My take about button bloating in PVP

PVP Arenas
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Many streamers have complained about how many buttons you need to press in WoW but here again, it is unique.
It is the only thing atm that separates WoW from other MMORPGS, MOBAS, ARPG’s and moving on.
WoW absolutely has the best combat system created into any MMORPG and there so many gaming studios that want to have that in their game.
WoW has been licensed to us as a copy and all including game code is not for the personal use.
So let’s go deeper about having multiple buttons. Some players who start to play the game have fewer keybinds than the 2 - 0.2 % of players.
These keybinds are ARENA 1-2-3 macro’s, focus cc, focus interrupt.
Response time is another what pro players take in mind, what’s the time between your command–> your ping—>server ping and before your commands come into an action you have spells in queue. Having multiple keybinds is actually better for this game.

In WoW most classes who has curses, totems or hot’s, does have the highest amount of spells to use.

Pro player key binds vary from 40-70 key binds. Yes 70 key binds. Now you are amazed and looking at your keyboard but stop counting, it takes years and even more years to memorize all of them.
In other games key binds are fewer because their games are not designed in favor of having multiple commands that are sent into a server.
I can give you few important takes what you are able to do on your class.
Most of the players focus too much on single targeting in the game and forgot overall ticking dot pressure.
This game style comes from mythic + and it’s been heavily implemented into pvp as most AOE spells are now single target spells.
So why you should stay on 1 target?
Well you shouldn’t. More disruption you do in small periodic windows makes you faster to understand one key factor which is TEMPO.
Having your key binds tuned for your character does make you better player and overall pro players are reactive because of this.
I would love to discuss with you more about server and delay between WoW’s own server and why i favor more keys to press than whacking 5 key binds or less. But what you do favor?
I think WoW is still a great game because of having multiple ways to customize your play.
That’s what i sometimes miss on other games but that is idd what makes WoW unique. It’s not the classes but the system.

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Summarised:

“What do you think is better for WoW, many or less buttons? Please discuss.”

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Yeah sorry, i’m sorting it to be better for viewer’s eyes.

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I would say less better. WoW with all those addons, macros million icons and tons of information in arena is too much, barely can see characters. Was watching Cdew today and that chaos on the screen was wth.
No need 5 buttons per character for bleeds, can make it 1-2 buttons. Ect.
WoW will sink with all those veterans smashing their 50+ buttons and raging on noobs.
Would be interesting to know how many new players playing PvP, or most playerbase still is from wrath peak times playing game 10+ years.
No fresh blood not worth investing into dying dinosaurs.

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Less button bloat is better ofc, less modifiers, less cc, less everything. Look rsham or frostmage and the amount of abilities you got to press just to play the spec even at mediocre level. And theyre not even very good but there is specs like deva and dhs that are #1 currently with 123 rotations and very little buttons in general.

The amount of abilities some have to micro manage to play their spec doesnt match the reward for what others get with easyer and less amount things to do and yet theyre rewarded so much from doing less that theyre #1 specs currently, so theres huge failures in DF designs and with overtuning specs in general. Also 3v3 or shuffle as heal now and you will spend the entire game in dozen micro cc cause apparently everyone has to have 4-5 cc now per spec for some reason which skillcap guessed as m+ purposes.

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Macros are a given to increase the amount of keybinds, however…

the amount of spells in the game needs to be heavily pruned down

it’s much better to add multi-functionality buttons derived from talents than to have more buttons

similar to Diablo and PoE where u have much less buttons but infinitely more builds on choosing what to improve

example:

Hamstring

why is this not just baked into overpower, or mortal strike? when slows are baked into half the other classes passively and automatically? look at rogue, dh, affliction warlock, ret and others - your dmg or auto attacks do the slow

next example:

totems

why doesn’t earthen just give a stoneskin effect passively on top of it?

why do healing tide and healing stream have to be different buttons? why not just bake in the pump factor of tide inside the healing stream totems and buff them slightly?

example 3:

same effect spells on the same class

hunters dont need an extra root spell, neither do mages

rogues should only have kidney, and they can have it returned to 7 seconds if they want to cry that much

but overall in terms of some other spells

they can be completely pruned or returned to being a choice node, or made a choice node that didn’t exist before

