Unpopular opion : the game is still great

I don’t post something only if it’s the opposite to popular. I tend to post something when my viewpoint hasn’t already been expressed by someone else. It’s often a marginal viewpoint, but not always. :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m not sure if I’d agree that the enjoyment of PvP stems entirely from class design. I have lots of fun in Warmode at the moment, and I’d argue it has nothing to do with class design.

Regardless, for those who do find that PvP revolves around class design – and who don’t like the current class design – I kind of feel like it’s very subjective. But it’s also difficult to objectively evaluate. I personally like the metric of looking at how many viable specs and comps that exist in Arena. The more there are, the more indicative of a healthy class design it seems, in my opinion. And as said before, then there are lots of viable specs and comps these days relative to the past.

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And yet your opinion is niche. Fun in Warmode at the moment is probably the last thing I hear, normally its the exact opposite.

The main reason I hear people not enjoying PvP is class design, for how can the game be fun to play when the class itself isn’t. If you’ve played a class that had more abilities and felt stronger 15 years ago then it’s not exactly a great feeling in an MMORPG to feel like your character is getting weaker as time goes on and just magically forgets how to do things it used to be able to do. That plus many of the defining abilities of what drew you to your class and made it fun in PvP for you are completely absent now.

For me i’d say I loved Warrior PvP because of:

Stances/Weapon swapping
Intervene, Intercept and Charge Stun

The first made gameplay dynamic and it mattered what ability you used when. E.g swapping to Berserker Stance so you can Pummel or Intercept, back to Defensive Stance to Disarm or Shield Wall, to Battle to Charge e.t.c

The second made Warrior feel mobile and disruptive, while at the same time having a skill-shot ability that was able to completely change the match outcome.

However they’re no longer a thing, now I just spam damage and feel like a lot of what is going on is completely out of my hands. I don’t understand how that can be perceived as fun bar a minority of people.

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My opinion is definitely niche on the forums.

I’d say it’s irrelevant whether lots of people dislike Warmode, because some people clearly do like it!
And that’s what makes PvP great these days – you have lots of options in regards to what you can do! So if you really enjoy Warmode, then you can do that. If you’re all about Arenas, Battlegrounds, or even Island Expeditions, then it’s right there for you to do.
Even as far as class design and balance goes, you have so much choice. More classes exist in the game than ever before and there are lots of viable specs and comps to play.

If you fall into that category of having played the same class for a decade or longer, and having a particular preference for a past long gone, then that really is just subjective preference.

The Warrior concerns you have are just really difficult to broaden out across the game as a whole, as a way of measuring PvP enjoyment overall. I mean, how do you translate your problems to other classes and specs? Take Demon Hunter. That class doesn’t have a past filled with different design iterations, and it has never gone through pruning or redesign or anything. And yet lots of people play it! Awesome!

If you look at Arena participation for the last Season, going by the number of rank 1 titles handed out, it was through the roof. Driving a narrative of how things are oh so bad doesn’t really correlate with a reality where Arena is as popular as ever, and World PvP is more engaging than ever before.

I sympathize with the personal, subjective feeling that the past was more fun. But that just doesn’t detract from the fact that PvP design overall seems to be a lot more pleasing to a lot more people than ever before.

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The point is not the balance in my opinion but the feeling of the game.

Classes are not as fun as they were.

But int the past too we had problems i would not want to face again.

Nostalgia is a beautiful lie.

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a) That is objectively a lie. The game was far more popular prior to WoD, and therefore even if BFA scores past Legion in terms of pvp (which it does), it’s still WAY behind in terms of popularity when compared to Mists of pandaria or expansions before.
b) Like Saiyoko pointed out, if class design sucks, then the pvp sucks. You can’t dance around it, that’s a fact. There’s a reason why Q&A is filled with questions about overall class design and azerite armor, because those are really the only means through which you can customize your character’s toolkit and/or make plays (which are incredibly limited).

They also admitted that they took too broad a brush when they pruned classes and they are considering moving back, as per the latest Q&A.

