A casual observation from myself.
I’ve played a great number of different classes and specs at end-game content of Dragonflight, and one of the most common sentiments I experience are:
Damn, this new spec is a bit difficult to learn.
What are all these (new) buttons and abilities?
Do I have the right talents? What are -all- these new talents?
This is something I experience even on classes and specs I used to main before like Affliction Warlock or even on UH DK I suddenly was given 3 new abilities in my ST rotation…
Currently I feel like it’s one of the main hurdles of the game, up to the point that it is a big obstacle and discouragement for me to even try and play new specs. Currently I feel like I’m being pushed back into only playing the few classes and specs I really understand and to not try anything new.
Has the difficult curve to learn to play a new spec (in raids and mythic+) become too steep with Dragonflight?
YouTube videos, spending time reading the talents (boring for some I know) are two of the best ways to really get an understanding. Then depending how “good” you want to be it’s practice from there.
There are some priority add ons / weak auras as well which really help as a starting point to get used to your rotation when starting a new class or spec.
Personally I find a combination of the two works best, again it depends to what “level” you want to play the class. If you just want casual gameplay with some low keys or lfr or whatever for example then pick the talents you like the sound of and smash some keys it’s enough. If it’s to push a bit higher I’d recommend combining the above.
Specs in general feel alot harder now, I was surprised by how hard havoc was compared to what I’ve played in the past. Same for almost all my other alts.
I usually play a bunch of classes but have limited myself in DF for the same reason, too many abilities makes it harder to learn ( and if I do it’s easy to forget whatever I’m not playing ).
Literally just inspect someone with 2500+ rating in Valdrakken or Orgrimar and copy the talents. Rotation guides are on yt and wowhead/icyveins. The rest is up to you, tis is how I learned MM hunter and now I main it.
the talent tree rework is amazing when you level up a new character and you get talent points over time. But yeah when then expansion started and all your talents were reset it made it a bit confusing what to put all your talents into. I guess thats why people look up speccs and the proper rotations in icyvein
try to play pvp and now you have to know everyone else abilities too and quickly realize why a good pvp player is tracking more stuff than a financial stock market trader.
EDIT: i think wow mechanics are overall bad design
thats in most cases is depending on talents you choose.
there is a lot of builds out there which are realitively simple and strightforward.
sometimes if someone is not the absolute best player its really better to choose easier to manage talents - because so what if you potentialy will loose like 10 % dps compared to bis build when you cannot manage bis in first place so you loose automaticly 30-40 % of your dps.
with DHs its very visible - either you manage your demon explosions properly or you dont . its pretty much 50:50 .
Every time I bring it up I get shouted down by angry PvP’ers remarking how easy my class is - and then when I ask them for advice they, in the very next breath, tell me that mages are one of the hardest classes to learn.
To say that I’m frustrated with the attitudes of PvP’ers and Blizzard’s approach to it would be an understatement.
Been feeling the opposite. Most classes are jusy copy/paste these days. 5-6 button main rotation basic builder/spender. And a few big cds you just aim to overlap as much as possible, most cases use on CD. Yeah they work slightly different but not that much has changed since BFA → df.
I play MM and can pretty much 1 for 1 swap my buttons with outlaw, arms, fury, ret, BM, dh, WW and play exremely similar. Just slight difference like momentum on dh, combo strikes on ww, keep a buff up on BM/rogue. Same for fire mage, frost, demo, destro. Few builders, couple spenders and a hit me when I proc button. Sub/feral/spriest/boomy/afflic are the only classes that feel diff because dot management to me.
Same for all tanks, a defensive to maintain, a self heal, 3-4 button simple dps rotation. Then a few major cd’s to work with. Everything lost it’s niche and unique gameplay after BFA. All this from an M+ perspective, classes I played heavily in BFA are nearly identicle now just a ton more passives.
I remember during the whole homogenization and pruning period I had a discussion on the PvP forums about the number of abilities every spec had and the amount of hotkeys needed.
And knowing that my opinions were often a bit too polarizing for the PvP crowd I thought I’d soften my stance and say that needing 30 keybinds for PvP would be an okay design for certain specs that were historically on the more complex side.
30 anything in any other game would be crazy and ridiculous to even suggest as remotely reasonable. But in WoW, this was the lay of the land.
