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

[Thirtyrock]

What I reject in this conversation is the idea that "Maybe on average groups take five minutes longer to get into" is a sign that the game is fundamentally broken.

I don't think it means the game is fundamentally broken, by any means. I'm pointing out that the meta, which should only affect the top end groups, absolutely trickles down to groups where it is meaningless. In those two seasons, iw asn't running anything above the max key that gave gear. There is/was no comp that couldn't complete the keys at that level with a group of decent players. Outside of some very specific affixes, there was no combination of 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps that couldn't run a 10 (or the season's equivalent).

But the meta still trickles down.

People are not rational. They don't look at things like the top performing specs and see that they're only top performing because the group they're performing in is also doing XYZ. People just see that it is the top performing spec and want to bring it. Unholy DKs are/were top dps in Mythic raid groups (I havent checked in a couple of weeks) but only in the top 25% in Heroic groups. That tells me pretty clearly that either the top Unholy DKs are just much, much better than those in easier difficulties OR that those groups are doing something pretty significantly different with their Unholy DKs. My guess is those DKs are receiving PIs and Aug buffs very consistently and the ones in less progressed groups are, more or less, relying on themselves. Unholy is also more difficult than frost (or so I hear), so you'd expect to see lower skilled players performing better at Frost than at Unholy, so that's another factor. In reality, it's probably a bit of all three of these factors.

All that to say, Unholy might be the top DPS spec in theory, but there's a huge drop off in performance between Unholy DKs in the top groups and Unholy DKs in less progressed groups. That's important context, if you're trying to build the ideal group.

But people don't understand/internalize all that context, so they still fish for the meta spec, even when it's not really going to improve their odds of completing content. When there is imbalance at the high ends, it SHOULDN'T affect those who play at more reasonable difficulties. But it does, because we're human.

It becomes a lot worse when people perceive their own class as being garbage and start to reroll. This starts a cycle of "Class perceived as bad, decent players on that class reroll, remaining players are mostly bad, class is perceived as even worse because average performance has actually declined, because decent players swapped. Now the slightly less than decent players start to reroll..." and so forth.

[NineSpine]

I don't think it means the game is fundamentally broken, by any means. I'm pointing out that the meta, which should only affect the top end groups, absolutely trickles down to groups where it is meaningless. In those two seasons, iw asn't running anything above the max key that gave gear. There is/was no comp that couldn't complete the keys at that level with a group of decent players. Outside of some very specific affixes, there was no combination of 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps that couldn't run a 10 (or the season's equivalent).

But the meta still trickles down.

People are not rational. They don't look at things like the top performing specs and see that they're only top performing because the group they're performing in is also doing XYZ. People just see that it is the top performing spec and want to bring it. Unholy DKs are/were top dps in Mythic raid groups (I havent checked in a couple of weeks) but only in the top 25% in Heroic groups. That tells me pretty clearly that either the top Unholy DKs are just much, much better than those in easier difficulties OR that those groups are doing something pretty significantly different with their Unholy DKs. My guess is those DKs are receiving PIs and Aug buffs very consistently and the ones in less progressed groups are, more or less, relying on themselves. Unholy is also more difficult than frost (or so I hear), so you'd expect to see lower skilled players performing better at Frost than at Unholy, so that's another factor. In reality, it's probably a bit of all three of these factors.

All that to say, Unholy might be the top DPS spec in theory, but there's a huge drop off in performance between Unholy DKs in the top groups and Unholy DKs in less progressed groups. That's important context, if you're trying to build the ideal group.

But people don't understand/internalize all that context, so they still fish for the meta spec, even when it's not really going to improve their odds of completing content. When there is imbalance at the high ends, it SHOULDN'T affect those who play at more reasonable difficulties. But it does, because we're human.

It becomes a lot worse when people perceive their own class as being garbage and start to reroll. This starts a cycle of "Class perceived as bad, decent players on that class reroll, remaining players are mostly bad, class is perceived as even worse because average performance has actually declined, because decent players swapped. Now the slightly less than decent players start to reroll..." and so forth.

The max key that gives gear is still only run by a wildly small number of players.