Short lesson in video game marketing, customer retention & loyalty is incredibly important and Blizzard gains way more (defacto) from a player that’s been loyal for several years than a guy that hops in the game and then unsubs after a week or two when they find the game dull to play.

Customer isn’t always right but the developer team has been proven constantly to be on the wrong by the community when it comes to class design: Even if a class is viable and strong in pvp, it may still feel like sawdust compared to the good things you had in past.

Also the spec argument you bring up doesn’t really hold any ground as even niche specs like arcane and fire could be made to work in MoP and previous expansions.

Is it, really?

Warmode participation for one is a really bad thing to take numbers from because you’ll remember after a week or so, the Alliance practically lost all interest in Warmode, and only came back after the rewards were made insanely good for turning it on.

This, again, is your typical whataboutism because let’s be real here, these are the questions why we pay them our monthly sub for.

You tackle a problem, you don’t avoid it or simply go “Oh it’s hard to get this right, we don’t want to do this”.

Because hey, some Island expeditions and Warfronts can’t fill the void class design has left in the playerbase, despite them being easier to make and design.

Anyway to give you a concrete answer because I hate waving arms around without actually giving a solid answer to a question, here’s mine:

Ask the playerbase.

Make an in-game questionnaire for players, that is optional to answer to.

The questions could include something alone these lines:

  1. Which expansions / patch’s class design pleased you the most? (simple pick an option)
  2. What do you feel your class lacks / what would you like your class to have?
  3. Do you want vendors?

You could go down to A LOT of detail, with both simple “pick an option” choices and elaborate (write x amount about your choices). Then you have a team of data analytics & alghoritms go through the material, sort it, and see how the poll comes out.

You then, as a developer (team) make changes based on the feedback given, or deny some of them, provided that you give a solid argument as to why you do not want to do x thing.

There, concrete solution for a concrete problem.

The DH problem is also basically a no-issue because you can just make up or invent new abilities. Easy.

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No that’s not true.

Rank 1 is given to the top 0.1% with at least 150 wins. That makes it possible to calculate how many active Arena players there have been in a given Season by looking at the amount of Rank 1 titles handed out.

MoP’s most popular Season was Season 15 with 375k eligible characters.
WoD’s most popular Season was Season 16 with 320k eligible characters.
BfA’s currently completed Season 1 had a total of 405k eligible characters.

So BfA is currently the most popular Arena has ever been.

And you all know that, because there’s been countless threads on this forum during Season 1 where people have commented on how everyone and their mom are getting Gladiator and how Rank 1 titles are just being handed out left and right.
And that’s because there are a lot of people participating. That means lots of spots for Gladiators and Rank 1s.

And if you factor in how alt-unfriendly BfA currently is compared to MoP or WoD, then you really get a sense of just how popular Arena in BfA is.

Disagree, but I’ll accept the premise and reiterate what I said earlier:

Class design is objectively better than ever before, because there are more classes to play, more viable specs to choose from, and more comps to explore. And the addition of Azerite Traits and Honor talents introduce more character customization as well.

The sum of the above is objectively better than in years past where you had less of all that.

People who are happy to play Demon Hunter today are inevitably better off than in WotLK, because they couldn’t play Demon Hunter back then!
People who are happy to play Fire Mage today are inevitably better off than in Legion, because Fire Mage wasn’t viable to play back then!

Good class design is something that is as popular amongst as many players as possible. It’s not about having an Arms Warrior design that perfectly caters to Saiyoko’s refined tastes. He’s just 1 guy. If there’s another design that appeals to 2 people, then that design is objectively superior.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. :alien:

My argument is that the volume of viable specs and comps in Arena (and PvP as a whole) has increased over the years since TBC when Arenas were introduced.

I find that very difficult to be a disputable argument, since Blizzard have introduced 3 brand new classes to the game since then (not to mention all the new races with their unique racials), meaning that PvP is ultimately much richer today than ever before.