So I expected some reasonable replies with opinions on abilities, keybinds, pruning, and homogenization.
But all I got was the whole damn forum telling me in very matter of fact terms that anything below 50 keybinds for PvP was catering to the casuals and a complete dumbing down of the game and I was clueless and delusional and a dragonslayer and piss off and… You know the drill.
And I was like…huh, I don’t even think I have 50 buttons on my keyboard!
I thought I had gone far by saying 30 to accommodate the somewhat elitist attitude on the PvP forums, but I was totally not prepared for people arguing such an extreme opinion as 50 keybinds – at least!
Besides Dwarf Fortress, then I don’t think there is any other game as complex as WoW from an outside perspective, and where those who’ve stoutly played it for years will argue that it’s nowhere near being complex enough. And they will die on that hill.
And that Blizzard have completely surrendered to that crowd is beyond incredible, because the design is just so anti-Blizzard as it gets. It’s the complete opposite of what you’d want if you are a game developer who wants to sell a mass-market game for a wide audience.
It’s bewildering.
I was there. I don’t remember this particular incident, but the way I felt at the time was this:
I was tired of abilities that were overcomplicated and I was tired of having a billion buttons, but I also thought that the approach they were taking to the simplification was a problem precisely in that it simplified the complexity instead of what made it complicated.
For instance, taking all CD’s and merging them really doesn’t help with the Swifty macros. It’s just… still a Swifty macro. For those who don’t know the team it means a macro that combines all available offensive cooldowns into a single button such that the damage spikes by over a hundred percent and instantly kills people.
That’s still here. 100% - except it’s not a macro. It’s the “modifiers problem” and it’s HUGE right now. Never been worse. I mean I can literally pop trinket+icy veins+rune (done automatically)+TWO BLOODLUSTS LOLWUT within seconds and absolutely delete enemies for the next 40 seconds. And after that I feel pretty helpless.
Many of the spells that were removed were the less flashy ones that nevertheless served a great purpose.
There were some abilities that were overcomplicated that I was glad to see the removal of, such as Symbiosis.
As a European it’s quite likely you have between 62 and 104, and then there’s modifiers, but this of course ignores the bloody fact that you ACTUALLY HAVE TO BE ABLE TO REACH THEM FAST, plus all the panels and movement and that some of them are modifiers, several aren’t registered by WoW at all, etc. It’s amazing to me how people are just suggesting “Oh just bind this commonly used spell to shift+5” - how about I don’t do that and also avoid getting arthritis thanks.
But there’s far more problems than just keyboard space, and you know those.
Totally relatable. In my opinion, some classes are easier to play than others. For instance, Beast Mastery Hunter is a really easy spec; it has a fairly simple rotation, and you can top the damage meters by learning when to use your three abilities and appropriate gear. As for Frost Mage, it seems really difficult to me. In Mythic+ dungeons, I perform poorly compared to other classes. The spec just feels too slow. I have not yet tried Fire Mage, and Arcane Mage is slow and has mana issues, which I can’t be bothered with, after a year of managing mana in TBC Classic. Everyone says that every spec is viable and capable of topping the damage meters, but I find Mage to be an exceptionally challenging class to play. Hunters only need to use Barbed Shot and Kill Command on cooldown, and pop Bestial Wrath when it’s available. That’s practically it as far as I’m concerned. Quite boring, though, which is why I don’t main it, it gets boring after awhile and you just want something more challenging, but not too complexed. Usually, the most popular classes are easier to play (specifically, their DPS specs). I see a lot of Hunters, Warriors, and Paladins, but rarely do I see a Mage in Valdrakken, and I’m beginning to think Warlocks are becoming extinct. The game is currently too complicated, and I hope they fix it soon.
This hits too close to home, I omitted Divine Word and Empyreal Blaze solely because I have way too many abilities as is.
Unless it’s off the GCD and aligns nicely with other abilities I’m not taking new spells if I’m running out of keybinds. I don’t care if it’s better than a passive choice I like. Hell if I’ll click half my spells
(That said, I do take the baseline CDs so I’m not playing without defining cooldowns like Adrenaline Rush. This is mainly for smaller CDs that I generally haven’t used yet because of the button bloat.)
