TBC and Vanilla are braindead but Cata is a perfect balance imo. I even preferred BFA rotations to this with the exception of off GCD skills, there are simply too many buttons now and passive talent options are not viable dps-wise. No one wants to lose dps through talent choices so that’s a non argument.
SnD should be permanently extended through finishers on all specs to make it a non factor basically, because it’s a boring spell. All maintenance spells should either be removed or sidestepped in a way that trivializes them.
Interrupts should have their cd cut in half whenever you dont successfully interrupt a cast in PvE, because it’s impossible to coordinate without voice and a kick order in pugs.
There’s this perception at Blizzard, and in the community, that in order to have fun, or to be rewarding, the game needs to be hard. In my opinion, thats completely the wrong ethic.
The game was / is more fun with simpler / less systems, less buttons and less mechanics.
I sound like a boomer, but retail is too complicated to be enjoyable, it’s overwhelming and I and many others just don’t have the energy for it anymore.
There’re a lot of people who do enjoy their class and / or spec. They enjoy the balance, the rotations, this provides a lot of depth to the gameplay, and allows the top 10% of players excel through creative use of situational abilities… And while the time and thought that’s gone into building these classes is appreciated we really need to acknowledge that what the game strives for now, isn’t why we all fell in love with it in the first place.
I’ve tried my best to avpid going on a tangent here, but it does all link together… I’ve done my fair share of Mythic progression, I’ve done my +20 and now I’ve just stuck with Wrath. It’s just more fun to play and more rewarding.
A irl friend of mine said back in Legion, he doesn’t raid anymore, just plays for the story because… too many buttons. Honest to God this is a real anecdote. And at the time he was playing a Hunter. This is a guy who has Crusader’s White Warhorse.
Had the most fun end of wotlk / Cata era. Felt like classes had a good amount of depth. Didn’t mind WoD either , felt MoP was a tad too cluttered and crazy from a casual PvP standpoint
But I absolutely disagree with notion that less buttons / abilities is good. I don’t want to only press 3 buttons thanks , and no I play other classes other than DH - Just love the fantasy of the class
The talent tree does allow some choice when it comes to active vs passive talents, so that helps. Also, a few active talents don’t really need to be key-bound as they don’t play a role in active rotations. Personally, I like having lots of keys to press as it keeps the game interesting to play. I stopped playing Diablo when I started playing WoW five years ago largely for this reason.
One of the reasons why whenever I play FF14 I use the combo addon is the insane button bloat in that game. You have like 3-5 ability chains that then either reset or go into secondary chains and abilities that are off global also. And then the same for aoe as well. So you have like 20-30 buttons that you actively have to use in your rotations. And it’s just dumb because 90% of the abilities deal exactly the same freaking thing.
Like: First ability → Deal damage with the potency of 200 that then chains into,
Second ability → Deal damage with the potency of 220 that then chains into,
Third ability → Deal damage with the potency of 250 that then chains into,
Fourth ability → Deal damage with the potency of 300 that then chains into,
Fifth ability → Deal damage with the potency of 350 that then either resets the
chain or sends you into the secondary chain.
And then there are also off global abilities that you spam in between like one ability that deals damage with 100 potency and then second ability that deal damage with 200 potency and then third that deals damage with 400 potency etc etc.
And the best part is that you also have the same stuff for aoe, same kind of chains for aoe and same kind of off global abilities for aoe.
So in the end you just have this massive bloat of abilities that literally do the same freaking thing with just slight difference in damage.
And to clarify, these chains are not combos, they are actually separate abilities you have to press in the correct order. The addon that I use when I play FF14 turns them into combos which lowers the button bloat by an insane amount.
I think one of WoW’s biggest flaws is that it doesn’t cap how many abilities you can use at a time, which is pretty much a design staple in games today. Diablo III is a straight-forward example. Your class can have a total of 100000 abilities, but you can only use 6 at a time. It’s super effective. The developers can add as many new abilities as they want without any fear of bloat, and players have lots of abilities to experiment with and customize builds around.
In WoW you get the sense that the developers are being super careful with any changes they make to class design, because it always only piles up. Any new ability introduced to a spec is an extra ability every player of that spec has to fit on their action bars and integrate into their gameplay. It’s forced design and it doesn’t work. It’s old and archaic and from a time when MMORPGs didn’t have many abilities in total, so no one likely saw it as a necessity to think about a cap or anything like that.
i want less buttons that feels garbage to use
lets see from rogue perspective
i have slice and dice but could be baked into a passive its bland and feel worst to use it as a combo point spender
i have talent that proc ambush (stealth combo generator) that i CANT macro to use instead of my out of stealth combo generator. somehow in Aion online it could be done when your skill had proc it changed for next chain skill
ive had blade flurry that used to be a toggle ability since wod, now it takes my gcd and its pathetic to use
i have my random roll the bone that give random buffs i dont know its funny ability but it could be baked into my slice and dice
thats allready 4 less buttons to press and build is the same
I prefer reasonably simple rotations myself as I can’t use a mouse to click lots of buttons.
But there should be choice in playstyles. Some classes (or even specs) can be simpler than others. Sometimes it can be achieved through passive talents vs active talents.
Used to be that Shaman had a more proactive playstyle whilst other classes had a more reactive playstyle. So with Shaman you could put down totems that would prevent Fear or Poison effects but those have been removed and all classes are reactive now, so I need to know when a fear is being cast and get my totem down immediately. This playstyle doesn’t suit me very well and I miss the older proactive style of playing.
Some classes should be slower with fewer buttons and some should be faster with more buttons. Some should be proactive and some reactive. Some should be very mobile and some be almost turrets.
Of course these all need to be balanced but that’s up to them to do it.
I personally would like to have 5-7 buttons in my rotation, but I’m fine with whatever. I’m so used with great button bloat for including my CC’s as arena1-3, “hotswap” aka targetless burst to arena1-3 (Would be great for DH players with the hunt for example) and for my healers party1-3 heals with modifiers.
It depends on the gameplay loop and if it has satisfying animations and sounds to me. Fire Mage might be simple but there’s something about that satisfactory hot streak proc that makes yeeting pyroblasts enjoyable. I’m speaking of WotlK mage, I haven’t played enough to judge the current version.
If we’re talking having tons of actual damaging spells then yes I enjoy that but if we’re talking about an overload of cooldown buttons then no, I don’t really like that.
WoW has never dropped down to moba level abilities lol.
MoBAs typically have 1 passive, 4 abilities, 1 ultimate.
Quite litterally never existed in WoW. If abilities are added in a method of synergy and cohesion sure, more abilities csn offer a more diverse class
Classes still had about 20 abilities accessible to them even in the pruning.
Given the fact
Gw2 - has 10 abilities + 5 utility skills open at a time
ESO has 10 abilities accessible only at one time.
Ffxiv generally aims for 20-25 active abilities.
WoW never dropped beneath the mmorpg standard realistically. I think DF is a major improvement on prior class design in the previous few expansions. Bht that aint just because theres more buttons.
and its pathetic to use
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