It isn’t irrelevant whether people dislike Warmode, it effects other parts of the game. For example World Quests which are very important to do, especially for the new Azerite armor after the patch, are now awful to do as you get ganked by a group at every World Quest.

More choice but less appealing options. Would I want 10 very well designed specs or 30 lackluster ones? Easy choice.

The concerns I gave regarding my class easily translate into others, bar Demon Hunters - but they have a good toolkit as it is, not that it couldn’t be improved.

I wouldn’t say participation was through the roof. We’ve been in a serious decline for many expansions, perhaps somewhat levelling out from WoD onwards. You may think different looking at the numbers, but you’re not reading into what effects those numbers. We had an incredibly long season, in an expansion thats very very very easy to multiclass, with a new system where you achieve your goal before the season ends, meaning you either stop playing or do it on another class. These factors massively inflate the numbers, but don’t represent how popular the season is. It was similar for Legion in terms of how easy it was to multi class. I had different 8 classes on the ladder, as opposed to MoP where I had 2.

All of the people i’m friends with are PvPers, that ranges from the 1500 players to the rank 1s, and i’ve never had such an inactive battle.net for PvP, at the same time the LFG tool is in a dire state.

Battleground and Skirmish queues are longer than ever.
Durotar and Elywnn/Ironforge aren’t even quarter of what they were before in terms of duels
Rated Battlegrounds are so inactive you can fight teams with more than a 1000 MMR difference
Arena queues are long and often its just the same 1 or 2 teams queueing, which has a knock on effect of oh the only team queueing is what hard counters us, let’s stop.

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That is true. My point though was just that it’s extra. It’s more. It adds to the volume of PvP. And more is better. More can appeal to a wider audience than less can. Does that make sense?

Back in Vanilla you had 3 Battlegrounds and World PvP. That was it. If you weren’t a fan of Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, or Alterac Valley, and World PvP wasn’t your cup of tea either, then PvP as a whole probably didn’t appeal to you.

Then Blizzard introduced Arenas with TBC. And some of those players who didn’t enjoy Battlegrounds or World PvP found that they really liked Arenas. So PvP as a whole got richer from introducing a new form of gameplay.

The same holds true in BfA. You still have your Battlegrounds and Arenas. But there’s more. And more makes PvP richer.

For you, sure. But the playerbase as a whole? Again, the game seems richer from having more. I find it difficult to believe that the people who play Death Knights, Monks, and Demon Hunters would concur with your statement, because that would inevitably mean they couldn’t play those classes.
More is better. The playerbase shows a constant desire toward that end. Whenever Blizzard introduces more to the game – in any aspect – the playerbase almost always welcomes it with open arms.

I would say so. It’s the highest it’s ever been, by a noticeable margin. And it’s the first Season of an expansion, when people have the lowest amount of alts. That’s nothing to scoff at. Then you can speculate as much as you want, but it does paint a different picture from the usual sentiment of “PvP is the worst it’s ever been!” that gets thrown around a lot.

You can’t compare Vanilla World PvP to BFA World PvP.

Vanilla World PvP occurred because there were more people out in the world, you encountered each other questing, at world bosses, doing professions etc. Factions also mean’t more back then in terms of rivalry, the game was slower and less convenient so people would take the time to fight each other despite no reward.

In BFA you World PvP because of the rewards, and it encourages poor behaviour such as ganking flight paths and World Quests. Genuine World PvP doesn’t really occur since everythings about convenience. I pretty much just leave the city to do World Quests, meaning I want to get that objective done and move on, ignoring members of the Alliance while I do it. Blizzard have basically had to incentivise people to fight each other, PvP is not richer, its showing bad design.

More can be better, but it’s always to an extent. With regards to class design if more results in less enjoyable class design then more is not better.

You’re ignoring my reasons for it being high, its massively inflated by alts, so not individual players.

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Not true, rating accumulation worked differently back then (also being far less inflated), and the number doesn’t tell anything about overall arena participation, only the top group (from which you can extrapolate the rough number, assuming there’s a normal distribution to participants, which doesn’t hold up).

