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

[Malikath]

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.

lol, so you claim without any evidence to substantiate it's just your opinion.
meanwhile the record of the subscription numbers proves otherwise, that casualisation in-fact drove people away faster.

[Beefkow]

Those are your opinions, end of story.

Wait, so losing artifact weapon traits is my opinion?

Losing talent choices is my opinion?

Losing legiondaries is my opinion?

Losing Tier sets is my opinion?

Class design is simplified and pruned my opinion?

Class design is bad my opinion?

I'm starting to think you don't know the difference between facts and opinions or subjective vs objective. I've never once said how I felt about class design in BFA or how my opinion is automatically justified as a fact.

[Buliwyf the Omen]

You mean like every other expansion they were just to scared to admit they were wrong so they reworked classes anyways?
How many people complained about tanks and healers before?
How many people complained about some classes being broken in pvp.

Sure dude, you either have goldfish memory or started playing WoW just now.

There has not been one point in the Game where me, my friends and even my Guildies considered quitting because of class gameplay - up until Legion and BfA.

Dont bother Beefkow, if Kamins head was any deeper up Ions butt he would be on the Blizzcon stage in a few weeks aswell.

[Relapses]

lol, so you claim without any evidence to substantiate it's just your opinion.
meanwhile the record of the subscription numbers proves otherwise, that casualisation in-fact drove people away faster.

...sub levels prove nothing because you have absolutely no fucking idea why anybody chooses to quit WoW. You just see sub levels decreasing without any fucking context and say, "GOTTA BE THE FUCKING CASUALS LOLXD" Great argument dude.

[kaminaris]

Wait, so losing artifact weapon traits is my opinion?

Losing talent choices is my opinion?

Losing legiondaries is my opinion?

Losing Tier sets is my opinion?

Class design is simplified and pruned my opinion?

Class design is bad my opinion?

I'm starting to think you don't know the difference between facts and opinions or subjective vs objective. I've never once said how I felt about class design in BFA or how my opinion is automatically justified as a fact.

I'm starting to think you are really delusional if you think any of this is a fact.

You did not loose any talent choices, some classes had their talents reworked.

You did not loose legiondaries, still have them in a bag. Obviously they don't work at max level, who could have thought about it?

Tier sets from legion still works (well mostly)

Class design is not simplified and pruned, that is your opinion. Simplicity means anyone could master specs but reality is, maybe 5% of playerbase can. Having more buttons =/= simplified. Proper word is not having bloat anymore.

Class desing being "anything" is purely your opinion.

lol, so you claim without any evidence to substantiate it's just your opinion.
meanwhile the record of the subscription numbers proves otherwise, that casualisation in-fact drove people away faster.

This is also your claims not backed up by anything, nothing ever close to being a fact.

Facts are:
you have no idea about statistics, blizzard does
We do not know what would happen if blizz went in another direction.

[kaminaris]

There has not been one point in the Game where me, my friends and even my Guildies considered quitting because of class gameplay - up until Legion and BfA.

Dont bother Beefkow, if Kamins head was any deeper up Ions butt he would be on the Blizzcon stage in a few weeks aswell.

Look and my old mates came back to BfA. Those guys are now 50+ years old.

[scarletanh]

It's hilarious hearing people whining to have a bag of cluster fck that they never use than a neat package of toolkit that get the job done.

[Beefkow]

I'm starting to think you are really delusional if you think any of this is a fact.

You did not loose any talent choices, some classes had their talents reworked.

You did not loose legiondaries, still have them in a bag. Obviously they don't work at max level, who could have thought about it?

Tier sets from legion still works (well mostly)

Class design is not simplified and pruned, that is your opinion. Simplicity means anyone could master specs but reality is, maybe 5% of playerbase can. Having more buttons =/= simplified. Proper word is not having bloat anymore.

Class desing being "anything" is purely your opinion.

Yeah, i'm done.

I think you're the delusional one, legiondaries aren't wearable at level 120, nobody gives a shit sub 115 level, so those effects are gone.You forgot to mention artifact weapons, a huge part of the toolkit for classes, gone. Tier sets from legion are functional but everything else is disabled, not viable at max level, gone.

How the hell does any of that stuff have to do with max level 120? All of that shit is disabled, period, who cares.

Unholy dks used to have double doom as their weapon trait, which was mostly responsible for a reasonable RP regeneration rate, now pruned and put in the talent trees.

I can go on and on and on.

You lose talent choices.

Using fire mages as an example: phoenix flames, their original artifact weapon ability is moved into talents and 3 of the legiondaries replaced in the talent trees. THAT'S EIGHT THINGS LOST.

It is simplified when there's less talent choices, less button rotations, less passive effects. That's pruned.

You need serious help, I'm not joking at this point. You have got to be a troll.

INB4 "No, you're delusional!" "No, you're a troll". wouldn't be surprised at this point.

[Aggrophobic]

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.

It's still a subjective opinion.

[styil]

Blizzard promoted/hired wrong people, Ion Hazzikostas and Brian Holinka for example, I'm not saying they are bad at what they are doing but most definitely not the best like their art department.

Don't forget Celestalon.

[Eapoe]

I don’t think all classes/specs have been pruned too much, but I do agree a fair decent amount of them have been.
Maybe my reasoning is flawed, but when I can fill up 2 action bars and some of a 3rd with abilities/trinket usage (yes trinkets get a spot), then I don’t think those specs are too pruned. Namely looking at Hunters and Warlocks for abundance of abilities with talents. When looking at other classes and specs such as a DH where I fill up a bar and a 1/2, at most, while only using 2-3 abilities for the majority of the play. When I played up to a month or 2 ago, my DH had a bar filled of just mounts and another of toys. Also my Paladin and Warrior.