Sanctuary for Ret can be a choice node with Sacrifice

stormbolt and shockwave should be a choice node

essence break and eye beam can be a choice node with essence break giving u meta instead and reducing its cooldown via ur dmg instead of eye beam doing that

call dreadstalkers and call vilefiend can be 1 single spell summoning both (with them being slightly weaker than currently)

the list goes on

so many things can be pruned from the game, with whatever is left being able to be customized to the player’s liking more via talents

this is actually false

it takes like a month of spam playing a class with all ur keybinds to just get muscle memory of them

i think i have like 52 or 53 keybinds on my prevoker

i know every single one and my playtime on the character isnt that much, im pretty inexperienced on the class

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Less buttons :+1:

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It depends what you mean with less.

  1. Less micro CC? Yes. Chimaeral sting, Gouge, etc.
  2. Less rotational damage spells and cooldowns? Yes. Shadow priest optimal st rotation is 19 steps. Cut that by half and then some.
  3. More class restrictions on unique utility? Yes. Remove mortal strike from all but Warrior, monk, hunter and demo lock, remove dispel protection from all but affli locks and SP’s (including resto druid hot dispel protection), etc.
  4. Remove / tune away automated gameplay from classes and return restrictions back to abilities. E.g. Divine shield reduces damage once more by 50%, passive leech removed from DH’s and metamorphosis, blur now only dodges abilities from in front of the caster, DBTS removed in favour of shield wall (requires def stance), etc.
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Button bloat happens at the cost of homogenization. Not a big fan. Among many people an unpopular opinion, although I enjoyed PvP in that expansion (I played WoW mainly for PvP anyway), I’m not a fan of MoP class design for that reason. Everyone had everything. I find it more compelling when classes/specs have to complement each other. Spell pruning is good when done right imo. Having class flair abilities is fine though such as Portals for mages and wls being able to port etc.

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Many classes have abilities that are off gcd and make more sense macroed together with something and people done so forever. Theres so many abilities in game that should been baked into something else ages ago instead give separate button for it when theres other classes that just already have the said thing baked in with something and even switches with conditions. Prune spells in general, bake abilities more into same functions to reduce button bloat is the way. This isnt 2005 wow its 2024 they need to adapt with the old classes designs aswell and start remodeling the specs more. Nobody wants to have 5 different buttons to open with that all do separate thing if there is other classes in game that do the same thing by pressing 3 keys and had multiple conditions applied same as you but just with lesser key presses involved and to maintain.

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Because shortly WoW isn’t Diablo, i know you prefer that some spells and abilities should be caked into rotational spells and abilities such as slows. This however creates horrible combat. Diablo is an ARPG, it’s been played by a mouse and with few key binds. Both of these games WoW and Diablo are different but here you are right, Demon Hunter class design ( i play Diablo btw ) comes from the developer choices. Idd developers should know that adding systems from their other games, might not succesfully work on the game they are developing. Totems again are unique and those are again choices that the developers want to have in their game. And we need to also take in mind that the WoW team has changed multiple times in +20 years.

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I wasn’t talking about Demon Hunters

I was trying to say that WoW is too complex for new players

And without new players the game will continue to become more stale

For you and me, 50-60 keybinds is whatever, we are used to it, we’ve been here for many years

For somebody trying to join a new “game” this is absurd. Now add addons, weakauras, DR’s, strategies to win, scuffed group finder system, you name it

Button bloat is a big part of why the game seems unfun

It’s also a big part of why so many people in PvP are not very good

Learning curve is too large

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You have a line of sense in this. I agree that as long i have played the game, i do memorize my key binds. Button bloat might overwhelm new players and drift them away from WoW but it’s sometimes hard to see as you and me and most of the glads, rank 1’s , top 1% players in the world are used to it. Some addons give too much information, such as Weakauras. Stepping into pvp in WoW is a hard reality check for a new player. I agree.

But what if the addon developers such as programmers of Weakaura: Respect the code of the game and rules and stop selling strings that can be used at the top end level? I know it happens. I just get banned by saying it.

