Power Creep in World of Warcraft has Gone Too Far

Community General Discussion
101

I will ignore the intuitive part of your post because this has already been discussed by Ellipsìs and me.

As for the APM. What is the APM of Shadow Priest? Simulationcraft isnt loading and I cba manually checking sims and count. But based on what people said, aimed at TWW, its among the lower ones. In comparison to melees anyhow. Try Devestation, apparently they have the lowest APM by quite a bit (if one can stomach the non existent transmog).

Then again some classes may just not be ones forte even if they are ones main and especially if Blizzard reworks a spec. I don’t touch any healers aside from Mistweavers for instance. I cant play them for jackpoop. DPS classes I don’t touch Mages and DKs. Rogues also have quite a low APM (Assa and Sub. Outlaw is wrist suicide)

102

Kinda low honestly, lotta channels and nothing really off gcd. Even your cds aren’t really off gcd.

Also it’s not like APM really matters “That” much because people press their keys way more than the game actually allows due to spell queueing. You’re mashing the next button before the cast of the previous is even over.

103

I ignored that part on purpose. While true it does ease the mind if you don’t “have” to spam the button because you have time in theory and can just chill. Like there is a difference between “imma spam the ever living F out of Mutilate!” instead of “Mutilate then envenom oh god rupture ah garrote ahhhhh!” (this isnt true and not how Assa is being played right now anyway but you get the point)

104

So many effects tied on single spells :smiley:

1 Like
105

For me the APM spectrum in WoW goes from high to too high. But that’s just me.

I remember back in Mists of Pandaria that Blizzard briefly explored (with baby steps) the possibility of choosing a talent that was either an active ability or a passive effect. That seemed like the beginning of an attempt to offer more gameplay customization so that players could choose if they wanted lots of buttons to press and a very active play style, or if they wanted more emphasis on decision-making and an overall slower pace of gameplay.
But they never really took that design very far, and today the difference between builds is miniscule in terms of gameplay. It’s mostly a choice of single-target or AoE, and not a choice of fast-paced or slow-paced or many buttons or few.

And consequentially, I think it goes to show when the most popular class by far is Paladin – a very simple and relatively newcomer-friendly class.
All those top played lists show players erring toward the more forgiving and simpler choices, which certainly brings into question why Blizzard insists on class design that is often the polar opposite of what players actually seem to prefer.

So I don’t think it’s commendable to point out a few class/spec options that are less APM demanding, when that seems to be what most players gravitate toward, and it’s what Blizzard offers the least of in their class/spec lineup! Again, know your audience.

106

Which of these things do you not want, they’re mostly core mechanics that underpin the spec’s gameplay and the others are just passives that enhance build diversity or introduce concepts to players as part of the levelling process.

Blizzard and frozen orb’s interactions for example create one of the most satisfying AoE gameplay loops in WoW’s history.

1 Like
107

I love the 5 million procs and modifiers, makes my cpu love modern wow designing. It is ryzen 5600x and for gpu I have 3060 ti, I cant run wow without stutters :slight_smile:

1 Like
108

Well try Devestation. From what I’ve heard the APM is very low.

Passive wise I can choose some passives on Ret (the passive that removes crusader strike also being the best option sim wise). And yes Blizzard said that, but it was requested and stated that more active talents should yield higher results. You can technically get away with a full passive built and still clear the content, the issue isnt the built but the people going ballistic if you’re not cookie cutter (as long as you pull your weight I couldnt give less of a rats if your damage is like 10% lower of whats possible. Or even 20. Most of the stuff is mechanical anyhow. Including in keys.)

– Assa example incoming, you can skip.

But I can argue against passive options. At least they arent always better. Case in point Thistle Tea. Thistle Tea auto procs at 29 energy since the anniversary patch. This unironically made it more annoying to use because you don’t want to press it outside of when you actually want it (damage window aka kingsbane. Not neccesarily needed for Deathmark because youre getting spammed with energy during it)

Serrated Bone Spike was also turned into a passive for Assa. The only annoying thing about Assa for instance right now is, and that is unacceptable, is how Envenom works with Twist the Knife. The Blizzard UI isnt capable of properly tracking the double envenom stacks. Yes you can also ignore this but the moment you know how it works (which you see when you watch the debuff. We, the rogue discord, noticed this instantly) you just get heavily annoyed and get a weakaura to track the seperate stacks. Blizzard only displays one buff that stacks but the stacks have their own seperate uptime and pandemic that you can’t otherwise track.

