X thread: https://twitter.com/aggrendwow/status/1781037113838047328?t=GeKtPyMM33OFghhZfXfPPA
While I have no input on Spriest, Rogue, or Hunter as I have yet to play these, here are some ideas regarding Holy Paladin and Warrior:
Paladin
Make the FoL HOT not overwrite the bigger HOT.
Give a spell that puts a HOT on a friendly target and heals anyone within 15y by a percent or give Holy Light some sort of splash (or both).
Change Infusion of Light to add that Holy Shock healing critical strikes reduce the cost of the next Holy Light by 20% and reduce the casting speed by .2 seconds (or more).
Alternatively, Flash of Light critical strikes now reduce the cool down of Holy Shock by 5 seconds, balance it with some sort of internal delay so pumping FoL crits doesnāt make HS insanely spammable, but better.
Other ideas are Holy Shock critical strikes make Flash of Light instant cast.
Holy Shock criticals on any target (dps/healing) leaves a HoT/DoT for 50% of the damage or healing over 6 sec.
Warrior
On the topic of Rage, it would probably be best to move Endless Rage to a QoL book or alternatively a small amount of rage every few seconds in combat. Much like Anger Management, but maybe 2 rage every 6 seconds?
Make it so that Shield Specialization is increased to 5 rage per block, dodge, or parry.
Crit abilities refund 40% of the rage cost.
Blood Frenzy brought up to 5 or 6 rage.
Focused Rage brought up to 5 or 6 rage.
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Hereās the full tweet for those who donāt use twitter:
The team focused on SoD has spent a good chunk of the last few days chewing on a rather large list of class adjustments coming soon (likely actually soon, not āsoon tmā soon). As always we want to prime everyone that itās not going to fix every single thing everyone wanted, but we are continuing to iterate.
Weāve been watching discords and forums for ideas and suggestions as we go, and while thatās fine and good, I figured it might be a fun exercise to probe for a few suggestions here to a few targeted questions.
Disclaimer; there may be an excellent idea in here that you love that we canāt execute on for whatever reason.
Game dev isnāt easy and sometimes you have to pass on a good idea for a myriad of reasons. Itās nothing sinister and its not us being tone deaf. Many things are also too big to hotfix so we have to think about what we do now vs. next phase.
So, feel free to post suggestions or links to media with good suggestions in reply. Please do keep it civil though both towards me/the team and each other. Iāve been increasingly having to mute/block folks with abusive or unhelpful commentary so letās all be chill humans together.
Lastly, please try and frame your suggestion with both a) the issue to be addressed, and b) your suggestionāphrased as concisely as possible. We likely wonāt have time to read super long posts/threads to find the meat of your point, so this will help (he says, while typing a super long post himself).
Anyway, here goes:
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Shadow DPS - Weād like to increase damage while allowing them to still shine in terms of group utility, particularly because their utility/value is likely to increase even further at 60 with some new stuff coming. One thing we also keep coming back to as well is wanting to restore mind flay to having a place in the toolkit. With that in mind, how would you suggest improving Shadow DPS with those goals in mind?
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Survival Tree for Hunters - We know a lot of melee hunters really want Survival to be a thing and we agree that it really fits that āRPG rangerā class fantasy. Currently, BM tends to outstrip it in terms of raw output. What do you think could be interesting to zhuzh this up and make a deepish survival investment interesting?
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Holy Paladins - We did you guys a bit dirty by not giving you interesting buttons to push like every other healing class. Viewed through a level 60 vanilla lens holy is great, but in SoD it leaves a lot to be desired. One thing weāve been discussing is a group heal or some sort of proactive heal mechanic for Holy, but interested to hear some concise ideas here.
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Sword Rogues - We have some adjustments coming in the upcoming update but we are open to ideas for how to make Saber Slash and other sword gameplay compelling. Might simply be a ādo moar damageā adjustment that fixes this in the end, but we are interested in āfeelsyā adjustment ideas too.
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Warriors - Rage is a problematic mechanic because more damage = more rage = more damage = more rage ad infinitum. This is going to become more problematic at 60 as well. If we had it to do over again, weād likely have normalized rage (i.e. you donāt get extra rage when you do more damage/crit) at the start of the season and focused on major changes to their gameplay to compensate. The way it works now really hamstrings the design options for Warriors as we have to worry about the historically best dps in the game becoming even better later and forcing us to do an absolutely massive nerf which everyone would hate. To you, what would be a good trade for some form of normalized rage at 60 if we had to do such a thing?
