Developer Insight: Combat for Everyone in Midnight

I went to the bother of actually calculating how many different spells were used:

26 different spells against 3 targets.
11 spells were only used once.

This player is probably on the top of the leaderboard, and he knows what he is doing because he spent a good amount of time understanding his class.
So what is your issue? Git gud.

|1 : 2|2|
|2 : 2|2|
|3 : 1|one time|
|4 :5|5|
|5 : 2|2|
|6 : 5|5|
|8 : 1|one time|
|Alt2 : 2|2|
|Alt3 : 1|one time|
|Alt5 : 1|one time|
|Alt6 : 5|5|
|Alt7 : 1|one time|
|Alt8 : 2|2|
|AltE : 1|one time|
|AltR : 3|3|
|C : 1|one time|
|Ctrl3 : 3|3|
|Ctrl4 : 3|3|
|Ctrl8 : 1|one time|
|CtrlS|S|
|CtrlZ :1|one time|
|E : 2|2|
|F12 : 1|one time|
|Q : 1|one time|
|X : 3|3|
|Z : 3|3|

As far as I understand the stated goals are to keep the game understandable and accessible. To that end, it’s not only classes that are getting pruned and simplified, it’s also combat - similar to the work that was done before Season 2 M+ in TWW, which made M+ so much more enjoyable.

What’s baffling to me is seeing changes on classes that are antithetical to the stated goals. For example, Shaman’s Chain Heal casting time being reduced from 2.5s to 2.0s. Holy Paladin received similar treatment with their Holy Light earlier in TWW. Changes like this one only help to SPEED UP combat instead of slowing it down and reducing cognitive load. The issue is not the cast time length - the issue is the reward for succesfully completing the cast versus how often you fail to complete the cast.

Given how power progression happens throughout an expansion’s patches in recent years I also think that Haste is a problem. We get too much of it. We get too much out of Bloodlust. Too many classes have it as their best stat. Too many spells scale with Haste. Haste should be looked at. We shouldn’t get so much of it that it feels like you’re playing URF in LoL so often. Casters should be allowed to sometimes plant their feet and cast lengthy spells that hit hard. Certain classes should be given more affinity for different stats. Maybe some classes should interact differently with different stats. Maybe tanks should have modifier talents that convert their Versatility to block chance instead, for example. There’s just too much of “more haste, more builders, more spenders, more damage” going around.

An iconic example of this issue would be Destruction Warlock’s Chaos Bolt. It’s slow moving projectile, with a huge visual and a long cast time. And for the most part, their entire gameplay revolves around how to alleviate that cast time. Maybe that should be Destro’s niche. Maybe they should excel at fights that don’t involve so much fire on the ground so they can plant and cast not a thousand Chaos Bolts that tickle, but a few that are VERY hard hitting.

Yeah that sounds horribly boring.

The class changes as they are currently stand are a joke compared to the gameplay we currently have.

Sure make everything passive remove buttons take away skill expression. This will help the OBR users to get back into the game going form 1 to highly demanding 3 button rotas …

That would be the only good thing coming from these changes ppl need to again learn 3 buttons

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The problem with the changes isn’t that simplification is bad thing, it isn’t, It’s that disabling combat addons somehow has an affect on visual only addons also. At this point Blizzard might as well say “we’re removing addons” from the game, as at least it’d be honest and allow me to evaluate Midnight fairly.

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