I mean…even back in shadowlands you had different ST, cleave, m+ and pvp, duh. What is your point again?
Edit: chose shadowlands because it was the first expansion that came to my mind. Insert any expansion and it’s the same.
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What we lost going from MoP-SL trees to DF trees is curated choice. Blizzard can’t balance talents against eachother anymore because there’s no real way to make specific talents compete with eachother anymore besides choice nodes.
Oh cool you buffed A so it’s competitive against B, I’ll just take both and drop C.
Perhaps read the rest of the post too.
Also, in SL, if your best covenant choice for raid wasn’t the best choice for M+, you were basically stuck with it for a while into the expac. And it’s still much easier to switch talents right now than it would be to switch a covenant in SL. Same with any other borrowed power structure of years past.
Talents right now incorporate all of that BS that used to exist, except these days to fix any mistakes or test out unorthodox choices you only need to go to your talent tab and throw points around, then play.
Perhaps it would be easier to think of it as though the talents are functionally the same as the MoP model (with the majority of picks not actually being conditional, i.e. you always take Colossus Smash on Arms War), and thinking of potential pick-or-not nodes as the actual choices you get? I do think there are more than five or six spots per two trees on every class where you can make different choices, tbh.
I think what we have is worse than MoP because players don’t have the choice to avoid active spells without effectively neutering their damage / gameplay. In the past if you didn’t pick an active you had a strong passive in the same row that was at least fairly close and had some compelling or interesting design, now you get all the good passives anyway and if you want to drop an active then the only thing left to spend points on is stuff you didn’t want to begin with.
If I want to drop void torrent on my priest for example, the next best talent I can pick up as an alternative is some nothingburger DP interaction that has no gameplay impact and is 10x weaker.
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This doesn’t apply equally to all classes, I think. For instance, I could fully ignore getting Thunderclap/Storm Bolt and get some passive benefits instead. Mage gets a lot of options to not take some utility talents in their class tree, too.
But frankly, that’s a question of balance between those options first and foremost. It’s the decision of class designers to make active options provide more throughput on average, which is a very debatable choice to be sure, and it’s not something that needs to be automatically true. You could have two duds and one OP talent in the same row in the MoP structure, too (I think I remember my priest friend complaining about exactly that somewhere around SL, actually).
Class tree is a different story, I’m speaking entirely about spec trees.
You could but in order to fix that you only have to look at 1 set of choices, instead of compare that node to every other node on the tree.
Having three talents be mutually exclusive let’s them be tuned to be comparable with eachother, and also let’s other talents in other rows be tuned differently as long they’re also comparable to the other options in that row.
Interestingly enough, most of the classes I’ve tried out so far seem to have way more variety in their class trees than their spec trees. A lot of spec tree choices boil down to the last third, with only a few relatively minor choices prior to that.
Though for some classes it’s a chance to veer away from the meta compounding of class+spec talents, like Assa Rogue not picking up more of the “when stealthed…” talents and instead boosting their upfront damage profile (comes out to a ~5-7% loss overall in perfect conditions, but it’s more consistent and doesn’t suffer nearly as much when you don’t have Vanish available (some tanks have zero consideration for restealth, I swear).
It’s a bit more complex than that (because for most talents, there’s a prerequisite talent, often enough the only way to get talent Y is to pick up talent X, with no other option, so in function they tend to be like bundles), but yes, it is a fair bit harder to tune it compared to MoP/WoD versions (but probably not harder than borrowed power versions of said talents).
I feel the need to address this, not only because I tried rogue and didn’t like it, but also because it seems at the surface to be contradicting me, and you’re making the point a lot. It’s simple, yet people are deselecting it. Why?
There’s the class fantasy aspect first. Rogues have also received a great deal of visual noise and nonsensical animations. For example the ability that repeatedly teleports you backwards into the air, or various spells that are clearly shadow or nature magic, but present themselves as if you’re a regular rogue in text. There is also an insane burst window that isn’t based on your ability to stack, but instead of a giant set of often intricately woven cooldowns to be stacked.