[kaminaris]

Yeah, i'm done.

I think you're the delusional one, legiondaries aren't wearable at level 120, nobody gives a shit sub 115 level, so those effects are gone.You forgot to mention artifact weapons, a huge part of the toolkit for classes, gone. Tier sets from legion are functional but everything else is disabled, not viable at max level, gone.

How the hell does any of that stuff have to do with max level 120? All of that shit is disabled, period, who cares.

You lose talent choices.

Using fire mages as an example: phoenix flames, their original artifact weapon ability is moved into talents and 2 of the legiondaries replaced in the talent trees. THAT'S SIX THINGS LOST.

No you are delusional, legiondaries are wearable at 120, they still work in timewalks. It was dumb to assume we get legendaries from that massive outcry in legion. Also mop cloak stopped working, wod ring and all previous legendaries. As expected, yet nobody crys mop cloak didn't work in WoD.

Artifact weapon was 99% passive shit that could be just incorporated into numbers of spells, remember, I did 36 mage towers so had them all maxed out. They just had one active spell and other shit was just passive that had NO IMPACT on your gameplay. Go to any artifact calculator and stop saying nonsense.

Yet fire mage still plays about the same as it was played before. Core rotation did not change. Nothing of value was lost.

It's not even opinion anymore, its more like pure delusion.

[Beefkow]

No you are delusional, legiondaries are wearable at 120, they still work in timewalks. It was dumb to assume we get legendaries from that massive outcry in legion. Also mop cloak stopped working, wod ring and all previous legendaries. As expected, yet nobody crys mop cloak didn't work in WoD.

Nobody gives 2 shits about timewalking, I don't use that crap for doing WQs/dungeons/raiding/bgs/arena/rbgs/scenarios/etc. So that part of your arguement is 100% invalid.

That 99% passive shit you mention is responsible for RP regen/ Rage regen/energy regen and helping out with the classes, unlike garbage azerite armor, which doesn't address any concerns.

Remember that arms warrior weapon trait that made your execute apply this debuff that made MS deal 50% more damage per stack? Gone, removed, it was satisfying and made the execute phase a lot less painful.

INB4 "No, you're delusional!" "No, you're a troll". wouldn't be surprised at this point.

No you are delusional,.

Called it!

Lets keep talking, I can go all night, seriously.

[Nikkaszal]

what about ret? affli? frost mage? frost dk? mm hunt? sp? how do you feel about these?

I fucking love Frost Mage and have mained it all the way through BFA.

Opinions are subjective. The end.

[HCLM]

what about ret? affli? frost mage? frost dk? mm hunt? sp? how do you feel about these?

Did you just list your characters? These classes are fine gameplay-wise.

[Soon-TM]

Its still a million times better than it was in vanilla.

It would better be, since they've had 15 !@$%ing years to improve. And in the OP there are no mentions of Vanilla whatsoever btw.

[Beefkow]

It would better be, since they've had 15 !@$%ing years to improve. And in the OP there are no mentions of Vanilla whatsoever btw.

I'm not sure why people keep bringing up past expansions.

Just move on and focus on the now.

[Zyky]

And once you enter the actual endgame content, you realize how wrong this statement is.

Here i am sitting on any Boss in MC spam and either Chain heal on a random target that has lost HP or constantly start to re cast Healing wave in order to snap that exact moment when the Tank lost HP.

So
Much
Fun

Like seriously, once you actually apply the game content of the current game onto the class design of Vanilla, you realize how much of this actually falls through.

So many abilities have lost their point because that niche no longer exists.

I mean if you're actually trying to compare healers to DPS, especially trying to compare in Molten Core or BWL, then you're actually a lost cause. Regardless Frost Mages in MC use Arcane Explosion regularly, Warlocks have used Searing Pain situationally over the Vanilla and BC to tank mobs that tanks should never tank, Fury Warrior literally stance dances to use Arms abilities. These are only a few examples, but you're over here talking about fucking resto shaman like LOL are you joking?

[kaminaris]

Nobody gives 2 shits about timewalking, I don't use that crap for doing WQs/dungeons/raiding/bgs/arena/rbgs/scenarios/etc. So that part of your arguement is 100% invalid.

That 99% passive shit you mention is responsible for RP regen/ Rage regen/energy regen and helping out with the classes, unlike garbage azerite armor, which doesn't address any concerns.

Remember that arms warrior weapon trait that made your execute apply this debuff that made MS deal 50% more damage per stack? Gone, removed, it was satisfying and made the execute phase a lot less painful.

The 99% passive shit is not response for anything nor helping classes unlike azreite armor which does change core rotation in most classes. Go check simcraft APL from legion and from BFA. Somehow there was no code checks for specific traits in artifact weapon and tons of checks for azerite traits. Wonder why... Oh wait I know, because I wrote rotation helper and they DO change rotation.

Also you are completely mistaken about one thing. Gear should not be mandatory to "fix" class issues. Base class design should be good enough.
No damn bandaids like previously tier sets. Gone, each new raid tier.

[Zyky]

Did you just compare old hard-cast-to-DPS balance with latest instant-cast-everything caster mechanics? Limiting spells per spec was a balancing action, because interrupting 1 spell did nothing when 100% DPS could be done with instant-casts.

With your limited PoV why some changes had to happen in WoW, maybe it is a good idea if you stay in Classic WoW and remain "unhappy" with retail WoW's silly design choices.

I mean if you think there's anything complex about retail WoW then you must really have an issue comprehending simple information. Almost every spec in retail is three buttons max for a rotation(this isn't counting cooldowns because they're cooldowns that you hit once or twice a fight). The class design philosophy has gone downhill and people like you white knighting is why it continues to be a shit show.