I have been playing this game since Vanilla pretty much without break and classes has really gone through alot. Talent trees revamps, skills removed, new skills, some classes reworked and some specs gone and reworked.
Gladiator stance, demonology warlock metamorphosis, ranged survival hunter and a bunch more, gone like the wind.
Now it just feels like they focus on content too much and there is alot of work to be done on classes. There is definitely some “dead” specs and has been for a long time.
So if the classes and specs doesn’t feel right the game doesn’t feel fun no matter what content. I have always played the game because I loved the “flow” of the char I played.
Hunter for example. I switched to Hunter as my main in early wotlk and played Survial. I have never had that much fun ever in wow as when I played ranged survival. The flow, the damage, the aoe. No matter what content, I was happy playing my class.
When did we get something new and exciting? Like new talents or new skills? Feels like forever.
I liked the artifact weapon tree. It was something new anyways. But my favorite spec was gone. So the fun kind of ended with Legion. And yes, I choose Hunter because I love being ranged dps, less chaos than being in melee =)
What I’m saying is that Blizzard should be focusing alot more on the classes we play. Maybe bigger talent trees, more skills, take care of balancing the specs way faster, animations and so on.
Fully agreed. This is one of the core design points that Blizzard has neglected for a good while now.
Granted, I’m having fun as Fury Warrior and would be loathing the experience if they hadn’t reworked the spec in the months leading up to BfA based on player feedback, but many other specs suffer from a rather monotonous gameplay scheme.
Gameplay has gone from situational ability use to slaving away your single-target or AoE rotation, while avoiding key encounter mechanics.
Focus on encounter mechanics in such an in-depth manner would be great if WoW wasn’t an MMO-RPG; Problem is, this approach lacks a stable approach to the content experience and essentially takes the gameplay flow out of the player’s hands and puts it in the precreated content. This means that an encounter with simple (or cheesable) mechanics invariably ends up extremely dull for the player experience because there’s just so little to engage oneself with beyond the barebones core rotation.
Edit:
To clarify, I’m not saying that my spec would be complex. On the contrary, it’s very simple. But even more complex specs tend to suffer from a certain sense of monotony caused by the restricting rotation system where you press buttons repeatedly to get to the same outcome.
Ironically, I would actually like this gameplay monotony back for healers; I dislike the overly gimmicky healing system that dominates the game atm, from druids hotting up to shaman with their totem-storage, to disc priests with their damage-healing. I liked the stable damage intake of earlier expansions, it felt better to heal.
You are completely right. I used to like my main, my discipline priest, so much before Legion. Then it got reworked and I liked it less, a lot less. I also used to like my most played alts, the ranged survival hunter and the combat rogue, and both got reworked, combat got turned into something different with outlaw, which I can’t say ever sparked for me, and survival got turned into a melee, which I was never interested in. So together with the specs I used to really enjoy playing, gone was my enjoyment of the game as well.
What are you talking about? fury warrior was much better in legion. The rotation was much more fluid and execute phase felt very impactful (especially with the stacking buff). Now you just do your regular rotation with added execute, less impactful and while i got used to the cd, it still feels better without it.
I don’t remember anyone complaining about this pre-BFA but yeah, usually when things get worse it’s totally plausible that player feedback is involved.
I empathize with you a lot. Granted, I never got a max-level Disc Priest before Legion, but like… my first main was a Surv Hunter, and I really miss the ranged gameplay. MM Hunters’ dot-based spec got nerfed to oblivion when it was a meme spec in Legion and BM Hunter is too pet-focused to get the full old-school Surv vibe.
I do kinda miss the old Disc, though. Sure, it had a lot of issues with being extremely potent in most PvP content (I’m one of those old-school Disc haters, sorry!), but at least it wasn’t about juggling two spell schools!
Regarding this, I’m speaking of BfA alpha/beta, during which Fury Warr had major mechanical issues due to the removal of the artifact weapon. Sure, I liked the Legion Fury, it was VERY fun to play with.
But it was so married to its artifact weapon that when it was removed, the spec became an absolute mechanical mess with talents that were often competing for your attention, or abilities like Bladestorm being virtually useless because of their duration/spot in the rotation.
Players came to the forums and made their voices heard in large enough numbers that Blizzard took another look at the spec and reworked it and adjusted talents and abilities to work with BfA’s longer GCD and their loss of an artifact weapon.
As a result, Fury Warr works smoothly in BfA, with very few mechanical issues… aside from the enrage-baiting, curse you Bloodthirst!
Edit (1-3):
Left behind a mess, came to fix it. My articulation isn’t on fleek today!
I really feel you. I was decided to pick up sub rogue in legion after leaving it in WoD, and had so much fun because of the new way of playing it. The artefact tree was perfect, most specs were viable… though it just feels like whatever they do in-game, blizzard seems to forget to keep the classes fresh
It’s kinda sad, because now I still play sub even tho it’s kinda dead, because I love the spec. They talked about some classes changes in Shadowlands tho, so I’ll be praying with you
I agree, more focus on classes would be ideal for future patches or hotfixes.
I’ve played a Holy/Disc Priest since late vanilla as well, and never before have I disliked Discipline as much as I do now since it was redesigned in Legion. In short it is too much effort for the same or even less performance that other specs do. The spec was fine in WoD and earlier, when it still had its roots in rewarding skillful playing to do higher performance. But now it’s simply easier to play a different spec or class for the same or even better performance.
Mate…i feel you. That s the reason why right now i dont play the game.
I play on blizz since wotlk -> in cata i played rogue only for pvp (i did only pvp in cata since the pve didnt have the spark for me). Then in Pandaria i played druid resto because my GF at that time was arms warrior for pvp. It was fun.
In WoD i went into hardcore mode - DK frost 2h - obliterate SPAM fun. Then they changed the spec to dual-wield. I rerolled into a HUNTER wich i can say its my favorite class. I played MM -> moving and aimed shot , kill shot, traps…barrage. FUN. Ashran was fun as a hunter. Pve was fun as a hunter.
Legion came out. Stayed on my hunter - survival was trash for me. Bm had only 3 buttons. MM was the way. Barrage everything, sidewinders + marked shot…oh god…so much fun. Then they nerfed it and changed it. Still played MM.
BFa was out - tried MM - its like unplayable for me. Tried my alt (priest) - Shadow in the early days of BFA was badin M+, they would even kick me if i told them i play shadow. Holy was decent. Discipline never liked that spec.
Then they started to buff the druid and my holy priest was no longer required.
Then i rerolled into a rogue - i was forced to play outlaw cuz other specs sucks in pve.
I rerolled into a druid - boring after 2 weeks.
I rerolled into all other classes. The only one that was fun for like 3-4 months was my WW monk. But now i just dont feel like playing it.
So i hope blizzard will change all classes next xpac and rework them and make them interactive and fun.