I can’t think of any rogue that asked for this. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem to natch what rogues expect from their class fantasy.
To the gameplay, then. Rogues are filled to the brim with plates to spin. Outlaw in particular can have Roll the Bones, which is not only plate spinning, but it’s also random. The number of plates you get to spin and the number that fall to the floor is outside the player’s control, and sometimes you need a certain buff you don’t get, causing you to lose. The fact that up to 6 buffs appear in an alreaedy incredibly crowded buff area makes it nearly impossible to track what actually happened, necessitating a WeakAura.
You are using defensive cooldowns for rotational purposes - not as a way to re-attack slightly stronger, but as integral parts of the rotation. You’re backstabbing from the front.
You sometimes apply over 10 debuffs to your target. It really isn’t possible to tell what’s going on without a WeakAura to sort that all out.
Rogues do well in justifying their use of combo points and energy as one might expect, but unfortunately the right choice is often determined not what your enemy is or is doing, but rather by the state of your spinning plates. The mechanic that makes you try to hit certain amounts of combo points that isn’t the max yet also makes combo point generation nearly totally random is another annoying and ultimately meaningless mechanic. It doesn’t rely in any way interact with your choices and desires in your attack, but instead likes to get in your way as you flail about trying to do a simple finisher.
Rogues also, like most other classes, tend to AoE like crazy regardless of the fact that the player may have no desire to do so, making single target crowd controls nearly useless.
This class is every bit as broken as many of the others. In fact I’d argue in many ways it’s even worse. Yes, the sequence of buttons is somewhat simple, but where ever you turn between the specs you are sure to find something outrageously stupid, and it makes people avoid the class, myself included.
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Power creep has been too far since at least Legion.
200 ilevel lasted 2 expansions in early WoW, now it lasts less than one tier.
You can enter S1 at 400 ilevel and leave it at 639…
A fresh level 80 who’s got there only through questing has less than 1/3rd the HP of a mythic geared character. Gear needs to make a difference but this is insane.
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That isn’t exactly genuine. You are ready to enter S1’s content (proper content, like Heroic dungeons and World Quests) at something around 560, 570 item level. Anyone below 530 is severely undergeared (likely due to levelling without either doing dungeons with loot or quests with gear rewards).
What is true, however, is that the leap between DF S4 and TWW S1 is a hundred item levels. DF S4 ended at circa 530, S1 ends at 639. Considering S2 is likely to end at circa 675, we’ll be looking at 710-720 item level by the end of the expansion…after which another stat squish (and probably ilvl squish) will occur in Midnight, following the general line of all the other squishes - make scaling before the current expac linear rather that exponential, so we might see TWW items drop down to ilvl 200 or so (displacing the current ilvl 200 SL items to somewhere way below), and Midnight S1 items being circa 250.
Is this true though, I created a Shaman to do an experiment, levelled with timewalking and came into the start of the max level quests at ilevel 460
That’s a little low to be fair, but it is certainly possible to start out at sub 500, but you can get gear that’s well above 500 very trivially with that item level in your bags and of course the auction house has tons of items for you as well to sort this problem out and get up to speed. I managed to get my priest to item level 580 in 4 hours, and that was after levelling for 4 hours as well.
But actually, this is a little bit offtopic. It’s on topic given the title, but it’s not what the OP’s post is about. He’s talking about all the passives and spam effects.
That’s right - I was ready for M+ within 8 hours.
I’d say that’s pretty fast.
Classic WoW passive: Your ClassicBolt does 1 % more damage for every point
Dragonflight talent passive: Every time you jump you gain a Class discord mod buff, increasing the damage of your DragonflightBolt by 2 % damage. When you reach 5 stacks of Class discord mod buff you gain Super Class discord mod buff empowering your next DragonflightShock to increase its crit chance by 50 %
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Every char i level, with dungeons, is somewhere around 520-525 when dinging lvl 80.
