I'm maining a class.. not a spec.

[october breeze]

The loud minority wants to play alts with minimal impact in game time, the silent majority CANCELED SUBS in WoD, because min-maxing alts and nothing else to do for main chars is not working out for the majority of the players.

Blizzard would be stupid at this point to ever go back to ALT friendly WoW, since that was crashed in WoD pretty hard.

People talk about empty servers all the time, but if you did not play WoD you have no idea what a HIGH-POP-SERVER => WOD EMPTY looks like.

But the game was very popular AND alt friendly in MOP and WOTLK. what you talkin about mate?!

[razorpax]

I agree. I don't understand wanting specs but not wanting them to feel distinct. If they're barely different, what's the point?

That’s not the argument

The thing is there is a big grind on par with gearing a new character when you just want to use the other stuff your character has

I’m not asking for my affliction lock to play the exact same as my destruction spec

I’m asking for us to not have to grind 5 different systems to be able to play the other 66% of my class

[Trend]

if I play a Rogue I don't think I should have to put in 3 times the work to play all the Rogue specs compared to someone who only plays one spec

Good thing that you don't have to put 3 times as much work in then eh?

• neck level applies to all 3 specs
• cloak corruption resistance applies to all 3 specs
• trinkets are usable on all 3 specs
• a lot of gear pieces can be useful on more than 1 spec
• etc, etc

You can come up with reasonable complaints if you want to. No need to make up stuff.

[Niwes]

That’s not the argument

The thing is there is a big grind on par with gearing a new character when you just want to use the other stuff your character has

I’m not asking for my affliction lock to play the exact same as my destruction spec

I’m asking for us to not have to grind 5 different systems to be able to play the other 66% of my class

extremely well said.

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Good thing that you don't have to put 3 times as much work in then eh?

• neck level applies to all 3 specs
• cloak corruption resistance applies to all 3 specs
• trinkets are usable on all 3 specs
• a lot of gear pieces can be useful on more than 1 spec
• etc, etc

You can come up with reasonable complaints if you want to. No need to make up stuff.

lets look at your points, point by point:

1) neck level: you are right.
2) cloak corruption resi: you are right. but you loose no word here, on the corruption „enchants“, you buy with Nyalotha currency. resi is useless without corr gear. and you need completely other corruption „enchants“, in lets say heal spec than in dmg spec.
3) trinkets: yes, they are usable on all 3 specs. and often completely useless. maybe rogue example above can use same trinket in 2 specs, without gimping himself. ok. but what about the example above ? a dps using a healer trinket ? come on...
4) a lot of pieces can be useful in more than 1 spec: yes, in older xpacs this was true for nearly all slots. today you first can cut out 3 azerite pieces with wrong traits. than you cut out all corrupted gear with wrong corruptions (this is additionally to point 2 above). than you cut out trinkets (see point 3). also wpn is mostly different for specs. so, in the end of day you share 3-4 items, if even, in BfA, when switching specs. 3 of 16 slots. great.
5) you loose not a single word on essences. i know why...

your quoted poster is totally right. he choosed to play a core dps class. this means he accepted to loose the ability to tank or to heal. EVER. he accepted it, because he factually said „i wanna go that deep dive into dps that i wanna adapt myself perfectly to every fight, dps wise.“ and he is doing this, by switching specs. what use has this, when he cant switch specs easily or have to invest double the time to do this ?

no offense here: but, play a dps/heal class or a tank/dps class in BfA and switch specs or try to get 2 half-competitive gear sets for both specs. after that, come back in here. i spend you 10 pizzas, if your opinion not changed then.

besides all of that: why have anyone to invest even just a day in another gear set for your class, when you choose a class and not a spec in this game ? you choosed a i.e. heal/dps class NOT, to play 2 specs like 2 classes after each other. if the game was ever designed with the fact, that you have to do nearly the same work twice, for 2 specs, the game just had offered every class with 1 spec.

i mean: if i have to invest everything twice for lets say an elemental shaman and a heal shaman as 1 class, i could play a fire mage and a holy priest ? so, for what even have specs at all ?

what i wanna say: the ppl that tell us, that specs should be completely distinctive and should have heavy investment, should in reality cry for 1-spec classes in wow. you cant say „we want classes and viability and versatility and balance and whatever“ when at the same time you say „we want completely separated specs with own identity“. thats not rational.

either you have 36 classes with 1 spec and 1 investment per class, or you have 12 classes with 3 specs and specs are part of the class and the whole investment in class (i said 12 classes and 3 specs, cause druid 4spec and dh 2 spec even them out).

everything else makes no sense at all. from a rational/logical point of view. imo.