To close us outāat this point, we are always open to novel ideas for any class, including things that donāt just strictly borrow from future expansions. Our philosophy on this has shifted from when we started developing this season and now weād love to experiment with totally NEW mechanics (that ideally fit somewhat plausibly into the classic ecosystem). Not to say we wonāt use future expansion spells, but thereās a willingness to expand our horizons a bit.
Anyway sorry for the length. Weāve had a lot of fun just trawling discords and forums recently but figured Iād just throw this into the maelstrom and see what we get here as well. Thanks!
EDIT: I am not answering questions here, so sorry if you want to ask something. My thoughts are irrelevant to this discussion and we want YOUR ideas.
4 Likes
A) Shadow DPS B) Make Mind Flay be empowered like Void Torrent in retail after a Mindblast Crit or Mind Spike Crit. This would add it into the rotation naturally without changing up the play style as it would be keep dots on Target Mind Spike x3 > Mind Blast > Mind Flay and could allow crit to be a useful stat for shadow. If someone at Blizz checks this thread lol. Please make posts like this on the forums as social media is cancer <3
Why they havenāt been leaning into the shadow priest mana battery identity that we already know and love is just insane to me lol
Bring Holy Paladin healing up to be competitive against Priest and Druid, by leaning into a stackable AoE shield where once broken results in a short-live heal over time.
Cast once on a target, all Party members within D yards get a small shield.
Second cast to any target in that Party applies a second stack, up to some maximum application.
If the majority or all of the absorb shield across the party is consumed, trigger the short live heal over time on the party.
Ty for reposting this. What follows is directed to Aggrend, not you.
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Post this on your forums not twitter, Aggrend.
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Survival Tree for Hunters - We know a lot of melee hunters really want Survival to be a thing and we agree that it really fits that āRPG rangerā class fantasy. Currently, BM tends to outstrip it in terms of raw output. What do you think could be interesting to zhuzh this up and make a deepish survival investment interesting?
I want ranged survival to be a thing more than Munters. Please bring back that as a playstyle instead - the forcing of melee onto survival is what killed it for me in retail. Abilities like TBCās Expose Weakness (+agi as AP to raid on crit), the original Explosive Shot, Readiness so we could multi-trap were all what drew me to the class.
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Warriors - Rage is a problematic mechanic because more damage = more rage = more damage = more rage ad infinitum. This is going to become more problematic at 60 as well. If we had it to do over again, weād likely have normalized rage (i.e. you donāt get extra rage when you do more damage/crit) at the start of the season and focused on major changes to their gameplay to compensate. The way it works now really hamstrings the design options for Warriors as we have to worry about the historically best dps in the game becoming even better later and forcing us to do an absolutely massive nerf which everyone would hate. To you, what would be a good trade for some form of normalized rage at 60 if we had to do such a thing?
Normalize it now and introduce things that give us fun buttons and things to do. Glad stance is nice, but the shield slam changes makes it terrible for actually DPSing with as a prot warrior.
Reducing the cost and CD on Sweeping Strikes would be a nice change if weāre normalizing rage. Also, letās lean into some new design spaces.
Limited Titanās Grip (2hd + Shield) so we can be Spartans would be a nice idea. Or heck, why not a ranged Warrior idea? It always felt to have 1 ranged physical DPS only slot. (For that matter, why not a ranged rogue - lean into throwing weapons as a fun thing to do!)
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He responded to this too btw:
Gonna give you an honest reply. I personally prefer twitter because, in general, people are less hesitant to be complete jerks because they (usually) use their personal accounts. Forums are often actively unhelpful at best, and downright abusive and toxic at worst.
Not looking for people to suck up to me, but I am looking for people to be human beings and I get more of that and more actionable feedback here (and to a lesser degree, in discords).
That said, I/we DO read forums, itās just for a discussion like this, I think this format is a bit better. Just my opinion though.
Confirmation that yes, the forums are a toxic cesspool that have driven away the developers over the years and the only reason weāre getting so much open and honest communication in SoD is because they just started talking to players in other places instead.
