How did blizzard manage to let class/talent design get so bad?

[Ye Olde Hat]

If you ask me, there wasn't just a single thing that was the main reason most classes/specs feel awful right now. In my opinion, it was a combination of things, namely:

1. Oversimplification of classes/specs. Blizzard has even admitted at this point that they've gone too far oversimplifying classes/specs; Taking away abilities/passives, making current abilities/passives too simple and uninspired, etc.

2. Addition of the artifact system. This system has seemingly taken the place of talents from level 100 onwards, though at this point it only kicks in at 110+. This system taking the place of talents for an entire 20 levels at this point is harmful to the long-term stability of class/spec design, as it forces people to become used to a swathe of passives/abilities that get taken away two years later.

3. Refusal to listen to feedback. The BFA alpha and beta were clear signs that, at that point in time, Blizzard no longer saw player feedback as important to listen to or act upon (even in the case of bug reports, at times). A game's players are one of the most important aspects of a game due to their ability to keep a game active, and Blizzard refused to listen to their players' feedback on the way they were designing classes/specs, among other things.

4. Shifting the game towards e-sports. This is an issue when it comes to class design (at least in my opinion) because it introduces balance (or at least is supposed to) while sacrificing interesting and fun gameplay, for the sake of ensuring that the game's ability to function as an e-sport stays intact. When it was just PvP that made up WoW's e-sports scene, this was an issue to a lesser degree, but now that they have the M+ invitational as well, it's become more apparent that classes/specs have suffered in the transition from an MMO to an e-sports MMO.

5. Removal of tier sets. This may seem minor at first, as tier set bonuses weren't baseline in the first place, but having those set bonuses diversified class/spec design and strengthened classes/specs as a whole. No longer having them was just another step towards homogenization among all specs of each role, which leads into my last point...

6. Homogenization of classes/specs. This has become a thing for multiple reasons, of which the e-sports thing was one of. They've moved away from having each spec be unique and have it's own niche to fill, and towards having all specs within a role essentially do the same thing, with mostly just numbers being different. Homogenization of classes/specs leads to a situation where classes/specs are no longer unique and interesting to play because they all do basically the same thing.

There may be other things I didn't think of that've contributed to the current situation we have for classes/specs, but those are the most major things I could think of at the moment.

[asil]

That makes sense considering they removed the DoT damage buff from Drain Soul this expansion. It's a DPS loss when considering single target only, but in fights with adds could be used for a lot of shard generation which I would assume is the intended purpose for it now, as opposed to Legion's design of throwing up DoTs and just spamming Drain Soul to buff their damage.

There's an intended purpose for the talent, it's just not incredibly viable right now considering there are a lot of single target heavy fights in the current raid designs. That would be like me taking Dark Void on my Shadow priest (applies SW:Pain in AoE) and wondering why it isn't buffing my single target damage at all; talents are allowed to have a niche purpose. Drain Soul is shard generation against quick dying targets or even the execute damage against potential burn targets, Dark Void is used to apply my DoT in AoE fashion.

I think the real issue with Drain Soul in particular is that it replaces Shadowbolt entirely instead of adding Drain Soul as a new ability which would allow it to be used for its (presumably) intended purpose without screwing over your single target DPS with Shadowbolt spam. I'll definitely say that it's not serving much of a purpose this expansion like it did in Legion, that's for damn sure.

It doesn't matter how many adds there are, DS is worthless.

- - - Updated - - -

First of all: you should also care about the casuals because they are the ones who pay the bills and keep that game alive for you to enjoy.

Second: i think you don'T exactly know what you're talking about or you haven't invested 2 Seconds to think about what you said. Even if you tuned the talents to be more in line: there will still be the best option? You will take that option no matter what. There is no point in fixing the talents just so that you still have "no choie because numbers hurr durr durr"

It's sad that you don't like the current set of best talent options but there is no way that blizz can make the system work so that people of your mindset like it.

Except there will be more options still, you won't play deathbolt on every encounter type invariably. So no, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Like blizzard fanboys that show up defend them from literally anything make these forums just... bad. I remember getting in an argument on here once where a guy tried to tell me shadowbolt was the pinnacle of game design and he unironically meant that.