You are 100% right about how people don't understand that balance is not uniform across skill levels make very stupid and irrational decisions.

I've always derived the most fun by playing whatever is considered a joke and outperforming everyone.

[Jastall]

Your actual point was just to provide these examples that don't demonstrate your argument. If these things would have catastrophic effects on the average player, there would be examples of it, but instead, you are appealing to vague community sentiments and personal anxieties, not solid examples. If Augmentation was preferable by some people for a couple of seasons, so what? Who cares? Was anyone excluded from the season? Where are the examples where no rogues were allowed in normal difficulty raids for a tier, or every +20 group was all paladins? These examples don't exist, because the doomsaying is not born out by reality. It's just projection of personal anxieties driven by consuming too much wow media.

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What I reject in this conversation is the idea that "Maybe on average groups take five minutes longer to get into" is a sign that the game is fundamentally broken.

You haven't demonstrated anything yourself, but hold me to a much higher standard of absolute proof, despite me literally saying it's not some set-in-stone truth. The fact that you don't care about having more difficulty finding groups doesn't mean everyone else shouldn't care or that Blizzard shouldn't care. The fact that the problem hasn't recently been so bad that classes are outright excluded from content doesn't mean a completely laissez-faire approach to balance thus becomes the logical conclusion. I'm not affected by those issues as I have a guild and spend most of my time in-game with them and the rest leading my pugs so I'm hardly ever declined to anything, but that doesn't mean I'll just ignore the potential pitfalls of a lack of balance as exaggerated as the one you pitched on the wider community. Bad design doesn't become good design just because it has a lower chance of affecting me, personally.


Also, similarly, I summarily reject the idea that the game is in such a homogenous state as you claim, or that it's all the bad 1%ers that are responsible for it. This may have been true in Mists, but it's why Blizzard pruned so much in Warlords. Maybe we'll get back there at some point, and I hope we don't. The issue I personally have is more in terms of too many DPS rotations feeling spammy when some shouldn't, but that is not the same thing as every class having overly similar or the same tools and isn't a balance issue per se, more one of class design in a conceptual way. Blizzard at the moment relies too much on having procs making buttons go shiny, and even as Fury I'm not a fan of the fact that most of my "meta" Hero talent tree is random damage procs, hence why I switch to Mountain Thane from time to time.

[Thirtyrock]

The max key that gives gear is still only run by a wildly small number of players.

You are 100% right about how people don't understand that balance is not uniform across skill levels make very stupid and irrational decisions.

I've always derived the most fun by playing whatever is considered a joke and outperforming everyone.

I play for flavor/rotation feel. I swapped from DH, which is performing very well this season, to DK, because I hate how the rotation of DH has changed with hero talents. I tank for our raid, but like to be able to DPS keys or when pugging raids, because it's nice to have a change of place. The only Tank classes that I like DPSing on are/were DK/DH, so the changes to DH meant I couldn't play 1/2 my class, so I rerolled.

But this problem of "the top 1% do it so I have to do it" is a real thing. It's similar to why the AP grinds were so problematic. Normal play during Legion-SL gave you all the AP you needed to down the content, unless you were trying to push for Server firsts or something. But the community perception was "This is the max theoretical AP levels you can have this week, you should be at that or you won't get invited to groups".

[NineSpine]

I play for flavor/rotation feel. I swapped from DH, which is performing very well this season, to DK, because I hate how the rotation of DH has changed with hero talents. I tank for our raid, but like to be able to DPS keys or when pugging raids, because it's nice to have a change of place. The only Tank classes that I like DPSing on are/were DK/DH, so the changes to DH meant I couldn't play 1/2 my class, so I rerolled.

But this problem of "the top 1% do it so I have to do it" is a real thing. It's similar to why the AP grinds were so problematic. Normal play during Legion-SL gave you all the AP you needed to down the content, unless you were trying to push for Server firsts or something. But the community perception was "This is the max theoretical AP levels you can have this week, you should be at that or you won't get invited to groups".

What you are describing as the "community perception" I would argue is the "top 3% perception" and that is a percentile that is always dissatisfied because their approach to the game is so dramatically unhealthy and obsessive.

