Even small things like backpedaling into smoke bomb not to get gouged mattered. Classes were dealing good sustain damage without CD. Many classes only CD was Gladiator’s Badge. It made other spells more inportant while now it’s only cooldown trading.
Person who thought that making you able to hit backstab or shred not from behind only was so wrong. It added so much depth. Also integrating Ravage into Shred for Feral was huge mistake. Removing weapon enhancements, seals, auras, some totems, many spells from disc, making mages able to burst without casting, removing stances. This all was done under “quality of life” theme but it’s not quality of life if you feel you can’t do anything and back then you had so many posibilities. It had some depth and it was (I know Blizz would be suprised but yeah) FUN. Depth and posibilities are always fun. You felt that even after playing your spec for few years you had an area to improve.