Interesting point about Go, but I don’t think it entirely translates into WoW.
In any case, I really wanna zoom in on this statement because
a) I agree
b) I think the CD aspect here is important
The issue for me, in a nutshell, is that everything has a little cooldown. The amount of mage abilities now compared to tBC isn’t actually that much higher - a little bit, but not hugely. But the number of cooldowns is over double.
Cooldowns are great in limited amounts, but the problem with everything having cooldowns is that cooldowns regenerate independently - that means that the more you can throw quickly on top of one another, the quicker they’ll come back. It is often very foolish to hold them for long, especially the offensive ones, and they stack together into true absurdities.
Put another way: If you give me 100 of something and two abilities that cost 100, I’ll have to choose one for the situation - but if you give me 200 of that thing and tell me each of them can be used only once, then you’ve just told me to mash every key on the keyboard.
You can then further reinforce that by saying 1 powers 2 up, and now you’ve reduced an interesting choice to “press 1, then 2, no matter what” by adding passives and more resources.
That’s the problem that’s consuming WoW’s class design at the minute in a nutshell.
How could I miss that. Yes, that is also very true. Tons of stuff just doesn’t have a sound, sounds get filtered, overlap.
In vanilla the only proc Druids had, which I played at the time, was Omen of Clarity, and whenever it procced it made a nice little sound that not onyl I could hear, but people could hear from me (albeit at a lower volume) - and when it procced, I had 5 different ways I could use it.
Why did we go away from that?
Choices. Your Ice Wall vs Polymorph example is great, but most mage abilities aren’t like that. Most mage abilities are like Frost Nova, Freeze, and Ice Nova, that all behave slightly differently but ultimately gets used for the same thing and has a very similar effect, or things like Flurry that’s really just there to allow you to shatter two ice lances (or a glacial) - or indeed things like Glacial, which is just a stronger Frostbolt you can cast every 5 icicles.
Your character has literally never been in an arena match. I’m very confused as to what you’re talking about.
I think a lot of people would agree with that, myself included, but even there we’ve got some weird shenanigans.
For example, due to the insane amount of debuffs and DoT’s and cleaves in the game, Invisibility more often than not would last 1 second, so they put a 50% damage reduction on it. So now it’s actually a shield wall rather than invisibility. I think that’s less complex than if the spell worked as intended because not everyone could deal a DoT tick to you 3 times a second, and because you wouldn’t feel compelled to save your “shield wall” if it wasn’t one because it was invisibility.
Next patch we’re gonna have the whole 3 shields thing again. How is having 3 shields more fun than having 1, given the fact that it’s the same ability that uses them all anyway?
Is it really more fun that warriors have 5 charges and you have 5 blinks that you need to trade precisely for every single one of them? (Shimmer, Alter, Shimmer, alter back, Shimmer, Displace)
Why do Mirror Images provide damage reduction instead of just doing CC and threat reduction?
It’s just bloat. It’s so much bloat.
Oh and by the way, as for the 30 spells thing - huh? I just specced my RM build to see what we’ve got.
I have binds with unique spells on:
Poly RoFire FBomb Ray Racial Decurse Spellsteal Displacement Alter Mirror Ice Nova RoFrost Trinket Ice Lance FB Glacial Flurry Counterspell Blink Invis CoC Nova WE Freeze (same bind) Mass Barrier Ice Barrier Block Orb Blizz Cold Snap Floes Slow Slowfall (useful in BG’s!) DB BWave Shifting DPS trinket
So how many is that? Well, it’s 35.
Then I could mention AE Fire Blast Time Warp (BG’s again) AI and I could also spec Comet Storm, bringing me to a grand total of 41 abilities useful in combat. But let’s be fair and stick to that 35.
It’s… kind of amazing. We we have someone who says the game should be complicated because he has 30 and that makes him happy - but he has more than 30 and doesn’t even know it. I rest my case.
anyway i played my first season in season2(mm hunter, frost mage). in season 3 i just started rolling in green stuff(honor) nowdays on my void elf frost mage.
in my circle of friends or work environment prefer long detailed posts\talks usually its a good thing, maybe the standard here is 3 words\sentence but thats ok.