I always welcome new layers of depth in class design.
But so far, for most classes, Hero Talents are nothing more than a bunch of passive effects that generate RNG damage, RNG healing or RNG summons while the players are performing their normal rotation.
Procs here, procs there. More mobility creep. Uninteractive gameplay. Lame.
With the amount of new visual effects and summons added to the game, I expect WoW will soon look like GW2 when it comes to visual clutter.
For those who have not played GW2, here’s an example of what I don’t want WoW to become: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC_G2--kfAc
Sometimes, less is more.
These fancy animations you show us on wowhead would look fantastic if WoW was a single player game, but it’s not.
Dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas and open world bosses will look like a fireworks show and low income players with lower end rigs will flood the forums to complain about the performance issues they’re now experiencing. That much I can predict.
Compare retail with cata. Cata is miles better. Classes have identities and play differently from eachother. Much less spell effects flying everywhere. PvP is much easier to follow what´s happening. Things play like they should and you understand what´s going on. I get the urge to play when I watch Cata gameplay - that doesn´t happen with retail.
They really did a number on themselves not building on the classic class designs in favor
of WoD pruning and Legion pruning and redesigns. Classes have never recovered.
I mostly agree with what you said, and whilst I didn’t like how WoD removed all disarm and blanket silence effects from the game, I’d still say it was a very solid expansion.
Classes were still true to themselves: rogues still had backstab, ambush, and hemorrhage for example.
Legion is the expansion that truly destroyed unique class mechanics:
Death Knights lost their Presences
Death Knights no longer had 3 types of runes
Warriors lost their stances
Holy Paladins lost Holy Power
Mistweaver Monks lost Chi
Mistweaver Monks lost their 2 stances
Windwalker Monks lost Tigereye Brew
Rogues lost positional abilities: Backstab and Ambush
Mages lost Alter Time
Fire Mages lost all Frost spells and mechanics
Frost Mages lost all Fire spells and mechanics
Frost Mages lost Deep freeze
Hunter lost KILL SHOT (yes, I’m not making this up)
etc.
Legion is the expansion that homogenized all classes and made them lame.
They massacred classes in WoD. Took a chainsaw to what was near perfection - and it showed big time!
Still, they managed to kill what was left of the classic designs completely in Legion, with an additional round of pruning, where “Class fantasy” turned out to be one dimensional “spec fantasy” propped up by the artifact weapons.
Who do you mean by they? You mean those bunch of whiners also known as wow community? You can’t have anything unique in this game anymore cos if god forbids it gives you any advantage over other specs of the same role it’s a tragedy. Everything has to be bland so this community doesn’t go craycray.
Again, I must disagree.
Please take a look at the examples I’ve given. The “chainsaw” swings you mentioned happened in Legion. WoD removed an ability here and there, but it didn’t massively overhaul core class mechanics like Legion did, except maybe for a spec or two.
I mean, seriously.
Legion removed Kill Shot from Hunters and Battle Stance from Warriors, lmao.
I did say “except for a spec or two”, I also stopped playing my Fire Mage in WoD.
Although I did have fun in arena with Prismatic Crystal + Double Breath one shot combos.
Again, I know what you mean. Fire Mage was my main in MoP.
Dragon’s Breath > Frostjaw > Deep Freeze combo with Alter Time in 1v1 made me feel like a God. Fantastic stuff.
I hated what WoD did with Fire Mage.
But again: that’s just one class.
Legion didn’t just gut 1 class, it gutted every single one of them.
It’s actually nothing compared to the Legion class changes list: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_7.0.3_(class_changes)
I agree that Legion was the worse offender. Just that I pretty much exclusively played fire mage in MoP - it was that good!
Still the design philosophy of pruning, and removing class wide spells and intricacies was clear to see already in WoD - they removed shatter from fire and arcane! Freezing enemies in place and shattering them had been a mage staple since vanilla, a very satisfying one at that. You don´t gut a spec like fire mage unless you have a warped sense of what good class design is. And you certainly don´t remove shatter from arcane and fire.
yeah I’m gonna enjoy United getting destroyed for one last time this season. I’m sure there are going to be some grilled veggies but I’m most hyped about burgers. Mmmmamma mia
I’m in the same boat. I was a Fire Mage main too.
Just like you, I hated Fire in WoD. I actually completely changed role, WoD is when I discovered Mistweaver and I haven’t changed main ever since.
But still, what WoD did to Fire Mage, Legion did to every single class, hence: