Do yourself a favor and don’t. Unless you enjoy Kindergarten.
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Think they changed it in Shadowlands. Cant remember. I remember that we who pointed out its gonna become a mess and cookie cutter will remain and choice is an illusion were proven entirely correct.
I’m indifferent because cookie cutter is cookie cutter but its annoying with the templates occasionally. Especially if I don’t clean them up every now and then.
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It’s not intuitive to put your options in order of cooldown and then press them? What? That seems extremely intuitive to me, I wanna press everything as many times as I can so the big CDs are inherently more flexible than the little ones.
Agree, my rdruids broccoli were killed for months at one occasion all cause talent pathings were changed to please m+ more and then I had to suffer for it in arenas, it pretty much ended my season on my rdruid cause I stopped play. They cant have this type talent trees and make it work for both content, they have shown they are unable.
Also like you said its just cookie cutter anyway and only creates the illusion of choise while also creating hassle with the clunkyness of switch stuff around in short windows, to take something we need and alter half the build for it while at it.
Ret pala. Me. My only problem was that I didnt see how much HP I wasted because I didnt read a certain talent (which isnt the games fault but my own).
Or alternatively have separate trees for PvP and PvE (However I dont expect them to pull that off properly).
I think it just creates them too much on their plate like borrowed powers, and they are notoriously bad at thinking bigger picture or balancing in general. The simplified few choise talent trees were better in that regards. I have no confidence that they would ever be able to design talent trees that entirely work for both pve and pvp like ppl want.
Even if they would for starters manage make build that works for me then at any given moment they change some pathings on talent trees and it changes entirely everything and possibly even the whole spec itself becomes bad. Also why I multiclass.
If they share the same tree like now then no. Given how PvP and PvE want different playstyles (including burst damage, sustained damage etc njada njada)
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I think we’re at an impasse.
I’m trying to describe a general sentiment when playing a class or a spec – that of overwhelming complexity and confusion overshadowing any intuitive approach to the game. I gave some examples of that.
You are focusing on explaining the details of Shadow Priest to convey the fact that there is a design intent behind each ability and the gameplay design can be understood through reason, ergo it’s intuitive.
I disagree with your take because it’s not reflected in the game by the players. If it was, then people wouldn’t resort to guides, but they do, ergo it’s not intuitive.
You are dismissing the notion that the gameplay is not intuitive on the basis that you personally understand it and think otherwise. But how you feel does not even out those who feel otherwise.
And you wouldn’t be a busy bee on Wowhead if it wasn’t because lots of other players don’t understand Shadow Priest half as well as you do.
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and here I thought I wont be needing the sinus function ever again after school
People always resort to guides. Not just in WoW. We resorted to guides even in Vanilla 20 years ago. A game just gets released and you have the guide searches pop up on google pretty much instantly.
People always have a tendency to strife to become better, and this is achieved through guides because there will always be someone better than you that can teach you.
I believe players to consider the game less intuitive than it is due to a need to second guess and expectations of external resources being available. The people I have personally helped often remark things a long the lines of “I hadn’t realised it was that simple” because players simply aren’t looking or trying to intuit their rotations, they’re getting distracted by flashing lights and giving up.
WoW rotations can be hashed out 90% of the way following 3 basic rules, theres more nuances than that sure but you can get far enough to do pretty much everything just following the fundamentals.
There’s a difference between looking up a guide for Elden Ring and World of Warcraft.
In Elden Ring you look up guides to see character build options.
In World of Warcraft you look up guides on how to play properly.
The former is cool, the latter indicates flawed game design.
To me that lands Retail WoW between a rock and a hard place.
It is absolutely not approachable for newbies, who will gravitate toward Classic for a smoother introduction to the game. I think we can see that much being the case.
