I don't really like "modern" class gameplay.

[FAILoZOFF]

Damage/healing comes from sooo many different sources that nothing really feels that powerful. For instance my holy priest, renew in itself does close to nothing on its own, you kinda have to keep it up for 10% increased healing on targets with it up, then there is some heal proc when PoM heals target with renew on and there is another one stat stacks as renew ticks.
Kinda prefrred it when you wanted to cast renew just because it was just a nice HoT on its own. That theme is present all over other classes, not saying that "vanilla style" where you pressed just one or two buttons was ideal, but since wrath pretty much every class had a solid rotation/priority and it still felt really good when you just saw that juicy WW crits on warrior, where now ww is just a tool to activate warriors cleave.

[saixilein]

I can agree in some way, for like Resto Shamans... Riptide was a a strong Heal + Hot - now you can just spam it. It lost some value and dont feeling so impactful anymore.

[NineSpine]

Damage/healing comes from sooo many different sources that nothing really feels that powerful. For instance my holy priest, renew in itself does close to nothing on its own, you kinda have to keep it up for 10% increased healing on targets with it up, then there is some heal proc when PoM heals target with renew on and there is another one stat stacks as renew ticks.
Kinda prefrred it when you wanted to cast renew just because it was just a nice HoT on its own. That theme is present all over other classes, not saying that "vanilla style" where you pressed just one or two buttons was ideal, but since wrath pretty much every class had a solid rotation/priority and it still felt really good when you just saw that juicy WW crits on warrior, where now ww is just a tool to activate warriors cleave.

I agree with you, but you are about to get flamed for this opinion. I think the sweet spot was around BC and LK. These are the factors I'd identify, and all of them have exceptions:

• Kits felt tight without feeling like a mini game.
• Kits seemed highly reflective of the class fantasy.
• Clever use of abilities could actually prove useful and create clutch plays.
• Every ability felt meaningful. You could tell when something hit or when something saved you.
• Tons of utility abilities outside of the normal rotation, many of which had very specific scenarios to use them in.
• Classes were allowed to shine in in individual fights without it being considered a balance problem.

[Malkiah]

this is the inevitable DDR-ification of WoW, it's a design flaw rooted deeply in the core of the entire structure of the game.
when WoW came out in 2004, it followed in the footsteps of everquest in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is that the gameplay side of things was designed around the social side of things.
IE, the pace of the game was slow and you only had a couple buttons for the explicit reason that you would be able to type and read and communicate during combat, because games like WoW and everquest were partially on the forefront of social communication on the internet back in the early 2000s.
WoW was mostly a game, but also partly a chat room and that was inherent to the entirety of how a user interacted with the client.

you can see the real shift in WoW's gameplay when ventrillo, discord, teamspeak, etc etc, started to become more of a thing - when the upper end guilds (who are the guilds that sign up for the PTR and test raids and thus are the measuring stick for devs) were using voice comms to communicate the inevitable happened... "make players hit moar buttons faster" was the obvious (and stupid) way to fill in that vacuum and ramp up "interactivity" in the game.

fast forward 15 years and here we are, where gameplay is now playing DDR with your fingers - DDR for your rotation, for movement and avoidance, for reading screen prompts... hell they even made fucking *traversal* into DDR.

anyways, i don't like it either.
i'm not saying go back to when every class had 5 buttons total and each of them had a 5s or higher cooldown, but IMO the fact that the core gameplay loop of combat has zero downtime at any point is annoying as hell.

[Biomega]

Yes, WoW's current class design is bloated and needlessly convoluted. It has too many buttons, too many procs, too many things with fringe benefits. It needs to be streamlined and trimmed down and brought back down to a manageable level.

Which does not mean going from 50 buttons to 5 buttons. No one is asking for WoW to become a mobile game. But there's plenty of space that can be saved before we go down that far.

[Hotmail]

Blizzard should just release a World of Warcraft: Memberberries expansion pack.

member... member... member...

[FAILoZOFF]

you can see the real shift in WoW's gameplay when ventrillo, discord, teamspeak, etc etc, started to become more of a thing - when the upper end guilds (who are the guilds that sign up for the PTR and test raids and thus are the measuring stick for devs) were using voice comms to communicate the inevitable happened... "make players hit moar buttons faster" was the obvious (and stupid) way to fill in that vacuum and ramp up "interactivity" in the game.

