Anyone NOT that hyped for 'return to class'?

[Seuchentiffy]

I have absolutely no idea what you're getting at to be honest.

People's primary complaints with regards to levelling that it was:
1) too long, the game is overwhelmingly focused on 'max level' activities
2) it teaches you nothing meaningful about your class because everything changes at max level
3) you went several levels without any new spell or ability
4) incoherent story

The SL level rework (if executed as they said at Blizzcon) addresses all these issues:
1) They are vastly reducing the overall time from level 1 to max level and from 50-60 you will be able to make meaningful progress on max-level content (on alts)
2) because you will reach max level quicker it will only need to teach you the absolute basics of your class anyway
3) massive reduction in number of levels will mean that every level will reward you with a new ability and/or talent
4) you'll be able to level 1-50 in a single expansion so you will get a coherent story.

Have you even looked at what they've said they're going to do? It most definitely is a rework.

I did and it didnt excite me at all, maybe because i leveled to much over 15 Years and i dont care.

And it doesnt adress any of the Problems i mentioned, if it plays like shit who cares when and where you get what ability.
Same goes for your mentioning of "leveling taking to long" yeah they toke care of that themselves with the removel of the EXP Flask you could get from MoP for example.

Leveling from 1-50 in any expansion you like is maybe nice but i doubt that it will be anything else as it is atm, all it does is space out the level you would do over all the other expansions in 1 expansion with prob all it zones, so their mentioned 60-70% increase in level speed !can! be pointed out to A) less travel time and B) Zone Scaling. If you dont have to change zones let alone expansions because you outleveled it is a huge time saver nothing more.

I mean im all for "please suprise me with something good" but after 15 Years in this Game and seeing/playing with all the decisions they made i highly doubt it is worth even a little hype.

[Temp1on2]

made the wrong quote. And was reading the rest to the other guy. You keep saying "what are you talking about" and that "you think you do but you don't" about the specs to be 1 class. I do, i want a class to be a class, not specs separated in 3 classes. I don't care if others leveled up more of the same class to make another spec. Tbh that's not my problem.

Talents since you touch on the subject, many of them could turn into passives.

And about the levelling too many people asked to win something every level, they just did it. And it's way better. I will enjoy it.

I never said "you think you do but you don't". I said that whilst you claim to what more choices what you are asking for would in fact necessitate less.

Each individual mage spec in game today uses far more abilities, far more regularly than during the time of the original talent trees. Moving away from individual specs would inevitably mean less unique spells or just tons of abilities that are never used.

Why would you want passive effects? Invariably they would become mandatory, i.e. would gimp your character if you didn't take them. If they are quasi-mandatory they should be baseline. A plethora of options isn't true choice.

And I support the new levelling system. In the post you originally quoted I was clearly defending it saying it was a good move.

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I did and it didnt excite me at all, maybe because i leveled to much over 15 Years and i dont care.

If you've been playing for 15 years then it isn't meant to excite you. It's meant to make getting into the game more enjoyable for new players and/or streamlining the experience making it less grindy for people who like to level alts.

And it doesnt adress any of the Problems i mentioned, if it plays like shit who cares when and where you get what ability.

Yes. It. Does. Instead of having x amount of abilities spread over 120 levels you have x amount of abilities spread over 50 levels. By definition you are going to get abilities more frequently. No idea what you mean by "plays like shit" have you played the new levelling experience?

Same goes for your mentioning of "leveling taking to long" yeah they toke care of that themselves with the removel of the EXP Flask you could get from MoP for example.

They are giving a hard nerf to the time it takes to level. From what they've said it will more than eclipse the exp flask, but even if it didn't, you're complain that they've shorted levelling baseline instead of forcing you to buy an item to achieve the same effect?

Leveling from 1-50 in any expansion you like is maybe nice but i doubt that it will be anything else as it is atm, all it does is space out the level you would do over all the other expansions in 1 expansion with prob all it zones, so their mentioned 60-70% increase in level speed !can! be pointed out to A) less travel time and B) Zone Scaling. If you dont have to change zones let alone expansions because you outleveled it is a huge time saver nothing more.