Other than that the spec is as straight forwards as it could be. Get CP, don’t waste more CP than necessary (same principle as Ret), keep dots and envenom buff running and use your CD every 1-2min.

And despite this Assa, just like Rogue in general, isnt an attractive class to a lot if not most people. You would also see A LOT of ret players drop the moment the class either gets its damage chopped or (which arguably translate into the same) have their range chopped because rets are a pseudo melee.

– example over

And it may also be the class in general thats attractive. Look at the druid population for instance. Shamans are very high too and from what I’ve heard they are hard/annoying to play. Both Elemental and Enha. But their numbers are pulling them up playerbase wise.

Mage is another offender. Its very popular but the class is hard. You can watch mage performance do ping pong from key to key and from raid to raid, its fascinating (more than any other class. At least from my personal observation).

109

Alright guys, just gotta make a new weakaura to track a buff - super important, need to make sure I react correctly to this thing.

Just gotta find the buff in here and~…

What.

:grimacing:

Blizzard you have to stop.

Speaking of auras, why in the absolute deepest pits of Diablo 4’s Hell do my buff icons show which type of flying I’m doing even though I’m not even mounted, show something about an effect that only happens when I die, and something that describes a world event.

Why is there a timewalking buff icon? It applies to literally everybody. What’s next, a Love is in the Air buff for every single player?

The only icon there that’s justified is Rhapsody since it actively changes, but frankly I think that buff should be removed.

So that’s 4 icons out of 4 that I think should be removed. Nice.

4 Likes
110

The problem with this approach is with talent trees you already get to eat have your cake and eat it. In the past you might make a choice between a compelling passive and a compelling active, but now that compelling passive is weaker and split across multiple points, and you can get it alongside the active because you are spending points in the whole tree.

What ends up happening is you get all the cool / good passives anyway, and not choosing actives means you get a couple bad passives or utility passives. The only way to create a compelling choice is by grouping a set of talents + captsone up as a “Build” like Enhance Shaman or by making the choice part of a choice node like ret paladin’s Crusader Strikes.

111

You can just give the active talents ranks, too. The lower rank is much less powerful.

I don’t see a problem here.

Here’s my solution to this: The whole left talent tree is deleted and the whole right side cost at least twice as much. The hero specs like Frostfire, Archon, Keeper of the Grove, etc. are removed as the failed experiment that they are - they just create visual clutter and fail to deliver exciting gameplay.

When pruning, remove rotational abilities that are about spinning plates or building/spending combo points unless there’s something intrinsically interesting about what to choose depending on the situation or if it always existed for the class.

Make every spell feel impactful. Give it a clear visual and sound and make sure its buff or debuff icon, if one such exists, is distinct. Make sure there are no more than 4 buffs or debuffs coming from a player. All these little procs for selfinteractions just go. All of them.

Slice a good chunk of utilities off as well.

Everything should be a choice. If the player ends up having a resource or spell at hand where there is never any external pressure from another entity in the game world that can make him change his mind about when and how to use it, it should be removed.

Here’s a simple example: Cone of Cold does not reset other cooldowns and there is no talent that increases its damage by 40% stacking up to 30 times for a total of 1200% bonus damage. There is a single spell called Cone of Cold and it deals 8 times more damage than the current version - and slows just like the current one, and that’s it.

Use-case? Enemy is close and won’t let you use other AoE abilities, and you need to create distance and deal damage.

If we get this far, then we’ll be in a good position to start building something a bit more interesting.

2 Likes
112

So if a spec has 1 spender, delete the spender?

113

Yes, and the resource. Or add multiple spenders.

In some rare cases I can accept this resource if it does something to the other spells, such as Arcane Charges.

But something like Glacial Spike? Stupid. Icicles? Stupid because there’s only Glacial Spike. It’s visual noise, it’s not fun. Buff Frostbolt by 300%+ instead.

Glacial Spike has made a builder/spender out of Frostbolt to do simply what Frostbolt was designed to do in the first place.

EDIT: Alternatively they can make Glacial Spike the Frostbolt chunky boi. Takes twice as long to cast, hits about twice as hard and freezes the opponent for 4 seconds. High risk/reward in PvP, allows frost mages to chill a bit with the insane spam in PvE plus the mage has to watch out for things that would make him to move and interrupt his cast before he commits to the big spell.

Like right now, if you have to move and your rotation is saying “It’s time for a glacial spike” because of lack of procs? You just can’t do anything. Your platespinning has to somehow align with the flow of the fight because you don’t have any other option than to spin the plates, and whether it aligns well or not really only depends on the procs you go beforehand.

