I miss wotlk class design and i truly miss when i could stack haste on my moonkin and shaman so much that wrath and lightning bolt became almost instants.
To me it was so much more fun than waiting for X minutes so i can global things down.
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I can only hope that if we continue to post about it, if people keep talking about it, we may catch the attention of someone from blizzard and they may consider doing something. One can say it has the same chance as the mount from sha dropping from the first try.
as Aff warlock (a class you don’t even see in MDI) prepping for dots and when you fully ready to pump damage, seeing enemy cleanse all of your dots with one click… Also not only enemies but fricking allies who act like your enemy with their dot removal abilities (like Detainment of DHs)
This burst meta is why you don’t see warlocks up in the ladder much. I just do BGs and spam mass slow.
It has to be this way, cause it makes the game much simpler 
This allows the players to make less decisions and at the same time to feel like they have “skills” and boast about it
Watch any WoW related PVP video and you will notice that when the supposedly amazing player making the content says “I GOT BIGDEM” it simply means that he’s pressing one button, two at most, which is generally a one shot type of macro in the first place and that’s it. And the player on the other side is supposed to press his other button to negate these effects. Then the game is won based on how effectively you pressed your one button and how the other team responded by pressing their one button.
Of course, to top it all, there’s the epic huge difference in gear! A player with 215 gear will always insist that he beat that 200 player with skills, etc.
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Dude, not to break your dreams but it’s the third xpac in a row where ret has the same base design with minor changes, when everyone except the devs knows that IT DOESN’T WORK. And it’s just an example.
At this point i got more hopes on me being able to sleep with Beyonce rather than getting actual effective class reworks in wow.
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You’re not, and this is imo the biggest problem with Shadowlands gameplay by a mile, especially in PvP.
I mean there are pretty much no problems besides this to be perfectly honest. And don’t tell me about class balance, because many of the problems there are because of this.
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It would already help, if Shadow Dance could be redesigned, so it modifies the “next X attacks that usually would need stealth can now be cast as if you were in stealth”. Would make the specc much more flexible. No need to worry about missing a potential Shadowstrike, because you aren’t able to attack or have to refresh S&D/Bleed. You could even keep the “stealthed for 8 sec” aspect, so other talents don’t have to be reworked.
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It works for one or two specs but the issue is too many atm.
I mean mage is a great example.
Historically Frost was always about control and setting up spikes “as and when” based upon freezes. So semi-consistent spikes you have some control over.
Arcane was always about controlling and managing an extreme burst window you fully control and guiding yourself towards it outside of this.
Fire was historically more about consistent damage that ramps up due to ignote, but overall their sustained damage was generally the most stable.
Now we have:
Frost - I don’t know enough about it comment, but what I hear isn’t great.
Fire - A spec that revolves around a burst window in combust, crap sustained damage unless aoe.
Arcane - A spec that revolves around a burst window in AP, crap sustained damage in aoe comparatively.
So basically we’ve had a class that used to have three very different feeling specs in their play reduced to two of them being almost identical except one throws fireballs and the other purple magic but the fundemental theme is very similar: go big during the cooldowns and try to get back into cooldowns when outside of it.
This also makes the balance really poor, because then the inconsistencies become even more obvious because the play is capitalized on in the same manner, yet kits differ. IE Fire has a very mobile burst phase which means their burst phase not only improves their DPS, it improves their handling of their DPS, whereas Arcane actually reduces their mobility during their burst because any lost casts hit the spec hard, so moving is not great. So naturally fire is superior because both “try the same thing” but fire is simply better at doing that thing more successfully most of the time.
And what do we see? Fire mages everywhere and people wondering why people roll arcane and frost at all. Which isn’t necessarily justified (they may be workable for content, but the fact is a fire mage with equal skill and gear optimization will typically be better, because it’s kit is just better at doing the same thing they all want to do).
