What is good spec design?

Community General Discussion
1

What makes good class/spec design in your opinion?

In my opinion there are a few points that make a spec enjoyable to play.

1: It must have some dynamic elements to the rotation, this is usually achieved by adding some proc conditions, for example, fingers of frost, chaos strike fury refund, stormbringer etc. If a rotation is extremely static it is not fun.

2: It should not have so much rng that you feel like you have 0 control over your spec, imagine if fire mage didn’t have guaranteed crit on fire blast and no fireball crit stacking mechanic. That would be terrible. If there is rng in a spec, there also must be some mitigating factor so you don’t run into situations where you never get anything.

3: cooldowns should be impactful but not so strong that half of your damage or more comes from it, think combustion, the perfect example, why exactly does this cd also need to grant mastery as well as crit on every ability? Can’t it just guarantee a hot streak proc regardless of whether it crits or not? This way you would retain the cool rotation from combustion without the insane power spike. Basically keep the mechanic, but don’t stack so many things on top of each other. There is no need to have a 20 % extra damage that does nothing other than bigger numbers. Reduce the burst, increase the duration.

4: Interactions with stats, so far only haste can be said to have an impact on each and every spec in the game as it does this by design, it increases the rate of abilities you can cast basically, i am a firm believer that energy classes should also have their gdc reduced by haste, and that the gcd of every class should be 1 second baseline, with haste reducing it just like it does now. Crit could grant more resources, for example, or have a higher chance to proc something etc… Mastery should be designed in a way that actually impacts the rotation and isn’t just versatility 2.0. As for versa, i think it should be relegated to pvp only, and in it’s place i would personally bring multistrike.

5: If a borrowed power system is to be made, scrap it, and make an actual progression system, think like artifacts but long lasting, and improve it by slowly building upon it. Covenants and soulbinds are terrible, azerite and essences were decent, only artifacts were actually pretty good, the only thing that was the problem was the fact that ap was not account wide.

6: the bulk of the spec should be baseline or in the progression system that you can fully unlock, like artifacts, there should be no talents that feel required for a spec to flow well, infact i think they should do one of these things with talents.

1: remove them, and add the best talents, and in general things that synergize well together as baseline or, part of the progression system.
2: Talents that feel required, and talents that greatly improve the rotation should be baseline, instead talents that are just small modifications to an ability like splitting ice, or talents that completely change how a spec plays like glacial spike are talents.
3: keep it as it is, but allow us to choose more than 1 talent per row, that could be done with a token, or part of the progression system, whatever.

7: visuals, visuals are not the most important, but they do add to the experience.

8: The spec must provide both aoe and st as baseline, as well as different defensive cooldowns or healing.

For example, shaman could have low damage attenuation but good healing, rogue good damage attenuation but below average healing. The important thing is that they are comparable in terms of effectiveness.

I am not asking for perfect balance, but there are clearly some bad outliers, like enhancement shaman has some really big problems with survival.

9: every “pet” spec aside beast mastery, should have a baseline petless alternative. Think like lonely winter. Pets are just terrible.

3 Likes
2

One that tops meters?

2 Likes
3

I am purely talking about design.

You could make fire mage only about fireball and fireball does 50k splash damage per hit, it would top meters, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Balance is completely different, you fist design a spec, and then balance the numbers.

4

I’d wager most players dont care about design, they just want to be ‘competitive’ ie highest dps.

That’s what gets Blizzard into trouble in the first place: some design choices can’t be balanced unless you nerf them into oblivion.

5

I’d wager this too, WoW information sites, addons and sims are so heavily used now to optimise everything and it ends up with people changing even the smallest of things for 1dps.

6

Well, engagement numbers, how the expansion is rated etc says differently.

It’s not the only reason, but come on, i cannot believe you are saying something like that.

So what, should we just accept bad gameplay because it doesn’t matter? Are you two actually serious?

7

No it doesn’t, you have no idea why the numbers are down. We can hazard a guess but a spec missing a proc i doubt is high on that list.

You’re whole post on good design is subjective, naive at best.

8

I think my post was a bit more than just talking about a single proc, but after saying such ridiculous stuff i will stop responding to you from now on.

Unless you actually care about having an honest discussion that is not just saying stuff to either have a reaction or being a contrarian for contrarian sake.

Making frankly ridiculously dumb points.

9

Engagement numbers mean nothing when the population who still plays the game are engaging out of necessity with certain aspects of the game in order to get stronger rather than for actual fun.

I never said it was the only reason.

Never said that but no we shouldn’t accept bad gameplay. People have complained massively over the years and given feedback about gameplay and received very little back in return from Blizzard.

I will attempt to answer for both of us and say we are serious.