I really can't understand what you're saying here. There is a hard nerf to the time it will take to reach level 50(110).

I mean im all for "please suprise me with something good" but after 15 Years in this Game and seeing/playing with all the decisions they made i highly doubt it is worth even a little hype.

I really don't understand what you're complaining about... The game isn't about levelling, all the new "good" stuff is at max level, *hence* the change to levelling to make it less of a burden.

[Shakana]

I never said "you think you do but you don't". I said that whilst you claim to what more choices what you are asking for would in fact necessitate less.

Each individual mage spec in game today uses far more abilities, far more regularly than during the time of the original talent trees. Moving away from individual specs would inevitably mean less unique spells or just tons of abilities that are never used.

Why would you want passive effects? Invariably they would become mandatory, i.e. would gimp your character if you didn't take them. If they are quasi-mandatory they should be baseline. A plethora of options isn't true choice.

And I support the new levelling system. In the post you originally quoted I was clearly defending it saying it was a good move.

Well then you clearly never played with tree talents? An expansion with tree talents, still had the "bis talents" to choose, and spells, because balanced spells is something blizz can never do, but you would get the best of the 3 specs, into your action bar. And it was amazing. I never loved so much more the in game how i loved in both opposite states = WotLk and Cata / Legion. Again i never played MoP so i can't even touch there.

Opposites but great. Legion focused on that spec thing, fine, but was good because it gave a meaning.

As for the rest now i don't appreciate it, and i had the best time of my life when i had tree talents. Can't even start on rogue, rogue compared to what it was before, it's almost like a joke.

It's not a plethora of abilities, is a variety to show what that class can do, without being specific.

Classes were more unique at that time, this time 2 specs can be good, not the class.

This time, everyone has a replacement and the same utility.

The only utility people don't have is portals and teleports (but still everytime you get more portals on your main city)

And summons and Healthstones - Warlock keeps being the only class that still has more utility than any other.

If they come back to classes being needed and be more unique as our friend locks do, and fix economy, make professions better, i bet everyone would feel more connected to their class than what they are feeling now.

We were told that this spec-specific would make us feel more unique, but it doesn't work, doesn't make me feel more unique as a class, feels like i'm ignoring what my class can be entirely when i choose a single school for my mage. And arcane is the base for fire and frost to gain form, and still, arcane can't be on my spell bar, as i can't have arcane with other fire+frost. Only ability i can have everywhere is frost nova.

More stuff like Frost Nova on Arcane was possible with tree talents. And they should really overhaul Arcane, is like this since a decade.

About the leveling quote i don't remember seeing you talking about leveling with me. As that quote was the first one i saw and it was about the classes vs specs

[Temp1on2]

Well then you clearly never played with tree talents? An expansion with tree talents, still had the "bis talents" to choose, and spells, because balanced spells is something blizz can never do, but you would get the best of the 3 specs, into your action bar. And it was amazing. I never loved so much more the in game how i loved in both opposite states = WotLk and Cata / Legion. Again i never played MoP so i can't even touch there.

Opposites but great. Legion focused on that spec thing, fine, but was good because it gave a meaning.

As for the rest now i don't appreciate it, and i had the best time of my life when i had tree talents. Can't even start on rogue, rogue compared to what it was before, it's almost like a joke.

It's not a plethora of abilities, is a variety to show what that class can do, without being specific.

Classes were more unique at that time, this time 2 specs can be good, not the class.

This time, everyone has a replacement and the same utility.

The only utility people don't have is portals and teleports (but still everytime you get more portals on your main city)

And summons and Healthstones - Warlock keeps being the only class that still has more utility than any other.

If they come back to classes being needed and be more unique as our friend locks do, and fix economy, make professions better, i bet everyone would feel more connected to their class than what they are feeling now.