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You haven't demonstrated anything yourself, but hold me to a much higher standard of absolute proof, despite me literally saying it's not some set-in-stone truth. The fact that you don't care about having more difficulty finding groups doesn't mean everyone else shouldn't care or that Blizzard shouldn't care. The fact that the problem hasn't recently been so bad that classes are outright excluded from content doesn't mean a completely laissez-faire approach to balance thus becomes the logical conclusion. I'm not affected by those issues as I have a guild and spend most of my time in-game with them and the rest leading my pugs so I'm hardly ever declined to anything, but that doesn't mean I'll just ignore the potential pitfalls of a lack of balance as exaggerated as the one you pitched on the wider community. Bad design doesn't become good design just because it has a lower chance of affecting me, personally.


Also, similarly, I summarily reject the idea that the game is in such a homogenous state as you claim, or that it's all the bad 1%ers that are responsible for it. This may have been true in Mists, but it's why Blizzard pruned so much in Warlords. Maybe we'll get back there at some point, and I hope we don't. The issue I personally have is more in terms of too many DPS rotations feeling spammy when some shouldn't, but that is not the same thing as every class having overly similar or the same tools and isn't a balance issue per se, more one of class design in a conceptual way. Blizzard at the moment relies too much on having procs making buttons go shiny, and even as Fury I'm not a fan of the fact that most of my "meta" Hero talent tree is random damage procs, hence why I switch to Mountain Thane from time to time.

My favorite spec has 5-7 main rotational abilities, it is based on a builder/spender mechanic, it has a couple of abilities that are used more rarely and mix up the rotation (but these mostly have to be specced into), it can interrupt enemies, it has some form of crowd control, it has a self heal, it has a damage mitigation cooldown, and it has a slightly altered rotation for AoE.

What is my favorite spec?

[HatsHatsHats]

I'm here to complain about Shadow Priest, I have 3 one minute cooldowns, two of which have cast times. The wind-up before going crazy is compounded by shadow being a dot spec.
In delves 8+ I have gotten into the habit of just pulling once a minute anyways and standing around for anywhere between 20-30 seconds because my power level seems so low without those CDs.

Edit: also my one interrupt is a 45 second CD. If I'm lucky they can also be feared then I have another interest on a 30 second CD, but for mobs that chain cast then it's just a DPS race

[Byleth]

Yes I completely agree. I have always felt mmos should be more of a relaxed social experience. I don't want to feel like I am playing a fighting game while playing a mmorpg. I also much preferred the planned methodical gameplay in classic WoW. You don't just pull 10 mobs and then go dragon ball z on them. Cc mattered.

I also agree with this statement. But I guess it's just a different game now, and that's fine. I have plenty to play elsewhere.

[Swnem]

Look, i agree maintenance buffs aren't very fun and we could do with less of them. The complexity can be dialed down a bit.
But, that does not mean scrap everything and go back to 15 year old gameplay. Get a grip.

[Glorious Leader]

Most healers have 2 relevant dps buttons. The only healer that is even remotely more complicated dps wise is a resto druid cat weaving but that isn't that hard either compared to actual dps rotations.

DPS add near 0 complexity to healer specs, its the equivalent of filler buttons in a dps rotation.

Yea no they all have more than 2 buttons. By way of example resto sham has or had at one point lightning bolt, chain lightning, flame shock, lava burst and im probabaly missing some.

[Thirtyrock]

What you are describing as the "community perception" I would argue is the "top 3% perception" and that is a percentile that is always dissatisfied because their approach to the game is so dramatically unhealthy and obsessive.

I don’t know if I’m in the top 3% of players, measured by pve performance, or not. I know these issues affects me. They affected me enough in Legion - SL that I just stopped playing after one season each. Maybe these issues aren’t as prevalent at lower difficulty levels. I just don’t know. I know how they affect me.

For reference, we went 5/8 (maybe 4/8? I’d have to look back at logs) in all three Mythic raids in DF S4. I got KSM in the first couple of weeks in S3 & 4 and unlocked 5/8 portals in S4 before I deprioritized keys.