Just insane.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Ah so your counter argument is that we can pick sevral /cast talents, even if they are the useless option how fun

There not useless and when it comes to class design having a talent be with in 1-3% of another isn’t doing it poorly. To quote icy veins.

All talents in this tier are within 1-3% of each other for pure single-target.

Serpent Sting Icon Serpent Sting is a respectable single-target damage option (and not bad when multidotting a few targets either), but we prefer Master Marksman Icon Master Marksman for its ease of use, and therefore we generally do not recommend using Serpent Sting.

Explosive Shot Icon Explosive Shot is useful for Mythic+ scenarios where everything dies so quickly that you do not get to benefit from Careful Aim Icon Careful Aim. This is particularly the case in lower Mythic+ keys, and arguably more so during Tyrannical weeks.

Serpent sting is a perfect example if you want something harder to use to add to your rotation the option is there.

[probert]

the gradual shift of WoW towards esports, casual play, and almost exclusive focus on Mythic+ dungeons and raiding.

the game has gradually dropped its RPG open world roots, seeing class variety and any imbalance as deterimental to the game. as can be seen in classic wow, rock/paper/scissors was a design pattern, whereas retail wow is all about homogeneity so that skill isn't hampered by class.

the games are fundamentally different, and have shifted away from eachother over the years.

my conspiracy theory is that htey've been trying to port wow to consoles for some time -- every other active title at Blizzard now is mobile or console capable now. if they could reduce the ability bar to 8 they'd achieve their goal. they were one or two more turns of the screw away from achieveing this in their design focus, but they've broken the game for most players at this point.

[Tenjen]

Their class and talent design is streamlined and amazingly well made. Its an example of varied choices, an arsonal of spells for what you may encounter (some classes being better at certain situaitons than others) and very finely balanced. the discreprancy between classes in certain roles is tiny compared to previous expansions and other mmo's and even then it retains the fact that some classes performs roles in certain situations better than others, while those others are still viable in other situations. The adaption on the fly which the talents allow.

There is a fantastic convenience for the designers to adjust and balance classes and spells and stats in relation to each other. something I havent seen in any other similar game.

Honestly. the class, spell and talent system in WoW is a masterpiece.

Good riddance to the past. I havent played since legion and dont intend to anymore for my own reasons, I dont even like blizzard anymore after its clear it's activision wearing the skin of the blizz i knew but I can still say from an outside view after trying gw2 and FF, the devs are masters at balancing the system in WoW

[Qnubi]

But it's not. By far the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design. I've never met a high-end raider in this game that thinks spec/class design issues have not been plaguing BFA since day 1.

But high-end raider is a tiny fraction of players. In order to estimate if class design is bad you have to ask the majority. Which are not mythic raiders. I am m+ only player and I enjoy all specs I have played so far. Again, I am still not the majority. The majority are WQ player, Collectors, Casuals so to speak. Even if M+ AND high end Raider say class design is bad, it still won't represent the Majority.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I clearly said using optimal talents.



There is zero point in talking about a spec and it's design if you're not talking about optimizing the toon.

Class design isn’t based around doing optimal damage it never has been. You can have options that are less optimal damage wise but make up for it in other areas, hell having options like that is what makes class design good as you have choices.

Top dps choices change based on situation. the top dps choice for one fight might not be the optimal choice for another see my above explosive shot quote for an examples. If you are going with the “top choice” with no thought put into it you are not going to be optimal on every fight time or even most.

[Thor79]

I think the problems with BFA (I agree with some of the posters above) are far more than class design. I've enjoyed almost every iteration of WoW's class and talent designs, and trying to learn how to play with and around them for the best result. I think where Blizzard really went wrong with WoW was when they listened to all the strident screams for perfect "balance" - every healers gets a rez / decurse, etc - every tank must do this or that, all DPS must be within 1% of each other or a spec is deemed "broken and useless". Basically, turning it into an E-sport. M+ competition, world first races, Arena - all of these things that become competitions I believe are not great for an RPG.

