The "cost" of modern wow gameplay

Community General Discussion
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I came to realize something about playing WoW while playing the prepatch event.
To be precise when for a short time the bosses took especially long to beat.

You don’t have the time to appreciate the animations or enemy.
Since you have to do something every second and have to constantly be aware of your rotation and think about your next steps while evading “ability xyz” you even don’t know the name of the ability, you forget the name of the boss you fight, you literally don’t have the time to look at the boss or the spells you are casting.

Yes it makes game and class more engaging not having to wait for the next ability to use cause your resource is empty or your cooldown is not off. But at the same time every fight becomes some sort of panic hasty mist of action and reaction.

I remember (yeah I know) when I could watch my chain lightning jump over to enemies and think “Yeah nice I am an shaman” or when I actually saw how my strong mortal strike hit the enemy and made a big number. Same goes with Pyroblast.

Now they are just one number in 100 that are displayed at all times and I am not even sure witch number the ability was.

It also makes every class the same it feels like, cause there is no difference in spamming fireball, lightning bolt or arcane shot. Then fast press the proc that happened (there is always a proc that happens with EVERY class). Oh my main cd is off…now fast hyper panic press to get as much gcds into that small window…what happened the last 30 seconds? Don’t know but I didn’t die.

I think you get the picture.

Some will say “Why don’t you play classic, there it is like that.” but we all know it isn’t. Classic wow is full of hardcore people that want you to be better then retail raiders in a game that’s easier then Tetris. And THAT is to less again. Also the game is far to solved.

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It depends on the person and the content you do I guess, if it’s a heroic run with my guild, I’ll be more focused on my rotation, than seeing how pretty my Eternity Surge is, if it’s LFR, open world or dungeons I relax a bit and enjoy my environment more.

I consider at least the evoker has that feeling, the empowered spells are a mechanic I really like. This patch I have played my arcane mage and I also enjoyed it with all of its constant missiles and spheres.

But I do agree shaman feels a little plain. It is sad that many details of the raids are lost when its current content, there are many things that one notices when the expansion has ended and you can solo the raid. The game unfortunately revolves more around m+ now, you need more quick reactions as you have limited time. More CC because of affixes. More instant abilities since you have to move constantly… etc etc…

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I can relate to that. “Back in the day” it seemed like you had to be more situationally aware, conscious of your threat %, plan your rotation, and yet you still had time to appreciate it. Now I feel it’s more keep your eyes on your action bar or weak auras and spam your filler until something glows then mash that. I feel like the game has been dumbed down and speeded up. I still love it though.

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There’s not much to look at for a lot of enemies. I’d say raid boss mechanics and animations do get look at if they are unique.

Sire denatrius for example, even though I focused on positioning, rotation, etc I could still admire the stunning voice lines, animations of the fight.

Most bosses especially this prepatch event is a copy paste. Like seriously, how many times have we fought an “image” of the lich king already? Not much to appreciate if you ask me.

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Dungeons were speed runs long before M+, and the “gogo” mentality didn’t start with M+, either. Already by WotLK people rushed through dungeons, getting their dailies or rep farming out of the way as quickly as possible. The dungeon mechanics were also much simpler, so players rushed even more mindlessly. You’d get kicked if you didn’t keep up.

If someone wants to play more slowly and methodically, they can still do that. HC and M0 dungeons are there, with no timer. All you need to do is find like-minded people to play with – the same thing raiders and M+ runners have to do, too. The M+ timer can also be ignored, if a group agrees to that. You still get end of dungeon and vault loot.

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But isn’t the game designed so that you fail if you play to slow?
As far as I understand it you can only allow yourself to play slower when you have very high gear so that missing 1 or 2 gcds doesn’t weights as much. Or else you even loose in a M0 because of enrage timer or stacking debuff mechanics.

Also why do heroic and m0 if the gear from world quests is better? People never did dungeons for the sake of doing dungeons.

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There’s no failing in M0 dungeons, though. I wouldn’t want to play in a way where I ignore the timer in M+, but if someone would like the slightly higher difficulty and the gear, but not the timer stress, ignoring the timer is an option. You’d be limited to low keys, but as you’d still gear up, beating the timer in low keys would eventually no longer be a problem even if you don’t rush. I think it just depends on your goals.

M0 drops 493 (champion track). You get only one 493 piece from doing the weekly quest, I believe. M0 also drops further Drake’s Crests, though that is no longer a bottleneck now that all the world bosses and events are awakened.

I think people do dungeons for a reason, but that reason could also be just the experience of playing through them more slowly. My main reason to do dungeons currently is because I enjoy playing with my friends and chit-chatting while we do that. Getting crests and beating increasingly higher keys is a nice side effect (started timing 12s on my alt/new main), but it’s the social aspect that keeps me playing.

I think my point was mostly that if you want to play the game in a way that differs from how most people play or how the designers try to make you play, you can still do that. You just need other people who want the same experience.

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I think my main problem is the “speed” of modern wow. Expecting of me to think about 2 things at once while communicating and being aware of my surroundings.

People tend to tell me: “Then go play Classic”
But classic on the other hand is to less. Boring a*s slow and ugly looking mechanics.
Classes that have 1 or 2 button builds

Why only those 2 extremes?
Why cant there be 2 or 3 specs that deal a bit less damage but there for also have downtime or play slower. And you cant tell me “everyone would play only those classes” since there is always players that play the hardest class for the sake of it even if its not the best damage.