10

Then you seem to hold quite opposite thoughts, on one hand you do realize that gameplay is important, but on the other you agree that it doesn’t matter as long as you do good damage?

11

I like meele specs without dots

windwalker has a unique aoe mechanic where you have to switch the target after your GCD to spread cranekick stacks ( without a cd )

together with the mastery it gives you an authentic fistfighter-combo feeling
(not using the same thing twice in a row)

to have a spec good you need to have balance between class fantasy and mechanic

12

About dots.

A dot that just does damage is boring, no one presses rend and thinks to themselves, wow that’s great.

If you want to make a dot feel good to keep up it must do something else besides just damage.

For example, agony gives you soul shards, vampire touch and pain give you spirits, which should provide insanity baseline, flame shock gives you lava surge etc…

But a dot that does nothing but damage? No thanks.

13

Depends on the angle you’re trying to take here but I disagree.

Yes but different people will have different interpretations of what good gameplay is.

I never said it didn’t matter, although player behaviour points more in this direction imo.

I was simply agreeing that most players simply want to be able to do high/competitive damage like Someoneelse pointed out and added to it by including that so many players are using sims, info websites on WoW and addons to get out even the smallest of dps gains.

14

There is no angle where you can reconcile that. They are mutually exclusive. You either think it matters or it doesn’t.

On your second point, whose fault is that? It’s not that people don’t care about gameplay, it’s that if you put them in a competitive scenario where every % matters, then they are gonna make the choice that gives them the outcome they desire, which is killing the boss or winning in general.

So you are looking at the problem, but come to the wrong conclusion. The reason why people may choose a less fun spec is because it’s performance is higher, because in a competitive game that performance matters. So the problem is not the players, it’s the game.

For example, i like ray of frost, problem is that it’s in the same tier as thermal void, and thermal void is just way better, and it;s not just 1 or 2%. So what do you think i would have to choose if i want to maximize my chances of winning? Thankfully thermal void is not too bad, as it’s cool to increase the duration of icy veins, but you should get the point.

it’s a problem with how blizzard designs the game.

Anyway, one thing i have to wonder, why are you arguing against your own interest? Do you not want your spec to flow better? To feel better to play? Forget my argument about how to improve the specs, but ultimately your and someone else argument boils down to, it doesn’t really matter if the spec is fun to play as long as it does good damage. Why would you argue against your interest? Do you not care about good gameplay?

15

some people sure. sometimes a class with a 3 button rotation can top the meters but to me a good spec is about being adaptive, having to make decisions on how to spend secondary resources and mini-CDs.

16

I think the argument boils down to.

As long as there is a stronger alternative people will choose that, it’s not incorrect, but the wording makes it seem like actual gameplay is not important.

And mostly, while it’s not incorrect, it’s not a player problem, in a competitive game, people have to choose what works, and sometimes that % can make the difference, you can’t put a talent that does 15 % more damage than the other, even if it’s less fun and expect people to pick the fun talent, it just does not work that way.

Same thing for a spec, if a spec performs 20 % better than another, even if it’s less fun, in a situation where performance is important, which do you think the average player will choose?

But it doesn’t have anything to do with how fun the spec is, there is no correlation, this is a performance problem. If anything that guy may wish he or she could play the actually fun spec.

It’s like the correlation between ice cream sales and shark attacks, it’s false, there is no correlation, it’s just that people in summer eat more ice cream and go to the beach more often.

17

Common in PvP, but its forced by the devs
also racials, every expansion they buff a race alot so the pvp elite buys race changes

18

yeah but this is one of those no win scenarios. if classes have situational strengths that would compensate for doing less DPS, then people would complain “2DKs and a lock for mythic soulrender are mandatory to even being progress”.
but if the only measure of performance is your DPS then people will say class A is pointless because B does 0.01% more damage

19

At that point a choice must be made.

Do you value “exclusivity” more even if it can come at the expense of potential fun for other classes, because everyone needs to feel “special”

Or do you value balance and fun more?

Anyway, it’s not like they have to remove everything that makes a class a class, otherwise what’s the point, but at the same time, you cannot have a class that does twice as much aoe damage, or way better single target.

In the end to have similar results you don’t necessarily have to make the class feel the same.

I already tackled this on the primary post though.

Every spec needs at least good st and aoe, and some form of utility that is comparable between each other.

If dk is slow, it must have some means to get to the target or close the distance, etc… But it must be properly balanced. If enhancement shaman and shaman in general has little to no defensive cd, it must have really good off heal. Otherwise how is it gonna survive?

20

No… I had a longer reply but I will simplify it instead.

Pointing out the reality of how people play this game doesn’t mean I’m disagreeing that gameplay is important, however players generally are making their choices on performance and not gameplay. It really is this simple.

1 Like