Why have they stopped giving each class lots of new abilities each expansion?

[Deathknightish]

I hoped that BfA was an exception, but with Shadowlands, it seems to become a trend not to give classes fun new abilities. In the past, you could count on Blizz giving you like 4-8 new buttons to press that did something awesome per expansion, but all tat has really happened now are that talents they removed in the past are given back.

New abilities are fun. Why have they effectively stopped making them?

[Leakage]

They've been replaced with borrowed power

[Omedon]

If you've ever played FFXIV you would know why ability bloat is bad. Some of their rotations last minutes, multiple minutes of different buttons. WoW's strength is its approachability, that goes away if you have to play a grand piano style rotation.

Also, WoW (as slow as some claim it to be) is faster paced than FFXIV so that even more moves toward a need for a smaller number of buttons.

[Deathknightish]

If you've ever played FFXIV you would know why ability bloat is bad. Some of their rotations last minutes, multiple minutes of different buttons. WoW's strength is its approachability, that goes away if you have to play a grand piano style rotation.

Also, WoW (as slow as some claim it to be) is faster paced than FFXIV so that even more moves toward a need for a smaller number of buttons.

I can agree with that, but the number of abilities is laughably low right now imo. Why not have it at the same level as in WotlK, or Cataclysm? They could also rotate useless abilities out and give something new, not just downright remove without giving something back imo.

[Sammonoske]

There is no reason why when Blizzard constantly contradicts themselves. Chalk it up to just not wanting to put in the effort into making something truly new.

[Jazzhands]

Go check out EQ2. I think last time I played I had 10 12 button bars full of stuff and I was doing billions of DPS just with my auto attack. I also have like 8 pages of "talents" and 350 points to spend, and only like 30 of them really matter.

They're in their 16th expansion and have never adjusted anything. This is why prunes and squishes are needed, and why Blizzard has gone to such lengths to avoid ability bloat.

[Jonnusthegreat]

I can agree with that, but the number of abilities is laughably low right now imo. Why not have it at the same level as in WotlK, or Cataclysm? They could also rotate useless abilities out and give something new, not just downright remove without giving something back imo.

I think I counted over the free weekend, and my monk has 32 abilities that I use every fight. That's a lot to bind.

[Tronski]

If you've ever played FFXIV you would know why ability bloat is bad. Some of their rotations last minutes, multiple minutes of different buttons. WoW's strength is its approachability, that goes away if you have to play a grand piano style rotation.

Also, WoW (as slow as some claim it to be) is faster paced than FFXIV so that even more moves toward a need for a smaller number of buttons.

Who? Who claims that WoW is slow?
And which games allegedly has more button mashing than WoW?

[Dug]

Some classes could stand to use some more sure but there's still a lot of bloat on some, even more so now with the unpruning.

[ymirsson]

I can agree with that, but the number of abilities is laughably low right now imo. Why not have it at the same level as in WotlK, or Cataclysm? They could also rotate useless abilities out and give something new, not just downright remove without giving something back imo.

Or they could remove the useless ones and try to make the best out of the remaining ones.

Also, too much or too few buttons is a highly subjective opinion.

[Fistfighter]

Because at some point you ran into something like MoP, where Druids got Metamorphosis, which was a nightmare to balance and Mages got Alter time, which was underwhelmingly boring.

Or WoD, when Hunters got aspect of the fox, which was fundamentaly too OP to exist and was taken away right away, while Mages once again got an underwhelmingly boring Amplify Magic.

What I am trying to say, it's hard to come with a new interesting and usable abilty for each class, and most of the times they will end up repeating themselves, or being forced to create abilities just to pad the numbers.
And what happens when the ability just.. doesn't work, removing it seem rather harsh, considering the rest of the classes get to keep their new shiny toys.

The borrowed power of (especially) Azerite armor was just enough new flair, while still remaining fresh and and interesting to use.



And don't get me wrong, I am for adding new base class abilities, IF they really fit, and not every class really needs or warrants a new ability each expansion.

[khazmodan]

I hoped that BfA was an exception, but with Shadowlands, it seems to become a trend not to give classes fun new abilities. In the past, you could count on Blizz giving you like 4-8 new buttons to press that did something awesome per expansion, but all tat has really happened now are that talents they removed in the past are given back.

New abilities are fun. Why have they effectively stopped making them?

#1: In order to make WoW console ready they need to cull some abilities
#2: they have been bleeding talent and with a lawyer running the game they have no competent leadership.

[Tantaburs]

Because at some point you ran into something like MoP, where Druids got Metamorphosis, which was a nightmare to balance and Mages got Alter time, which was underwhelmingly boring.

Or WoD, when Hunters got aspect of the fox, which was fundamentaly too OP to exist and was taken away right away, while Mages once again got an underwhelmingly boring Amplify Magic.

