Why are so many classes designed like this?

[Nalam the Venom]

Hey.

Just wondering…

Why are so many classes designed around 1 ability doing almost all of the damage, and every thing else looks close to “Useless” ?

[Beingbob]

Builder-spender type gameplay is typically one of the easiest ways to create a satisfying rotation, and they're overrelying on it. Legion/BfA Shadow was far more unique than the revamped Shadowlands version for example, but even though it was unique it wasn't that fun to play in most content whereas the pretty boilerplate new Shadow has been very well received.

For these examples, Arms is a bit of an odd case due to Condemn - warriors with a different covenant won't have as uneven a dmg breakdown. You're also seeing the results of multidotting being quite nerfed in Shadowlands, partly because when multidotting is strong it makes Affliction, Balance and Shadow even more powerful than they already are in multi-target (spread) cleave situations which are extremely common in (mythic) raids.

Honestly I don't see this as a huge problem. Yeah the specs are a bit homogenous atm, but Blizzard have mostly failed to create unique AND fun alternative playstyles. Something like the new Enhancement for example, which is not a builder-spender (*) but rather somewhat strange, old-school spec with a variety of short cooldown abilities with limited interaction (outside of talents) is fairly divisive in terms of player enjoyment.

* Actually... it does have a bulder-spender component with Maelstrom now that I think of it... it's just a bit de-emphasized since there's no longer a dedicated "builder" ability, and it's not as big a deal as e.g. Eviscerate or Pyroblast is for Subtlety and Fire respectively.

[Amariw]

Honestly I don't see this as a huge problem. Yeah the specs are a bit homogenous atm, but Blizzard have mostly failed to create unique AND fun alternative playstyles. Something like the new Enhancement for example, which is not a builder-spender (*) but rather somewhat strange, old-school spec with a variety of short cooldown abilities with limited interaction (outside of talents) is fairly divisive in terms of player enjoyment.

We had mop warlocks though. Both the spender (dest), semi spender (aff with haunt) and mixed (demo) speccs were much more unique and imo fun to play. They were too strong, but i think thats tuning and dot snapping more then inherent problems in design.

[kaintk]

because spec with all ability dogin the same dmg is boring, people love that big bouton to push with big number on it :P

[Ludvig]

It's the builder-spender crap the diablo devs forced onto the game for literally every dps spec in legion. You could argue some specs had it before like with post-cata destruction, but those managed to be somewhat fun still (before legion ofc), perhaps because other spells still felt impactful. Now every spec is just a hollow shell of what they used to be. Imaging casting like a 2.5 sec spell like starfire and it does like 2k damage while an instant spell like starsurge does like 9k. It's absurd.

[Watchers]

a dull class design, since bfa its bad.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Players complain when they don't have a hard hitting ability. I specifically remember it being a problem they wanted to address in enhancement as far back as WoD, where they had too many sources of damage to make any of them feel like they hit hard. If every ability hits for similar amounts, then you don't feel like your big spell that you build up to is as big a payoff.

[Lolites]

Hey.

Just wondering…

Why are so many classes designed around 1 ability doing almost all of the damage, and every thing else looks close to “Useless” ?

LOOKS is the important word here, cant coment other of your examples as i barely play them but for affi lock malefic rupture dmg is based on how many dots the target have so without other spells that "look useless" it wouldnt do shit... which tbh is basic knowledge of spec which you should learn way before you start to analyse your dmg, so i cant see this as issue

[A Chozo]

People like big-hitting spells.

[Jurani]

For half of those specs it really is just "looks" like they're useless. Nowhere near "all the damage." The spender is doing 30% of their damage. That means the majority is everything else.

[Nerovar]

Hey.

Just wondering…

Why are so many classes designed around 1 ability doing almost all of the damage, and every thing else looks close to “Useless” ?

It's a mystery to me. At this point, even other MMORPGs do a much a better job at this. I actually found it really refreshing when I tried the latest SWTOR expansion to play a bit of PvP and had several hard hitting abilities and dots and all of them felt impactful and fun to use.

In recent years WoW class design made me feel like some kind of pavlovian dog.

[Kelduril]

Players complain when they don't have a hard hitting ability.

Demon Hunter hasn't had one in years lol

[Nalam the Venom]

Players complain when they don't have a hard hitting ability. I specifically remember it being a problem they wanted to address in enhancement as far back as WoD, where they had too many sources of damage to make any of them feel like they hit hard. If every ability hits for similar amounts, then you don't feel like your big spell that you build up to is as big a payoff.

Instead of 1 hard hitting.. why not have all hard hitting?

Have all dots and drain soul do the same dmg as rupture.

No not nerf rupture down to the level of the dots, But increase the dots damage.

Or at least the shadow ball/drain soul dmg.

The fillars need dmg as well.. for when you are out questing and stuff

[Thrif]

Why not? As long as the game mechanics themselves are interesting, does it matter what spells actually does the damage?

[Ham on Rye]

It feels good to have a "main" ability, especially if your spec has ways to get you to use it more often. If all your abilities did the same amount of damage, then it wouldn't matter what button you pressed.

That said, there are, of course, limits to this. Warlocks are generally fine with the Malefic Rapture nerf, but only if they compensate by making their dots hit harder (because they play Aff because they want to play a dot class, not a Rapture class). Pyroblast hitting hard is much cooler than Fire mages getting all their damage from Ignite last xpac, which felt awful because it wasn't even a button you pressed. It was just something that happened in the background. And that Condemn graphic is just plain stupid. I feel like Devouring Plague is probably the best of these examples you gave right now.

[haiyken]

As a fire mage, I feel quite okay with the current rotation and what spells are doing damage-wise.

