Anyone actually been on beta?

[Spiritz-amanthul]

when did that happen?
When I tested it yesterday RSK with SEF hit for 80k each (so 240k)

so even a 50% nerf on that would still be very high considering it has like 0 cd

[Inagony-twisting-nether (Inagony)]

Anyone hopeful in regards to tuning is at best delusional.

I remember very well the threads on this forum about Subs before SL season 1 landed. They listened did “some” tuning and the result was we had multiple glads that were never glad before who were able to achieve it through running 3 Subs 'cuz they were simply one-shotting everyone, other than Palas.

I am expecting the same.

[Wotlkwhen-kazzak]

as always, we’ll only see if the tuning and the xpac is good in season 2, season 1 is the real beta with real tuning

[Jamais-stormscale]

@Brodanyo-burning-legion

I can tell you what’s the problem. I said it multiple times already but I don’t mind explaining it again. The problem is damage breakdown. There are too many CDs and micro CDs in the game. Through all these years Blizzard kept adding CDs to the point your baseline spells do literally nothing.

This opinion is quite subjective tbh. Just because Venruki parrots it in his videos doesn’t make some undisputable truth above everything else. Some people prefer dmg to be more spaced out, some like cooldown based spells. But I remain unconvinced as to why one would take more ‘‘skill’’ above the other. If anything, where is the skill of you having a high dmg on your baseline abilites and just killing someone without any setup, or as they say, out of the blue.

Statement that baseline abilites do no damage is overblowing it by a lot. Most specs in SL deal high dmg on their own, some do have cds that bring their dmg over the top, I will give you that. But if a spec commits all it’s cooldowns to score a kill, if there is no proper response, it should be lethal. The problem here is how some specs (namely rogues) can do big dmg WHILE having absurd control and surv as well.

A lot of specs in SL don’t really rely on cooldowns to kill, they have high consistent dmg like BM, Survival, Necro ret, arcane, demo, frost, ele, both warrior specs. MM, Fire, moonkin fall more into spectrum of cooldown based playstyle. So there is room for both.

I also remain unconvinced as to why cooldown trading would be ‘‘weird’’. You may not like it, but it is also an expression of a skill, but simply of a different kind.

@Brodanyo-burning-legion

Unless this is going to change retail PvP will be similar to Legion, BFA, SL. It can be more and less bursty like SL compared to BFA but overall the concept stays the same.

Yea, Legion, BfA and SL metas are vastly different compared to each other, especially BfA vs Shadowlands.

@Brodanyo-burning-legion

What I’m the most disappointed is that DF absolutely wasted the concept of bringing back talent trees to redesign specs. They literally took everything from SL (even more CDs) and just put it into trees.

So what? Most SL abilites were fun for their respective specs. And don’t use the arguments that they weren’t ‘‘fun’’ for other players when they faced them, because that argument has been used since the dawn of time by people. Oh this spec has this which isn’t fun for, so you must remove it.

@Brodanyo-burning-legion

Why DF talents don’t work compared to Wrath ones? In Wrath you have class and talents are the way to shape it into spec. So you have passives there to increase range for spells if you go the caster way or reducing cast time etc. There are 2-3 unique class spells for spec in the tree as well.

I get it man, you like Wrath. But no, old talent design is something that has been discussed to death, both by players and developers. Most of the things in old talent trees have been made baseline over the years due to the fact that they were indeed, cookie cutter builds. Some people do, but many people simply didn’t find putting +5% dmg, or casting time points fun. Having to reach hit cap via talents was not fun. It was this mathematical thing you needed to reach after reading a spec guide. This is why devs have moved away from stats like hit and armor pen - they were simply redundant at one point.

@Brodanyo-burning-legion

What DF does is that they put mostly active spells that they gathered from all past expansions and allowed you to pick 60%. Same goes for spec tree. There are just too many spells so then you get this stupid cooldown stacking. While I was against pruning I believe this game needs it now but back then they removed plenty of spells and left all these CDs. Now I believe CDs need to be pruned.

Over the last 2 years, I’ve seen you change your stance on many things, which is admirable actually, a person who never changes his mind holds itself above the truth. But like I said, now you are presenting it like some undisputable truth.

