I think the current one is way smoother and fun still but I liked dealing big damage to unsuspecting enemies so I liked original Raynor a lot. He basically had a lot of active and passive abilities.
You had things like:
Searing Attacks: Increases damage by 50% for 5s but each attack costs 15 mana.
Berserk: Increases attack speed by 40% for 5 seconds
Executioner: Slowed or CC-d targets take 40% extra damage from you.
Focused Attack: Increases basic attack damage by 60%, 10s cooldown but every attack reduces this CD by 1s.
The list goes on but you could combine most of these talents to do obscene damage. Also keep in mind that heroes were squishier back then and Raynor had very decent basic attack damage until sweeping changes nerfed that to the ground.
EDIT: Plus he had two abilities to buff him, Inspire which gave 15% attack speed & damage and Adrenaline Rush which was a movement speed boost, heal and self-cleanse. Yes, he had that right until the early stages of his rework.
But that’s the thing. Pretty much all your talents were about “more damage”. And since you didn’t have your E to activate. It was all right click, Q if you’re in trouble, repeat.
Just using “Fight or Flight” to time your E properly to get armor is more dynamic than anything he had before.
Fight or Flight
Reduce Adrenaline Rush’s cooldown by 10 seconds. Casting Adrenaline Rush grants 25 Armor for 3 seconds.
Current Raynor always had decent wave clear. But you can pick Exterminator Lvl one if you really want to feel like a specialist. In my eyes, He gained a lot and didn’t lose much. (He didn’t have much to lose)
Been a while so I forgot that for much of Raynor’s life Adrenaline Rush was a passive ability. Anyways, it used to be pretty good against anything that wanted to lock Raynor down so I don’t think it was bad, just different. In modern game design it’d be Raynor’s trait, actually. And again self-cleanse > armor. You also underestimate the potential of massive DPS. Reminder that Executioner and such talents are way weaker now for understandable reasons.
Anyways, while current Raynor is likely its best iteration we compared old 2015 reworked Raynor with the original where you happened to be one of the scariest DPS in 2014. I think you gravely missed this.
Actually, the reason it was changed was because you could get bursted without the ability activating. It was the second most complained about aspect of Raynor (first was his lack of trait). Currently, you can pro-actively activate your E to have a chance to survive. Whereas before, it often would not proc.
Raynor’s attack scaling was raised to 5%, and since he now deals 125% every 4th hit, and can auto combo with Ace in the hole, which you get from Lvl 1, Executioner wouldn’t make sense anymore.
And yes, you no longer have CC reduction. But Raynor is rarely the target of the enemy’s CC. And once the enemy can reach the backline, they should be able to lock you down. It’s a weakness that makes sense.
I saw that currently tutorial was the Battleground training that have 3 Warcraft heroes in the game (I owned both Jaina & Muradin that fine Tyrande haven’t owned because I want to Whitemane).