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Here’s a simple circle for you

Daily life time most people don’t enjoy > Chores,School, Job
Free time > trying to get away from this by doing something fun
Game > something to do in your free time to have fun
Having fun when beginning a game > getting the hang of it and understanding it
Classic wow, Sod, Hardcore, older expansions > simple and easy to understand with a personal growth path > fun for new players
Retail > hard to understand, forced growth plan which you are not even given and learn about through group declines, harassment, CHORES (mandatory quests, gearing up, setting up UI, addons, etc), learning all of this as if you’re in a UNIVERSITY with no CLEAR WAY OF LEARNING IT ALONE, and playing daily becomes your unpaid JOB if you want to stay relevant

So there you go, Retail feels more like the things we are trying to get through in our daily lives than a game itself

Sure, you learn how to do the things you have to do, even though you have to keep learning new spells, new builds, new items, new team comps, new classes, new whatever

Sure, you accepted the fact you must grind GEAR locked by ARTIFICIAL CAPS every season

and Sure, you accepted that you have to KEEP DOING THIS OVER AND OVER to stay relevant

that’s retail

it needs to be drastically simplified with quality of life systems added in order to become a good game again, and to bring back all the players it lost to other game versions or other games

Most of the “fun” are things which are baseline for other games, with people accepting the rest as part of their day

It’s a vicious circle

I literally have a close friend who refused to try the game after asking him 5 times over, simply because he saw 2-3 streams for a few minutes with people having NASA UI and having 0 idea what’s going on

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But why couldnt slows be on some ability x? Doesnt half the specs in game already have it like that, then theres just some relics that still got everything as separate bind that you have awkwardly constantly maintain or go through in opener when the other spec just did 123.

Like take charge if we talk of warrior and hamstring why it cant be on same button if other has minimum range and other has x-y range it can be used. Any smart designer would just make it 1 key which other conditions purpose is to help you get to the target and other you to stay at the target. Ppl do this with macro but new ppl dont know they can on other hand. War is just example, theres dozen specs with similar ability bloat, some are sortable by macros and some are on gcd so you cant.

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Yes they do but some of the slows are actually designed to trigger from tier sets. Improved hamstring was in game in Vanilla for warriors and if you add a charge into same skill, well unneeded micro cc occurs again. Micro cc is horrible but it doesn’t have anything to do with my post atm. Button bloat is idd an issue as new players don’t have knowledge—> time ----> interest ----> learning everything on WoW. Maybe we are at the brink of new WoW. Everything needs to change.

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Its part of the button bloat when they increased the amount of everything for df.

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This is superb explanation. My RL friends refuse to play arenas, one of them said, he will better learn piano or guitar. Some gave up after I listed addons to download.
Talked in my work colleague to play wow, leveled up grinded bgs, he loved pvp and then it was time for arenas, after all setting up, macros ect. We tried few games and he gave up , he went to try classic and stayed there. Hard to get friends to play, have to play with some strangers all the time.

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Get rid of Button bload doesnt mean its need too get simpel

Exampel harmstring from ww Monk
Press it apply slow press it again root
Other specc have the “same” abilitys but need 2 buttons one for slow the other that root

Bm hunter got a quit simple rotation but a lot of Talents buff and make new and intressant interaction with the exisiting abilitys rather then just let you press more and more buttons,
Barber shot:you consider the Dot effect
The crit buff that stack and should not fall off, the gcd reduction for Bestial wrath, the reset chance for kill command and the dot effect reduce the cooldown of killcommand, crit reset barber shot, your pets stomp if you press barber shot, every 3 barber shot stack your pet gets buffed for 50%
You can play serpent sting with poisen injection witch let your barber shot consume stacks
ONE BUTTON and so much going on arround it

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Less buttons 100%. Way too many things to keep eyes on. Even with mmorbg mouse on use with 12side buttons im full on binds etc. I dont say there should be 4 buttons to press but WAY less than we have now. Much easier for new players to join the game and learn pvp etc when there isnt so much u need to bind and keep eyes on (mean addons).

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