9+ million subs vs 2-3 million subs alone is telling enough.

More =/= better.

The reason why so many specs are viable atm are because they have one-trick-ponies and because classes have so limited toolkits to answer to these tricks that you actually have to bring in a specific class to counter the rock-paper-scissor mechanic they’ve made the game into.

To give you an example, Shadow priests (as you know) were completely viable to play into high rating, despite never even using their main spec mechanic, the voidform.

Was that engaging, good, solid class design, in your opinion?

Or is it more telling about the fact that the class design failed horrible at some point?

But ofc you can say “That’s just one spec”. Fair. Let’s look at other classes and specs too, then, shall we?

How about elemental shamans? They were made viable by 1 trait that made their earth shock all but one shot people. Or retribution, with their burst being able to delete a person in 1-2 seconds. Until they were changed, that is, and in the elementals case didn’t see light of the day until they went through “massive changes” (actually just a few minor treaks to their toolkit).

The result is an abomination that, while functional, is incredibly clunky to play, with the playerbases wishes ignored for the most part.

The problem with one-trick-ponies and rock-paper-scissor gamedesign is that ultimately it leads down to the road that when you nerf that rock, paper or scissor of a class a tad too much, that spec loses everything that makes it viable, because it doesn’t have any tools to work around with.

So since mine and Saiyaka’s views outnumber yours, you’re wrong?

More great arguments at noon.

Do they?

Would there be less customization if pvp talents were simply part of your normal toolkit or separate talent rows? Instead of gaining a new talent every 15 levels, you’d get one every ten levels.

Unironically I actually think that pvp talents are a good idea (and the design was vastly improved upon from the abomination the system was in Legion), but Azerite traits universally are hated by the playerbase, which is why Blizzard themselves has admitted they’re changing the whole system.

Now -that- is an objective fact.

This is a really dumb argument. The absence of something =/= being less good.

To give an analogy, what if you get cancer? Are you better off now, simply because it’s a new thing?

I know of course that that’s a hyperbole at worst, but the point is that nothing stopped demon hunters from existing back in Wotlk- Blizzard just hadn’t brought it up yet. Continuity could have willed them into the existance at some point, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been designed with the rest of the game.

Wtf yes it was.

People played fire up in to high ranks- And other unpopular specs too, same as in previous expansions. Just because the specs are underpowered doesn’t mean they’re not viable. (Case and point: Demonology warlock atm. Perfectly viable spec, just not very played).

I don’t disagree.

I disagree that that is automatically a good thing.

No, that’s actually case and point what marketing myopia means.

When you try to market something for everyone, you risk losing every customer.

I mean, look at the god damn state of the game right now. There’s more stuff to do than ever before! Island expeditions, Warfronts, Azerite farming, war campaign, reps, world quests, raiding, pvp (in all its forms), and so on. Objectively speaking, there’s more content than ever before!

But does the playerbase think that the game is better than ever before? NO.

Again. More =/= better. It can be. But it can also not be.

You mean like island expeditions, warfronts and azerite farming and azerite armor?

Come on, you can’t be this delusional.

To conclude, I’m not saying that new = bad. On the contrary, I see a lot of great potential in how they could have improved upon the warfronts concept or island expeditions.

I also agree that probably stagnating the game at MoP era with nothing ever changing would probably be bad too.

But there’s a difference between GOOD, meaningful decisions and just “hey let’s just wrap everything into this thing, because more = better”.

To give you an analogy, most people like ice cream, pizza, hamburgers, fries, whatever.

You DON’T get a good result by putting all of those together, even if every1 loves them.

No. You use them wisely. You mix things up and change things in a way that makes sense, and more importantly, in a way that you can -argue for-.

If you can’t argue for a game design change you are making to the community face-to-face and defend your view to them, then you probably shouldn’t add it to the game/make that change.

The GCD change is a great example of this. I kept posting that “GCD doesn’t fix the underlying problem of burst cooldowns being too strong when paired with x abilities, it is hitting a fly with a bazooka”.