We were told that this spec-specific would make us feel more unique, but it doesn't work, doesn't make me feel more unique as a class, feels like i'm ignoring what my class can be entirely when i choose a single school for my mage. And arcane is the base for fire and frost to gain form, and still, arcane can't be on my spell bar, as i can't have arcane with other fire+frost. Only ability i can have everywhere is frost nova.

More stuff like Frost Nova on Arcane was possible with tree talents. And they should really overhaul Arcane, is like this since a decade.

I have played since vanilla. Builds were pretty rigid, there were clear 'best' builds an rotations were 2/3 buttons until about cata. I agree that there will always be "bis" talents, but by moving away from the old talent trees it allowed them to do more situational talent, and get rid of the passive effects that were necessary. Now there are situational "bis" talents depending on what content you're doing.

A frost mage pre-cata had 90% the same talents regardless of what content they were doing for example.

And whether you 'appreciate' the rest of my post is irrelevant. I'm not commenting on your personal enjoyment of any system, but its facts that each individual spec in game today uses far more abilities, far more regularly than before. Moving back to class centred game-play in a meaningful way will more than likely lead to less choices not more.
To be clear, that is fine if you think that will be more fun - but don't market it as though you'll be getting more choices because that's incorrect.

I don't know what you mean by "classes were more unique"? I agree that there have been some core identity spells that shouldn't have been removed but I do not believe that in order to restore these abilities we have to lose spec identity that allows for a far more diverse array of play-styles and spells. I don't see how you can feel less unique as a fire mage now than a fire mage in BC that's just nonsensical - throwing around phoenixes, literally combusting and being on fire, having insta pyro procs a staple of the rotation...

About the leveling quote i don't remember seeing you talking about leveling with me. As that quote was the first one i saw and it was about the classes vs specs

You originally quoted my wrong post i think, where i was talking about levelling and not specs.

[Nihilist74]

I don't think "class" will make it any more fun than "spec" identity. What it comes down to is that they made the rotation of abilities not that interesting. It is not going to matter if the specs share some of the same class abilities if they don't make the spec more interesting to play. Before cataclysm when every spec had access to most of the other specs abilities, it was really a mess. There were other spec abilities that would seem appealing to use but they were not really that great to use unless you were playing that spec. They say they want to make some abilities that all specs can use. This is not going to hurt or help. It is just going to give the illusion of choice.

[Temp1on2]

Opposite for me, old school way if you wanted to be Fire then just be all Fire. Don't have to put useless abilities on your bars. But also if you wanted to be Fire/Frost you can do that or Fire/Arcane. So many choices, it was awesome. Now it's just too bland

This is really disingenuous. There were very very very few examples (there were some however) in the history of wow where talents were such that this was effective to play in that way (you simply didn't have enough talents to make your fire and frost spells competitive). Only a tiny minority of players would do this and they wouldn't be doing competitive damage.

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I don't think "class" will make it any more fun than "spec" identity. What it comes down to is that they made the rotation of abilities not that interesting. It is not going to matter if the specs share some of the same class abilities if they don't make the spec more interesting to play. Before cataclysm when every spec had access to most of the other specs abilities, it was really a mess. There were other spec abilities that would seem appealing to use but they were not really that great to use unless you were playing that spec. They say they want to make some abilities that all specs can use. This is not going to hurt or help. It is just going to give the illusion of choice.

This. People have really forgotten that just because you had "access" to a spell didn't make it viable to use, and thus wasn't a real choice.

[Shakana]

You originally quoted my wrong post i think, where i was talking about levelling and not specs.

Ye, my apologies.

I have played since vanilla. Builds were pretty rigid, there were clear 'best' builds an rotations were 2/3 buttons until about cata. I agree that there will always be "bis" talents, but by moving away from the old talent trees it allowed them to do more situational talent, and get rid of the passive effects that were necessary. Now there are situational "bis" talents depending on what content you're doing.

A frost mage pre-cata had 90% the same talents regardless of what content they were doing for example.

