Power Creep in World of Warcraft has Gone Too Far

[Ishayo-tarren-mill]

The problem is that our abilities are by and large designed to spin plates as opposed to allowing us to deal with various situations enemies can throw at us.

The difficulty of WoW should come as a result of enemies smacking you to pieces if you fail to respond to their attacks, or by them avoiding or minimising your damage, but instead enemies do very little and most of the time it’s just you fighting your own class trying to fire off 6 billion procs before they expire, or casting spells that do nothing to get the procs.

The fact that attacking a target dummy can be challenging for some specs is evidence enough that we’ve gone off the rails.

In PvP there’s a double whammy as both you and your opponent is creating tons of visual noise each from spinning their own plates. Once you’ve got an even moderately sized battle the server itself has problems due to it having to keep track of all the plates being spun.

This kind of gameplay was annoying since the day it came to be. It’s still annoying. It doesn’t improve the game in any way whatsoever.

The pruning should be all these little procs and CD’s and buffs going away and abilities being retuned to be much more dangerous in general and how tricky they are to use. We could use a small reduction in some cases elsewhere, but generally it’s all this rotation plate spinning madness that needs to go.

I’ve commented on this myself many times.

Readability - an ongoing problem

Before I go on: What is readability? Readability is a measure of how easy it is to understand the situation by looking at the game world or other obvious HUD elements. Readability measures how easy it is to see and follow the flow of the game. Note that readability does not mean making it easy to make the right decision, it simply makes it easy to see and understand what’s going on. Shadowlands has major readability issues. Most effects, including very dangerous ones, simply have no visual dis…

Modern abilities be like

New spell: Arcane Echo Type: Damage Spell, Arcane damage Description: Unleash a surge of arcane energy at your target, causing 48,394 arcane damage initially. The energy lingers, echoing within the target and causing an additional 23,304 arcane damage every 3 seconds for 12 seconds. No cooldown No cost New talent: Echoing echoes Description: Every time Arcane Echo ticks on a target, the echo echoes to other targets, causing them to take an additional 10,395 damage. New talent: Echoing spi…

Here's why the server lags and people can't tell what's going on in combat

Hey, let’s restore what damage text used to look like in WoW and see how things have developed. [WoW Retail Addon: Classic Nameplate-based Floating Combat Text] … well. Remember, even if you hide these numbers, the server still has to process them and the animations on characters still play. That’s our problem. Right there.

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Incisor-moonglade

BTW, did you notice how far we got with ilvl from start and how powerful and full of secondaries we are.

We have less total % secondaries than we did at the start of legion at least, by a solid amount as far as I recall.

[Jito-turalyon (Jito)]

@Ellipsìs-tarren-mill

Shadow’s DPS rotation feels great, no notes here except maybe get rid of shadow fiend.

I find it rather unintuitive.

There are times where you will have Void Bolt, Void Blast (or instant Mind Blast), Devouring Plague, and Shadow Word: Death available at the same time. Often during the execute phase.

Without reading guides or engaging in hard theory-crafting yourself, there is no intuitive way to figure out which button to press and in which order.

Which one should I press?! asks the player.
All of them! says the game.

[Incisor-moonglade]

@Jito-turalyon

I find it rather unintuitive.

There are times where you will have Void Bolt, Void Blast (or instant Mind Blast), Devouring Plague, and Shadow Word: Death available at the same time. Often during the execute phase.

Without reading guides or engaging in hard theory-crafting yourself, there is no intuitive way to figure out which button to press and in which order.

Which one should I press?! asks the player.
All of them! says the game.

this - I dont play shadow - ofc I cant play all classes/specs but the fact how actually complicated SP priority seems to be, I just abandoned it for now. Too many procs at once, yes.

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Jito-turalyon

Without reading guides or engaging in hard theory-crafting yourself, there is no intuitive way to figure out which button to press and in which order.

1: Don’t cap on resources (Insanity, MFI Charges)
2: Prioritise shorter rotational CDs first so you get more overall uses of each ability. Void Bolt > Blast > Death
3: Avoid casting void blast or void torrent without all 3 dots active.

That’s all it is.

People overcomplicate it but the answer is simple, they just second guess themselves. That doesn’t even require any real specialist knowledge, it’s the basic principles that underpin every WoW rotation.

[Jito-turalyon (Jito)]

@Ellipsìs-tarren-mill

That’s all it is.

@Ellipsìs-tarren-mill

People overcomplicate it but the answer is simple, they just second guess themselves.

In the old days it went like this:
Mind Blast is your hard-hitting spell. It has a cooldown, so you’ll want to use it when it’s available.
Shadow Word: Pain is a damage-over-time ability. You’ll want to keep it up all the time.
When you’ve ensured the two above, then you use Mind Flay and melt faces.

That was uncomplicated.

When you have Void Bolt, Void Blast, and Devouring Plague, and Shadow Word: Death up at the same time, and they are all instant-cast hard-hitting abilities, then the game doesn’t do a very good job of communicating the which and the why.

You say Devouring Plague because you shouldn’t cap on resource. Okay (we’ll forgo the fact that there is some nuanced resource management here depending on the encounter).

That still leaves 3.

Then you say prioritize shorter cooldowns, which is a cop-out, because between Void Bolt, Void Blast, and Shadow Word: Death, you’re looking at cooldowns that aren’t static.

And they’re all clamoring for the player to press them for their own reason. You’ll want to use that Void Bolt to get value out of your Void Form. You’ll also want to use Void Blast to get value out of Entropic Rift. And you’ll also want to use Shadow Word: Death, because if you’re sitting on a free proc you’re not getting value out of your Deathspeaker talent.

And then you say avoid casting Void Blast and Void Torrent without having all 3 DoTs up. Which is 2 more DoTs to keep up than in the old days, yet they don’t do anything special. It’s just 3 damage-dealing DoTs. So why 3?!

It’s just needless complexity.

I’ve played Shadow Priest for 20+ years, and I guess you have too. No problem.
But ask me to play a Feral Druid or an Affliction Warlock and I’m clueless (and I have those characters!). Even if some Druid or Warlock was to explain it to me there’s still a huge gameplay barrier in front of me, which is the mind’s comprehension of what’s going on and the ability to convey that to your fingers that then press the proper buttons.

That stuff isn’t learned in an iffy. It takes a serious amount of time to do even adequately. And the game has 13 classes and 38 specs.

In a MOBA where you have a ton of characters as well, the toolkit tends to be simpler, so it’s a bit easier for a player to manage a roster of a handful or a dozen characters that they can play adequately well.

The same task in WoW is lubricious, because each class and spec is the equivalent of learning Beethoven’s Hammerklavier.

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Jito-turalyon

In the old days it went like this:
Mind Blast is your hard-hitting spell. It has a cooldown, so you’ll want to use it when it’s available.
Shadow Word: Pain is a damage-over-time ability. You’ll want to keep it up all the time.
When you’ve ensured the two above, then you use Mind Flay and melt faces.

That was uncomplicated.

And coma inducing.

[Warlóór-steamwheedle-cartel]

Its an mmo not bloat, your objectively wrong.

[Álaric-mirage-raceway]

todays talent tree just makes you think you have more choice i actually pref the other talent tree’s

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Jito-turalyon

When you have Void Bolt, Void Blast, and Devouring Plague, and Shadow Word: Death up at the same time, and they are all instant-cast hard-hitting abilities, then the game doesn’t do a very good job of communicating the which and the why.

Bolt > Blast to 1 charge > Death.

Bolt is 3 gcds cooldown, blast is 6, death is at least 7-8. Done. The longer you leave a short cd spell on cd the more likely you are to lose a use of it, so use shorter cd stuff first.

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Jito-turalyon

And then you say avoid casting Void Blast and Void Torrent without having all 3 DoTs up. Which is 2 more DoTs to keep up than in the old days, yet they don’t do anything special. It’s just 3 damage-dealing DoTs. So why 3?!

Devouring plague spends resource, it behaves very differently to shadow word pain and VT.

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Jito-turalyon

I’ve played Shadow Priest for 20+ years, and I guess you have too. No problem.
But ask me to play a Feral Druid or an Affliction Warlock and I’m clueless (and I have those characters!). Even if some Druid or Warlock was to explain it to me there’s still a huge gameplay barrier in front of me, which is the mind’s comprehension of what’s going on and the ability to convey that to your fingers that then press the proper buttons.

Honestly when I play alts I just stick to the following 3 general rules. Maybe I look up a talent build but otherwise it’s.

1: Don’t cap on resources
2: Use short rotational CDs before long ones to avoid losing uses.
3: Stack damage buffs together to get value out of multiplicative increases.

And that’ll get me far enough to pull my weight in at least early mythic.

[Jito-turalyon (Jito)]

@Ellipsìs-tarren-mill

And coma inducing.

To who?!

I watched Day9 – a pretty decent gamer with fair credentials I would say – managing to play a Frost Mage just fine in Classic WoW, and then jumped over to Retail WoW and played like an absolute n00b because he didn’t have a freaking clue which of the 20 abilities on his bar he had to press.

