having iconic abilities as talents for at least 1 spec of every class is the most egregious mistake in wow history. Look no further than Shadow Word: Death
There’s very little difference between current ret and 5.4 ret. Our buffs got changed, exorcism became Blade of Justice, inquisition (Which is better than it used to be) became optional as did Hammer of Wrath and word of glory, our (irrelevant by the time 5.4 rolled around since you mostly used Truth anyway) seals got removed and we lost a couple of defensive cooldowns.
As far as PvE is concerned (Can’t comment on PvP since I never bothered with it) very little changed, especially in regards to the rotation. Even our 4-set bonus from SoO is on Azerite gear now.
The only major downside is that we don’t have enough haste to make it truly fun just yet.
I don’t know or care how we rate on the meters, since that’s down to numbers. Gameplay wise the class is fun as far as I’m concerned.
Either way, that wasn’t the point. Singling our class design as the major thing wrong with the game right now minimalises everything else wrong with BfA. The entire package is the problem, not any one aspect.
Last edited by Aeula; 2019-05-01 at 11:29 PM.
Reducing classes from 3or4 full action bars (as they were in before and during MOP) all the way down to barely 1 action bar as they are in BFA is what killed WoW for me.
Classes are the most important thing in an RPG.
The story and the content are meaningless if you do not have quality interesting engaging classes that players can play with and engage the world through.
BFA dumbed down and simplified the classes so much that its a boring sad experience to play them.
If classes are boring then i would rather see Wow content on youtube without paying the sub or having to suffer through using shite classes.
Not even close, quite the contrary. The classes have been the saving grace of BFA with the actual zones.
The story needed to be better and it might finally ramp up in 8.2, finally.
Max level outdoor content needed to be better, WQs are okay, but they needed a new aspect to them, they need to evolve to more dynamic direction.
Raids have been unintersting regarding the story, mechanically okay.
War mode, is probably the best they can ever come up regarding pve and pvp servers.
It's been mediocre and the story and outdoor stuff needs the most innovation.
But classes, they have been the best part. Okay there's an issue that the talent tree hasn't done anything since like WoD.
That needs to expand in some way. Ability morphing or something, or just new talents and rows.
More customization yes, but it needs to be meaningful, it can't be like vanilla talents where half is just outside the cookie cutter and most are passive add 1% this and that, uninteresting shit.
I don't want to go back to days where you have to ALT-SHIFT-CTRL bind and macro on top of that to fit everything.
Spec rotation needs to fit in to max 7 keybinds (includes single target and aoe) with up to 15 keybinds reserved for cds and utility.
At the moment best specs are the ones with 3 button rotations, well it has pretty much always been the way 3-4 buttons. Simple and fun.
And the good thing is almost every class has at least 1 fun spec, everyone has at least 1 fun spec only exception is demon hunters.
Obviously the optimal is that all specs are fun, but that has never been the case.
Still having 1 is good, but currently it doesn't end there, most of them have 2. Are they all measurable in meters and rankings, probably not, but who cares..
Less esports, less leaderboards, less rankings and more roleplaying.
Some specs go even so far that the one spec that's good can even offer 2 different playstyles via talents. Outlaw rogue being one of these.
Good old SnD is a choice for simple playstyle and RtB is another for those who wish it.
Best thing to do with the talent trees would be this. Not necessarily to bloat more abilities in to bars, but offer differing ways to play one spec, by changing one ability or couple.
3 buttons doesn't mean it's always good, but mechanically is optimal. Engagement comes from the rotation or priority list. MM hunter for example seems more intuitive now than in Legion. Enhancement shaman is fluid than Legion. But prot warrior lost something, it lost something from Legion and it already lost some in WoD.
Then there's things that have stayed the same frost mage, it has played well so no point changing. Some have the benefit of offering very simple gameplay and very complex gameplay like feral druids, you can min-max your buttons per minute via talent choices. Unfortunately there's downsides of specs that have not been good and need a revaluation, like survival hunter and sub rogue that has never been fun ever, maybe maybe during one patch back in TBC, because it more than often tries to be too complicated than it needs to be.
One thing in the grand scheme Legion did better was, it got rid off the raid buffs. Which bring nothing to the game, you can bake that power in to anything. Class identity is not pressing a button once every 60 minutes, that's not how that works. Utility to differ from others is welcome, bring a buff or debuff slot to a raid just to make one of your class mandatory is not. Ring of Peace, Mass grip, Life grip, Shroud of Concealment, Mass Invis, Group speed, aoe stuns, summoning stones, portals. That's all viable and worth something.
