You are 100% spot on with Survi/Disco.
Two of the most interesting specs in Legion. Down to toilet they go.
I don’t think being unique is super important.
A Fire Mage and a Destruction Warlock are fairly similar in terms of design. And that’s fine. The fantasy of both is to throw some magic bolts of insane power at your opponent - and they both deliver on that fantasy rather well.
What’s more important to me is that the feel and look of the spec shines through. If you’re a Destruction Warlock it should feel and look as if you’re dabbling in dark, evil magic. And if you’re a Fire Mage it should feel as if you’re in complete mastery over this school of magic as you harness a wide variety of spells.
The specs that Blizzard tends to struggle with are those where it’s difficult to figure out what the fantasy is, or where it’s difficult to align the fantasy with the gameplay.
It’s really difficult to pin-point what the fantasy of a Survival Hunter is and how that’s different from the other Hunter specs.
It’s really difficult to make good healing gameplay around a fantasy of wielding both the Holy and Shadow magic for Discipline Priest.
I think Blizzard’s design approach is pretty good - lots of specs feel great and have solid gameplay.
Blizzard mostly struggle with the execution of certain specs, usually the ones that’ve gone through multiple revamps over the years.
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They had a decent approach to some classes and specs in legion, then they destroyed artifacts and half the flavour went away with them. Artifacts would’ve been the perfect approach to the old talent trees.
If they retained the artifacts things would’ve felt different in bfa.
This were my bars in WOD
https://i.imgur.com/C5iYrlE.jpg
And these in BFA:
https://i.imgur.com/XW50nMg.jpg
BFA is so packed with abilities in comparison that i don’t even have enough binds for them all.
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Gameplaywise I would say mage had it pretty bad this expansion.
You often have situations where you just spam the same ability, no matter if it’s Frost with GS build casting frostbolt for a proc, Fire hoping for a fireball crit, or Arcane just using AB most of the time.
For Frost’s GS build there is an alternative but then he requires the rune of power (a horrible CD in my eyes) just like the other 2 mages builds. And then it feels just like Fire and Arcane where your CDs have a too huge impact on the ovrrall dmg.
And while Frost’s AoE isn’t so bad, Arcane’s and Fire’s AoE mechanics just feel bad.
Regarding SV hunter, they should either make it a tank spec or a ranged spec. It suffers the same fate as Enhancer and cat, tobe less popular then the ranged ones.
I fundamentally disagree with you on fire mages and destruction warlocks. Fire may have started out as a slow kind of playstyle in classic, but already as early as TBC it was changed into a very fast paced action spec, which is completely contrary to the slow and methodical destruction warlock.
Visually, sure, but they approach things like building towards damage completely different, mobility too as well as defensively.
When it comes to the fantasy of a spec, even blizzard admitted they had been to zealous in pursuing spec identity. Imo, a spec should never lock you into that sole idea. It’s true that it can be difficult in some instances though, such as with shadow priest. That’s mainly because you make use of a form that locks you out of your holy spells.
Survival was actually far more defined in its identity than BM and MM. BfA changed that of course so we’re back to having a playstyle that largely resembles the others. I don’t think the fantasy is difficult to pin down either. A javelin/dragoon/polearm/spear wielding warrior that has great knowledge of how to use the territory to their advantage. It’s flexible, sure, but so are warriors in any of their 3 specs.
You really don’t think classes resemble each other too much now? I’m curious to hear what you think.
now I go make my hunter survival and go do all the M15 dungeons and go do hc raid with it, just because this thread.
Ha!
yeah bring back wod paladin please (:
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Okay, fine, I’ll bite. Let’s see what fantastic results that has achieved:
- Battle for Dazar Alor normal mode:
survival = 830; hunter total = 830+3266+12411=16507 total hunter. Survival represents 5.03% of the total number of hunters.
discipline = 3079; priest total = 3079+7314+7591=17984. Disc represents 17.12% of priests. Furthermore, compared to the 3079 disc parses, there are 11017 resto druids, almost 4:1 ratio.
Eternal Palace, same story, disc is the least played healer by a large margin (only 60% of the second least played one), and survival barely registers among hunters. That’s in normal mode, where you would assume people do tend to play what they like, if something is so amazing gameplay and people like it so much.