[cparle87]

Personally I think Azerite gear should never have been in the game because in no way did it fulfill its purpose. Blizzard said from the beginning that the goal was to be able to customize your gameplay and that azerite traits would be switched up each raid tier. But it didn’t. I have been using the same boring traits for the entire expansion.

But given that it was in the game, they should at least have removed the reforge cost because that is just pure gatekeeping. In my opinion.

How did azerite gear not give you the ability to customize? You found your best throughput traits then you had choices between heals and speed from kills, absorb bubble, food buff when you rez (good for pvp), and more. Also I don't recall them saying anything about them being switched up each raid tier. We got raid-specific traits that only came from certain raids. Boring is an opinion.

There's a reforge cost cause they tune things and change things and you might want to change your traits. Like maybe you run with the dark heart trait but the corruption got you killed in raid or you decided it wasn't worth the trouble you can switch into something different. Why didn't you do what I did? Build a set for each of your specs? Unless that's what you've been complaining about this entire time, of course. If you don't want to, fine.

[DarkAztaroth]

As someone who plays shaman, I would like to be able to switch specs without having to constantly update 3 different sets of chest, helm and shoulders. Right now I kinda have to get different azerite pieces of very similar levels for each one of the specs to get decent bonuses as they don't translate great from DPS to Healer or Int to agi both.

I'm pretty casual when it comes down to it, sticking to what I'd consider low difficulty content, but it still feels like it goes against the idea that was established when they made it so gear get the same primary stats all the time and only having to change weapons and trinkets. Even spirit was less of an issue as having some spirit on some gear instead of crit for Ele didn't handicap me as much as not getting these abilities do.

I'd say new gear is most exciting, farming duplicates and updating armor sets a bit less so :S

I don't play any dps only classes and I dunno how bad you guys have it, but this is kind of a hassle I think ._.

[Kaver]

How did azerite gear not give you the ability to customize? You found your best throughput traits then you had choices between heals and speed from kills, absorb bubble, food buff when you rez (good for pvp), and more. Also I don't recall them saying anything about them being switched up each raid tier. We got raid-specific traits that only came from certain raids. Boring is an opinion.

There's a reforge cost cause they tune things and change things and you might want to change your traits. Like maybe you run with the dark heart trait but the corruption got you killed in raid or you decided it wasn't worth the trouble you can switch into something different. Why didn't you do what I did? Build a set for each of your specs? Unless that's what you've been complaining about this entire time, of course. If you don't want to, fine.

Well, as I said, I’ve used the same Azerite traits for the entire expansion. There has been no need for me to change anything because the same traits were the best at all time. To me there have been almost zero customization and I know it’s been the same for a lot of people. Did you often change your playstyle with Azerite gear in BFA?

You might not remember it, but Blizzard did say that you would switch up your traits each raid tier. Because people were concerned that they were going to use the same traits for the entire expansion already before BFA launched.

I did have different Azerite sets for my different specs, but yes, that’s essentially a part of what I was addressing in this thread.

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Good thing that you don't have to put 3 times as much work in then eh?

• neck level applies to all 3 specs
• cloak corruption resistance applies to all 3 specs
• trinkets are usable on all 3 specs
• a lot of gear pieces can be useful on more than 1 spec
• etc, etc

You can come up with reasonable complaints if you want to. No need to make up stuff.

Hi Trend. You’re right.

I was talking about Azerite gear, Corruption effects and Sockets. And those things require A LOT of work per spec.

[Kallisto]

Says who? Why is the 9-12+ hours per week that is commonly put towards mythic raiding not enough for Blizzard to just... leave me alone? There's really no reason to make the lives of mythic raiders intentionally worse, it doesn't benefit anyone.

Because that gives us wod where there was fuck all to do outside the bullshit raid or die.

[munkeyinorbit]

"-We listen to feedback from the community" -also blizzard while ignoring feedback about covenants conduits and soulbinds.

"Blizzard never listens to feedback" as Blizzard literally reacts to player feedback and implements changes to address that feedback all through bfa.

[Kallisto]

The sad part is that it's easier to maintain a competitive alt than a competitive offspec and has been since Legion(and is probably staying that way in SL). This is because of how much of your power comes from weekly lockouts, and how you have to choose between your specs with basically all the decisions you make, so having an alt effectively doubles the amount of weekly power you get to allocate.

