you're outside of fire spec

Fireball used to have its own DoT, aside from Ignite. No reason why it shouldn't do that again.

Man i cant really wait to start weaving those fireblast inside of frostbolts and arcane blast casts... will be so much fun!

I'm sure you love the current mobile DPS options for Arcane, then. Dump your charges with Arcane Barrage, and you're done.

And mop the peak of class design? This meme only started on bfa, mop was one of the most hated xpacks when it was current( i love the xpack, but not because of class design)

Nobody I knew back then rated it lower than Cata, and almost all the hate it got was because of the Pandaren and excessive dailies, not the class design.

[Will]

I really don't get the OP's argument. Having access to spells from other specs gives you more choice, more choice is good.

I mean... you still kinda spec your character towards a particular style, so it's not like you will be using all your toolkit all the time. But you can if you want. And if you don't want to, don't. How is more choice a bad thing when classes have been neutered for years?

[Ludvig]

I also don't think any of the spec revamps with Legion ended up being even a moderate success outside of Arcane mage, UH DK and Enhance shaman I suppose.

I agree with the rest but UH DK and enhancement shamans were far more enjoyable before their reworks.

[Logwyn]

I just want to duel weld as a survival hunter..

[Gungnir]

I agree with the rest but UH DK and enhancement shamans were far more enjoyable before their reworks.

I fully agree with that, I was merely saying that out of the revamps, those offended me the least with how they played.
Don't get me wrong, they were still shit.. just slightly less shit than other specs.

[Schizoide]

Totems back when you had to summon each one using a GCD were annoying, yes. One GCD for the whole collection though, that was fine. I manage fine on my Elemental now using Totem Mastery. One click, then start casting your opener. Big deal.

That was a huge improvement but it still suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. Obviously YMMV.

Regarding enhance, again that's just your opinion man, but IMO Enhance is the best it's ever been by a very, very large margin. It took them a long-ass time to make AE work in particular.

[Tisane]

Glad I'm not the only on who's not looking forward to the return of "class" identity, or well at least not in the way Blizzard is planning to do so. Been playing non-stop since Vanilla myself and I'm used to "spec" identity now and yet I feel like I still have a class identity as well, even without there being spec-wide spells. If they want a return of "class" identity, I'd say, bring back class armor sets instead of the generic armor-type sets we're seeing in BfA now. Bringing back class identity simply by just reviving old spells again feels like an extremely cheap move. Like what's next, Blizzard bringing back the first aid profession to get a better "independence" identity? Or old guild perks to get a better "guild" identity?