And at the same time, the veteran players are playing a game that is predominantly focused on difficulty progression and gameplay challenges that demand optimization. So they read the guides and install the addons and watch the YouTube videos. Because trying to progress in the game without doing any of that, and simply playing intuitively on their own accord, is not getting many players “far enough to do pretty much everything”:
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I’ll add a final remark, because I really have to eat. I am starving. 
WoW is not intuitive because it is a game of optimization.
So whether I press Void Blast or Shadow Word: Death has nothing to do with understanding the gameplay intent behind the abilities. What I press is entirely down to numbers tuning. I press what hits hardest and gets me the most dps.
That creates unintuitive gameplay.
And I’m sure all classes and specs have examples of that. I’ll share the one for Shadow Priest.
If you are using Mind Flay and Mind Blast comes off cooldown, then you are supposed to interrupt your Mind Flay in order to cast Mind Blast immediately.
That is unintuitive.
There is nothing intuitive about interrupting your own damage-dealing ability so you can cast another damage-dealing ability. The only reason that makes sense is because WoW is a game of optimization, and you produce more damage if you do interrupt the Mind Flay than if you don’t.
And you don’t learn that simply by playing the game.
Edit: And the joker is of course that sometimes Blizzard have balanced Mind Flay so it’s optimal to let it finish its duration and not interrupt it. And then everyone has done that. Not because of intuition, but because the theory-crafting told them that it was the new optimal.
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I am talking about every game (especially multiplayer. Be it for arguably competetive PvE (logs, meters) or PvP). We looked up guides when WoW had 1 button rotations as well. And there are also people in your example of Elden Ring that look for min max guides (and of that a lot).
We have asked for raid nerfs since Sepulcher. The issue arent the specs, its the complexity of the encounters and how punishing they are. For both Dungeons and Raids. The amount of oneshot abilities is too much. Just take Ovinaxx, you fail an egg on heroic and in most cases, especially pugs, its a wipe. On Mythic its a wipe straight away unless it happens like 10seconds before the kill with immunities ready. Court dispells or charge, ansurek P1 rings. Kyveza too. Everyone blasted through the first four bosses and then hit a brickwall for 4 bosses in a row on the difficulty the person was progressing on.
If you want to play at a higher level you have to spent more time to learn and get better. More shocking news everybody already knows at 5.
I’ve seen people go ballistic because they didnt get stuff instantly. Thats a them problem.
Easy to learn, hard to master. And welcome to pretty much every competitive game ever. People are also under the impression that they need purple, orange or pink logs to succeed. Which is fundamentally wrong as far as the game is concerned. You can clear mythic with grey, green and blue logs.
If “Ability A is stronger than Ability B so if its ready just use it” is unintuitive for you then the problem lies with you.
The intuitive thing about it is the following: It enables you deal more damage (from what I can see also because it increases your spell damage done to the target. That alone would tell me, a non shadow priest player, that its more important than a spell without a cooldown). It also has a CD unlike Mindflay so you can just go back to mindflay afterwards. Its not like lets say the breath of evokers that if they cancel their breath have lost a significant portion of the spells damage due to the required resource to cast it being consumed upon starting to cast the spell.
In that case you can blame Blizzard that they force players too often to reread their abilities.
This tbh…
If you’re walking into town and someone offers you a lift half way do you turn them down because you’ve already started walking?
The only real issue with it is that it causes the game to lag because the game cant handle it.
Some set bonuses change the gameplay but essentially you’re correct. And you can mainly blame people wanting tier sets back.
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I guess they could make even more core things as default to make less in the trees. Is kinda stupid that multishot is a talent, now they atleast understood to make it default for mm on 11.1 for one example. Too much clunkyness constantly switch around those talents between shuffle rounds or what im doing, I dislike them but some might like them so I suggest compromise to bake even more basic stuff as core abilities.
For example. Or remove stuff that nobody uses like Final Reckoning (if rets use it for PvP which is possible because of its instant instead of delayed burst aspect I suppose (no clue, dont play pvp and cba dipping into it atm) then I will go back to my separate trees for PvE and PvP remark)