Anyone NOT that hyped for 'return to class'?

[Boricha]

As someone who used to be an avid pvper, I'll gladly take back all the cross-spec utility spells we've lost. It really depends on what they give back to us. If I could get back shatter, frostjaw, deep freeze, PoM, and alter time on my fire mage then I'd be in heaven.

[Lane]

The game was overall better when hybrid classes paid the tax. That’s a fact. Wasn’t better for hybrids but the entire point of hybrid is jack of all trades but master of none

I enjoyed playing druid as a true hybrid in vanilla, but it had no place in raids where min/max is king. A feral/resto hybrid was amazing in PvP and useful in 5-mans for off-tanking/healing. When BC hit I was torn between being thrilled I had competitive DPS and dismayed that my utility had been stripped. I don't know where the balance is. I doubt I'll ever raid again, but if I did I wouldn't want to be pigeonholed into healing again like in vanilla.

Honestly I'd be more hype is they went back to caster dps using mana. This was such a stupid idea. This isn't Diablo 3 not every class needs it's own resource gen/depletion. Oh balance druids not longer use mana they use Astral Power. Oooh Shamans no longer use mana they use Maelstrom Power.... oooooookay bro. #MakeManaGreatAgain

I feel this way about all the classes. I have hated Holy Power ever since they added it to paladins. I've wanted Wrath-era paladin back for years.

[Pakheth]

To me it feels like a lot of these people started playing after Mop and they don't actually know what it was like to have the abilities. You don't know what's you're missing if you never experienced it in the first place. I personally think that Enh shamans were way more fun in Wrath/Cata. Playing an Enh shaman doesn't even feel like a Shaman anymore.

Exactly.

We had so many buttons and yeah sure it could be a bit much at times but they were there if you needed them. You didn't have to have all on your action bar. I still don't have all buttons on my action bar and that is fine.
Like hunters had serious button bloat with all the tracking options but they fixed that by first making a drop down menu button and later made it part of the map functions. Same with multiple pets.

I seriously miss having a rotation that is longer than 3-4 buttons on most classes to be honest. And for Elem shamans to have more totems than elementals(which aren't even totems anymore). Enhancement is just a regular melee class. Resto still uses totems thankfully.

Blizz has been very good at removing mechanics that made the classes unique which is sad.

[Swnem]

I am not

I want 36 streamlined aesthetically pleasing classes, not 12 cobbled messes with tons of dead buttons

Exactly this. Class fantasy is nonsense perpetuated by classic fans. We don't play classes, we play specs, and that's a good thing.

[Vankhorne]

I'm am definitely not excited for getting a bunch of crap from the other lock specs shoved on me. I play destruction for a reason. If I wanted a bunch of DoTs on my bars I would play affliction. And if I wanted a bunch of pets I'd play demonology. FFS I miss when Grimoire of Sacrifice was the go to talent and I could just eat the demon for his ability.


AND CURSES!!! Why on earth are they putting curses back? Who is excited about curses? It's just another thing to manage and they're so damn boring. I was legitimately happy when they removed curses and now the little shits are coming back.

So far, the only lock thing I'm happy about is demonic circle not being a talent anymore.

And here you see, ladies and gentleman: the typical PvE-only player. Did you ever do a Battleground? Arenas? Hell, World PvP? Because let's face it: Complaining about pets and having the ability to Spell Lock/Seduction a target while you are CCed, or having spells from other specs like Shadowburn, screams virgin at PvP to me.

You are also complaining about having CURSES ffs. Did you ever use Tongues on a Healer? Curse of Exhaustion on a fleeing target/Flag Carrier? Weakness on a Melee bashing your Healer's Face, and enabling him to live with an inch of HP instead of dying?

Probably not. As a Warlock player, I'm baffled there are other Warlocks with this mindset. Probably a player from post Cataclysm.

[Ethule]

I feel this way about all the classes. I have hated Holy Power ever since they added it to paladins. I've wanted Wrath-era paladin back for years.

Holy power is the reason I ONLY PLAY HOLY PALADIN. If you want a more Wrath feeling Pally play 2h Holy. Feels so good lol

[ThrashMetalFtw]

How long did you play WoW? This needs some context, If you haven't played before the era of Cataclysm I can understand you being skeptical of the idea of "Class" as you've never truly known what a class is, but rather a spec with a few doodads shared among the class. Go to classic, that alone will teach you what a CLASS truly is, not a spec. And hopefully Shadowlands will do a good job at returning class identity.