[Kralljin]

I think where Blizzard really went wrong with WoW was when they listened to all the strident screams for perfect "balance" - every healers gets a rez / decurse, etc - every tank must do this or that

Let's get this clear: This is not a balance problem, but simply something that players primarily wanted.
Cata / MoP was essentially the time of "You want it? You get it!" time of WoW class design.

People wanted Interrupts on their Pally, they got one.
Hunters wanted an Interrupt, they got one.
Warlocks wanted some Shield wall, they got one.

To a certain degree, some abilities are necessary to fulfill a given a role, Tank needs a Shield wall type ability or a Taunt, else this Tank will really struggle.

But some abilities were simply given to classes because players wanted it and Blizzard was too lazy to find any workarounds to a given issue and simply copy n' pasted abilities from other classes onto another one.

Go down the list of specs / classes where Blizzard simply has slapped a baseline defensive CD, offensive CD & Interrupt during Wotlk,Cata and MoP onto it, the list is quite long.

That is not a mistake of the current devs but a mistake of an expansion like MoP, yet some people treat that like it was some sort of golden place of WoW class design.

all DPS must be within 1% of each other or a spec is deemed "broken and useless".

This is such myth within the community that needs to be dealt with.
No class or spec is deemed "useless" because it is a few % behind another one, that isn't the case.

The problem simply is how Blizzard continously fucked up Balance on a grand scale.

Take my main spec, Elemental, for example.
It's probably been for the most part of WoW's history as far as highend PvE concerned, a pretty fringe spec.

Why?
Because for most of the time, it was a worse Mage, you did less damage, had less mobility (No Blink) and less utility.
So, why would you take an Elemental over a Mage?
There's no good reason, if it were just dps, you could talk about it and as good player possibly compensate it, but there are some specs within this game that are just plain bad because their "competitors" are just so much better.

If this tiny gap just existed on paper and would then vanish in a real encounter, that could be dealt with, but the truth is that in an actual encounter that gap in overall "powerlevel" grew even bigger.

If you just look at their ST dps, that gap might not be big, but once you look at the entire toolkit between the "FotM" Class / Spec and the "Underdog" Class / Spec, you will see that a canyon wide chasm opens before you.

Same goes for a spec like Enhancement or Feral, it's not that their Dps is inheritly terrible but a Melee like Rogue or DH just do similiar Dps and bring so much more to the table.
The reason also might very much be that certain specs are simply OP or on the opposite, have no noteworthy strength to begin with.

[msdos]

Retail has a trickle down effect that starts at the top and is spoiling every single thing on the way down and I believe it starts with the gear.

The gear is adding way too much HP, making people impossible to kill in PVP. Because of this PVP feels terrible. Your abilities feel like tickles and everything is an attrition game. This makes warmode pointless as everyone is desperately trying to avoid PVP. The BGs themselves no longer have vendors, therefore you don't feel any progression there, every BG feels like a pointless skirmish. This makes the honor talents pointless to even be in the game.

Gear is too easy to get, this undermines professions. This undermines actual currency, as without professions, there's no longer a need for currency upkeep, you simply use the gold from the game's systems to repair. There's no point really in having currency other than just for the sake of trade; is there an actual WoW economy outside of Alchemy and cooking? Does Pathfinder exist because you no longer need to look at the AH whatsoever when an xpac comes out????

Then you have traits and TF and bad stats and the gear its self is undesirable and what is the point of having gear, all the stats that supported anything are just baked into the specs now. Like tank druids in classic actually have to itemize themselves, in retail everything has agility and that's all that matters anymore, there is zero thought put into itemization. This is extremely boring for an "RPG". Imagine playing any other game with gear in it and instead of stats, you just get +1% dmg until you enter a higher bracket, that's basically retail's itemization in a nutshell. "Oh this is 255, instead of 225, I can use that, kewl dude!!!"
Neither traits nor stats allow you to do anything with your character and honestly, neither do the talents. Unholy DK's builds, no matter what talents you choose, you are always going to spend the first 5 GCDs ramping up awful damage, it's a laughing stock. The traits don't do anything but give more strength. Nothing you can choose or equip changes how you do anything, there is zero customization in builds and a lot of the talents you never ever pick, there's no reason to, they don't change anything or do anything.