1 Like
114

I just did this to shadow, looked at what was left, played it on my hands for a couple minutes and fell asleep. You removed 2/3 of the spec.

115

Frost mage fried my brain when I dabbled in it during DF. I enjoy understanding a spec better, but looking up explanations with that one just made me go: I’ll hit whatever, this is too much! Lol

(No players were harmed in the process, I just did some world content.)

3 Likes
116

Yes, this plate-spinning trash is taking up your entire action bar, leaving no room for anything interesting in its wake.

We obviously can’t leave you with a class that’s 1/3rd of your current one. They have to do something else instead.

A lot of spells should simply be redesigned from being plate spinning to doing something more interesting. In many cases this simply means restoring the way the spell was before Shadowlands, really…

Another example is a spell like Fingers of Frost. What does it do? It makes you press Ice Lance. That’s it. There is no choice. When it’s up, you press Ice Lance, when it’s not, you don’t. Unless Ice Lance is undertuned so there’s no reason to use it ever.

Ice Lance should be a spell that can be activated while on the move if the enemy is under control or the water elemental is applying some debuff for PvE. Its damage should be less than Frostbolt, but that’s in a world with a massively buffed Frostbolt.

When you look back at tBC you see an Ice Lance that deals 8% of a player’s health in damage and if the target is frozen crits for twice and then 2½ times more iirc, causing it to deal around 40% of a player’s health, and it breaks the control it benefits from. It thus presents a choice between damage and control and has a use case based on what the opponent is able to do.

That’s a good, chunky spell - simple implementation, feels satisfying.

Right now? I will spam 10 friggin’ Ice Lances back to back, each one doing 8% of your health in damage - and if I don’t have all these buffs it’ll do less than 1% of your health in damage and you will passively outheal it.

That is ridiculous.

117

None of the current Rogue play patterns are fully attractive nor simple to get down compared to many other classes. I am not a great player, but I got most 10s done with decent overall damage on an Assa Rogue (~1.3-1.4m), and let’s just say that having to play around combat restealth is just a PITA. I like the general idea of the spec and the gameplay outside of stealth, but the overall impression the spec leaves is “clunky” despite doing good damage if executed correctly. You’ve mentioned Thistle Tea which is automated (good) in a way that doesn’t really align with good usage (very bad). Mutilate doing absolutely no damage and being plainly a filler ability also feels…weird, though I admit that I haven’t seen any Rogue design between Cata and later DF.

Outlaw is the same feeling (having to combat stealth as Outlaw is just poor design in every way including class fantasy) but you press twice as many buttons in the same timeframe for less damage. So you’re doing lots of work for no gain. Also, RtB is plain annoying.

Sub doesn’t feel as jank by default patterns (probably because it’s actually the spec that should be doing combat stealth as a gimmick, which the entire class is currently building around), but it’s the most demanding in terms of skill at lining CDs up and watching your positioning (I believe that’s the only spec that is outright rewarded for staying behind the target - which is also a detrimental position to be in for some bosses, like GB 2nd boss or CoT last boss this season). So it also doesn’t see a lot of play.

118

Yeah let’s get 1 thing straight: Classic and retail are totally different games. Classic players are…smoothbrains. Anyone can parse 99 in Classic.

119

Mop - shadowlands were the simple Talent trees (the best ones)

Dragonflight changed those to the mess that we have now. And guess what? The illusion of choice is still there. Who would have guessed that? At this point blizzard shouldn’t take the majority of the community serious when it comes to changes at all.

3 Likes
120

The illusion of choice is only an illusion if the class isn’t getting proper upkeep. I can tell you that several classes have options in how to build AND in talents chosen for various activities - you don’t raid with the same setup you do M+ with. Also, some classes get a reasonable way to rely less on their “optimal” play patterns which might be unfun or complicated by making a different spec, losing 5% of potential throughput, only because they have the freedom to not choose the optimal talents and instead pick things that do slightly less damage, but are easier or more fun to handle. Sure, there are must-pick talents and that kind of sucks, but for maybe 20-30% of your build, there is flexibility.

And do you remember that every time between the end of WoD and the end of SL, Blizzard basically introduced “talents” in a guise of some other system - Artifact abilities (and legendaries), Azerite powers and items (and eventually corruptions), then Covenant abilities and passives? The only time when MoP talent “trees” worked kind of as intended was MoP and WoD.