The problem is, some things only appear in endgame like Raids. During leveling you have no chance to learn how to raid or why you need things like two tanks.
The thing is, the game never really evolved from information giving beyond Classic.
Yeah we have adventure fibel now but that is not doing a good job on explaining exactly what to do. The way the whole game is set up you are expected from finding it out yourselves or already know everything because it does not really explain you anything except how to do your rotation on doing damage.
This is why I am personally for turning the LfR into a Soloscenario mode. Not just what we have now with fighting the Boss once with NPCs without Loot but really the whole way with your party reacting to you and teaching you with their comments on how to better Tank, Heal, DD in this raid and so giving also Loot as a reward so people go inside and maybe learn something.
Power creep has ruined gear and character building.
Back when we had smaller numbers and no scaling, if you got an epic drop you could visually see the difference on the numbers being displayed on your screen. It meant getting a piece of gear exciting and noticeable. It made hard content at the start easier.
It also allowed for interesting gear choices and character building. You targeted dungeons for specific drops and hoped for that rare epic to drop with 3 gem slots.
You filled out gear with professions because epics were rare. Professions mattered because you needed that enchant, or food buff, or potion, or meta gem and gem slot or missing amour piece that hadnt dropped yet.
As there were more stats i.e. hit, expertise, spell resist, crit damage etc etc you could build your character around certain play styles or specs.
it meant that mana mattered because you could run out. CC mattered to prevent damage. Tanks and dps couldnt self heal unless they were hybrid so more value weas put on good healers and tanks.
Now its all item level and boring stats. You can even got up 10 ilvls and unless you have a damage meter and analyze your runs you wouldnt notice the difference.
One huge thing for me thats lost. Its expansion progression, nothing more gutting than all your progress being reset every major patch. Alts should have catch up but you should have to progress through the content to catch up.
Every major patch should have a badge vendor with catch up gear which supplements doing raids and dungeons when a major patch comes out. Less mini expansions and more full expansion progression. No rewards should be unobtainable during the expansion. Fair enough remove them when a new expansion comes out. Don’t remove incentives!
Somewhere we forgot about the rpg element.
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Bring back mandatory proving grounds from MoP, it wasn’t too hard, but at least teaches that you have buttons other than damage dealing.
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This isn’t classic old man. The slow and steady process doesn’t work in modern gaming.
I never asked for classic and i have no interest in going back to or playing classic, i asked for it to be a MMORPG.
What we have now is lobbies. You could do away with leveling and just have a lobby window. One for pvp, one for raid and one for mythic plus. Just have class templates and queue for whatever you like. Saves all that pesky rpg getting in the way and it would be easier to balance. As you complete a key it can scale your gear appropriately. Then it removes the need for gear completely! Just pure rated progression.
I mean most of the old wow world could be removed and they could just release expansions as stand alone games now or even a free to play game with season lobby game modes.
Also if slow and steady process doesn’t work then why is classic so popular, why is other games slower progression popular? Like single player games like skyrim, people enjoy building their character. People come to game games like wow to escape stresses and chores of reality now gain a whole new raft of chores and stresses.
What you mean is if you want to appeal to ADHD fortnight/cod players then by all means a lobby style game would appeal to them more. Instant queues and choose whatever class you feel like playing.
Remember, this is a mmoRPG, somewhere the game lost is identity. Dungeons used to be about story progression and adventuring with their friends and over coming new foes and exploration. Not a face roll zerg fest competitive meta nonsense.
The game is dwindling for a reason.
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Your last sentence says it all. This game is dwindling since Classic, lol. From reading all of it, yes you want classic. So just go play classic.
Classic and retail are 2 different games with 2 different audiences. I play both and I enjoy both for the games that they are. I play retail for its difficulty (mythic raids and m+) and I play hardcore to take it slow and relax. If there isn’t any flavor of wow for you, maybe you should look for another game.