I’m genuinely not looking to cause an argument, I’m just curious about other players perspectives regarding this.
I feel that the single greatest issues that hold me back from enjoying Classic (and TBC when we get there) is the combat. Being constantly out of resources and having to stop and eat/drink after a few kills really kills the enjoyment for me personally. When this changed during the WOTLK era, I enjoyed the game substantially more.
I love that the world is more dangerous in Classic. I truly love the idea that pulling a bunch of enemies poses a proper challenge - that much I like.
However, when you feel like you’re penalised for utilising your full toolkit in combat it just spoils any sort of enjoyment I would otherwise get.
Is the large downtime something you actively enjoy? As I mentioned, I’m just curious to understand from the perspective of others.
With effort from your side, you will notice that your character actually becomes powerful, no artificial ilevel scaling.
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I like that feature but that was present in WOTLK too.
It’s the insane downtime that I just cannot derive enjoyment from. Particularly with regards to hybrids such as Paladins/Shamans/Druids - the itemisation doesn’t allow you to utilise your full toolkit without running out of mana extremely quickly, causing you to have to take breaks to drink repeatedly. With Warriors, there’s no passive recovery so you’re obliged to eat over and over which doesn’t really add anything meaningful to the experience in my opinion.
This is the part of the game I cannot personally understand how people obtain satisfaction from. It just seems more like a debilitating annoyance from my perspective.
I think you are playing the wrong class then, personally.
While the limited resources help create the more dangerous situations overall i don’t feel it’s a limitation. As it brings depth and thought into tackeling a certain situation.
Also if you get better at the game in general downtime gets severely cut down for every class as stated before you grow as a player.
The balance is thin, but right where it should be.
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Which class are you playing? If it’s a clothie you need to use your wand more.
Otherwise, it’s not like Retail where you wait for your cooldowns, you need to manage your resource.
I get what the OP means, downtime between mobs is frustrating, or when I rez in a BG I have to cast buffs and sit and drink on the GY for 60 seconds to be combat effective again.
The danger and combat experience itself is great, it’s the downtime that is the pain. And they did fix this as the game progresses, however it slipped into to far the other way where you have no downtime or fear of any mobs.
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The thing is Vanilla (2005) was like this too, I know I levelled a warrior to start with so it’s only being faithful to the original. Which is what Blizzard wanted to be.
I know I shouldn’t say it but is a very retail thing to say about the resources.
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I don’t mind it to be honest. To me, it adds a little bit more to my planning. Everything from pulls, to spells/abilities used to the amount of food/water brought.
If I nuke with all I got, the mob will die quicker, but I also have to spend time recovering.
If you take first aid, cooking, keep relatively up to date gear and fight mobs no higher than 1 level below you I find ALL classes have very little (or no) downtime. This is just something learned over time
Blizzard should speed everything up. From Phases to ingame tempo. Remove all downtime and add more flashing lights. Make WoW into a arcade shooter with cool dances. Just dont let me be alone with my own thoughts…
They did - it’s called retail.
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Not sure if you were being sarcastic and I totally missed the point, but what you’re describing is pretty much modern wow. I can’t remember the last time I sat down to eat/drink to replenish other than food buffs.
I recently took advantage of the 100% XP Buff and levelled a couple of allied races from 20-110. On the latest one I had one death (including dungeons), and that was from falling no less. 
I’ve levelled a priest and hunter to 60, neither had much downtime at all. I have a warrior mid-level and whilst I have to be careful, I can get by on mostly bandages without having to sit and eat every fight. Mages have it the worst (had a 60 mage in vanilla), but even with mage, if you wand the last 3rd of a mobs health you can be regenerating mana by the time it dies. I had a 60 rogue in vanilla too and didn’t have too many problems, though I was undead and cannibalise was used as and when possible. What class is causing you so much of an issue?
Well a hunter can just auto shot and a priest is DoT, shield and wand and by the time you have killed it your mana is 100% again.
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Yep exactly, but both classes can have considerable downtime if you spam all abilities as quickly as poss to kill every mob and want to use all of your highest dps abilities every battle. I’m wondering how much of this is going on in the OP’s game.
I’m pretty sure he’s playing like a arcane mage spamming blast.
I would say that’s true and that’s precisely the reason I find it so hard to enjoy Classic. When I played an Enhancement Shaman I felt completely punished for using spells and found that my mana bar just drained completely after 1-2 kills.
If I didn’t use any spells (or at least kept them to a bare minimum), my TTK would be slower and I’d be forced to heal - once again resulting in going OOM. There just didn’t seem to be a way around it. It would be much better if there were items/talents available to boost my mana pool but there’s just nothing at a lower level that provides any tangible benefit. It also doesn’t help that hybrids like Enhancement Shamans rely on stats like Agility - which doesn’t provide any sort of benefit to the cost of spells.
I tried playing other classes (Priest being one) and while the Wand/Spirit Tap method was efficient, it was just exceptionally dull. I derive enjoyment from WoW by being able to actively utilise my full arsenal of spells and while I greatly appreciate the progression element to Classic, as well as the dangerous world, it just feels immensely punitive that actually enjoying your class to its fullest extent results in forced downtime.
At least as a Paladin you can either judge or use a mana seal while fighting mobs and you don’t have any downtime anymore.
It did that for me in 3-4, but I didn’t use every skill whenever I could, also an enhancement shaman in not meant to stack agility but a mixture of strength and intellect.
Yeah, that was never a thing in classic while levelling, it is for retail though.