What I am trying to say, it's hard to come with a new interesting and usable abilty for each class, and most of the times they will end up repeating themselves, or being forced to create abilities just to pad the numbers.
And what happens when the ability just.. doesn't work, removing it seem rather harsh, considering the rest of the classes get to keep their new shiny toys.

The borrowed power of (especially) Azerite armor was just enough new flair, while still remaining fresh and and interesting to use.



And don't get me wrong, I am for adding new base class abilities, IF they really fit, and not every class really needs or warrants a new ability each expansion.

Alter time is legitimately one of the most broken spells they have ever put into the game. Calling OG alter time boring is laughable. It was simultaneously a brokenly strong offensive cooldown and a powerful defensive cooldown.

[VinceVega]

Uff... most classes i play allready have more than enough abilities.
Main is a druid... please no more.
Monk has more than enough.
Shaman too.

I think the only class i would say would not suffer from even more is DH... because when i switch over from my druid to the DH with hte same interface half of my buttons are emtpy space... fun approachable class. But because you can skill down to basically 2 abilities it is litterally a smash your head on the keyboard class....

[Illusions]

Wanting abilities for no reason other than for abilities to be new is sort of bad design, after 9 expansions it'll bloat it too much anyway. I don't exactly know what they should do make classes feel fresh after each expansion (Artefacts were great, but BfA showed that without Artefacts you suddenly felt like there was a big hole in the gameplay though, Azerite felt so shit that hopefully it won't be Artefacts 2.0 in SL), but adding new abilities is dumb and takes away from the balancing aspects of the game.

They added old abilities back, but I'm not sure if you're going to use half of the 'new' abilities - mages now have fire blast, arcane explosion and frostbolt for all specs for example, none of them will be in your rotation outside of the main spec. Fire blast maybe.

[erifwodahs]

Fluidity is blizzards strong side. I don't mind having up to 10-12 buttons to press on every dungeon/raid day with my CDs/utility, not counting trinkets which I can macro in like 6-7 dps and then the rest is utility/cds. Anything more than that becomes disruptive imo. I mean some niche spells like soothe, tranq shot, shacle, de-curse, mind control is one thing, but having other spec spells is just annoying.

[Dartakan]

Its been 8 years since MoP, I think is time to add another talent row or permanent skill again. The argument about getting too many new spells doesn't make sense, considering how long it has been since all spec got a new one like in Cata, Wrath and BC.

[The Butt Witch]

I hoped that BfA was an exception, but with Shadowlands, it seems to become a trend not to give classes fun new abilities. In the past, you could count on Blizz giving you like 4-8 new buttons to press that did something awesome per expansion, but all tat has really happened now are that talents they removed in the past are given back.

New abilities are fun. Why have they effectively stopped making them?

There was a lot of room on the actionbar in past expansions. Now...not so much. In fact people already complain that some classes and specs have too many buttons to fit in their comfortable keybind setup, myself included.

Sure, you got frost dks, destro locks, ret paladins, with huge gaps in their actionbars, but then you also have rogues, druids, unholy dks, demo/affliction locks, mm/bm hunters, etc that are overspilling with buttons that need quick access especially in PVP where you need pretty much everything.

Yes, I'm aware there are keyboard athletes with 3 hands, who want even more keys, super clickers who don't do PVP nor PVE above normal, and who can click on any button whatsoever despite its position on the screen, and I'm also aware there are nooblords who have only the strictly necesary for their PVE rotation on the actiobar and don't even bind interrupts because it's not part of their PVE rotation.

But for the average skilled player, who engages in both PVE and PVP, there IS such a thing as too many buttons.

[Surfacin9]

We keep getting new skills all the time. Yes, its not like it was in BC, Wrath and Cata, but we still get them. The talents are being constantly reworked and readjusted. Those aren't part of borrowed power and can be considered permanent (until they get replaced if they are shit). All in all the concept of borrowed power deals with ability bloat extremely well and still give us new skills every expansion. Its as close to perfection as can be. Outside of that, the abilities they add have to make sense, else better not add them at all. Like the warlock spells that allows you to summon your demon - things like that cause unnecessary bloat.

[Fitsu]

I can agree with that, but the number of abilities is laughably low right now imo. Why not have it at the same level as in WotlK, or Cataclysm? They could also rotate useless abilities out and give something new, not just downright remove without giving something back imo.

Have you ever gone back and played Wrath? Christ... The ability bloat was unreal, you don't need 9 different defensive cooldowns it all just felt like bloat and made using an ability less impactful because you had 6 other things you could still use if things got dicey.

I think right now is quite a good sweet spot for how many abilities you should have and am glad they stopped just adding more for the sake of it.