Last edited by Redecle; 2019-05-02 at 12:13 AM.
"Very little changed".
We lost "a couple of defensive CDs".
2 of our core-rotation abilities became "optional" (talent)
lost 2-3 more talents (cba to search for links now)
lost mobility mobility in pvp
lost sacrifice
lost "close-in-gap" (long arm of the law) (let's face it, pony is useless, specially in pvp)
lost sustainable aoe dmg
and you call that "very little changed".
Ret is RUINED class compared to MOP.
And also a couple of others which I used to play A LOT in MOP and don't even touch now- ele sham, frost/fire mage, frost/blood dk, mm hunt, sp/disc priest, affli lock, BEAR TANK.
disappointing.
and yeah.. so far, class design is BIGGEST downfall about BFA.
then, it's rng charade (M+ chests, pvp chests, random WF reward (i still can't complete AB WF tmog set. 9 months since release), random WQ reward, rng rep, rng M+ key, rng azerite, rng pvp win, rng rated pvp win....)
and azerite (whole system is retarded. instead, we should have pre-wod glyphs back in)
fix these 3 things, and you have best exp.
All i can say about paladin from what i see, i don't even play one is that inquisition is nice.
As for PVE, a guy only wanted to play paladin because it offers the less buttons to press possible, even experimenting DH he said that DH has more buttons than ret paladin. And that for me, just makes me not find paladin fun. Not much mobility + GCDs, i don't think i would like it. I only tried a bit paladin this xpac leveling but leveling ain't the same as high level. So i just don't really think i can comment on that besides what i said and see, this being said now, in PvP, their bubble is the only thing that saves them indeed, they are plate but they seem like cloth wearers when the cloth kites them, a mage is made so they can kite melee, well, paladin and dks have some good stuff but their lack of mobility makes them lose way too much, and the time they shine is when they finally get close to a caster and can just wings on and use all the burst and might.
Palapop and Aeula, i agree with the story making no sense tho, that should be fixed ASAP. But we didn't wait until the story is fully told instead into just jumping into many conclusions and making assumptions. I personally only love Old Gods theme this xpac. Nothing else brings me a "Whoa". I love how Trolls by touching the well of eternity got a modification to night elfs and from the night elfs started existing: Highbornes, Queen Azshara, Blood elfs, Sylvanas, it's just amazing how things turn... And now we have Azshara in one side of the bad and Sylvanas in the other side of the bad. While the Night elves still remain together fighting the Queen Azshara and Sylvanas killing innocents. If you think about it, the big turns everything took is insane. Just the Horde is a big mess, i don't like this story.
I'd say it was taking specs that were clearly build around the idea of artefact weapons during the previous overhaul and pretending that just killing off artefact weapons together with tier sets and legendaries, especially after the system's synergies were fine tuned for 2 years, was going to work without a hitch. They realized way too late into development (or at least fucking admitted it) that their dev cycle was way to short for the task at hand and their ideas were obviously never going to work out. Frankly they fudged every other rule of systems engineering and project managment.
I feel the same way. The classes just dont feel finished(at least the ones I've played and gotten to 120). Which is why I have no problem staying unsubbed and not even debating on whether I want to resub for 8.2..WoD was a bad expansion once the dust settled...but I never unsubbed during the expansion because the core gameplay was still fun. BFA hasn't been fun once I felt exactly what you said.
I can't even start where i couldn't agree less with you. But i will try: I don't like "simple" where only 3-4 buttons is fun and the rest is just used when needed. I like to have always something to press and complexity of a class, keybinds are a meme without the abilities and i miss using macros which i can't even anymore because of GCD's. It's exactly the complexity that made you a good player because with just 4 buttons doesn't bring you much skill.
I know that whatever team worked on Legion (and now the expansion after BfA) should get raises and the team that worked on WoD and BfA need to get shitcanned or go work on Final Fantasy 78 or whatever number it's up to now.
Only thing i see myself agreeing is on classes needing buffs. Which some got buffs back. Like priest. @Redecle
This is what i mean, the classes feels unfinished and probably will take the whole expansion to be finished and complete towards the end of the expansion, i don't like tweaks here and there when they already had specs that were working really good and other specs needed tunning. And that's about it, now we go backwards and need to do it all over again and now with more tweaks probably.
i don't get blizz's obsession with pruning so much, xpacs should always add something new for your class. leveling is awful when you just lose things on top of the moronic GCD change.