The unpruning lies

Community General Discussion
21

I just want to get to a point where Dampening isn’t needed anymore. Where classes with self healing options can actually shine. Where comps like Vanguard, Thug, Jungle and whatnot for 2s would be viable again. Where your survival doesn’t depend on how high or low dampening is. It’s just so frustrating that with 70% dampening in 2s, no matter how much I skillfully fakecast people, use CDs at the right times, my mate or I still die, because the numbers are too low.

I could go on for a novel’s worth of rant, so I’ll save it, for now.

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22

Once again I accidentally erased my post. They need to do something about how forum posting works.

23

“OMG they lied to us” is not really feedback, tough.

Something more specific like this is feedback :

Typhoon is now bound to balance affinity, but we had Typhoon before already. So in reality, we just moved typhoon in another place, and nerfed balance affinity (if it was even possible). So, balance affinity ought to do more than just give typhoon and increase range.
When you choose an affinity, you should be able to fill that role aswell, to a lesser extend. Either because you can’t hold it for long or because it’s a bit less efficient. But not so unefficient that it is utterly useless.

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24

I am not really a druid specialist, but my tank is complaining about getting abilities removed/changed, and baseline abilities added that are not usable in bear-form :frowning:

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25

I can understand why. At the same time, it really depends on encounters in SL. Part of the druid flavor (in the past) was shapeshifting. Having a druid who sat 100% of the time in the same form was crazy.

Right now, in BFA, resto druids works very well, since you can catweave easily.

Some good bear tanks also manage to either catweave or heal while tanking, but it’s much more problematic.
A very good solution, that I already suggested years ago, multiple times, is that whenever you shift out a form, you could retain some specific characteristics of that form that would fade away within 6 seconds.
For example, you leave:

  • bear form, you keep increased health and armor for 6 sec.
  • cat form, you keep increased speed and mana regeneration for 6 sec.
  • boomkin, you keep feathers so you can continue to look stupid for 6 sec.
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26

Warlocks are one of the most pruned classes and we got a wholesome sum of one old ability back (curse of recklesness), rest are just old pvp talents/norm talents being swapped or baked into baseline (spells that used to be baseline, but became talents, and now become baseline again…).
It’s a joke, just like always all warlock feedback has been ignored.

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27

Ok

Why exactly you hoped for unpruning yet you play classic?
Dont you guys spam 2 keys over there?

Times change, minds advance and we adjust. If you are nostalgic about a certain play style go play it in classic or a legacy server and let us be here.

Im not happy about something that i did not even try yet, or something that is not finished yet. But i can see that you just want to whine, thats all.

28

I would love to have more situational spells. Things like shattering throw, which warriors are getting back and it looks like it will be good. Also, I want more CC spells, but all classes should come with a pvp stat that adds diminishing returns on CC from all sources, maybe with a breaking point that makes you immune to cc for a few seconds. That way you will have more ability to react to players, CC them, but at the same time, your team will be disincentivized from CCing the same player (which is just not fun for that player) because they may actually break him and he becomes CC immune and recks you.

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29

I think you’re confused. The un-prune refers to the undoing of the prune in Warlords of Draenor.

What was the prune in Warlords of Draenor?

It was the removal of core class-defining utilities, usually from back in vanilla, which were deemed too situational and therefore got streamlined out.

Cooldowns were generally merged, but kept, and class identity took a back-seat to spec identity in order to keep the number of buttons down.

How to undo this?

  1. Elevate class identity over spec identity, adding more spells from each spec into all specs.
  2. Give a lot of situational spells back

That’s what it means.

It’s not the re-adding, or the de-simplification, or The Great CC Restoration Project. It is the unpruning.

PvP is in a stupid state because the classes are too streamlined yet too full of RNG.

Removing Azerite Armour, Essences, and Corruption basically takes care of the RNG issues, and they are horrendous indeed.

The streamlining is undone by the unpruning, even in the form it takes now.

As for me being clueless about MoP - I was playing at 2.4-2.5k in MoP as a Feral Druid. I remember that expansion very well.

I remember being literally 1-shot by warriors.
I remember hunters globalling people with pets.
I remember my healer being instantly CC’d and then being chain-CC’d for almost a minute in 3v3.
I remember healers topping someone off from near 0 in 3 seconds flat.
I remember mana regen being higher than mana spending.
I remember 2v2 matches and sometimes even 3v3 matches lasting up to 30 minutes. Indeed some lasted so long that the game ended in a draw because arena games end in a draw after 45 minutes (the more you know, eh?)
I remember Swifty’s video where he demonstrated how to kill someone in less than 5 seconds by putting all offensive abilities into a single macro.

If this is the sort of gameplay you enjoy, may God have mercy on your soul.

MoP was awful on the PvP side. BfA would be decent, though not great, if not for all the ridiculous layers of RNG. More situational spells and less RNG is what we need. If they go back to having 3 trillion zillion CC’s and offensive CD’s like they had in MoP, then I’m not going to touch PvP in Shadowlands, that I can promise you. I cba with that garbage all over again.

Fun fact: MoP is the reason I went from PvP’er to PvE’er in the first place.

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30

Regardless of whether you like MoP or not, it was undeniably richer. If the game didn’t benefit from having more abilities added to classes overall, we would still be stuck at Vanilla’s class design. More abilities implies more possibitilies. Period. I’m not against removing useless abilities (was one of the few who welcomed the removal of healing touch), or limiting CC’s (I agree that we’ve reached a terrible state in that regard) but removing other key abilities that had already become part of the gameplay was beyond silly.

I like Classic for reasons that have yet nothing to do with class design.

