Wrath feels so good compared to retail

PVP Arenas
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I think I finally know what caused me not to enjoy retail. It’s damage breakdown. In retail you tickle outside CDs and your damage feels kinda meaningless on many specs. You do it because there is nothing else to do kinda but at the end only these 10-15 sec on CDs are the real kill windows that matter. On Wrath every button feels meanigful. In BGs you kill a lot but you also die a lot. No debuff for FC in bg or dampen is needed because people just die to sustain damage. CDs are also not even nearly as powerful as on retail. Literally due to amount of spells added in all these past expansions baseline spells have to tickle otherwise everyone would die in 0,1 sec. In some cases it happens already.

Unless this changes PvP will be in this weird current spot. Other thing that makes PvP frustrating is the amount of mobility and micro CC. Because of it casters cannot really hardcast unless they have as much CC as Demo Locks. Otherwise they get shutdown completely and get absolutely outpressured by meeles who have way more uptime than back in old days.

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At this point even Tetris feels good compared to SL.
But yea, other than that I agree. Generally doing zero damage and then stacking multiple cooldowns to instakill ppl is just cancer design and can never be properly balanced or feel good. Its a PvE design. Everything about shadowlands PvP seems to be copied and half assed PvE designs. Even ability designs are often so obviously bad that it doesnt feel good for pve and can never work reasonably in pvp,e.g. Convoke…

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A bit ironic to see this take from an elemental shaman, the spec who could 1 shot low res people with 1 Lava Burst and who had a S tier comp with destro lock, with two combined also globaling people if they dared to enter LoS.

Lava bursting is fun, but I don’t think that much dependancy on 1 spell is a healthy spec design.

So you could do that without CDs, and on retail, you have to commit cds and cc to kill some1. Don’t see how the former beats the latter in the terms of ‘‘skill’’. Of course there are outliers who should be brought down a peg, but cd trading (as in not over or under comitting) is also an expression of skill, together with the usual awarness and positioning, which have always been a part of arena and WoW pvp in general.

To each their own however, and I don’t judge people if they prefer wrath style of pvp.

As for retail, the current design is going to stay yes, thanks to PvE. However, not all specs are heavily cooldown dependant to kill people (BM, outlaw, demo, survival), and all of these specs were qqed about a lot.

Like it or not, PvE makes up the majority of this game, and Blizzard designs classes foremost to be viable in PvP and self - sustainable in outdoor content. I wouldn’t say PvP is an after thought, but it is deffo second in priority. If Blizzard didn’t revolve design around cds, they would have to constrain a lot of their fight design to accomodate for all specs - the reason why everyone got cds in the first place was not to get benched if the fight had heavy burst /priority phases.

You can accept this for what it is and make peace with it, but you also now have Wrath, so there is that.

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I dont know combat feels slow in pre patch atleast.

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There should be a middle ground. TBH trading defensive CDs for enemy’s offensive makes PVP kind of better because it’s like a mini game inside PVP. An assassination rogue using vendetta and you living it without any buttons would make for worse gameplay than what we have right now.

However, the difference between the damage you do when you’re in CDs and when you’re not is just laughable. I think something in the middle would be most enjoyable for everyone.

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there is loads of specs that have high sustain, maybe try one of them?

in other news, when i see wotlk streams i m glad i didnt even try it. it looks so bland, boring, and not really any less broken than retail

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The only thing I learned from pre-patch thus far is that my rose-tinted Glasses were a lot better all the way back to 2013-2014 till where I still played Wrath Private Servers.

I feel like if Wrath would come out today but named as Shadowlands, people would equally complain about it.

Passive tankiness is extremely stupid and unfun, looking at plate users here versus melee.

DKs.

Honor Grind for gear is absolutely or equally as brutal as on live.

Easy to get into Classes that are far too powerful for their effort → Ret, DKs, Warriors.

The worst part is literally everyone is just fotm’ing around. For every other Feral I see there are roughly 20 Warriors, 30 DKs and 20 Rets. Enhance is literally nonexistant. Demonology aswell. The rest are Mages and Rogues and Healers. Hunters are almost near extinction aswell. Maybe its different in Arena later on but BGs are like this 24/7.