Individual tuning & pruning (or combining the abilities to something new?) would have been the good answer. And as you can see, again, they regret that choice and openly admit they’re slowly reverting the change completely with the latest Q&A.

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I wasn’t. They’re different, you’re right.
My point was just that in Vanilla PvP consisted of 2 activities.
In TBC when Arenas were introduced you had 3.
More is better.

Sure, I agree with that. But then we go back to the earlier point of how you measure what enjoyable class design entails to more people than just yourself. And I’ll say what I already said, that the classes, specs, comps and customization people have available to them is good class design. That will always provide enjoyment to more people than having less of it will. In my opinion.

I see no evidence for suggesting than BfA is more alt-infested than previous expansions. Considering how you actually have to gear up for Arena in BfA, and that Assaults aren’t as quick a form of leveling as Assaults were, and that Azerite Traits needs to be unlocked, I’d contest the notion that BfA has more alts this early into the expansion than other expansions had (even in their later Seasons).

Everything you said there is untrue and completely wrong and I don’t even know where to start. I’ll leave it at that. Arenamate, look it up.

We’re talking about the state of PvP and Arena, not the game as a whole. Stick to the topic.

But for what it’s worth, the fact that Arena is more popular than ever before, whilst the game is less popular than ever before, is indicative that Arenas are doing incredibly well.
If the game’s general popularity is declining, then you’d expect all the activities within the game to also be in decline. It’s remarkable then that Arenas indicate the opposite – an actual surge of popularity.

No, but it was better than many previous Seasons where Shadow Priests weren’t viable at all and all Priests were pigeon-holed into playing Discipline.

More is better.

Sure.

Preferable to the days when every class that could heal was forced to heal because that was their only viable spec.
Choice is superior to no choice.

More is better.

The result is the most popular state of Arena Blizzard have ever managed to create.
It may be less refined to connoisseurs such as yourself, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that it seems to be enjoyable to lots of other people.
And the enjoyment of more people is superior to the enjoyment of fewer people.

More is better.

If we were the only 3 people playing the game, yes. But we’re not.

Back when Arena was rather unpopular it was natural to point out that people aren’t playing Arenas, it must be because it isn’t enjoyable.

The correlation between what players do and what they enjoy makes sense.

Today lots of people are playing Arenas. It doesn’t make sense to then say that the reason why so many people are playing Arenas is because it’s… not enjoyable?

The logic doesn’t compute.

I’d comment on the rest of your post, but it’s massive, so I’ll cut it a bit short. No offense :slight_smile:

What is your source for this statement? As a general rule in life, and it applies to any and all things, is that moderation is always key. No matter what you do. No matter what you’re talking about. Moderation is always key.
You know, you’re contradicting yourself right now, Jito. You agreed with the pruning because we had “too much”. You said it was “too unrealistic to ever balance”. Now you’re using the exact opposite argument (which I still want to know the source of), to justify your stance right now.
What the hell is up with that?

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I’m aware of how arenamate works. I’m saying that your suggestion isn’t an 1=1. it’s flawed. MoP had over 9 million active players, there’s no chance in any imaginable way that pvp participantion was below a game that has a max of 3 million player s(1,5 atm?).

To give you an easy example, a lot of players (like myself) just stop pushing once they’ve reached a level they’re comfortable with and got the gear they want. Since arenamate calculates the top numbers, and assuming that EVERYONE is pushing for that spot constantly, it becomes skewed because in reality there’s a lot of leeway in the middle who’re not participating at all in the end-race.

Saiyaka’s view also holds in regards to alts. I’m sorry but you’re wrong.

No. it -can- mean that Arena is doing well, but equally it can mean that the rest of the gameplay is doing incredibly bad- Or that the arena is just better out of the other forms of content. That doesn’t say that it’s better than it’s ever been before, that’s not how it works.

Well that’s not true. More isn’t automatically better, as I’ve proven.

Sure, you can THINK that in your view it’s better to have a crippled spec that works on 1 trick rather than have a single, fully engaging and a functional spec, but that’s not important. You can have that opinion, alright.