To me, as someone playing 15 years It feels shit to know I've had over 50 abilities and then am restricted to 15 per spec and the other 5 were removed. It felt like my class was butchered, standardized and according to analytics and data alone, was streamlined, not due to player feedback or criticism.

If you haven't played before the era of WoD you mean. Everybody still had all their spells in Cata and MoP. The only change in Cata, was that you got your "signature spells for each spec" like Mortal Strike and Chaos Bolt at lvl 10 instead of 40-50-60 like you did in the early expansions.

[Management]

I agree. I like the idea of spec identity rather than class identity. I don't mind if they bring back some of the abilities for some classes but as people have said, a lot of the unpruning will just bring back stuff that was never very useful in the first place. I'd rather have new spells that are spec specific.

[Kickbuttmario]

I'm am definitely not excited for getting a bunch of crap from the other lock specs shoved on me. I play destruction for a reason. If I wanted a bunch of DoTs on my bars I would play affliction. And if I wanted a bunch of pets I'd play demonology. FFS I miss when Grimoire of Sacrifice was the go to talent and I could just eat the demon for his ability.


AND CURSES!!! Why on earth are they putting curses back? Who is excited about curses? It's just another thing to manage and they're so damn boring. I was legitimately happy when they removed curses and now the little shits are coming back.

So far, the only lock thing I'm happy about is demonic circle not being a talent anymore.

"waves hand" I am kinda excited for curses if they end up doing something with them o.o

[Niroshi]

I agree. I like the idea of spec identity rather than class identity. I don't mind if they bring back some of the abilities for some classes but as people have said, a lot of the unpruning will just bring back stuff that was never very useful in the first place. I'd rather have new spells that are spec specific.

What wasn't useful?

[Rinnegan2]

over the past couple of years a lot of people voiced their opinion on this. you either got: 'this is too complex' or 'I don't have enough buttons to press'. the people that want changes to class design are literally 50% / 50% split in what they want. they both want changes, but 50% want the game to be simpler and 50% want the game to be harder. when you think about it, that basically means that what we have right now is the sweet spot. going to be interesting to see how it turns out now that they announced that they will change things. you either get a ton of abilities back that you hardly ever use / never use in combat OR you get new abilities that replace old spec-specific ones and thus nothing actually changes OR you get new abilities that are added to your current rotation. going to be interesting to see what they do. personally I think it will be option 2, where they replace say 'ray of frost' with 'fire blast' which is a flavor change but no rotational change.

[fatgunn]

And here you see, ladies and gentleman: the typical PvE-only player. Did you ever do a Battleground? Arenas? Hell, World PvP? Because let's face it: Complaining about pets and having the ability to Spell Lock/Seduction a target while you are CCed, or having spells from other specs like Shadowburn, screams virgin at PvP to me.

You are also complaining about having CURSES ffs. Did you ever use Tongues on a Healer? Curse of Exhaustion on a fleeing target/Flag Carrier? Weakness on a Melee bashing your Healer's Face, and enabling him to live with an inch of HP instead of dying?

Probably not. As a Warlock player, I'm baffled there are other Warlocks with this mindset. Probably a player from post Cataclysm.

No, I don't PvP. I play WoW for PvE content, if i wanted to PvP I'd do it in another game. If Blizz wants to add stuff like curses for PvP players there's already a perfect place to do that PVP TALENTS. You can have all your niche crap sequestered away where I don't have to touch it.

"waves hand" I am kinda excited for curses if they end up doing something with them o.o

I would be excited if I had any faith Blizz would make them interesting. But most likely its just gonna be a debuff to track, that we'll be balanced around anyway. So it might as well not even exist.

[Gungnir]

I don't see how they could bring back a proper sense of "class identity" without also bringing back the talent trees to support it tbh.

Right now all it sounds like is just giving back some rarely used abilities.

But maybe that is for the better.

Just look at MoP, that's basically the peak of class design meeting spec design, and also toted as the best expansion we've had gameplay-wise, and also had the 'new' talent tree.

Secondly, we haven't really gotten much information at all, so there's no use in speculating what's going to happen as we're over a year away from the next expansion.

No, I don't PvP. I play WoW for PvE content, if i wanted to PvP I'd do it in another game. If Blizz wants to add stuff like curses for PvP players there's already a perfect place to do that PVP TALENTS. You can have all your niche crap sequestered away where I don't have to touch it.

If you don't like having extra buttons you can press sometimes then don't fucking use them.
No one is forcing you to use Curse utility and no one will care if you don't, as we see people on the daily that don't realize that certain buttons exist.