And whether you 'appreciate' the rest of my post is irrelevant. I'm not commenting on your personal enjoyment of any system, but its facts that each individual spec in game today uses far more abilities, far more regularly than before. Moving back to class centred game-play in a meaningful way will more than likely lead to less choices not more.
To be clear, that is fine if you think that will be more fun - but don't market it as though you'll be getting more choices because that's incorrect.

I don't know what you mean by "classes were more unique"? I agree that there have been some core identity spells that shouldn't have been removed but I do not believe that in order to restore these abilities we have to lose spec identity that allows for a far more diverse array of play-styles and spells. I don't see how you can feel less unique as a fire mage now than a fire mage in BC that's just nonsensical - throwing around phoenixes, literally combusting and being on fire, having insta pyro procs a staple of the rotation...

I'm not just speaking for my best-experience only, as i'm saying what it worked the best for the gameplay for me and many people i know that plays since the beginning of wow. I see more "i miss tree talents" on my group of friends, in the guilds, and some other places, because it worked for them, than seeing "spec is so much better". That might be true for others, but in game perspective,classes tree talents worked perfectly fine and was really good for the game.

(And i even see people missing Shockadin)

[Temp1on2]

Ye, my apologies.



I'm not just speaking for my best-experience only, as i'm saying what it worked the best for the gameplay for me and many people i know that plays since the beginning of wow. I see more "i miss tree talents" on my group of friends, in the guilds, and some other places, because it worked for them, than seeing "spec is so much better". That might be true for others, but in game perspective,classes tree talents worked perfectly fine and was really good for the game.

But when you say you miss talent trees what do you really mean? Like I keep saying, every spec has far more abilities that they use more regularly than they ever did with talent trees.

If you were a frost mage in the days of talent tress you wouldn't be casting fire spells because they were so under-powered compared to your frost spells. Fire spells were unused by 90% of frost mages, so they were removed in order to give frost mages more unique spells like glacial spike, frost beam, and flurry - spells that you actually used!

[Shakana]

But when you say you miss talent trees what do you really mean? Like I keep saying, every spec has far more abilities that they use more regularly than they ever did with talent trees.

If you were a frost mage in the days of talent tress you wouldn't be casting fire spells because they were so under-powered compared to your frost spells. Fire spells were unused by 90% of frost mages, so they were removed in order to give frost mages more unique spells like glacial spike, frost beam, and flurry - spells that you actually used!

When i'm a bit feeling better cause i'm sick, as i wasn't feeling like discussing about this today, but since i got quoted on it, i talked, i will put more energy into explaining detailed what i miss and why i want it, atm i can just say what i think simply, i'm not feeling very well, to just type and think and transform my thinking into words and a big text. But regardless, i miss talent trees, and my rogue was where i felt the diversity going down. Even today, i think assassination and subtlety should be mixed into one. As i could be before.



The only SS that survived on my pc back in the day at Cata. I miss Sub+Assass.

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@Temp1on2






Also having all preparation and shadowstep on tree talents reduced to this on the same row at MoP:



I was like "WTF is thisss??? i will never play this game EVER, EVER, EVER AGAIN" and i didn't until legion, just because i loved Demon hunters class showing up.
And i only enjoyed Legion and this changes because dh only had a spec 1 dps, and 1 tank.

My rogue? Never came back to it.
And other classes i still feel it misses something. And mostly talent trees.

And for example, warlock could have demon armor and demon skin, and on retail they just have demon armor as a pvp talent, hence why i said some stuff could be baseline , mostly the pvp talents and some on talents. I think they talked about something like this on SL announcement tho.

[Pony Soldier]

Opposite for me, old school way if you wanted to be Fire then just be all Fire. Don't have to put useless abilities on your bars. But also if you wanted to be Fire/Frost you can do that or Fire/Arcane. So many choices, it was awesome. Now it's just too bland

See but then it won't feel like I'm using my class to it's full potential if I do that and I'll constantly feel like I'm playing it wrong. To me it just doesn't make sense to give classes so many spells and abilities if you're not going to use half of them. From a design standpoint it just seems sloppy and makes them feel disorganized. Classes right now feel clean and organized and I also feel like I'm using my class spec to it's full potential putting EVERY spell and ability I have to use and each one feels like an important part of the spec.