Gear is now not only abundant, but it actually feels bad to get geared. One, you know it will be replaced. Two, it's random AF. Three, you have to sim every single thing; when I'm not raiding, I'm alt tabbed with raidbots open. Nothing can be shared with your alt, nothing can be passed down, essences have to be reacquired.

Retail is an actual nightmare from an RPG point of view, like some type of frankenstein of RPGs, nothing connects seamlessly and no part is in place where it should be.

[Big Thanks]

There not useless and when it comes to class design having a talent be with in 1-3% of another isn’t doing it poorly. To quote icy veins.





Serpent sting is a perfect example if you want something harder to use to add to your rotation the option is there.

What you are referring too is the dilema between a "braindead" aka easy spec compared to harder yet more effective spec.
Customization in Raids comes down to this dilema pretty much, and there is little to no customization in raids apart from this dilema and Aoe VS Single target.

Ofcourse there is useless choices, like Ghostly strike for rogues. Its useless. (for PvE)

[Kralljin]

Imagine if every class did identical DPS per ilevel (in a patchwork and motion intense fight). We'd've finally achieved not only balance but sameness.

Balancing around a patchwerk enviroment is easy, but then you need to take into account that barely any encounter are raw patchwerk fights.
Does a spec benefit greatly from a 2nd target?
Can a spec abuse a certain burst damage phase?
What about Multi dot?

Patchwerk sims are nothing but a piece of this puzzle that people spend way too focus on it, the overall powerlevel of a class / spec needs to be balanced, not just its theoretical dps number.

"Sameness" doesn't exist unless Blizzard gives every single class the same tool for a given situation, people can piss and moan over homogenization all they want, but a Mage isn't going to pull the same numbers as an SP on a Multi dot fight.
Neither will an Unholy DK compete with a Havoc DH on a Boss fight where an addwave spawns every 40 seconds and dies within 6 seconds.

Should Blizzard spend more time on balance? Sure, but balancing around sims is completely misleading, you need to look at the entire picture.
And as long as Blizzard doesn't create identical bossfights or gives classes an identical toolkit, "sameness" will not happen.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

What you are referring too is the dilema between a "braindead" aka easy spec compared to harder yet more effective spec.
Customization in Raids comes down to this dilema pretty much, and there is little to no customization in raids apart from this dilema and Aoe VS Single target.

Ofcourse there is useless choices, like Ghostly strike for rogues. Its useless. (for PvE)

There’s always going to be bad choices but that’s not really the point. If you want more complexity it’s an option and in the case of hunters it’s a viable one.

[Katchii]

There’s always going to be bad choices but that’s not really the point. If you want more complexity it’s an option and in the case of hunters it’s a viable one.

The challenge with this is that complexity for complexity sake isn't really a good argument, there's a reason the ease of use talents are taken even if they are a few percentage point less because in the heat of the moment it's easy for the complexity to get in the way and the easier to use talents that provide a more consistent performance.

Unless the more complex option provides substantial performance increases there's just not enough of a reason to take it, the risk of lower performance is just too great to be worth it. Consistent DPS is better than spiky or inconsistent DPS as you can at least rely on the consistency. This is where skill comes into play, where the more complex rotation CAN provide consistent DPS when it's played by skilled players.

But then you run into the problem we always have where if one talent is clearly numerically superior that just becomes the default choice so the illusion of choice disappears completely.

I can understand Blizzard's dilemma here, it's not an easy thing to fix or address.

[Eroginous]

Oh it's you again, writing explicit Vanilla fan fiction still I see.

Protip: If WoW had never changed there wouldn't be a WoW right now. It didn't change to "appease investors," it changed because the lack of change would have spelled the game's inevitable doom. You can disagree with the direction they took the game -- that's fine -- but please stop coming into every fucking thread talking about Vanilla like it was the video game equivalent of The Rapture.

You're not a pro, so forgive me if I don't pay attention to your opinion on anything. Vanilla wasn't The Rapture. Nowhere have I said as much. Have you ever heard the adage 'don't fix what isn't broken?' Vanilla had good design. It needed bug fixing, it had a content slate, and they had a good direction to go in. If they had done it right, it would have been more like D3 in terms of the content and how it's played, how players progress through it. While Diablo 3 wasn't the best designed game either, the way it's designed does a much better job of giving the content longevity (as it should, there is very little content to D3, compared to a titan MMO like wow), which is why people still play it.