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They can have all the content they want, just don't make it bleed over into each other forcing raiders/PvPers to do all the other content they don't care about. Put overpowered stuff for world content as a reward for world content, repeat for all types of content.

Unless blizzard put a gun to your head you are not forced. You have free will, say no. If you lose your spot then you're raid leader is a piece of shit and you'll be better off without them.

Yes you can just raids and nothing else all the way up to mythic nzoth on the worst class and if you're not stupid with your rotation and positioning do mathematically more than enough dps to kill him.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Yes, let us further streamline and water down stats and specs until they all play the same and only fulfill the most basic of class fantasy... That along with a demand for perfect balance will surely lead to lots of variation and fun gameplay...

God I wish they wouldn't listen to incessant backpeddlers.

If the game never changes and offer new means of progression, it'll stagnate and die. As much as some want to lie and say otherwise, this is a game that has been around for 16 years and didn't see anything resembling the asspull downward trends that people in this thread want to project onto BFA.

Asking them to do better and learn from mistakes is good. Asking they return to raid-or-die such as they did in WoD, is idiotic.

[munkeyinorbit]

LFR is NOT raiding, sooooooo...

Repeat a lie enough times and it becomes the truth.

[Kaver]

Because that gives us wod where there was fuck all to do outside the bullshit raid or die.

They can give us things to do without making them mandatory. Actually they will do this in Shadowlands which is awesome. They also did this a lot in BC with the reputation grinds. It wasn’t mandatory but it was something people could do if they wanted to.

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Yes, let us further streamline and water down stats and specs until they all play the same and only fulfill the most basic of class fantasy... That along with a demand for perfect balance will surely lead to lots of variation and fun gameplay...

God I wish they wouldn't listen to incessant backpeddlers.

If the game never changes and offer new means of progression, it'll stagnate and die. As much as some want to lie and say otherwise, this is a game that has been around for 16 years and didn't see anything resembling the asspull downward trends that people in this thread want to project onto BFA.

Asking them to do better and learn from mistakes is good. Asking they return to raid-or-die such as they did in WoD, is idiotic.

This is not what the thread is about

[Kallisto]

It's bad design because it doesn't incentivize people to try harder content.

It's true, as a mythic raider, you don't ever have to do LFR (except in insane outlier cases where a trinket is just too good in the first week of heroic, or something).

But it affects mythic raid guilds, and mythic guild leaders/recruiters something fierce. The talent pool for mythic continually shrinks tier by tier, because there's a casual option to fall back on. Mythic raiding, in general, requires sacrifice of some selfish attitudes, like doing raid mechanics, and people are more likely to do that if they're already sacrificing their time to stick to a schedule for a raid. Most of my raiders, more than anything else, hated wasting time more than anyone else, and anyone who messed up an easy mechanic just because they were tunneling and only cared about themselves/their own numbers need to, for the success of the guild, be put on the bench or kicked if truly disruptive. But there's just not enough players to replace them with.

As someone who was an officer/recruiter/GM from WotLK through Tomb of Sargeras in Legion, it was much easier to recruit in those earlier times because people were naturally curious to see if they were "good enough." And many of them were. There is a necessary amount of churn in people trying out normal -> finding out it's real easy for them -> trying out heroic -> finding out it's real easy for them -> wanting to try mythic, that just doesn't exist in the playerbase any more. I think getting them in normal starts that churn, but LFR with its no social obligations, drop-in, drop-out nature, etc, takes away from all of that.

In other words, the effect is psychological. If people can be content with no effort, they're never going to push themselves to be better. The game design, in any RPG, should be to push players to try and take on more and more difficult challenges. But if they can see all the game has to offer in LFR, there's no such push.

The idea that people will step up their game died a painful death with the get good post from ghost crawler with he 180 post later on in cata when the game was bleeding subs like it had been shot in the jugular.

It wasn't until lfr was introduced that the bleed actually stopped for a while (transmog helped this too as well).

People that do lfr are people that without it will never step foot into raids. Likely the same people who before lfd never set foot into dungeons and I'm talking about normal level not heroic.

Pre lfr the numbers of people raiding was rediculously low to the point cata raids were tiny, asset flips with one of the elemental Lords not even having a voice actor and he was pretty much meant to be the main end boss of that tier. Cata raids were so tiny that WoD had more raid bosses and trash in 3 raids than all the cata raids combined (if we include bh then we need to include wod World bosses).