VEEEEERY interesting take, never though of it that way, but yeah, it really does make a lot of sense
still, we had that wrath-legion (id say) period when we had proper class mechanics and gameplay without it being so overblown i feel like

I agree with you, but you are about to get flamed for this opinion.

Im well aware of that and prepared for it
And yeah agree with your points, I am myself more of a PvP player and they amont of sht flying around... you just can't make out what is going on your screen. Feels like wach ability adds "what feels like a 10" different buffs/debuffs. On my rogue i counted like 6 or 7 different gap closers -.-

[Jebz]

There is always classic if you want to press 123 repeat.

[FAILoZOFF]

Yes, WoW's current class design is bloated and needlessly convoluted. It has too many buttons, too many procs, too many things with fringe benefits. It needs to be streamlined and trimmed down and brought back down to a manageable level.

Which does not mean going from 50 buttons to 5 buttons. No one is asking for WoW to become a mobile game. But there's plenty of space that can be saved before we go down that far.

oh yes brother agree but between both extremess theres gotta be that sweet spot, no?

[NineSpine]

Yes, WoW's current class design is bloated and needlessly convoluted. It has too many buttons, too many procs, too many things with fringe benefits. It needs to be streamlined and trimmed down and brought back down to a manageable level.

Which does not mean going from 50 buttons to 5 buttons. No one is asking for WoW to become a mobile game. But there's plenty of space that can be saved before we go down that far.

I'm not sure that the actual number of abilities has really bloated meaningfully. I think that what has happened is that non-rotational abilities have been pruned and replaced with rotational abilities (in most cases).

[FAILoZOFF]

There is always classic if you want to press 123 repeat.

I explicit said that's not what Im looking for... besides, my warriors rotation isnt all that much eaier on wrath/cata classic than it is on retail.

[Sezerek]

you can see the real shift in WoW's gameplay when ventrillo, discord, teamspeak, etc etc, started to become more of a thing - when the upper end guilds (who are the guilds that sign up for the PTR and test raids and thus are the measuring stick for devs) were using voice comms to communicate the inevitable happened... "make players hit moar buttons faster" was the obvious (and stupid) way to fill in that vacuum and ramp up "interactivity" in the game.

Thats some weird ass take given that teamspeak was some normal guild thing right at the start of the game. I started playing in august 05 (eu, so 6month after release) and every guild on my lil server used teamspeak.

[FAILoZOFF]

I'm not sure that the actual number of abilities has really bloated meaningfully. I think that what has happened is that non-rotational abilities have been pruned and replaced with rotational abilities (in most cases).

I kinda liked it old way, where you had quite a bit of that situational abilities but these were always with you, used or not, was kinda easier on keybinding muscle memory

[Shadowferal]

I explicit said that's not what Im looking for...

It's inevitable that you'll get plenty of responses from those not able to grasp the vast middle ground.

[NineSpine]

It's inevitable that you'll get plenty of responses from those not able to grasp the vast middle ground.

There are a lot of people who have a very emotional reaction to the idea that anything is preferable than the current state of WoW, no matter how small that thing is. They will get upset if you say a can opener is better at opening cans than WoW is.

[Rageonit]

VEEEEERY interesting take, never though of it that way, but yeah, it really does make a lot of sense
still, we had that wrath-legion (id say) period when we had proper class mechanics and gameplay without it being so overblown i feel like

Not sure if it makes a lot of sense. My guild was using voice comms since Molten Core... And many other guilds did too (as we were hardly "hardcore").

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Thats some weird ass take given that teamspeak was some normal guild thing right at the start of the game. I started playing in august 05 (eu, so 6month after release) and every guild on my lil server used teamspeak.

Exactly. Voice comms were already prevalent back then, as many players played fast-paced games that pretty much required them (like Counter Strike).

[Runicblood]

Blizzard should just release a World of Warcraft: Memberberries expansion pack.

member... member... member...

oh how this forum would enjoy that

[WowIsDead64]

Damage/healing comes from sooo many different sources that nothing really feels that powerful. For instance my holy priest, renew in itself does close to nothing on its own, you kinda have to keep it up for 10% increased healing on targets with it up, then there is some heal proc when PoM heals target with renew on and there is another one stat stacks as renew ticks.
Kinda prefrred it when you wanted to cast renew just because it was just a nice HoT on its own. That theme is present all over other classes, not saying that "vanilla style" where you pressed just one or two buttons was ideal, but since wrath pretty much every class had a solid rotation/priority and it still felt really good when you just saw that juicy WW crits on warrior, where now ww is just a tool to activate warriors cleave.