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31

Looking at Paladin’s pruning in Warlords :
*Retribution :
-Devotion aura: Added in vanila, Holy only in WOD → Still not back for ret in SL
-Inquisition : Added in Cata, removed in WOD, reintroduced as a talent in BFA → Still a talent in SL
-Guardin of ancient Knights : Added in Cata, prot only in WOD → Still not back for ret in SL
-Hand of Salvation → added in Vanilla as Blessing of salvation, prot only in WOD → Still a prot Paladin Talent in SL

Protection :
-Avenging wrath : Added in BC, removed from prot in WOD → Is now baseline across all the spec since Legion.

Holy:
-Both seal of truth and Righteousness: Seal of truth was added in Cata, Rightenousness in Vanilla → Nope (More on that later)
-Guardin of ancient Knights : Added in Cata, prot only in WOD → Still not back for Holy in SL
-Hand of Salvation → added in Vanilla as Blessing of salvation, prot only in WOD → Still a prot Paladin Talent in SL
-Holy light : Added in Vanilla, removed in WOD → Still not back.
-Divine favor : Added in Vanilla, removed in WOD → Still not back.
-Divine plea : Added in BC, removed in WOD → Still not back.

So when looking at Paladin’s pruning in Warlods, it’s not that big of a deal. And from what I hear, it’s kinda 50-50 regarding all specs, some like paladin were not really impacted by those changes, but some specs got butched (Warrior for example).

Now, looking at legion Paladin’s pruning :
*Retribution :
-Lost all seals : Added in Vanilla, all of them are gone in Legion → Still not added back in SL
-Hammer of wrath : Added in Vanilla, removed in Legion → Baseline once more in SL
-Hammer of the righteous : Added in Wrath, Prot only in Legion → Still prot only in SL

-Protection:
-Holy wrath : Added in Vanilla, moved as a ret talent in Legion → Still not back in SL.
-Eternal flame : Added in MoP, removed in Legion → Still not back
The list is longer than that,

So I think that most people wanted legion’s pruning reverted, at least. And yeah, they shouldn’t have removed spec specific abilities such has Paladin’s blessings, but they should have made those class wide instead !

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32

the classes overall seem to be improving, and most in the alpha and pretty happy with most of the things, theres a few critisms such as Spriest and Mage currently… but it looks like largely its stronger then BFA.

this was never the intention… they didnt lie, u just took “unpruning” to going to most Class ability heavy expansion.

they are going back to a time likely BEFORE MoP, when the Class ability pool wasnt so exhaustive. they’re not regretting their decision, they’re bringing back flavorful abilities which can fit into the current designs of the Classes… this was the intention… to bring back Abilities which… never Really should have been lost.

no we just made 7 Macros of Priority lists to use instead of pressing all the Actual abilities we had, the fact at the time guide sites Had LISTS of macros u needed in raiding… kinda Proved what the majority were doing in MOP>

it was very known players went as far as taking DPS Losses to use Macros… We had tons of “possibilities” yeah, which we restricted by Macro Capabilities.

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33

With gamepad support I worry that they’re going to end up designing classes to not be too complex to use with a gamepad
Which could explain the minimal amount of unpruning and in some cases removal of abilities

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34

Nah FFXIV Shows u can easily have 20-25 Abilities on a class with controller support :P.

i think its just a case of its a Addon attached to the game… like Gearscore once was… its just something the game should have had and they’ve finally decided to implement it.

2 Likes
35

20-25 isn’t that much imo
Maybe I’m spoiled by the prot paladin toolkit

Still, if they’re going too officially support it, you can count on the fact that they have plans for it

36

Because classic has sooo much better spec skills.

Ohwait…

This is an interesting sentence…

37

I wouldn’t call what you just did “thinking” but awh well.

Unpruning refers to the removal of abilities through time.

Obviously blizzard decided to small text this. A smol indi company cannot handle balancing so many spells so they keep coming with excuses to keep classes on a 4 button rotation, and some people actually buy into it.

I’m still amazed it works tbh.

38

Just a few corrections.

Devotion Aura: Back in Shadowlands for all specs.
Holy Light: Back since Legion.
Divine Favor: Back since Legion as a PvP talent. So, I guess, still not back.
(Retri) Hammer of the Righteous, Added in Wrath to prot, made available for Retri in Pandaland.
Eternal Flame: Gone from all specs since Legion.

To be honest, having more spells and stuff to use don’t neccesarily make a good class. I think Retri is a perfect example of this, at least in history. Didn’t have a lot of buttons in Wotlk, was still a very good spec, both in terms of enjoyment and strength. Didn’t have too many buttons in Cata, was still a very good spec, both in terms of enjoyment and strength.

Personally, I don’t care about pruning or unpruning one bit, I just want good classes.

39

I don’t even know where to begin with this sentence, so I’ll simply stop immediately.

Having a bigger company does not make design easier.

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well tbh… they’ve implemented a few things and rarely support any of em :stuck_out_tongue:

Item level was a Addon brought to the game, and they have so far done everything in their power to make it meaningless :stuck_out_tongue: also they’ve allowed controller access to WoW for along time… i think its simply the fact… it just makes em “look good”… by giving the playerbase “customization” in the way they play the game.

very rarely is it done with the intent of these players being equal to those who use the orginal methods.

dont think its as much excuses…

when we had Overloaded kits, we just macro’d them down to 6 buttons playerside :P… and there were Plenty of sites which recommended a DPS Loss to use some Macros to make the gameplay easier on the player.

statistically we did prove to every level they should prune the game. by the way we chose to play the game, and yes its arguable not everyone did… but it was ENough of us to make it compulsory to include in guides and have youtube videos Based on.

and i think most classes still are functioning on more then 4 buttons :P…