After playing Wrath I’m reminded why they pruned abilities

[cozzri]

Boosted an enhance shaman today and it took me over an hour to set up the UI, even though I’m very saavy setting it up now and have leveled a shaman before.

And I’m a little OCD in that I want to put every ability on my bars somewhere, even stuff I know is never getting pressed like Binding Heal on shadow priest. But even if I don’t bind a key to them I know I’ll completely forget about the ability if I don’t occasionally mouse over it.

But looking at just my toons:
Enhance:
—Have to pick (and bind) 20 totems and
——the three options of 4 I can auto-place
—Have to pick the right weapon buff
—Have to pick the right shock
—Have to bind all the heals
—Have to choose and bind all the talents
—Have to bind a half-dozen 3+ minute cooldowns and Shamanistic Rage
—Have to choose glyphs

Shadow (dps isn’t too bad but binding all the heals gets to be a lot)
—3-4 DoTs, Mind Blast, Mind Flay
—The description of shadow form is a page long
—Binding all the heals, flash, greater, renew, shield
—Cure Disease, Dispel Magic, Mass Dispel
—Cooldowns of shadow fiend, dispersion, Hymn of Hope, Symbol of Hope

And my other alt is a pally, and they have even More abilities:
Auras
Hands
Blessings, both manual and greater
Normal DPS abilities
Heals
Raid Cooldowns
Personal Cooldowns

And don’t get me wrong it was/is a lot of fun having all this utility and clever ways to use it is what made classic, classic.

But I can see why the choice was made to prune. New players in 2008-2012ish would have been swamped. And also as the competitive raiding stepped up, each extra ability was another thing to debuff and balance.

Wow.... You just reminded my of how much fun i had playing my Priest in WotLk... I played shadow healed all of the dungeons with my friends, And switched to Holy for raids; i had completely forgot about this. Binding Heal was a such a good ability for main healing the tank, it let me ignore environmental mechanics a lot of times to keep my tank, and myself up. Good times, and circle of healing.... I'm drooling

[Garymorilix]

If you are using 50 keybinds you are doing something wrong

It's not about actively using 50 keybinds, but having abilities keybound for convenience.
That's what keybinds are for. And WotLK is full of rarely usable but still sometimes useful abilities that warrant a keybind.

Not everyone is a mouse clicking mouth breather.

[Private Matters]

literally lol. i am free to put whatever opinions about the game I want on a forum about the game. shame on you for taking it so personally Enjoy your spellbook full of useless abilities and feeling good about yourself for figuring out "which ones are good and which ones are bad"

I am not against having a lot of buttons to push, i am against having useless buttons i will never use and abilities that do nothing for me.
Engaging gameplay isn't figuring out which ones are trash and putting the rest into a 1 button macro rotation, retail is fun in the sense that nearly all my buttons have a use and will be used after a proc or talent or whatever systems are in place in retail that classic is lacking.

So many specs are just tossing abilities into a macro and spamming 3 buttons. such fun.

I also find it funny how you people really think you are pressing more buttons in classic and that retail, although pruned, has less button management and thought process behind "what is good and bad to use in x y z situation"

see unholy dk. Dnd > IT PS BS (1button) > death coil spam. with summon gargoyle when you have all the buffs. Repeat and be nr1 dps. such engagement

Yes you are 100% free to post whatever stupid opinion you want just like how anyone else is free to tell you as such, and in a game where pushing buttons is the entire point yes having more buttons to push does make it more fun. You talk about macros like people don't do it in retail with even simpler rotations, at least in classic that helps free up your options, and I've been playing both versions of the game since their inceptions and you are in fact pushing more buttons and do in fact have more depth and choices. You can rationalize it all you want but retail is hollowed out version of the game where they have to make the depth the 'carrot on the stick' to keep people subbed and its honestly sad to see so many people act like that's fun.

[mcnally86]

That's the problem right there. You DON'T NEED to use all of them all the time. But it's fine to be bad at the game, not everyone is capable of understanding what spells are better than others and when.

What new player wants to join a game to be bad?

There will be no agreement on this thread. OP is talking about how complexity is intimidating and off-putting to a lot of people on a casual MMO like wow. Others are arguing they hate people who like easier things (while playing one of the easier MMOs) and it's not bad once you put on 100hours of leveling. Which means the game is weird for new players. Y'all are going to keep posting across each other. Hell, people in this thread say extra keys are vital and useless.

[Segus1992]

In pvp i assure you some classes run out of action bar button space.
Im 100% certain

They need to create a macro for every single button to do something on CTRL and SHift press. Modifiers.