Some of that was not being able to find the right guild, one that understood that there are diminishing returns on these types of activities and therefore have reasonable expectations for their teams. I can only play one or two dedicated nights per week, so having required activities outside of that time is a deal breaker for me.

The problem is, groups that are downing my targeted content typically have higher requirements for non-raid participation. Finding one that had the right split of raid vs non-raid requirements took me a long time.
There were three things that I think brought me back.
1) I found the right group. This is easily the most important factor.
2) the removal of grinds that incentivize non raid activity, especially if that incentive lasts past the first few weeks of a season.
3) removal of randomness in gear drops. Titanforging and corruption were absolutely terrible since running LFR still MIGHT give you an upgrade over heroic gear. However small the chance, doing easy things for a chance at an upgrade incentivized participating in those things far past what makes sense from a progression standpoint.

[NineSpine]

I don’t know if I’m in the top 3% of players, measured by pve performance, or not. I know these issues affects me. They affected me enough in Legion - SL that I just stopped playing after one season each. Maybe these issues aren’t as prevalent at lower difficulty levels. I just don’t know. I know how they affect me.

For reference, we went 5/8 (maybe 4/8? I’d have to look back at logs) in all three Mythic raids in DF S4. I got KSM in the first couple of weeks in S3 & 4 and unlocked 5/8 portals in S4 before I deprioritized keys.

Some of that was not being able to find the right guild, one that understood that there are diminishing returns on these types of activities and therefore have reasonable expectations for their teams. I can only play one or two dedicated nights per week, so having required activities outside of that time is a deal breaker for me.

The problem is, groups that are downing my targeted content typically have higher requirements for non-raid participation. Finding one that had the right split of raid vs non-raid requirements took me a long time.
There were three things that I think brought me back.
1) I found the right group. This is easily the most important factor.
2) the removal of grinds that incentivize non raid activity, especially if that incentive lasts past the first few weeks of a season.
3) removal of randomness in gear drops. Titanforging and corruption were absolutely terrible since running LFR still MIGHT give you an upgrade over heroic gear. However small the chance, doing easy things for a chance at an upgrade incentivized participating in those things far past what makes sense from a progression standpoint.

You are pretty firmly somewhere in the top 1-5%, probably closer to the 1%.

I think that this constant catering to that tiny percentage of players has not just been bad for the game arms a whole, but even bad for those players. Theres a tendency to think that if the game was just designed as hyper-fixated on your playstyle as possible the game must be better for you, but it really doesn’t work that way, especially in a social game with an online world.

[Hottage]

There is a sliding scale from "all the classes are one button snore fests with no depth" to "oh my God my RSI".

I'd say we are certainly closer to the right end of the scale now, but it's certainly not as bad as it was during the Wrath of the Lich King button bloat era.

[Archy]

Now take this and understand that for some people it applies to pve as well...

I literally said in my post that I get that people want it more simplistic. But then straight out say that. "The game is too overwhelming now for me." But nobody here says that. Rather the opposite with "needing no strategy anmyore" or "being an AoE zergfest".

[Thirtyrock]

If people are objecting to both the mechanical complexity of playing their characters and the mobs/bosses themselves then maybe the problem is the game is too fucking complicated.

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Now take this and understand that for some people it applies to pve as well...

All I know is that the game is just complicated enough to always give me a challenge, but not so complicated that I don't think, given adequate play time, that I couldn't down the hardest content in the game. It's the perfect level of difficulty for me, personally.

I can play a class I barely know and get through LFR. I can play a class I've spent an hour or two practicing and get through normal and maybe into early heroic. I can clear AOTC with a bit more effort. I can push Mythic on classes I know well. There's always an appropriate difficulty for me, regardless of my skill on a given class.

I'm not every player and everyone enjoys the game differently, so I don't intend for this to generalize. Just stating that the game does very well presenting ME with appropriate challenges across my skill spectrum.

[ImAnALtOfYou]

Yea no they all have more than 2 buttons. By way of example resto sham has or had at one point lightning bolt, chain lightning, flame shock, lava burst and im probabaly missing some.