Yeah, problems started in Cata and MOP, when some abilities became some sort of "Meaningful for 10min raid boss fight only". And overall tendency to slowly nerf classes continues with time. For example in TWW it really feels like many specs have their AOE nerfed, cuz for now it seems like SP isn't only spec, that can AOE on every other pack only.

[Glorious Leader]

Yes, WoW's current class design is bloated and needlessly convoluted. It has too many buttons, too many procs, too many things with fringe benefits. It needs to be streamlined and trimmed down and brought back down to a manageable level.

Which does not mean going from 50 buttons to 5 buttons. No one is asking for WoW to become a mobile game. But there's plenty of space that can be saved before we go down that far.

5 buttons is about right actually. Considering how simple vanilla was...

[Thirtyrock]

Damage/healing comes from sooo many different sources that nothing really feels that powerful. For instance my holy priest, renew in itself does close to nothing on its own, you kinda have to keep it up for 10% increased healing on targets with it up, then there is some heal proc when PoM heals target with renew on and there is another one stat stacks as renew ticks.
Kinda prefrred it when you wanted to cast renew just because it was just a nice HoT on its own. That theme is present all over other classes, not saying that "vanilla style" where you pressed just one or two buttons was ideal, but since wrath pretty much every class had a solid rotation/priority and it still felt really good when you just saw that juicy WW crits on warrior, where now ww is just a tool to activate warriors cleave.

I have such a hard time with this one.

I rerolled from DH to DK this expac and I'm really loving Blood & Unholy. Unholy is supposedly one of the hardest specs in the game - I say supposedly because I don't personally have the experience to judge this, as I haven't played enough classes, I'm not saying that people are exaggerating the difficulty - and it is a tough rotation for me. There's so much to keep track of.

And I freaking love it.

On the other hand, I really enjoy difficult gameplay and Unholy is probably too difficult for the average player. In the past, there was a kind of acceptance that there were going to be classes with more difficult rotations and classes with simpler rotations, and there was a tradeoff. The more difficult rotations could do higher damage, if done well, but the easier rotations were easier to master, and so hit the higher range of potential damage more easily.
While I'm OK with this, conceptually, unfortunately it leads to people flocking to the classes where it's easier to max out your potential damage. If we say the theoretical top damage for the most difficult classes is around 100, but the avg player typically averages closer to 70, because of the difficulty of the rotation. And then you have a spec with a significantly simpler rotation who's theoretical maximum is 90 and the avg player typical parses around 80, you'll see people swapping to the easier class because it does more damage in reality.

I think the rotations in Wrath, Cata, and even MoP were too simple for my tastes, with a few exceptions. Right now, Unholy is great, for me, but likely overwhelming for a lot of players (jesus, this sounds like humblebragging, but it's not intended that way). Unholy is great for me because I know the cap is high and I have a lot of work to do. That's exciting for me. Mastering a rotation like I had on my Paladin in Wrath or Cata would take almost no time at all, they were just so simple.

My personal preferences are to keep the complexity about where it is. I'm not sure that's what's best for the game, though. More complexity is too much, for sure.

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5 buttons is about right actually. Considering how simple vanilla was...

I would hate this. I was fine with this type of rotation when that was the only thing I'd ever experienced. But going back to the types of rotations we had in WotLK - MoP would feel empty, to me.

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There is always classic if you want to press 123 repeat.

If Blizzard was releasing new content for classic, like actually taking the story somewhere, I think this is a fine response. But I think a lot of people who would prefer the classic gameplay don't play classic because they want to play new stuff. This is purely a hunch on my part. I have no data to back this up in any way.

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I'm not sure that the actual number of abilities has really bloated meaningfully. I think that what has happened is that non-rotational abilities have been pruned and replaced with rotational abilities (in most cases).

I think you're correct here. I have about the same number of total keybinds on my DK as I did when I was playing Prot Paladin in Wrath-MoP. Somewhere in the realm of 30-36. The difference is a lot of my Prot keybinds were situational and wouldn't be used in every fight. When BoP had a 5 minute CD (I think? Man, long time ago) you didn't use it except in emergencies or for specific mechanics. There are very few of those 30-36 keybinds that don't get used at least once every raid boss fight. Most of them far more often, on a 2 minute cooldown or less.

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It's inevitable that you'll get plenty of responses from those not able to grasp the vast middle ground.

Yep. This is 100% true. Humans are bad at nuance and holding conflicting truths in their heads. Much easier to pick a side and die on the hill.