Then in mop with more people seeing the raids the correlation does imply that larger more epic raids were allowed to come back as the numbers justified the costs.

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They can give us things to do without making them mandatory. Actually they will do this in Shadowlands which is awesome. They also did this a lot in BC with the reputation grinds. It wasn’t mandatory but it was something people could do if they wanted to.

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This is not what the thread is about

Nothing is mandatory unless blizzard puts a gun to your head. You can mathematically kill all bosses at all levels doing nothing but the raids.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The idea that people will step up their game died a painful death with the get good post from ghost crawler with he 180 post later on in cata when the game was bleeding subs like it had been shot in the jugular.

It wasn't until lfr was introduced that the bleed actually stopped for a while (transmog helped this too as well).

People that do lfr are people that without it will never step foot into raids. Likely the same people who before lfd never set foot into dungeons and I'm talking about normal level not heroic.

Pre lfr the numbers of people raiding was rediculously low to the point cata raids were tiny, asset flips with one of the elemental Lords not even having a voice actor and he was pretty much meant to be the main end boss of that tier. Cata raids were so tiny that WoD had more raid bosses and trash in 3 raids than all the cata raids combined (if we include bh then we need to include wod World bosses).

Then in mop with more people seeing the raids the correlation does imply that larger more epic raids were allowed to come back as the numbers justified the costs.

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Nothing is mandatory unless blizzard puts a gun to your head. You can mathematically kill all bosses at all levels doing nothing but the raids.

Yep. The myth that LFR holds people back from pursuing organized raiding needs to die.

The amount of organized raiding has remained pretty damned constant in terms of percentages from before as well as after LFR. What LFR did, was to justify the resources spent on raiding content. Not sure how any raider would want that to go away in pursuit of a reality which never existed and never will.

Organized raiding is a minority activity. Always was.

[Kaver]

Nothing is mandatory unless blizzard puts a gun to your head. You can mathematically kill all bosses at all levels doing nothing but the raids.

True, but we are not in a court of law here. It’s video game created for enjoyment. What is mathematically possible doesn’t matter compared to how people actually experience it. If a lot of people feel that content they don’t enjoy is mandatory to stay competitive then it’s not a good thing. But again, Blizzard have already realized this so in Shadowlands they are making a lot of content that has no or very little impact on performance. Content you can do purely for fun and cool cosmetic rewards. It’s awesome that not all rewards will be related to power progression.

[CylomDashti]

Yep. The myth that LFR holds people back from pursuing organized raiding needs to die.

There is some truth to it.

Anecdote:
I've introduced a group of friends to WoW during MoP, had to leave them due to work. Came back a month later and they quit the game because they beat the final boss.
Checked their armory and they hit 90, geared up a bit and did SoO lfr, then they quit the game cause, well, they beat the final boss.
Had I not been there, they'd have never known that lfr is "story mode" and there are 4 difficulties.

[Kallisto]

True, but we are not in a court of law here. It’s video game created for enjoyment. What is mathematically possible doesn’t matter compared to how people actually experience it. If a lot of people feel that content they don’t enjoy is mandatory to stay competitive then it’s not a good thing. But again, Blizzard have already realized this so in Shadowlands they are making a lot of content that has no or very little impact on performance. Content you can do purely for fun and cool cosmetic rewards. It’s awesome that not all rewards will be related to power progression.

Then they are wrong with their feels and need to stop being ruled by emotion abd do what every functioning adult can do. Take a step back turn off their emotion and think for a few minutes. It will do them the world of good.

[Kaver]

Then they are wrong with their feels and need to stop being ruled by emotion abd do what every functioning adult can do. Take a step back turn off their emotion and think for a few minutes. It will do them the world of good.

Normally I would agree with you. But this is not about business for the players. It’s a video game. It’s entertainment. It’s about feeling good and having fun.

[CylomDashti]

No you’re not, you’re maining a spec and always have been.

We haven't been maining a spec since they introduced dual spec.
I'm maining a mage just like how my friend is maining a rogue and we'd switch specs as needed. m+/different bosses in raids/pvp and different comps.
I do not wish to be a gimped fire mage compared to other fire mages simply because I choose the covenant that benefits frost, because I'd like to do pvp.
Want to do m+ on my DK alt? well too bad! I choose the limb for pvp and now I'll never get to be the top in m+ or raids.

„I'm maining a class.. not a spec. Because when starting the game, i selecting a class, NOT a spec..

But when you boost a character or do class trail they make you choose a spec