Only a few specs should operate on “big planned burst, feeble outside of it” and these should be the pure DPS classes:
Arcane Mage
Sub Rogue
Marksman Hunter
Destruction Warlock
the rest of dps specs should be much more moderate in their output with their CDs being less impactful, but classes with two dps specs should have one that is more bursty and one that is less bursty but not to the same degree as above.
At current way too many classes have this “go burst or go home” playstyle:
Arcane Mages
Fire Mages
Sub Rogues
Assy Rogues (lol what dmg outside vendetta)
Boomkins
Ferals
Ret Paladin
MM Hunter
Surv
Frost Dk
Havoc
Enh
Ele
It’s ridiculous.
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Thing is many people esp. at pro level love setup comps and trading cds.
Also working around your burst windows and not messing them up, baiting defensives are higher skill cap than just going zug zug whenever.
Again a middle ground is needed between big cds and being useless when they’re not up.
Oh and make feral bleeds do sth again. Ty.
Nah it’s trash. The reason why I cba playing my rogue. They don’t know how to design classes anymore because everyone who knew is gone.
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The game is virtually unplayable at this point if your class doesn’t work like this in PvP. It’s so tremendously powerful.
It was the same problem in BfA, but this time they increased all the base damage (or more likely reduced the effectiveness of stamina) and the opposite reaction to the same problem occurs: Instead of nobody dying at any point except cooldowns, now everybody can die at any time, which is good, but during cooldowns people get globalled.
This has to be reigned in. It’s not a particularly complicated matter, either. Its history is perfectly simple - you just compare the cooldown selection in Classic with the cooldown selection in the modern game and there’s your answer. Not only do we have twice as many cooldowns on our bars, but each is generally far more powerful or otherwise idiot-proof.
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Wotlk was king, no stupid hydrogen bomb button… every class was viable. Like literally every frigging class man… The best exp. all the classes had sustain, with some classes with cooldowns that were dangerous, but not to much dangerous. It was fun and there was skill. I don’t feel this anymore
Ps: talking about late wotlk, the pre patch and the beginning was a total joke
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I think the issue is also that so much is weighted into burst that fighting outside of it feels and is largely meaningless. It’s waiting.
So whilst anyone can die at any time, nobody dies outside of these CDs. It’s too hard to kill people outside of them.
This imo is what largely leads to Hpala dominance. We are the healer best suited to averting sudden burst, and our healing although it isn’t the best or strongest, it’s remarkably efficient which means we can heal all day during the “waiting”.
This issue can be countered without necessarily ripping apart Hpala niche of big CDs and some mana efficiency, rather making consistent damage bigger, and burst damage less. In this situation a less efficient but more consistent healer like a shaman or monk suddenly becomes more appetising, but Hpala still had niche to weather the burst where it occurs better than others without this being the sole way and only way to achieve kills in PvP. As it stands it largely is, so off Hpala is the go to healer!
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Well, yes. Entirely yes.
Let’s see what ret can get when using the lovely talent tree built by Blizzard:
T15: Execution Sentence - 3HP cost - A hammer slowly falls from the sky upon the target. After 8 sec, they suffer [(250% of Attack power) * 1] Holy damage, plus 20% of damage taken from your abilities in that time.
T40 - Seraphim - The Light magnifies your power for 15 sec, granting 8% Haste, Critical Strike, and Versatility, and 12.8% Mastery.
T50 - Final Reckoning - Call down a blast of heavenly energy, dealing (250% of Attack power) Holy damage to all targets in the target area and causing them to take 50% increased damage from your Holy Power abilities for 8 sec.
Add these along:
Wings - 2 min CD 20% more dmg/healing and crit chance
Divine Toll(Kyrian) Instantly cast Holy Shock, Avenger’s Shield, or Judgment on up to 5 targets within 30 yds (based on your current specialization).
this is not the issue here… this is:
Conduit: Ringing Clarity - Divine Toll has a 56.0% chance to cast 3 extra time (2 in PVP) on the main target.
And ppl wonder why the big burst… it’s to balance the weak baseline of the class for PVE.