When was that? I don’t remember a single time when that was the case.

Repeating the same mantra won’t make you right.

More is better hasn’t worked out for Blizzard lately, now has it?

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I mean we’re about to start going in circles and you’re ignoring facts like increased queue times, duel areas being dead, LFG being dire, not taking into account Arena teams being present during parts of MoP - teams were often disbanded and therefore would not display on ladder.

Despite all the increased incentives they’ve put out participation is not higher, and the participation we have is entirely reward incentivised (elite sets, mounts, illusions etc) as opposed to being because it’s actually fun. Hence people queueing only until they get their reward and not past that.

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Convenient, we all know you can’t bring up a legitimate argument to stand against it, because I’ve listed so many occasions and examples where more=/=better that nobody would think to make that claim.

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Page 154 of Jito’s Game Design Philosophies and Ultimate Truths, volume 1? :kissing_heart:

I said that?! :thinking:
If I did, then I completely disagree with my former self. That dude was clearly clueless. What an idiot! :neutral_face:

What I do think I’ve said about pruning – if I may rely on my gut-feeling for a moment – is that I liked it from the perspective of concentrating the fantasies of each spec. For example, on my Shadow Priest I think all buttons should be Shadow-themed and they should all contribute to the fantasy of being a Void-wielding maniac. Anything that gets in the way of that – the odd Holy spell or such – should just be pruned or replaced.

That’s sort of my view on pruning, at least today. :yum:

And then I’ve supported notions that players can’t just have 100 abilities because it would be a giant mess and there aren’t keybinds or room on the action bars.
So in the sense of the amount of complexity the game presents to the player, I definitely don’t – and won’t – advocate that more is better. Quite the contrary.

Does that all make sense? More in terms of volume of stuff is good, but not when it increases the volume of complexity as well. Then it’s not so good. :yum:

Oh sure. I should clarify. The participation numbers are the total from EU. So they don’t factor in how many people are also doing Arenas in the US or Asia.

And since (speculated) the subscriber losses are most significant in Asia, the Arena participation in the EU shouldn’t have been very impacted by an overall loss of subscribers over the years. The EU has a fairly stable playerbase with minor fluctuations. It doesn’t go from 9 to 3 million, but maybe 2 to 1.5 million or something like that.

So it’s not flawed. It was just not specified, and I apologize for that.

Nah, I think I’m pretty experienced in posting walls of texts and arguing people to death on the forums. Just ask around. :smirk:
And I’d love to comment on everything else you’ve said, and we could go on for ages and I wouldn’t mind that either, but I’ll echo what Saiyko said that it’s starting to go in circles…And I really want to spend some time playing a bit as well and not just write on the forums. :yum:

Agreeing to disagree I guess!..As per usual on the forums. :slightly_smiling_face:

Can’t believe the only thing I had to say about being right was “lmao man MoP was more popular than BFA, therefore it was better.”

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You did not specify back then that you were only disliking the added complexity. You were simply saying you’re against bloated action bars and the increased difficulty in balancing it all (which is when you would quote Holinka and how he justified the pruning when it happened by blaming it partly on balancing issues).
It’s still you contradicting yourself nonetheless though.
I do remember you talking about class fantasy too, but it’s like saying you can’t grow a tree because a rock is within a mile of the location. It’s just not relevant.

Right… It just goes against philosophers, great thinkers, economical truths, science of physical & mental health, life coaches, so on and so forth. More doesn’t equal better. Moderation is key. More than too little is good. More than what is already good can quickly turn into too much. In all aspects of life, it’s that squishy, usually undefined middleground that is best.

BUT!
You’re forgetting the most important part.
More trash just equals a bigger pile of trash. More gold equals a bigger pile of gold. So the problem which upsets so many, and which is why you’ve been going around in circles, is that the pile of trash is too large. We need more gold.