I totally get people's opinion on the old more free version of class specs because I used to think the same way after they overhauled them after MoP. I used to hate what classes turned into. I even remember calling them "a hollow shell of what they once were". Over the years though they improved them and I began to understand why they did it and then I started to actually like the changes the more I played them. Going back to the way things were would feel like a regression, like we're going backwards with the game instead of going forward.

[Thelyron]

Its a con, plain and simple. So they can say, "Look we listen to the players, yada, yada, yada, etc." If they really listen to players, we would have seen talent trees back with meaningful choices and no stupid filler talents. So the player can be really rewarded when hitting that next level. Nope, they just want to give classes a few spells back.

The old talent trees didn't have a single meaningful choice in them. Not one. "Do i want .1% more crit or .1% more haste, of which i have to chose one because i can't advance this talent tree without taking stupid filler talents?" is not a meaningful choice. "Do i want my main attack to lose it's physical damage component, but gain 20 yard increased range, or do i want an additional summoned pet, or do i want my regular pet to trigger more effects on the target?" is a meaningful choice.

[Schizoide]

The old trees absolutely had meaningful choices, but you were choosing between entire builds rather than talents. So you choose between 17/34/0 and 11/8/32, not between bloodlust and mortal strike (or whatever). And that's if you knew what you were doing, if not you could completely screw yourself over by picking a nonoptimal build and thus making poor tradeoffs or worst case scenario, missing key talents. That's what the MoP-era talent tiers were designed to address, and that design was brilliant. Implementation, not so much.

[Ihsan997]

I’ll sign on as someone who’s been playing since vanilla but is undecided on this. A lot of people who’ve been playing since the beginning might enjoy the return to the class identity, and I can see the potential benefits, but I can also see the potential hindrances.

In the end, I just don’t know. I’m really looking forward to hearing what people involved with the beta for Shadowlands will say once it’s available.

[Erous]

I believe this will be a broken promise. Similar to path of the titans and when Ion said that they're making changes so items of significantly high ilevel should always be an upgrade.

[Schizoide]

The devs specifically said (for example) fire mages were getting frostbolt, so they would need to flat-out lie for that to not be the case.

The problem with that is, obviously, that fire has no use for frostbolt other than perhaps the snare, so it'll act as a trap for unsophisticated players. You saw this all the time back in the day, people using every spell in their spellbook because they were there, even though they were castrating their performance.

[George Costanza]

I am more worried they will do it wrong. and that it will not be enough.

[Schizoide]

That's my concern as well, that they add a bunch of abilities that you can use, but shouldn't. So there's no reason to have them at all.

Every hunter getting Kill Shot is great, I'm all for it, but what's the reason to give Shadow priests Flash Heal? Shadow Mend thematically made sense for the spec and filled the same purpose. If they cast Flash Heal they'll be dropped out of Shadowform.

[Roar-Powah]

I don't think Blizzard is going to return classes to how they use to be. I think Blizzard is going down the lazy route of giving classes a few spells back and call it a day, and this to me will put me off playing SL among other things.

I think Blizzard would've been better going back to MoP classes and specs, at least they were fun to play.

[Schizoide]

I disagree, most Legion-era specs were the best they've ever been, and BFA mostly improved on that, with a few notable exceptions and if you can ignore the terrible GCD change.

[docterfreeze]

That's my concern as well, that they add a bunch of abilities that you can use, but shouldn't. So there's no reason to have them at all.

Every hunter getting Kill Shot is great, I'm all for it, but what's the reason to give Shadow priests Flash Heal? Shadow Mend thematically made sense for the spec and filled the same purpose. If they cast Flash Heal they'll be dropped out of Shadowform.

The answer is always PvP. For that specific example, you'd use flash heal when you're shadow locked. Having all of your spells use the same magic school is terrible for PvP.