A sort-of Hearthstone streamer called sunglitters went on that whole OnlyFangs wave and made a Hunter and also a Priest. And she doesn’t play that Priest flawlessly, at all. Classic WoW. A newbie. Doesn’t play optimally. That which you call “coma inducing”.

Even I cannot log onto my Druid or Warlock or any of my other alts without feeling like an absolute scrub because I’m not up to date on the optimal rotation, and my muscle memory and ability to remember my hotkeys has all but vanished because I haven’t played those characters for a while.

That’s ridiculous.

@Ellipsìs-tarren-mill

Bolt > Blast to 1 charge > Death.

Bolt is 3 gcds cooldown, blast is 6, death is at least 7-8. Done. The longer you leave a short cd spell on cd the more likely you are to lose a use of it, so use shorter cd stuff first.

@Ellipsìs-tarren-mill

Devouring plague spends resource, it behaves very differently to shadow word pain and VT.

Why are you being obtuse, lecturing me as if I asked for advice when the point of my post is to say in opposition to your “Shadow’s DPS rotation feels great” that it is not?

I gave my examples to illustrate that the DPS rotation is not great. I didn’t give those examples to say that I needed help.

And you damn well know that.

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Jito-turalyon

Why are you being obtuse, lecturing me as if I asked for advice when the point of my post is to say in opposition to your “Shadow’s DPS rotation feels great” that it is not?

You said there’s no intuitive way to understand what order to press your spells in, I provided that order alongside an intuitive and logical reasoning for it. I’m not trying to educate you.

[Kretías-tarren-mill]

@Álaric-mirage-raceway

You have made the same post 4 times now about this addon.

1. all it does is help people learn (badly) a new class

If one needs Hekili to play ret then I’ve got bad news (also its not working for ret. You’re even more better off learning the muscle memory for this spec in particular than other specs actually because of how fast the prio can change dependent on procs).

[Alythena-ravencrest]

@Álaric-mirage-raceway

todays talent tree just makes you think you have more choice i actually pref the other talent tree’s

At best they are just clunky to work with when need switch stuff around in 10 seconds of time between rounds or the like, can make 10 presets aswell and its also as clunky hassle. I also dislike the new talents they make no sense and blizz has shown for 2 expansions now they cant make talent pathings that please both pve and pvp so they just made things worse.

[Kretías-tarren-mill]

@Alythena-ravencrest

At best they are just clunky to work with when need switch stuff around in 10 seconds of time between rounds or the like, can make 10 presets aswell and its also as clunky hassle. I also dislike the new talents they make no sense and blizz has shown for 2 expansions now they cant make talent pathings that please both pve and pvp so they just made things worse.

“We want our choice back like we had in Vanilla!!111!1!” (that classic is even more sweaty than retail is just the icing on the cake)

[Ellipsìs-tarren-mill]

@Jito-turalyon

A sort-of Hearthstone streamer called sunglitters went on that whole OnlyFangs wave and made a Hunter and also a Priest. And she doesn’t play that Priest flawlessly, at all. Classic WoW. A newbie. Doesn’t play optimally. That which you call “coma inducing”.

Was she the one who ran around in circles pressing nothing on onyxia and let pikaboo die? I don’t follow classic at all.

[Jito-turalyon (Jito)]

@Ellipsìs-tarren-mill

You said there’s no intuitive way to understand what order to press your spells in, I provided that order alongside an intuitive and logical reasoning for it. I’m not trying to educate you.

But those are not intuitive.

Those are learned.

I have never ever seen or heard of anyone picking up a new class or spec in WoW and just intuitively learning how to play it adequately or optimally.

Everyone goes to check a guide.

I don’t play Discipline Priest. Last time I did was back in Wrath of the Lick King.
If I had to do it today, you know what the first thing I would do is? Check guides for talent builds and rotations.

It is entirely unrealistic to approach gameplay introduction in WoW from a trial-and-error perspective. No one does that, in any aspect of the game. That’s why you get to make all those guides and commentary on balance changes! It’s because players need others to work all that stuff out for them. It’s why raid boss strategies and supplementary addons are so damn popular, because trial-and-error is a completely unintuitive approach to raiding for all but the top guilds.

[Alythena-ravencrest]

I liked the talent system in bfa if I remember right with few options to pick which you needed for the occasion. Current talent system with these talent paths are bad and blizz has shown 2 expansions that they are unable to please both pve and pvp with the pathings so they only complicate tuning and spec designs for them aswell.