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That does sounds a bit like something I might have said. :yum:

Difficult for me to judge, but you seem certain, so you’re probably right. I’ll stick to my current opinion and proclaim my earlier opinion – whatever it might have been – inferior and wrong. How’s that? :upside_down_face:

In the context of WoW Arena I will stick to the belief that more is better. It’s a fancy statement, so there are some caveats…a lot of caveats. :smirk:

But if we talk about what makes Arena fun, enjoyable, good, and otherwise a wholesome, organic, free-range gaming experience, then I will err toward the notion that having more classes as opposed to fewer is good.
That having more viable specs as opposed to fewer is good.
That having more character customization as opposed to less is good.
That having more maps as opposed to fewer is good.
That having more players participating as opposed to fewer is good.

Those are the metrics that to me indicate good design.

More abilities as opposed to fewer is good? Eh, that’s a bit more complicated. :sweat_smile:

I completely respect the fact that some people think that back in a previous expansion when they had a certain ability it was so much more fun, even if there were less viable specs, and less customization, and fewer classes, and less maps, and lower participation.

Everyone has their favorite WoW period.

But to me that doesn’t really define what made that particular time so fun.
If WotLK was the golden era, then what made it so good?
“Well you could Stance Dance as a Warrior!”
Okay, but what does that mean in terms of design? You can’t just slap stance-dancing on to a Mage and say “Here, now you’re improved!”
There has to be some broader truths that define good Arena design. And I’d wager that more is better*

*restrictions may apply.

They aren’t the only metrics that define good design though. There are more, and quality is just one of the metrics which you forgot. Because adding more trash just equals a bigger pile of trash. That doesn’t mean all trash needs to be removed. It doesn’t mean all trash should be removed. It just means we need balance in what is good and what is bad, but right now the bad is overriding the little good that is left. Get it? It becomes the focal point of contention.

As for the mages, even though you only used it as an example, a big part of what made mages stand out gameplay-wise back in those days was that when they blinked, it meant they had gained distance 100%. But if timed wrong, and the opponent knew how to handle a blink by moving properly (like for example, let’s say you’re chasing a mage as a melee back then, and you weren’t a warrior, it would make a world’s difference if you interrupted frost so the slow would fade mid-walk and that you begin walking towards the direction the mage was blinking before the blink happened, which in itself rewarded foresight. It would literally make the difference between a win or a loss if pulled off properly. The same for the mage, if a blink would be timed properly and the conditions would be controlled by the mage to ensure those windows would emerge.) then it would be punished.
This is not how it is today. I cba to explain the way it is today, but let’s just say, this is the foundation of why people say shimmer is necessary. Because it contrasts to how they can be caught up to.

Lots of classes and specs had small things like this that basically ended up in large variations of mind games. They’ve reduced the total amount of mind games to pre-walling a stun (but even that won’t necessarily mean anything anymore), and kicking/faking casts. Which is a result of this homogenized fiesta of today. So more resulted in less, in other words.

Also, the talent template of today, even though it offers more customization, it increases the amount of absolute counters. By being able to pick what counters your opponents the most you also bring out the strengths (and subsequently the weaknesses) to the max. So more results in more problems in this scenario. At least in the past you could still be strong vs. what you had a good chance against, and have the room to be stronger against what you’re weak against if you went with more all-around talents (at the cost of not being the absolute strongest against what you’re strong against), but now you’re either facerolling or getting facerolled. Because they removed that middleground and reduced those mind games.

Also, I don’t claim that wotlk was the “golden era”. And stance dancing was a thing even in vanilla and bc, they just emphasized the rewards of pulling it off well in wotlk (and at the same time reduced the punishments of not pulling it off well).

I’ll put it in other words:
The game is in dire need of finesse. The finesse is almost gone entirely from the gameplay and class designs. It’s what made the past stand out. It’s what makes the present so bad.

Well, that and social designs, but purely speaking about the gameplay and class designs then that’s the foundation of the problems today.

Oh right, and about mages, I forgot the subtleties to polymorphing and the existence of dispels without cooldowns and how it would only dispel one thing at a time. But anyways, it falls under finesse.