edit : not saying borrowed powers are good or bad, we need to change, lose things and get new ones, its more about the Psycological aspect that i am making this post.
i think they put too much work on borrowed powers so players dont feel too much attached to them as with class/spec base spells/talents and when new xpac comes blizz can change alot if they want with having an excuse to do so.
Not the best example but Imagine if resto shamans had an aditional talent row with Igniouse potential and the other 2 or 3 azerite traits they can choose instead of that. If they know blizz is removing that talent on next expansion they would be mad thinking how are they losing their single target dps from their base toolkit, they would feel bad and cheated.
But becouse its a borrowed power they know other classes loses their powers aswell, and hope that new borrowed powers can fill in the gap.
TLDR: All of this to say thats much easier to nerf/prune a spec this way then pre legion way where all you had was stuff from your base kit and when you got pruned it felt BAD and ppl complained. No one likes to lose, so its easier if you give back something that was borrowed to you instead of giving away whats yours.
IMO, it is a way to reset us every expansion. If we had retained every single thing from ever expansion we’d be doing stupid amounts of damage.
This way nothing from a previous expansion is relevant into the next. No one has to go back and farm Legion for Artifacts or BfA for essences or corruption etc.
Some people dislike borrowed power, I’m fairly indifferent to it. I do not mind giving it up to go onto the new system. Sometimes I’m very relieved to leave the previous system behind, like corruption for example. Other times I will miss things.
I think borrowed powers, this amazing forum warrior term is just another “something” that people whine in the forums about.
Before that we had thunderfury,Legendary staff, ICC strength axe and other “borrowed powers” that where given to specific classes.
After MoP blizzard started giving borrowed powers to everybody as an expansion feature and an easier way for them to balance out classes.
No matter what, people will whine about everything.
I see people that barely did +10 mythic and normal raid whining about their character loosing “powers” whislt they did not care to obtain the power their character can acquire throughout all the expc.
Just another reason for forum warriors to draw attention and whine about nonsense.
When people whine about “borrowed powers” it makes me laugh, now if people whine about the RNG behind such needed powers such as legion legendries there we have a point.
The whole Legion expansion is based on your artefact weapon.
With it’s powers removed it makes a complete nonsense of what NPC’s are telling you and I would imagine new players would be rather confused by it.
the reason why there are borrowed powers is because idiots complained every expansion since wolk about the bloat of abilities. and about game being boring because each expansion meant 1 new talent and maaaaybe 1 new extra button to push .
thats why they are making borrowed powers since Legion .
They could make new talents system in order to refresh game instead of tall thse borrowed powers systems.
And when i say new i don’t mean that god awful classic like talent tree ,what i mean is well something new which doesn’t resemble already seen talents trees.
There’s no such thing as borrowed power, imo. How do you define it ?
Does a trinket is borrowed power ?
Then, does a waist or a helm piece is borrowed aswell ?..
For example, armor set effects were borrowed power and noone ever complained about these. We actually loved it.
Also, complaining about the presence of “systems” in this game is - I really don’t want to judge… but it’s - stupid.
Let’s say there are absolutely zero “systems” in SL.
Again define “system”. Is raiding a system ? Is M+ a system ? Is reputation a system ? Is arena vendor a system ? Is you talent tree a system ? Was the old talent tree a system ?
Ultimately - and I agree that I take it quite literally here - the login screen is a system.
What I mean here is that without systems, the game would be empty. There would be nothing to do.
So, people don’t complain about the presence of systems. They complain about the introduction of new systems. But in that case, why not play classic instead ? Oh you like the fast combat pace of retail ? And you’re bored with slow combat pace in classic ? Well… Faster combat pacing was a system that was introduced at some point.
So people complain because they would just like to pick a little bit of classic with a bit of TBC and MOP with that nice questline from WotLK or whatever and add a little cherry at the top of their very personal cake. It’s not how it works.
Problem here is you seem to grab into sematics instead of trying to understand what people actually mean when they complain about “borrowed power” and “systems”. In this post for example OP uses these words to talk about phenomena where we are not getting more class skills or talents (permanent developement for our character) but instead get something similar to gear: something that is temporary - hence using the “borrowed powers” which indeed can sound similar to what gear is. So discussion is about permanent versus temporary and by “systems” OP is not referring to all systems in game but to particular systems that have replaced parts in game that have been permanent developement.
I think they have changed things to this way mainly because they are worried about ability bloat and indeed want to have easy clean table at start of each expansion. I would not call it “psychological aspect” though, more like easy way out, because while this makes development easier for them it same time causes value issues. Sure, it is easier for players to “give back” something that was “borrowed” but same time players know they are not actually getting anything permanent, like they used to get. Thing they get has less value than something they would get as permanent thing - it’s disposable. And while it is fine to have such things in the game (we already got lot of them in forms of gear and such power increases that get replaced) having practically everything as temporary thing can make game feel hollow and have less meaning.
Imo they are afraid of the criticism and that their system won’t be liked by the fans and borrowed power is always easier to be removed than reworking whole spec. They are literally so scared of downvotes and criticism that they are doing everything to hide it.
Check their youtube videos - comments and downvotes removal. They even stopped Q&As because of the up&vote ratios of the few last ones.
To me, it looks like they want to keep stuff refreshing and new, instead our chars just having to reaquire gear they already had. It’s also efficient way of testing new systems/traits/perks/spells/passives etc. - like Glimmer for hpallies.
My only problem is that some of those systems fix something class was lacking then they remove system and the gap in class design stays because new system didn’t fix it.
OK Socrates
Technically you are absolutely correct ,game is and always was full of systems that’s fine.
But term " borrower powers " become d synonym for specific type of system
I agree. Keeping game fresh = new stuff = regular changes. It’s better to crate a “borrowed power” bucket than it is to randomly change class / spec core talents every patch. That way, players know what they’re going to lose every patch without Blizz having to announce changes via Blue post which many players do not pay attention to.
I don’t disagree with your sentiment but some people object to the old system going when the expansion is over and having to learn a new system.
Like I said I just see it as a way to reset us every expansion and not overbloat us, something they used to do in the past. I also think it kind of keeps it fresh. However we do get to retain some things (abilities etc) or they make an appearance in a later expansion.
I do understand both sides, it’s just not something that I find a problem myself.
Absolutely agree, they are easily given, easily balanced, and more importantly, easily taken away. It’s a way to homogenise classes without actually homogenising them.