Disc priest
Smite, swp/upgrade, mind blast, swd, shadow fiend, penance

Holy priest
Smite, swp, holy fire, hwc

Monk
Tiger palm, black out kick, rising sun kick, spinning crane kick

Evoker
Flame attack thingy, fire breath, disintegrate, technically azure strike, flying breath move

Shaman
Lightning bolt, chain lightning, flame shock, lava burst

Paladin
Judgement, holy strike, uh concencration?, holy shock I guess?, shield strike thingy

I mean yah they have more than 2. I think he's thinking ff14 where they literally have 1 attack, 1 dot, and then 1-3 aoe attacks

[Mehrunes]

I don't really understand the complaint here. Let alone the posters that think they agree with the OP, but complain about the amount of buttons when the OP stated again and again that's not their actual problem. How impactful a given part of your toolkit is has little to do with modern gameplay and is just internal class/spec balancing.

Take Affliction Warlock for example. Back in 3.3.5, so in the expansion that's genrally seen as "pre-modern" in this thread, my Drain Soul was by far the most impactful ability, dealing around a third of total damage despite 1. Aff being a dot spec with tons of damage sources and 2. DS being used just for execute phase back then. Then in Cata, where very little has changed in terms of rotation (aside from the abominable ISF period of 4.0-4.0.5), it was much closer between multiple abilities.

Ditto for the topic of complexity. The spec is in general on the more complex side on the basis of being a dot spec with multiple things to maintain. Yet right now, even with additions of things like Malefic Rapture a few expansions ago and now also hero talents, the spec had multiple instances of higher complexity in the past. Including two times in aforementioned WotLK, both in 3.0 with 5 dots to juggle, and 3.3.0 with the initial way haste worked for dots.

And since supposedly almost no one wants Frostbolt spam here, the complaint about the new gameplay is priority based rather than rotation is also weird. The latter was still based on priority, just when things came off CD. The very reason you pressed them when they came off CD is because they had higher priority than the filler and dot/debuff maintenance in between. Now you have more procs that either make some otherwise weak ability stronger or reset a CD so the rotation is more reactive. And it's not particularly hard. Depending on the spec also had been the case since time immemorial.

It's particularly weird in context of healers when back in the day you had spell ranks and healers used lower rank spells much more often. Which added a whole layer of know-how that was also priority based. Except it wasn't just reactive to events where you had to prioritize most optimal spell and rank to a given event, but oftentime also proactive in anticipation to incoming raid mechanics.

Not to mention it all differs spec by spec. In both directions. In early expansions certain classes were already button-mushy, had priority system based toolkits, had their performance spread across a plethora of abilities or a mix of the above. Just like now there are much simpler specs, like BM.

It was engaging, this you can't say anything on haha. Mythic+ was also new at the time, so whatever changed your view about it later on did not affect the majority of players at the time. For once, dungeons were worth doing far, far into an expansion.

M+ dungeons came mid-WoD, not in Legion.

[Magistrate]

M+ dungeons came mid-WoD, not in Legion.

M+ didn't come in WoD. At the end of WoD, we got a harder mythic difficulty, but it was a single difficulty. We also in fact had this in MoP. The "+" system was a Legion thing.

[Eurhetemec]

I literally said in my post that I get that people want it more simplistic. But then straight out say that. "The game is too overwhelming now for me." But nobody here says that. Rather the opposite with "needing no strategy anmyore" or "being an AoE zergfest".

I think it's because the actual in-game *experience* of the game isn't really of overwhelming complexity for most specs.

Calculating exactly what talents to take and how they interact can, for some specs, be rather ludicrously complex but in 99% of cases, someone has done it for you, or worst case, you look at Archon or whatever and see what the big boys are taking.

Likewise when you're interacting with enemies, it doesn't feel complex, it just feels frantic. Your experience isn't one of like "this is so many interlocking parts!", it's more like "Press the buttons really fast and react really fast and you'll be okay!". And you are. Because you succeed despite the supposed complexity, by interacting with it in a simplistic but frantic way.