You say all this, and many people here say MoP was the best PvP expansion. Well, it was the expansion with high dmg, absurd cc and with LOT of cooldowns. In fact, when you say some specs have a CD which makes them godlike, MoP enh shaman comes to mind first. It was the very definition of what you wrote. MoP enh Ascendance could global someone with Stormblast+instant Elemental Blast combo (and I don’t mean 3-4 globals that people often condense into ‘‘I got globaled’’ it was a literal one shot).

You can explain all you want. The fact is, most WoW players like cooldowns. It is fun to become more powerful. You have to take into account all aspects of this game, both PvE with raiding/dungeons, open world and PvP. Especially in PvE, the specs who don’t have burst often get benched if there is any burst phase, priority dps and specs with more sustained profile are less desirable in M+. Unfortunately, the fact is most WoW players play PvE and while I don’t think PvP is neglected, it does take a second priority (newsflash, it took second priority in every WoW expansion and at no point was PvP balanced in this game)

You just have to accept that or move on, and be better off about it.

[Hetha-tarren-mill]

@Jamais-stormscale

A lot of specs in SL don’t really rely on cooldowns to kill, they have high consistent dmg like BM, Survival, Necro ret, arcane, demo, frost, ele, both warrior specs. MM, Fire, moonkin fall more into spectrum of cooldown based playstyle.

Ret high consistent? How?! Teach me cause last time I checked it was all in wings

[Jamais-stormscale]

I never said that ret doesn’t the main bulk of their dmg during wings. But unlike like lottery rng Divine Toll which was played most of season 1, most rets today play Necro, which gave them more survivability and better pressure, not completely depending on wings.

[Jamais-stormscale]

Also, a bit ironic that people advocate for more sustained dmg profile, but when some specs do that, they are often branded as ‘‘PvEing’’ the the target down.

[Bluemyst-outland]

Excellent breakdown. I’m tired of people glorifying pure sustain dmg (like wrath).
Doing a PvE rotation and waiting to see who crit first is not skilled gameplay.

A good WoW PvP is fast paced, with diversity (setup comps, rot/pressure comps), and possibility for creativity. Cooldowns&Defensives allow some chess like basic strategy which you can build good tactical play on.
Sl was a fine iteration of PvP, it could had been improved on casual accessibility and balance but was still a good iteration.

[Górehowl-stormscale]

If this is true, i guess im going to have to stay away from pvp altogether, shadowlands pvp was bad to begin with but this sounds like it will plague it hopefully they manage to do something about it

[Oblithorax-ashbringer]

Tis been said millions times but best iteration of WW was and is in MoP. Pruning killed gameplay because some tablet clown decided to do so.

[Lockfromwish-ravencrest]

@Jamais-stormscale

Also, a bit ironic that people advocate for more sustained dmg profile, but when some specs do that, they are often branded as ‘‘PvEing’’ the the target down.

WoW players in a nutshell. Entitled hypocrites that don’t even know what they want.

PvP based around CD’s: ‘boring, scripted, CD trading game’.

PvP based around high sustain damage outside of CDs: ‘zero skill PvE mode’.

Arena players will never wholly be satisfied with the style of PvP.

[Ðrpøurritûs-les-sentinelles]

It’s disgusting some spec can kill at any moment and some have to wait 2 or 3 min to be able to do something then be litteraly useless till your CD is back.

Every spec should be on the same page otherwise it makes some broken or useless.

[Zathina-stormscale]

@Lockfromwish-ravencrest

Arena players will never wholly be satisfied with the style of PvP.

Unsurprisingly since Arena is a “bolted-on” system.

A couple of years ago, half way through Legion a now former WoW dev said on discord that Arena was not even considered when designing classes and spec.*

But that wasn’t always the case. When Blizzard reworked a lot of specs and classes in WotLK, it was done with a “arena first” mind set.** But when arena PvP failed to take off as an esport they eventually just gave up on it. The “shut up PvP guy” mentality spread to the rest of the dev team.

*Going to see if i can find the quote.
** Partially true for Cata as well.

[Nexintus-darksorrow (Nexintus)]

Every spec plays differently though so that isn’t particularly true. Imo the problem is when it goes to the extremes one way or the other.

