been a long time player, here from the start (vanilla) over the years we gotten more and more talents active and passive.
the last year playing classic its still fun there, retail is tailormade for the streamers and the high end players.
not a rant here just an observation.
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I have been playing classic sod and certainly the pace is massively difference. In retail it is so fast and chaotic, zoom zoom, rush rush. Not everyone can keep up and reflexes aren’t what they used to be, plus the carpal tunnel inducing clicking/pressing buttons.
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I may be playing it wrong but so far, my DH rotation is very simple. Without counting them specifically, I’d say that I use up to about 10 buttons during a boss fight (with some of those only being used once during the fight) and up to perhaps 5 when killing normal mobs. I think that is a fair amount to have and all the other stuff is just utility stuff that has no impact on rotation, so doesn’t matter too much, I could have 50 of those and it’d be fine.
Overall though, I don’t think it is the number of skills you have to use that is the issue. For example, if you just had to press 1-10 on rotation, that’d be easy. The issue is when you factor in procs, builders, spenders, resource management etc. This is, from the experience I’ve had with other classes and from reading/seeing online, where the problem lays.
People all have different preferences. I find combat too slow and essentially dull in classic. Others enjoy it more and like the resource management or simply having to auto attack or wand for a bit in between.
I prefer the pace and interaction of retail which some obviously don’t. Nothing wrong with that. It’s nice that in addition to retail there are several classic versions too. Just a case of finding what you like most
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We already had one squish and don’t need another imo, I prefer retail over auto-attack/frostbolt classic. As a druid I just have one cooldown so definitely not too many
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I’d say most classes don’t have that many core abilities and are quite straightforward.
The majority of skills are utilities and some barely have a use outside of RP.
I think bloat should be avoided on the core rotation, and we’re in a really good place right now.
All the rest gives flavour and situational usefulness to the class, and I say the more the merrier.
I can see how too many skills, and cooldowns can initially not be fun for new players.
Yeah, initially, but over time I think they will appreciate the complexity of it.
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I think the issue is the inconsistency… At least for me. You can have a spec like BM hunter or frost mage, that has a handful of buttons during rotation that still allows them to perform quiet well… Then you randomly have a spec like arcane mage, that requires you to have a PhD and click 10 different buttons, clap your hands, spin on you chair at the same time, just for your arcane blast to do max dps…
This I think is also why PVP is not exciting for non-pvp or non wow players to watch, there is a billion different things happening so fast that even Ziqo can be mid sentence and the game is over. Its hard to follow
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Fun is something for person no.1, and something else for person no.2 .
Arcane mage is fun for me. Why? It’s challenging, keeps my brain working. To be noted: Not hard, just challenging. People like to make talks about arcane like it’s rocket science, when in fact you just need one extra braincell from MM hunter, and probably 2 more than for BM hunter.
BM hunter, Frost mage, Retri paladin? I can sleepwalk while playing those classes. They are dull, and completely lacking any sort of fun in their playstyle.
I do think there are a bit too many cooldowns though. And you probably even want to stack them for the best result. Even for a relatively easy spec like frost DK which doesn’t have many rotational buttons at all.
You want to stack your main cooldown Pilar of frost with Abomination limb, Remorse winter, Raise dead, Empowered rune weapon and right now with our current tier set also Chill streak. Not to forget you also want to have your death and decay. At least you can macro Raise dead, empowered rune weapon into Pillar, but you basically need to spam all your cooldowns at once, and then there are only like 2-3 buttons left for your normal rotation.
When you are able to press all those cooldownbuttons in the right order you do good damage with your 2-3 (well basically only Obliterate) abilities. Otherwise your damage is nothing. You need to press 7 cooldowns to let 1 ability shine. The other 2 rotational buttons are there to keep a buff up and to get obliterate procs.
All I know is that I complained about this for both mage and feral, and mage is having buttons removed while feral is being slowed down.
So I can’t have been the only person saying this.
There appears to be a lot of variance in how bad it is, but one thing that’s consistent as far as I’m concerned is that there are too many cooldowns and it’s hard to keep track of what’s happening on the screen.
However, Blizzard have stated that they are very aware of the importance of readability for the new expansion.
So right now I’ll say that acceptance is the most important road to recovery. And Blizzard has clearly accepted the criticism, though to what extent they plan to act is for the moment unclear. I feel like the new hero talents are causing a lot of extra bloat. I’ve also seen Sunfury Mage and I really have no words… The amount of meteors, lol. 
We’ll see what happens.
Not sure how people complain about there being too many buttons when most are niché when it comes to use or are used once every 2-5 minutes.
If anything the game is suffering from 1 button doing too much at the minute, especially if the likes of evoker, dh, warrior, monk, ret and hunter are to go off.
I mean………
passives = no skill
cooldowns = skill
Classic is way too simple and slow in my opinion, but on the other hand retail has quite a few specs that suffer from button bloat and unnecessarily complicated rotations.
There should be some sort of combat complexity ceiling for modern WoW, but it should be lower than where the current most complex specs sit. Simple specs have their place and so do complex ones, but there are cases where some pruning would be healthy.
But my fear is that TWW will only bring more complexity with hero talents.
Even two Eminems would have trouble keeping up with what’s happening in arena.
Exactly… So while that may be “cool” and what makes PVP “fun” for some, I think makes it bad for the game overall… Imagine if more people understood, and didn’t get so overwhelmed by it all, the PVP scene would maybe expand.
But of course that is utopian thinking, because it would probably require a bigger “revamp” of the game, and then would it actually still be WoW?
Is it, is it not? Like I said, I may be doing it wrong lol. Haven’t done the online research.
Well, I jumped into PvP the other day as my Legion Class hall sent me there, or maybe it was Shadowland Covenant, can’t remember now. Game starts, met the other team, stunned, stunned, rooted, stunned, dead. That was about the extent of my experience before I realised my time is worth more.
Well if you jumped in there with little to no pvp gear, of course that would be the case.
I’m more saying, if during AWC, more people / PVE players could understand easier what happens, it may seem cool enough for them to be willing to try… But open up a PVP streamer, and you’ll see his screen filled with 10 weak auras, 16 addons, raid warnings, duplicate spells…
Thats what I think is making other E-sports “popular”, they are easy to follow from a viewers perspective, and popularity = more focus on it = hopefully more changes keeping it relevant.
Oh here comes a blue geared LFR player to tell us what is fun.
Please, classic is there for you if you find live too stimulating for you with it’s vastly complex 3-5 button rotations and all these cooldowns and utility spells to manage.
Slap a seal on and auto-attack for maximum fun! 
Sorry. We don’t see eye to eye.