This game lacks Powerful Class Combos - Class Balance & Player Interaction

Community General Discussion
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tl;dr: The game should provide more positive interactions between players. Introducing combos of various abilities used in conjunction by two or more players to achieve a unique powerful effect would increase the skillcap and promote teamplay.

What world of warcraft can provide to players that other games cannot ?
If you fail to answer this question, then why players should stick to WoW and not other games ?

In this thread, I’m talking from the perspective of someone who seeks to challenge himself. I’m not talking about people who enjoy collecting transmog or follow the storyline.

Just a quick note on following the storyline, though.

The cheapest way to do it (in terms of money) probably consist in subscribing 1 month each time the next big update is released and the last wing of the current raid opens. That way, you just do quests then LFR quickly, and you’re done. So you can cancel your sub again.
So blizzard has to come with ideas to refrain the players from doing something like this. But if you only care about storyline… That’s more than enough (as you could also just watch youtube and read books, you’d get more story).

Back to the topic. What about someone who actually wants to challenge himself ? What World of warcraft has to offer to this guy ?

There are plenty of challenging games out there. Even more challenging than WoW and most of them does not come with a monthly fee or a toxic community that you have to deal with. Plenty of these games are actually single player.

So, why not play single player instead ? Because you love playing with others, of course. Chatting and having fun on discord while playing is fun.

That said… Listening to the same raid tactic for 2 hours for weeks because your raid team has a hard time defeating some boss is… so boring. More pew, and keep talking to a minimum. No other way to get experience.

But, back to the topic again. There are tons of multiplayers games that are both challenging and fun… and don’t require a subscription. Mainly because there’s very little developpment needed to maintain these games (example: among us). High replayability games, basically.

When you’re in a raid or a M+, don’t you feel like, even though you’re in discord chatting with friends who are in the same raid/M+, your character is basically alone ?
Of course, it’s not strictly alone. But does it feel that way ? Does being in a group really change that much the gameplay and feeling of the game ?

Ok, now that’s an awful long intro to get to the point… But I’ll put a tl;dr version at the top.

I think the game need more interactions between players. And I mean positive, enjoyable interactions.
The very core of the game is combat. I think this game does not provide enough combat interactions to the players.

An old and also very simple example of what I mean was symbiosis. I think a lot of people love it.
Another more recent example is the ursol’s vortex+typhoon combo. I used to play with a friend who has a guardian. During M+, we would sometimes have an interaction like that:

Him:  Thyri, can you Typhoon ?
Me, typhooning into his vortex: sure!

It’s simple. But when doing so, we feel like we’re doing teamwork, and considering the state of the game I will even dare to say “advanced teamwork”, even though it’s really simple.

I think the game should be balanced around interactions like that. Basically every class should add new varied possibilities to every other classes in the form of powerful combos performed by two or more players.

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This is all nice and stuff until u are in pug where u dont have voice and typing is awful, and before u start, i know this is MMOrpg and comunication is key, but there are tons of people that play “alone” in groups, and they still can achieve a lot.

So, i know where u are going with this but ill rather have solo control over my characters full power and rather wont have this stuff.

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Agree with this, people should be independently powerful, not have to rely on others to increase their performance outside of the healer/tank/dps combo.

It sounds nice, but in practice it will make very toxic meta builds and pugs are already a disaster when it comes to their self made meta of the week bs

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they tried this with the legendary rings in WoD

it failed horribly because it required absolute coordination to do right, and if you did it wrong - you ruined it for everyone

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And there is nothing wrong about it. You are supostu fail and no you are supostu fail for other people mistakes.

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i can totally see why Blizzard would wish to stay clear of that theme,
in making games you generally try to steer away from ‘ruin it for everyone’ mechanics

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ArcheAge had that, and it was awesome. Basically, in ArcheAge your class was the combination of 3 specs, and the game had like 15 specs to choose from. Then you’d spend the skillpoints you get as you level as you please among your 3 specs. You could level up all specs on the same character and save multiple loadouts of any combination of spec you wanted.

There were many “combo” skills, which were triggered by effects on the target - being tripped, stunned, poisoned, slowed, etc. would trigger your combo effect. However, the status on the target could come from any other player. It was awesome.

Not many did it, but a few players banded together with their mates and made their characters to combo with each other and completely obliterate everything in their path.

The sad part is that bosses were immune to most status effects, making most combos not work on them.

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I did forget about this one, but this is basically the idea.

It also addresses the problem of communication stated by Lommatik.
Since the effects are visible and the combo can be achieved by applying the various effects one after the other, there’s not a lot of communication needed, in fact.

But having the possibility to communicate on this level also increase the efficiency of course.

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I would love this.

Except for the fact that it is insanely hard to balance and would just lead to team stacking all over again.

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Basicly guild wars 2.
That game is all about using combo skills for buff uptime and damage.

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Everyone is talking about how teamwork is unhealthy for a game, yet M+ exists. Need I remind you that 90% of 19+ keys are fail runs where one or more player leaves because someone missed an interrupt? It’s not a case of teamwork, it’s a case of individual understanding of one’s class’s capabilities and applying them in the corresponding situations. It’s a learning curve, like with anything.

I think OP makes a pretty good point. It would certainly make the game A LOT more complex, but from a high-end player’s perspective, I’m on-board with something like that. I think the game and it’s many classes and specs are too damn simple, currently. However, if abilities should have powerful combos, they should also not take away from their solo potential. What I mean by that is you should still be able to fully control your class’s power alone, but have the option of comboing stuff together with other classes for an interesting interaction.

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