No idea how popular it is by the numbers, but if a game that doesn't have a sub fee or a box expansion releasing on a cycle can get updates and retain a static player base, that is every bit as valid as a design model as anything else. Arguably better, in fact. Since the cost to a consumer is virtually one time and rather low, for a AAA quality game. I quit Wow because after playing pretty steady for 12 years, I added up all the money I had spent to play this one game... could have bought a decent used car. Or stuck it in savings. Taken a class or two. Gone on vacation. Sure, 12 years of unlimited game play on demand with regular patches and updates is a pretty unparalleled entertainment experience for that price, but its still a lot of money to spend on one game. Most other games will never come close in terms of cost to play, even if one spends the same amount of time playing (I've spent more than 1000 hours on some single player games).

[docterfreeze]

Retail has a trickle down effect that starts at the top and is spoiling every single thing on the way down and I believe it starts with the gear.

The gear is adding way too much HP, making people impossible to kill in PVP. Because of this PVP feels terrible. Your abilities feel like tickles and everything is an attrition game. This makes warmode pointless as everyone is desperately trying to avoid PVP.

That's a big one i've noticed too, but another thing that contributes to this is our screwed up damage distributions. For arms warrior, your bleed and your auto attacks both contribute more damage than your mortal strike and overpower. Same with frost DK's, their disease and AA's contribute more than frost strike and obliterate. When did those classes become DoT classes? For destro lock your only damaging ability is chaos bolt, incinerate and conflag just tickle and generate resources for more chaos bolts. AA damage is too high, making the abilities you press feel lackluster. Builder damage is too little, making your spenders your only source of damage.

Neither traits nor stats allow you to do anything with your character and honestly, neither do the talents. Unholy DK's builds, no matter what talents you choose, you are always going to spend the first 5 GCDs ramping up awful damage, it's a laughing stock. The traits don't do anything but give more strength. Nothing you can choose or equip changes how you do anything, there is zero customization in builds and a lot of the talents you never ever pick, there's no reason to, they don't change anything or do anything.

Great point, glad other people notice this.

[Shakana]

Hmm ... i think one of the biggest reasons people stop playing wow is that nearly every expansion your class / favourite spec feels completely different and looses a lot of the strenghts from the expansion before.
I nearly quit in legion because the ovhauled hunter specs MM / SV felt so bad - and i `m pretty sure a lot of warlock players quit some weeks after BfA hit.

I feel weird playing most classes and i don't know why. I mean i think i do, it's cause i miss more elements to specs like not being specific so much, but still feels weird and not just that. I think GCD's too made me feel too weird, and the loss of some abilities that i had in legion + azerites annoys the heck out of me. I barely can keep getting gear for my main spec, need to get azerites and do triple m+ to buy azerites from vendors for my tank, etc. This whole expansion feels weird on my characters gameplay.

[bullseyed]

Its subjective and objective by the way you look at class design. If you base class design on feeling, it's subjective.

When looking at it objectively, you have to look at utility, mechanics, damage, resource spending, crowd control, aoe, cleave, execute, mobility, talent choices, pvp choices.

Based off of what I said, class design in BFA is not in a good spot, objectively.

It is pretty clear you don't know what subjective and objective mean.

[Zyky]

Class design isn’t based around doing optimal damage it never has been. You can have options that are less optimal damage wise but make up for it in other areas, hell having options like that is what makes class design good as you have choices.

Top dps choices change based on situation. the top dps choice for one fight might not be the optimal choice for another see my above explosive shot quote for an examples. If you are going with the “top choice” with no thought put into it you are not going to be optimal on every fight time or even most.

I mean, that isn't how the game works AT ALL. If you aren't taking the optimal talents(which are almost all the same for every fight) then you aren't being efficient. But at this point you're just trying to justify that you're wrong by naming a ton of worthless talents that aren't taking in any situation.

[toffmcsoft]

I mean, blizzard has let the game get worse and worse since Wotlk.
If you're looking for a fresh start on something that is fun, try classic.