Its gonna be fun in the later stages though. Shadowmourne for the already baffling DKs and Rets, with Arms being the icing on the cake since they scale far too good with gear, Preg Paladin being unkillable while dealing insane damage and healing. Meanwhile in the earlier stages Elementals and Destro twoshot you with fast casts or a Rogue just presses Killing Spree.

Add all around this dead faction balance on nearly every realm, premades that ruin every second BG and due to gear gap end in 20 min GY camping, GDKP, gold buyers and everyone wants to get boosted or buys said services from Blizzard and Wrath Classic is a big failure before it already fully launched.

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It’s not just Lavaburst that one shots in Wrath. It’s Lavaburst → Chain Lightning → Frost Shock combo and with people who actually have reasonable amount of resi it isn’t one shot at all. At the same time if I stack Primordial Wave and Echoing Shock I can hit 3 Lavabursts but I can also hit 6 followed with Earth Shock. The amount of times I killed people out of nowhere in SL is stupid. It’s unpredictable and I don’t feel that I actually have much influence on winning or not. I have to pray to RNGsus for procs.

While I agree Elemental Shaman is S+++ tier in Wrath what I mean is that balance isn’t a real problem because every expansion there was a spec thet was way ahead of the rest. It’s not the whole point of discussion. We can look at other specs to see that a problem lies in damage breakdown. What I can say is that playing Ele in prepatch with no Lavaburst because it’s learned at 74 is still fun. Lightning Bolt is actually doing something. On retail Lightning Bolt is never worth pressing outside of the Stormkeeper. There are plenty of spells like this.

Regarding specs in Wrath I saw Ferals, quite few Moonkins and Shadow Priests that actually have some S tier comps in form of RPS or Godcomp. I’ve seen Fire and Arcane Mages and even Demo Locks. Yes there are many DKs and Rets but they are mostly pepegas and not a big deal. Destru and Elemental are actually stronger in S7 as they scale well with gear. And yes Wrath is not ideal. No doubt but in some aspects I mentioned it’s better. At least in my opinion. Retail has plenty of advantages over Wrath for sure. Some specs are actually improved and playable when they weren’t really back then. Keep in mind Wrath was 2nd expansion and not everything was figured out yet.

Still I believe that less CDs is actually more fun. Spells like Primordial Wave, Echoing Shock and few others are just another small CDs to stack. There are literally too many of them. There is also too much mobility. Some specs can travel through half of the arena in 2-3 globals. The amount of instant small CC is also overwhelming. In Wrath against TSG you have to deal with 2 kicks, Silence, Grip and Paladin stun. Now compare it with what you have to deal with in SL and DF. There is huge problem.

It’s also funny when someone says Wrath is a failure when they have to open new servers due to 10 k+ queues to them few weeks ago. Even Blizzard was surprised with the amount of players willing to play it. Also you don’t need to GDKP. Just find guild and raid. No Wrath raids are as difficult as SL or DF. You can chill once a week and clear the content fast. Btw queues for bgs are less than 1 min.

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This post is so much spot on :heart: I feel exactly the same. Adrenaline is constant, every second of you casting spells/abilities feels important, everything matters. That’s what I love about WotLK and I absolutely hate it in SL - pop cds for 10 seconds to deal damage then be wet noodle for 1:50.

And since mana isn’t endless you can’t just spam your spells without consequences, unlike SL where you can’t oom mage.

Current retail PvP has so many issues it’s not enjoyable for me on any level.

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actually funny, i made the lava build (basically normal build) and after putting up flame shock on 2 targets, i LITERALLY only pressed lavaburst for 5 minutes. if i felt really fancy i used primordial wave but thats it. even dumber playstyle than fury lol

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Yeah wrath is so much fun…
Getting oom as a caster is prime gameplay!
:+1:

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What’s wrong about it? On the other hand people complain that the game needs dampening to close 3v3 game

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