"REEE I DON'T DO THIS THEREFORE NO ONE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DO THIS."
You can straight fuck off with that logic, mate.

[Pheraz]

Ah yes, the unique playstyle of 'press the cooldowns'.
Don't get me wrong, as a Ret paladin I also miss those days because we're stuck with FUCKING COMBO POINTS since Cata and will be stuck with it until the game dies.

However, as a resource system, Maelstrom is a lot more dynamic and modular than most others and the new Enhance doesn't feel ass to play.
Thus, in my eyes, it's one of the more successful Legion revamps because every other spec just start feeling like shit to play by comparison.




Alright that's fine, here's how that's going to go down.

Let's say you play a fire mage.
You've got the good ol' handy fireball, fire blast, pyroblast, flamestrike etc. All the nice ol' fire spells.
You haven't got ice block, since that's frost. You haven't got frost nova since that's also frost.
You're not allowed to have blink, conjure refreshments, teleports, arcane intellect, invisibility, polymorph since that's all arcane stuff.

You're not allowed to have Rune of Power, you aren't allowed to have Mirror Images, you can say goodbye to Ring of Frost and Ice Ward.


Now tell me which spec will be favoured for raid, PvP and M+ content when you are going balls deep into 'spec identity'.

My god then rename those abilities at least.

Iceblock->plasma barrier
Frost nova->flame hands
And so on

It's just ruining the fantasy

[Valysar]

I'm fine with specs now, but I'll still play my main DH, so "return to class" is not essential to me obviously.

[bluesock]

Ditch Void Form + Insanity Mechanic and I'll be happy.

Preach brother.

They turned us from a shadow priest to a bootleg void mage.

[Nebron]

The names should be a hint.

You play a CLASS. You have an access to most of the class spells. Then, you choose SPECIALIZATION. Mage is a perfect example:

You are a mage, so you know how to use magic of all schools. But in order to be good at something, you specialize in a particular school of magic. It feels way more natural to BOOST some of your spells to explicitly emphasize your interests in particular powers, rather then disallow you to use powers you should know. I can't think of a mage who would be able to conjure a major snow-storm and pierce it's enemies with icy spikes, yet would not be able to cast a minor fireball. It just feels weird and out of character.

For that reason, and many other, I just feel Classes are more rational and paradoxically way more CREATIVE than SPEC themselves. I can easily see why people prefer specs over classes, but I'm not sure wheter that type of gameplay is healthy fkr the game itself. I took my time on Classic, and it's so much better to feel the class as a 'whole' rather than just a piece of pie. Making classes more about classes is also a great oportunity to brong back variety to the game. Maybe it's a chance for Frost DKs to wield whatever weapon they wish... like two-hands?

Bringing back the sense of classes doesn't neccessarily mean we will be left with boring and maximally packed characters, overloaded with spells. It just means we will get more of the 'wholeness' feeling. Mage will still focus of Frost spells as these are the spells that are the strongest in his spec. But it also means he will be allowed to use other schools of magic and incorporate them in their rotations in specific situations.

I wish they also remade the talent trees, as it would be a perfect opportunity now, when they get back more into classes them specs

[Kalisandra]

Ah yes, the unique playstyle of 'press the cooldowns'.
Don't get me wrong, as a Ret paladin I also miss those days because we're stuck with FUCKING COMBO POINTS since Cata and will be stuck with it until the game dies.

However, as a resource system, Maelstrom is a lot more dynamic and modular than most others and the new Enhance doesn't feel ass to play.
Thus, in my eyes, it's one of the more successful Legion revamps because every other spec just start feeling like shit to play by comparison.

Ret played pretty well in MoP, and it had Holy Power. It even had Inquisition and was still okay. The problem isn't the Holy Power, but rather Blizzard's insistence that Ret needs downtime in its rotation. Combine that with the low levels of secondary stats in BfA, especially Haste, and a system that felt fine back then feels like ass now.

[Valette]

I don't mind more buttons, I'd welcome them with a loving embrace. I just want abilities that makes sense for my character. To me it makes no sense that a fire mage uses frostbolt for example. Sure, as an "archmage" I should still know how to cast it. But it just seems so stupid that while I'm literally melting the skin off your bones with my fire spells that you'll be slowed down because my frostbolt from earlier is chilling you. What is it, are you burning or are you frozen? Surely it cant be both.

[Isilrien]

I've played since the beginning, but I'm skeptical that Blizzard is really bringing back the feeling of a class rather than just focusing on the specialization.