I recently started looking around and it seems like elune’s chosen boomy is pretty nice. Starfires/starsurges actually hit kinda hard and tha damage profile isnt all that bad.
Fury warrior is also fairly good. I just don’t like it’s builder spender profile with rampage.
The problem with the WoD prune is precisely that it removed spells like Far Sight, but also other spells with niche uses and streamlined rotations into what we know today.
For example, MoP is infamous for its “switfy macros”, aka a macro that combines 5+ CD’s and near 1-shots somebody.
WoD’s prune should be about removing this, but instead they merged them into a single button?!
NOBODY asked for this.
And guess what? Then they added all the CD’s back plus even more, and now each of them is as strong as 3-4 cooldowns were before WoD.
Ehh… maaybe. I’ve never been a fan of boomie. I’ve tried it many times and it just felt fiddly, but then again they were also always changing it fundamentally. Eclipse, anyone? Blargh.
Also, isn’t it a button proc whack-a-mole fiesta?
It’s not my cup of tea either. I just wish the specs I enjoy were better in this regard
Yeah. Even though I never used it I didn’t want it removed either as others might find a use for it, maybe in PVP it was useful to spot others?
Whilst I did like those crazy macros in MOP, I can kind of see their point in reducing them.
I had one that did about five things and was awesome but probably a bit OP. I would call up Fire Ele, do Ascendance, pop Heroism, used Trinket and maybe one or two other things, then I could spam lava burst for a minute and wreck stuff.
I don’t think it saw much combat use, but that doesn’t make it useless. It’s okay for a spell to exist for roleplay reasons or just to be funny. It’s okay to put treasures under water and give a short breath timer and then give warlocks water breathing and druids aquatic form, or make undead not have a breath meter at all, or putting friggin’ gillyweed on the AH, or whatever. It’s okay to give 3 warlocks the ability to summon an omega awful demon where all 3 players die but one of them at random gets to play as this stupid strong demon and run into Stormwind and kill 8 people in Warmode.
Or you can have two people defending a base in a BG, one of them’s a shaman, and he’s Far Sighting an enemy base to see where people go so you can move around accordingly.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with these sorts of spells at all. You don’t need a keybind for them. They give flavour, they’re funny, and sometimes they’re even useful!
I’m just glad mages got to keep summoning food and drinks.
Losing this awesome stuff for spells Glacial Spike is a tragedy. Glacial Spike is just Frostbolt with extra steps. It has no reason to exist. Yes, it’s useful because it’s tuned to be useful by nerfing Frostbolt, but that doesn’t imply its inclusion was a good move.
EDIT: Sorry I’m editing as you’re replying. D:
Great point here. This issue is found across almost every spec. Another example is sinister strike doing practically nothing because of pistol shot procs & all the other passive procs the damage budget has been redistributed to. Same thing goes for Hammer of Light. Templar’s verdict is now a weasly holy power spender because you have a hammer every 30 seconds that does 5 billion damage
I hated the animation update they rolled out many years ago.
Every melee class is 80% the same now with animations and sound effects, nothing feels unique or satisfying.
Yep. Even though legion had amazing zones/raids/lore, it really did not do combat feeling, animations and SFX justice.
My other grumble in WoD was turning us into another builder / spender class. They added in Maelstrom which we had to build up and then spend with Earthshock.
Why must we all be builder / spenders now? At least with Shaman it is still reasonably simple, Most stuff builds and Earthshock or Earthquake spends. I can basically ignore Mana if I’m not trying to heal myself or a friend. So it wasn’t the end of the world but still.
Fully agree. Blizz seem to be doing a decent job at reducing button bloat since DF, but there’s extreme bloat of passive damage sources.
Most specs in WoW do like 70% throughput with 3-4 abilities, and the remaining 30% with 20-40 tiny procs that you only see if you check Details stats. Why even have all of those crappy procs? They’re a waste of development resources, they complicate game design/balance, and they make the game run slower.
All popular mobas and shooters like HotS/Dota/LoL or Overwatch only have around 5 abilities per hero. It’s not a lot, but they all look, sound, and feel really great, they have purpose, and they are well balanced.
I can’t think of a spec that isn’t builder spender unfortunately. And that says alot about current design. It usually also ends up in builders doing insignificant damage, and spenders doin the majority of it (whatever’s left that isnt passive procs).
The only class that isn’t as much builder/spender is hunter.
I wish it was 70%, some classes have it better than others, but certain specs only do 50% with their button presses.
True. And this feels bad as it takes ages to kill even open world plebs which aren’t even that tough. These should be 2 or 3 spell mobs generally. But I have to Flame Shock, a Lava Burst, 2 Lightning Bolts then an Earth Shock to actually do some danage and kill the mob. With scaling this ends up being basically every open world mob fight.
Should be plebs that die with 2 Lightning bolts with their captain needing a bit more with the occassional elite that needs Earth Ele and some other stuff.
True. I mained a rogue in vanilla WoW and loved the sound effects of backstab and ambush. Ambush chunked a huge percentage on mob/player HP - it felt really impactful! Now, players have waaaaay too much HP in PvP and time-to-kill is way too high - but that’s a different problem.
When I took a break after Wrath and came back in BfA, I was really disapointed by how lame the new rogue abilities sounded. 
Personally I enjoy specs the more variety they have in their button presses. Anything that routinely devolves into pressing the same button over and over for any protracted period of time feels terrible to me.
I don’t want to have 1 button specs either. But i would rather have the current damage profile of a spec be redistributed into the active button presses, rather than the rng procs and passives.
For example, I would rather have Mind Blast, Mind Flay and the dots you actually press do damage rather than have Psychic link, apparitions, Idol of C’thun etc. do the dmg
I would say maybe affliction comes closest to not being a builder spender spec.
Yes we have soulstones but except for the one we get by killing an enemy with soulsteal we don’t build them directly. They kinda flow into us over the fight and that actually feels kinda nice
Psychic link and apparitions are mind blast flay and plague. The only one of those 3 you listed that’s out of player control is cthun.
maybe i’m in the wrong since i don’t play shadow priest. I don’t have a clear idea of how it works. Maybe everything is fine on that spec.
Other than that, I do think what Ishayo said earlier regarding glacial spike applies to shadow priest too. I’d rather have big mind blasts than have Void torrent & void bolt.
Maybe I’m in the wrong, and I understand if you disagree.
Psychic link is effectively the “cleave” damage of your direct damage spells. Apparitions spawns when you cast blast / plague / bolt. They’re both functions of your direct damage abilities and their output is tied directly to your ability to do your rotation.