[Nakamura-outland]

ive been on beta since day 1, almost everything need a ton of tuning, they just puit soloq again, ive played mostly my SP and a random fury warrior, i haven’t touched my mage, since sp feels more fun to play
WW is the scariest thing, boomie and destro are scary asw, dh is pretty scary, retri has a strong burst, but tbh, i haven’t seen many, and when i saw them they were outmatched.
Rogue has recived some changed, and suddently everyone is playing it and is pretty strong, same as hunter, i havne’t seen many ferals, mage feels good only when ignored, has lots of stuff but against double melee if he is the only caster it still feels pretty annoying to play.

ask me anything.

[Ðrpøurritûs-les-sentinelles]

Sure but the problem is rn nothing makes sense, take sub for example you can kill every go and most of the time alone.

Normally with the toolkit you should do almost no dmg to compensate.
Assa can kill only with vendetta then you are basically afk till it’s back.

Same story if you take affli and sp, affli do 12k dps while sp do like 7k.

Even spec with similar playstyle got too much difference, they need to put every spec on the same ground (with keeping in mind the playstyle) otherwise it will make same issue some spec being to strong and other too weak.

[Wotlkwhen-kazzak]

i also played some sp on beta (even tho que times are brutal so not so much) and thinking about maining it for soloq, might be just me but dps is way too low considering how hard it is to do damage while 2 melee at you with 50 kicks, maybe i played wrong build, whats your experience?

[Nakamura-outland]

dps feels bad, but tbh im playing a dot speck, i think mindspike is the go for single target dps

[Brodanyo-burning-legion (Brodanyo)]

@Jamais-stormscale

But like I said, now you are presenting it like some undisputable truth.

Nah I just share my opinion and I think what I’ve typed above. As long as the game is cooldown based it will be crap imo. And while you think meta changed from Legion to SL it’s still based on the same premis “when he presses x I have to press y”, “I have kill window when I have x and he has no y”. While BFA was significantly slower overall and SL is fast it’s still based on the same idea.

@Jamais-stormscale

If anything, where is the skill of you having a high dmg on your baseline abilites and just killing someone without any setup, or as they say, out of the blue.

That’s absolutely wrong high sustain damage in Wrath doesn’t mean high sustain spec in SL. In SL as you said a lot of specs just sit on you 24/7 and PvE you down. While in Wrath you have high sustain damage you also have high sustain healing so without proper setup. Arms doesn’t have as much uptime as in SL so he cannot sit on you and PvE you down. In Wrath you still have to make a setup but it doesn’t mean pressing CD but executing your combo like in fighting game. Most of the time you have to press few spells in the proper order so they hit at the same time for example. You can’t kill anybody through free casting healer as long as he has mana but you can do it anytime you land a CC chain.

And no I didn’t base this on Venruki video just on playing Wrath recently.

@Jamais-stormscale

You say all this, and many people here say MoP was the best PvP expansion. Well, it was the expansion with high dmg, absurd cc and with LOT of cooldowns. In fact, when you say some specs have a CD which makes them godlike, MoP enh shaman comes to mind first. It was the very definition of what you wrote. MoP enh Ascendance could global someone with Stormblast+instant Elemental Blast combo (and I don’t mean 3-4 globals that people often condense into ‘‘I got globaled’’ it was a literal one shot).

It was other way around Elemental Blast and Stormblast then to hit at the same time and get the bonus from the Elemental Blast. You are partially right because most def CDs were less than 3 min. so you couldn’t use Ascendance reliable to force CDs and then to score a kill and had to rely on partner. Anyway best iteration of Enha in my opinion is Cata. It’s well designed all around has weaknesses and strengths. Spec doesn’t have major flaws like mana issues in Wrath.

Also my spec is kinda sustain damage based now but Elemental on retail is too RNG. I don’t know when I’m going to deal big damage because it all depends on Ascendance and Mastery procs. It’s fun for a week and then you are just frustrated that you are literally doing your PvE rotation. In Wrath I have to land Lavaburst → Chain Lightning → Frost Shock at the same time to do my burst. And I can do it anytime we do a CC chain. I have way more control over my damage and I feel every button is worth pressing.

The problem with CDs is you either get BFA or you get SL. It’s almost impossible to find a balance between 15 min. arenas and one shots due to the amount of CDs.

And don’t get me wrong - this game was never truely balanced and never will be. It’s about gameplay being more appealing - that’s it. Combat overall feels way more interesting for me in Wrath than now even though objectively more specs are playable on retail than back then.

[Azarelia-tarren-mill]

no way it’s going live like this