Dont know why some people are acting surprised.

I mean yeah if you need 5 target macros for every important skill you're gonna run out of bar space no matter what. That's not really an issue with bar space as it is with macros being too powerful.

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What new player wants to join a game to be bad?

There will be no agreement on this thread. OP is talking about how complexity is intimidating and off-putting to a lot of people on a casual MMO like wow. Others are arguing they hate people who like easier things (while playing one of the easier MMOs) and it's not bad once you put on 100hours of leveling. Which means the game is weird for new players. Y'all are going to keep posting across each other. Hell, people in this thread say extra keys are vital and useless.

The vast majority of players (old or new) are pretty bad. Chances are the new players won't even be able to tell that they're bad because they'll fit in very well.

What MMO that is currently relevant is harder though? I assume we can both agree it doesn't get much easier than FFXIV.

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Wanted to post once more, just to explain my demo problems; https://imgur.com/a/uzqUQPF

So breath, stealth detection, curse for pvp/raid, 2 CC's, sense demon/taunt, mana drain, scorch (ehh), felhunter and wand is not binded. Just cant fix em with my standard keybinds. Bloat^^

Sounds like a you problem. People wanting to dumb the game down because they can't be arsed to put effort in is what caused the terrible class design we had in later expansions.

[Deferionus]

If you are using 50 keybinds you are doing something wrong

Or you are playing a warlock in PvP. A fel hunter alone is a ton of keybinds. Attack, follow, stay, spell lock current target, focus spell lock, devour magic enemy, devour magic team mate 1/2/3. So that is 9 keybinds just to control a felhunter. If you also have a focus/current taget for fear and banish it is easy to get your number of keybinds up there.

[Thundering]

What new player wants to join a game to be bad?

There will be no agreement on this thread. OP is talking about how complexity is intimidating and off-putting to a lot of people on a casual MMO like wow. Others are arguing they hate people who like easier things (while playing one of the easier MMOs) and it's not bad once you put on 100hours of leveling. Which means the game is weird for new players. Y'all are going to keep posting across each other. Hell, people in this thread say extra keys are vital and useless.

yeah what horror you need to learn how to play....... All of these abilites create alot more gameplay maybe you only use 20% of them in a normal raid, but there is also open world content and dungeons, pvp etc all these abilites create fun since u can play more as you want. But yes if you dont learn how and when to use what you will be bad....but i guess mobile games are made for people who dont want to learn stuff and have freedom.

[Segus1992]

If you think WotLK had button bloat, you will need to fine a lot of new binds for Cata and MoP. For Shadow, PvE button bloat is the biggest it has been right now in SL, and it will get worse in Dragonlands.

I used slightly more than half of my retail keybinds as Shadow when playing on WotLK Frostmourne.

You can't have played PvP if you got away with that few as Shadow definitely doesn't have fewer skills if you bind all of them.

[vian]

A lot of things is just clutter that you'll never use.

[mcnally86]

What MMO that is currently relevant is harder though? I assume we can both agree it doesn't get much easier than FFXIV.

It takes maturity to accept bad is ok. Or at the very least you don't need to be 100% all the time. An easier game has broad appeal. I think this is why retail is getting ready to be controller friendly. I have seen the gameplay with action-camera enabled. It look pretty playable and ready to eat FF14's lunch. Or at the very least claw back some of the most casual players.

As for hardest MMO's, the most difficult die because uper hard nich games are... only for uber hard to please nich players. They don't have broad appeal. That said Everquest is still going and I hear is pretty hard. I think the real answer is Eve online though. You can know a guy for 12 years but it turns out he was only supporting you until you could get a big enough ship to make robbing you with his band of pirates and ponzi schemes worth it. Like dang dude, how can you play a game where your friends list is also a list of potential enemies?

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yeah what horror you need to learn how to play....... All of these abilites create alot more gameplay maybe you only use 20% of them in a normal raid, but there is also open world content and dungeons, pvp etc all these abilites create fun since u can play more as you want. But yes if you dont learn how and when to use what you will be bad....but i guess mobile games are made for people who dont want to learn stuff and have freedom.

So stop being surprised when youtube commenters talk about how classic population is less than retail? I am not saying YOU have to be less hardcore. I am saying it inherently has less appeal. I never commented on the quality of people, although you make me believe your team is LQ.