Blizz removed Inquisition (7% dmg and haste for 45 sec on spending 3 HP) and added Final Reckoning and Seraphim to ret… and remade Execution Sentence, effectively lowering the sustained damage to up the burst.
Added consecration which ticks for a few hundred per target along with keeping the Crusader Strike damage below auto attack damage… oh and they upped the cooldown on Blade of Justice as well.
Too many things can stack on top of each other to create a crapload of burst.
Basically there are about 5 or more cooldowns on average of 45 sec to 2 minutes that can be used by ret, who thought they could add so many and it wouldn’t create an issue?
Personally i think 2 cooldowns for DPS is enough… 3 is pushing it.
Also when you have to delay a 45 second cooldown to 1 minute so it aligns with your other cooldowns, it shows that stacking is king, is the 45 sec cd balanced on 45 sec or 1 minute?
Just add it to 1 minute if it’s like that or nerf it and lower it to 30 seconds.
It’s fine if ret is a burst spec, it should act like one, but it’s not burst on demand, it’s rng on top of rng on top of crit, now crit is low at the start of the expac, maybe the burst is manageable if 20% of the stuff crits, but when you happen to hit the rng motherload and crit with all, that’s bad.
Just like it’s bad when nothing crits and you stand there tickling the enemy… don’t worry you will probably crit outside the window of burst you just missed and crit for nothing.
This type of balancing is bad for the ret and bad for the one on the receiving end, you either get lucky in your burst window, or you don’t…
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The only spec ingame that was not relying on cooldowns was shadow priest pre SL rework.
Yet the 10/12 nomal NyA forum warriors whined about it xD
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Yeah ret baseline numbers on their consistent abilities are completely ridiculous. My holy spec judgement, crusader strike, consecration and HoW all hit harder than when I spec ret, in some cases by a huge amount (my holy CS hits 100% harder than my ret version) and I don’t think my 10 ilevel lower 2hander weapon is responsible for damage swings this big.
Yet when I play ret, the damage isn’t worse than holy, because of the CDs. It’s quite a wierd playstyle though, outside of CDs nothing seems to hit hard at all, and crits simply make the damage “moderate” rather than feeling more impactful…this is why HP is mainly spent on WoG outside of wings/CDs because you get way more bang for your buck (each HP for my ret is worth at least 2.3k healing on WoG up to 100% more tho, and about 950 dmg per HP for TV). Yet during wings my TV can crit as hard as 12k and I can do them back to back in conjunction with stuff like WoA.
If Ret had more dmg outside of wings we might see less of the somewhat degenerate “healbot ret” playstyle because HP wouldn’t be as valuable for healing and it’d feel worth pressing TV outside of wings, but atm it just doesn’t. Why throw HP into about 3k damage given the time it takes to build when I can use it to generate 6.6-13.2k healing? A crit TV in this state is gonna do what, maybe 20% of someone with similar gear to me HP? Whereas a WoG crit is gonna heal that same person for 80% of their health if they’re lowish when i cast it.
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Yeah, not a fan.
Just autoswinging on the target saving the resources and waiting for cds to go ballistic is not that fun.
It’s fun the few seconds when you’re all super Saiyan but not the inbetween time when you’re Krillin…
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You cracked me up with the Krillin part.
Hopefully, burning crusade is near and that one will be better suited for my preferred game style. The old talent tree was far from perfect, but healthier, offering a small but meaningful power increase, such as crit, movement speed, cd reduction etc. People say that some specs were not not played at all but the same argument can be hold today, 14 years later.
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I see your point. However I like this way of dpsing through burst windows rather than having a linear type of dps. Otherwise I feel like you would just have an even simpler and a rather boring rotation. This was also one of the main reasons for why I stopped playing hunter many years back.
Also sub rogues are kinda famous for this type of bursty gameplay.
This is just my opinion and I do agree some abilities become a bit OP though, like templar verdict as you previously mentioned.