I disagree that all spells should do a lot of damage, because not all spells are here for damage.

For example, Fireblast exist mainly to enable Hot Streaks and finish mobs, not much else. Its damage being on par with Pyroblast would not make sense, as Fireblast is instant and off the general CD.

Same for Scorch, wich is a really specific spell in our toolkit, making really low damage but being quick to cast and while moving. It having the same damage as a Pyroblast or even a Fireball, while moving ? It would make other spells obsolete. As it is, Scorch is really useful to keep doing damage while moving and trigger some Hot Streaks with Combustion.

Pyroblast is of course the most damage spell, but you can't just spam cast Pyroblast and win. You have to actually do your rotation right in order to make the most use out of Pyroblast.

I think looking at the damage of spells only is not the right way to look at this issue (I don't think there are any issues, at least for my fire mage). There are a lot of other aspects in a spell beside damage, like cast time or synergy with other spells.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Instead of 1 hard hitting.. why not have all hard hitting?

Have all dots and drain soul do the same dmg as rupture.

No not nerf rupture down to the level of the dots, But increase the dots damage.

Or at least the shadow ball/drain soul dmg.

The fillars need dmg as well.. for when you are out questing and stuff

If your fillers do as much damage as your spenders, then the spenders don't feel like a satisfying payoff. Destruction Warlocks are complaining about this a lot.

[jellmoo]

It keeps the skill cap at a consistent level so that mistakes aren't punished by a gigantic drop in DPS. All a player needs to do is make sure to use their big spender at the right time (on cooldown or when they hit resource) which they learn to do while leveling anyway. If they mess up with the other abilities, the DPS loss isn't so bad that it cripples them and the group. If the other abilities made up more of their DPS, mistakes would have a larger impact.

It's class design based around ensuring that even the worst players can be competitive enough to get by in group content, rather than designing the game in such a way that players are taught how to actually work their class.

[LordVargK]

What would be the alternatives though?
As a WL player since cata, I am familiar with different forms of specs. I did only play destru in cata, and that spec was a mix of everything. You had your upkeep buffs (soulfire cast every 20 seconds or so), DoTs Doom/Agony and Immolate, your basic rotation (incinerate, combustion), a short cd (chaosbolt) and a debuff (Curse of elements). Then you had your cooldowns: Dark Soul (or demonsoul) and iirc Doomguard. Ontop of that you had a pet and had to manage your mana. The result was a mess. I quite liked it, but I was new to WoW back then, so my opinion wasn't very differentiated. No builder-spender here.
Then came MoP:
Destru: Builder-Spender Mechanic, with mana effectively replaced by an energy system. Chaosbolt/Shadowburn were your nukes, everything else supplemented that. You played around your trinked/cloak procs.
Affli: Snapshotting was a thing, so you had to manage your DoTs. No builder spender here, but also playing around your Procs.
Demo: Builder-Spender all the way, but that did not translate to the dmg graph. IMO the best form of builder spender in WoW, sadly scrapped because of DHs. While UVLS was a thing, most of your dmg came from imps, without it your dmg profile was very balanced. It was still builder spender, though.

Legion did another rework:
Destru: little change, still builder spender. Shadowburn was effectively removed. Mana was made irrelevant.
Affli: Reworked to builder-spender: Soulshards became your primary ressource, but you still had to manage your Mana. Unstable Affliction became your main source of damage.
Demo: Did not play it, though I think most of the dmg came from your artifact ability. So another form of builder-spender, where you build your demon army to buff one nuke.

BfA:
Destru: unchanged.
Affli: Doubled down on builder spender: Darkglare became your main nuke, coupled with UA.
Demo: small changes. Your demonic Tyrant became your main source of damage, still builder-spender.

SL:
Affli: Malefic Rupture replaced Darkglare and UA as your spender.
Destru: unchanged.
Demo: unchanged.

So, WL has had 4 forms of design:
-One where every ability was about equally responsible for your damage.
-Builder-Spender designs of many sorts
-Cooldown-centric designs
-Trinket proc centric design with snapshotting.

So, why this text?
Over the years, builder-spender has become more prevalent. And this has a simple reason: Maximizing your damage in a small window of time (aka burst) is generally better for m+, thus many classes are designed with that in mind. Now, you can't burst all the time, and the devs wanted that CDs feel impactful, so they put them on long cooldowns. That leaves builder-spender designs as the only design for modern WoW, since you basically have burst on a medium cooldown, which is useful in most content, contrary to designs with no high and lows. Not all specs are designed that way, but most have some ability that enables them to burst. And this ability mostly works best, if you use it combined with your most powerful "basic" ability or cooldown, depending on spec. Because damage stats multiply another.
Also that design is more responsive for the player, because you can immediatly see your impact.

[Easyclassictopkeklel]

It's a mystery to me. At this point, even other MMORPGs do a much a better job at this. I actually found it really refreshing when I tried the latest SWTOR expansion to play a bit of PvP and had several hard hitting abilities and dots and all of them felt impactful and fun to use.

In recent years WoW class design made me feel like some kind of pavlovian dog.

Yeah but its working. Look at the numbers. WOW is fkin old and still the mmorpg big dog. Wanna know what happened to specs which felt different or were complicated but rewarding to play? Nobody played them.
Build/spend is something not overcomplicated even for very casual player. Also it works well in all kinds of content. Even tho I miss old feral days f.e. the bleed playstyle did not fit this criteria. And btw, unique playstyle...nobody wanted to play it. And even when a class is only slightly different I hear SO much complaints...like how are people still complaining over ww monks hit combo and mastery? ^^
Truth is: This is what the majority of the playerbase wants. Even tho some do not even know they do.