Thus the actual experience feels like "no strategy", because there's no time for strategy, and "AoE zergfest", because because basically that's what it amounts to (even if it's hyperbole to some extent). Sure, if you sit and analyze it after the fact, it is, in fact, overwhelming complexity for the amount of time you have to deal with it (especially with WoW's lengthy GCDs, annoying tab-targeting and sometimes unreliable click/hover targeting, even with Plater or the like), but it doesn't feel like "OMG TOO MANY THINGS TO THINK ABOUT!", because you don't even have time to really think, you only have time to do.

WoW's PvP has some of the same issues when more than about 5 people per side are involved - but note that it always has done - I was literally complaining about it all the way back in Vanilla, having come from PvP-oriented MMOs. When you have like 10v10 in a small area in WoW, for the most part it's just a mess of abilities going off, you're not having the precise and complex interactions you might have in 1v1 or 3v3 or whatever. Perhaps ironically, less complex characters and fewer abilities would lead to larger combats feeling more engaging and more about tactics and so on, rather than just wild ability spam. PvE has only gradually got there as the number of rotational abilities has crept up and up for most specs (including cooldowns gradually becoming ever-more rotational, and less something reserved for "when you need it"), even with DF/TWW reducing the overall number of abilities somewhat. And it's still not as "grey paste" as WoW's PvP can get with a lot of people involved. But combine every player needing to use a bazillion abilities and mobs having increasing numbers of abilities, some quite weird, and it does get pretty messy.

[Lolites]

M+ dungeons came mid-WoD, not in Legion.

nope, legion
mythic dungeons came in late WOD

"In patch 6.2, Mythic mode was expanded to include 5-man dungeon instances."
" Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): Mythic+ difficulty added."
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Mythic_mode

[Archy]

I think it's because the actual in-game *experience* of the game isn't really of overwhelming complexity for most specs.


Likewise when you're interacting with enemies, it doesn't feel complex, it just feels frantic. Your experience isn't one of like "this is so many interlocking parts!", it's more like "Press the buttons really fast and react really fast and you'll be okay!". And you are. Because you succeed despite the supposed complexity, by interacting with it in a simplistic but frantic way.

We are talking here about the influence of modernization. WoW's rotations are objectively more complex in modern WoW than in classic.

Calculating exactly what talents to take and how they interact can, for some specs, be rather ludicrously complex but in 99% of cases, someone has done it for you, or worst case, you look at Archon or whatever and see what the big boys are taking.

This is not related to combat complexity. But if you miss it, just do it. It doesn't really matter. If you're not at the highest level, it barely matters and if you are, you probably don't blindly trust what everyone else is doing.

Likewise when you're interacting with enemies, it doesn't feel complex, it just feels frantic. Your experience isn't one of like "this is so many interlocking parts!", it's more like "Press the buttons really fast and react really fast and you'll be okay!". And you are. Because you succeed despite the supposed complexity, by interacting with it in a simplistic but frantic way.

Complexity of this type exists in turn based game, shouldn't really be a thing in games like WoW. And it never was. Back in the day it didn't feel complex at all. Just slower. Also you are only right in a very surface level. You are probably all right if you react fast and press abilities/avoid stuff. But it's far from optimal and if you are not pre planning (your positionings, your offensive/defensive cooldowns, your route, your utility, drinking, etc) you won't be able to do hard content.

Thus the actual experience feels like "no strategy", because there's no time for strategy, and "AoE zergfest", because because basically that's what it amounts to (even if it's hyperbole to some extent). Sure, if you sit and analyze it after the fact, it is, in fact, overwhelming complexity for the amount of time you have to deal with it (especially with WoW's lengthy GCDs, annoying tab-targeting and sometimes unreliable click/hover targeting, even with Plater or the like), but it doesn't feel like "OMG TOO MANY THINGS TO THINK ABOUT!", because you don't even have time to really think, you only have time to do.

Considering how many players fail basic mechanics it's pretty much a thing of "OMG TOO MANY THINGS TO THINK ABOUT".
There is strategy to think about, but if you're already overwhelmed with your rotation, you don't have the mental bandwidth to deal with strategy.