At the moment the only way to play with some downtime is if you for example refuse to do a class mechanic. Like blood dks that only use the marrow strike or monks that ignore their mastery or not weaving blizzard into single target rotation of your frostmage.

Its kind of sad that the resolution to this problem is “play bad on purpose to have more peace of mind and less hurting fingers”

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I am almost certain that performing only 80% of your rotation correctly is enough to clear most content in the game. It should not be an issue if you miss out on a GCD or two, especially not in content like heroic dungeons and M+, but I guess that partially also depends on you own skill levels.

I personally do not look at boss animations because most of it is something I have seen other bosses do before.

What can help on your situation is to use the simplified talent setup many of the specs can go with. Your damage will be noticably smaller in most cases, but it helps simplify the rotation if you feel it is affecting your ability to play too much. Most content can be done with said simplified talent setups as well, outside of perhaps mythic raiding and very high keys.

A last ditch alternative beside that is to look for specs that are very simple to get a grasp of. BM hunter used to be like this as the rotation is very basic, which frees up your attention to focus more on your surroundings, and I think the same still applies to Havoc DH as well.

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We really have to get clean with the myth that BM is the easy go to class. I played and tried out a few classes lately and BM is actually one of the hardest to play I would say.

  1. You have a very fast rotation with Button pressing down to less then 1 sec per press. And Abilities that are off GCD like Beastial Wrath

  2. You have to balance your resources. You cant allow your resources to cap out threw barbed shot but at the same time you allways have to keep above 40 focus so that you can instantly use a kill command prog or else you might miss another kill command prog.

  3. You have what? 7 actives in a 30 secound rotation? cobra shot, beastial wrath, killshot, kill command, barbed shot, explosive shot, dire beast, and 3 aoes that you have to use when more then 2 enemies are around. The so called oh so hard arcane mage has less actives right now on a slower pace.

Compared to other classes I played (evenso i havent played all since the last 2 month) this is a very hard and demanding class.

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I really dislike and am bored silly by the slow gameplay of classic. Everyone is different but I far prefer the engaging gameplay of Retail and it’s pace.

There is content where you are up against a timer but there is plenty without for the more casual approach.

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Yeah but there is no in between. You are right that Retail is better in many ways then classic.

But why are all the “easy” classes race locked?

Paladin can only be half of all races
DH can only be elf’s but what if you don’t want to be an elf?
Evoker can only be dracthyr but what if you don’t want to be a dragon boy?
Shadowpriest is nice but you have to be “a evil character” to play that since Void is very morally challenging to use.
And everything else goes up in difficulty fast.

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I use an MMO mouse and I set it up under my character’s personal resource bar with 2 grids shaped like the buttons.

I am a bar peeker but I can see procs even when not peeking.

MMO mouse is like cheating. I was a clicker before and I don’t use binds apart from e for leap on VDH and Prot Warrior and q for hs.

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Fury warrior, frost DK, BM hunter all have comparatively easy rotations, and most (all?) races have access to them.

I agree that even these specs have a lot going on if you want to play them to their full potential (this includes using their utility correctly), but their rotations are easy to grasp with fewer spinning plates than many other specs. I’d agree with the argument that WoW classes in general are a little on the bloated side by modern gaming standards.

I think it comes down to aligning one’s goals and expectations with one’s limitations (voluntarily chosen or otherwise). It’s going to have to be a compromise.

For example, I used to enjoy playing rogue (combat) before the developers completely changed the class and spec. I don’t enjoy the playstyle of outlaw and find it frustrating. I suppose I could learn it and get decent at it, but I don’t want to play that way. So I play something else, because this isn’t a job where I have to settle and do things I don’t enjoy.

I’d also love to be able to play enhancement or elemental well, but it doesn’t work for me and ultimately I enjoy the revised frost DK more, so I play that. It’s also a compromise because I don’t care for the DK’s class theme, but I do greatly enjoy the gameplay.

It’s that way with difficult content too. I managed to time a +12 and I suppose I could do a +13 or a +14 too, but that’s probably where it ends for me unless I practice a ton more than I am willing to and play more with people outside my circle of friends (and less with my friends), but I don’t want to do that, so that is a limitation I choose.

But even if I did want to go higher, I don’t think I’m a good enough, fast enough player for that. So I stick to key ranges that feel challenging to me and I’m content with that. I try to set goals that align with how I want to play and with how I can play, regardless of what others do, especially influencers.

It’s sometimes difficult not to get sucked into a competitive vortex, especially when watching content creators or e-sport events, which I think can cause a lot of frustration. Comparison is the killer of joy.

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Warrior and Hunters can be every race pretty much. Dracthyr is being expanded into the other classes sometime in the future but not with launch.

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BM is not easy…again…I analysed it and compared it to a lot of other classes and its actually one of the hardest there is.

  1. You have active resource management. Not just Dump and Fill Dump and Fill. You have to have the resource at around 40 focus at all time if possible. This is to not have dead kill command procs
  2. You have less then 1 sec per button press witch makes this one of the fastest classes in the game that needs constant awareness and button pressing.
  3. You have to manage multiple cooldowns and its the class with the most actives if skilled semi to high dps
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