Oh, yea, smashing changes mate. It payed off so much for both those reworked specs. 
Please don’t post proof that you have more abilities. This is the GD forum, what are you thinking?!
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I was actually referring to the remake for Legion, not that it matters. It seems like I can say just about anything and it’ll provoke a passive aggressive response from you.
Because it was the same situation in Legion with both discipline and survival. I don’t want to say nobody, because obviously some people play them, but not many people did play those in comparison to the traditional specs that haven’t been altered beyond recognition. And at the very least in the case of discipline, which was my main since when I can remember it, previous to the Legion rework it was the most popular healer in the game. After the rework, it’s the least popular one. That’s a downgrade, no matter how you put it.
I think they’re highly aware of the hate the classes are getting at this point. Since Ion has discussed it at one of the livestreams. I agree with what you said about how most classes lacks distinctive features and unique gameplay.
Atm I’m hoping we get some good class design the next expansion, so I’m reserving my judgement till after Blizzcon.
But, that’s not true. PvP has discipline priests all over rank 1 just like for legion. Mythic dungeons are seeing plenty of discipline representation as well, just go see for yourself. My reference are the on-site ladders, what are yours?
Besides, you seem to have lost track of what this thread is about completely. I am arguing FOR class feel and identity, not against it. You were the one to bring supposed statistics into the conversation. Honestly you just seem contrarian for the sake of it.
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I will only say this once. You only have 3 buttons to push and your class is boring and it was only better before this expansion!!! This is absolutely not subjective, it’s a fact because i don’t like this expansion!!!
/s
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Actually, you got nothing mate. If your point is that people still play discipline priests or survival hunters, yes sure some do. But whatever things might be, they were played more before the rework, especially discipline priests, than after.
I am not against the general sentiment that you express. Not at all, I also find classes to be really bad and I hate them too. I am, however, against your supposed good benchmarks like legion reworks, which clearly haven’t been the peak of popularity, or ideas such as “Ability pruning is not a bad concept in and on itself”, when ability pruning is precisely what led to this class design crisis. This leads me to consider that you are missing the point completely.
I didn’t say they were the peak of popularity, nor that they are pristigne examples, just that they are good examples imo. Furthermore, it was a comment on the design of their gameplay, not the numbers they put out, which again is something you brought up, only to abandon to talk about how people supposedly miss the old survival hunter/priest, which probably is true, but as a general point? What?
It’s not that some people are still playing these specs, there are plenty of discipline priests on the ladder just like I said. I don’t understand what your point is anymore because you turn heels and make it about something else on a whim.
What exactly does “plenty” mean to you? Previous to the rework (in WoD), discipline was the single most popular healing spec at all brackets of raiding and pvp, alongside resto druids. Now, it’s one of the least popular ones, whereas resto druid, which has been largely unaffected or only mildly affected by pruning and reworks, remains as popular as before.
I agree. I’m excited to see what they’ll present at blizzcon. Could be that they’re only talking about 8.3 though. We might have to wait until gamescon.
Ever played classic ?
Yes but players expect to be able to join groups, even if they don’t care about the numbers. 8.0 shamans should be enough to prove that numbers matter.
Are you even trying tho ?
Ele Sham and unholy DK design follow a similar concept : builder, ST spender, AOE spell allowing you to deal AOE dmg on your ST spender and a few filler spells to adapt to some situations.
Yet the gameplay is different because it doesn’t rely on the same mechanics.
All these “all the classes are the same” arguments are meaningless. This is about as true as claiming that alls specs are great and fun to play.
Ever seen it ?
Imo that’s plenty of details for something announced more than 12 months early. The usual blizzard wouldn’t have told us anything more than 3 months before release, that’s a bold move from them after project titan
3 main things we can expect :
- return of class wide spells
- return of some flavour / niche spells
- work on the CDs to make them more impactful to press
Anything beyond that is pure speculation tho
This Blizzcon will be the biggest in years or maybe ever even if you don’t take WoW into account (we should expect 2 new PC games => D4 and OW2, W3 reforged release, maybe one or two mobile games but who cares at this point).
Missing on an expansion announcement would be a terrible mistake from blizzard imho.
8.3 was revealed a few weeks ago, doubt they’ll spend too much time talking about it on stage
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