[Thundering]

A lot of things is just clutter that you'll never use.

that depends on you and what you do ingame, I never played a class where not all abilities are useful in some situation. Sadly in the name of making the game easier and more accessible they make the game so easy you dont need them anymore. We see this already in tbc and wotlk.

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It takes maturity to accept bad is ok. Or at the very least you don't need to be 100% all the time. An easier game has broad appeal. I think this is why retail is getting ready to be controller friendly. I have seen the gameplay with action-camera enabled. It look pretty playable and ready to eat FF14's lunch. Or at the very least claw back some of the most casual players.

As for hardest MMO's, the most difficult die because uper hard nich games are... only for uber hard to please nich players. They don't have broad appeal. That said Everquest is still going and I hear is pretty hard. I think the real answer is Eve online though. You can know a guy for 12 years but it turns out he was only supporting you until you could get a big enough ship to make robbing you with his band of pirates and ponzi schemes worth it. Like dang dude, how can you play a game where your friends list is also a list of potential enemies?

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So stop being surprised when youtube commenters talk about how classic population is less than retail? I am not saying YOU have to be less hardcore. I am saying it inherently has less appeal. I never commented on the quality of people, although you make me believe your team is LQ.

last time i looked on a you tuber they said, the amount players in classic seems greater than retail due much higher amount of raid logers, and now when wotlk is out too i bet there is even more people why retail will maybe get more players with dragonflight and then it will die simple due too very long content droughts.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Boosting a class you’ve never played and feel overwhelmed by the spells in your spell book?

No, its Blizzard’s fault.

[Laqweeta]

This post is a GREAT reason why boosts for classic shouldn't be allowed - not only is 1 to 80 NECESSARY to learn your class, but it's also NECESSARY to learn your keybinds.

[mcnally86]

that depends on you and what you do ingame, I never played a class where not all abilities are useful in some situation. Sadly in the name of making the game easier and more accessible they make the game so easy you dont need them anymore. We see this already in tbc and wotlk.

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last time i looked on a you tuber they said, the amount players in classic seems greater than retail due much higher amount of raid logers, and now when wotlk is out too i bet there is even more people why retail will maybe get more players with dragonflight and then it will die simple due too very long content droughts.

Last time I watch the community youtubers they were telling everyone to make characters on Mega realms and once people came back they pretended they never contributed to the problem of clogged servers. Right now I see they are saying "OMG so many people need better servers, get it together blizz" a couple months ago it was, "not enough players free realm changes to Grobbuluis needed, get it together blizz."

[voidillusion]

Pruning and having much less abilitys is awesome and healthy gameplay. The proof is just how sucessfull retail has been doing vs how classic has done.

[Recovery]

I was exagerating with the 50, most classes get away with ~5 macros that just rotate their abilities and cds...

and from my experience what is 'useful' while leveling is hardly used in an actual raid setting, and so you are left with 3 buttons you push, a couple cd's, and a spellbook full of useless never to be seen abilities. hence why i totally agree that the ability pruning was a great move by blizzard.

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Well that's a bold statement. quite rude on your part to assume i am bad at the game and can't decide which of my 4 out of 50 buttons are to be pressed or stored in my spellbook never to be seen again, until they take them out, at which point i will have to cry because i don't have them anymore, although i never actually used them in actual in game situations o.o

Just because YOU dont use alot of the abilities, doesnt mean that people who are getting the full value out of the class arent using them. Wow is never good when pruned. It takes customization and outplay / skillplay potential away every time its pruned. Noone wants to walking around pressing 12351231212125. We want buttons that means something and alot of them. I have around 50 keybind on Hpal and between arena / raid, I use every single one of them.

[Nalam the Venom]

I use 1-7 + QEF.

The rest i click.

Playing Warlock.


I’ll never understand how people can click Shift+F and Stuff like that, Does it not confuse you where the bind or what ability has what bind?

Instead of just clicking?

[Recovery]

I use 1-7 + QEF.

The rest i click.

Playing Warlock.


I’ll never understand how people can click Shift+F and Stuff like that, Does it not confuse you where the bind or what ability has what bind?

Instead of just clicking?

You just memorize it. I would venture to say that most people who play wow even semi seriously dont need to look at a keyboard to type..

Also, we dont use out keyboards to move. We use strafe keys and mouse.

The thing about keyboards is... The keys never move. They will always be in the same exact place. I literally learned how to type without looking and stuff because of wow keybinds and having to type quickly in certain situations.. lol

[threads]

retail has way more bloat than wrath lol.

[Onikaroshi]

MoP had some of the best class design in the game ever, and they ruined it when they started pruning in WoD.