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According to the forum moderators they do provide this feedback to the developers. To me it is awkward that the developers use unofficial means to submit official discussions. There are plenty of toxic people on Twitter and other places and itās kind of silly to not just have better moderation then.
That said, he has mentioned he has been reading discords and forums, which I would hope here would be one of those forums as this is literally the SoD forum.
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Yeah, he definitely reads all of these forums. Heās just not going to engage in discussion here because he does not consider the average poster on these forums to be worth talking to.
Canāt really blame him to be honest.
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Then get rid of them or police them better. The forums are entirely within their control, they can control and combat the toxicity if they want.
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Yeah I donāt agree with shying away from the literal official forums because people are trolls. They have the power to remove anyone at any time and should if it is disruptive.
With that said, I would rather stay on topic with suggestions to make classes that are struggling with an identity to be better.
Warriors just want buttons to press. Victory Rush was a godsend for leveling because it gave you a rage-free GCD that dealt damage and a heal. Quickstrike and Devastate are fun because theyāre basically spammable, like thereās actually something you can do on every GCD.
Some efficient low-rage option thatās spammable at low rage generation levels and gets outclassed by heroic strike when rage capped would give a smoother progression to gameplay.
Maybe add some better utility to shouts, maybe something like hits/crits by nearby party members affected by a positive shout have a chance to give you a rage point, this way youāre less reliant on scaling with your personal damage.
Make shouts part of the rotation somehow, so that applying them doesnāt āfeel badā? Maybe even gives the āweakā warrior in the party something helpful to do while the āstrongā warrior in the party can focus on doing big damage, if thatās something people want to do. Put demo shout on a 15s cooldown and give it some bonus effect if itās applied after dealing a critical strike, you know, to further ādemoralizeā the target. Etc.
Specific off specs were mentioned in this. I am surprise Ice lance frost mage wasnāt talked about at all. Would be nice to know for sure if they are just planning for it to be always dead of if they have future plans for it during the last phase. Currently Frost/fire mage is literally the same combat with based around FFB. Just one with scorch and one with winterschill.
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Holy Paladin:
Lack of AOE healing (can try to Batch a HL with a fresh BoL to heal 2 targets at once, but this has become harder and harder for me to execute, often wondering if it is a hotfix or just a player skill issue or just a latency issue, and usually ends up just being the last 2).
- Splash of Light- think retailās Beacon of Faith but limited duration: FoL applies 6s Splash of Light, mirroring to the target all healing done to allies in 40yd for 30% of the amount healed
- Glyph of Holy Light- wrath
- Sanctify- Consecration additionally heals up to 6 friendly targets for X every 2s
- Improved Blessing of Sacrifice- connects all party membersā health pool of the target
Iām glad he understand rage generation is a big problem and need to be normalized. Thereās the TBC formula and the Cata formula so hopefuly they will use one of them and not try to invent a new one.
Also white crits should always give double the rage, it would be a mistake to nerf that.
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havenāt play survival hunt in a hot minute
but, lightning reflexes is the bread and butter of the survival talent tree. Make their melee somehow scale well with that talent.
He does say he would have preferred that they normalized it from the start, but doing now would require huge nerfs later so people would be upset about that (which is literally just to keep them from being rage capped 100% of the time).
As I suggested, the only other option is to lower the rage cost on most things, give passive rage, or filler abilities that give rage (which I think feels weird).
Note: for all of these suggestions Iām going to try and avoid āBigger numbersā
For Shadow Priest: Thereās two ways I can see changing it to make it interesting. One way is to have Mind Flay and other such spells refresh durations on things like shadow plague and void plague. Could also give them a spell like Seed of Corruption. Something that when the shadow priest deals enough damage the target explodes. The neat thing we could do with SPriest is we could cause this explosion to refund mana to anyone within 15 yards of the target.
the other option is we give Mind Flay the ability to shield a raid member with the lowest hp ratio for 10% of mind flayās damage. Would it be as good as just having an outright disc priest? No, but it should compliment them, not replace them. Giving the raid minor extra survivability is only a good thing.
Holy Paladin: I think thereās some interesting ideas we can do here. Hereās a few that might make it fun.
- Letās make holy shock really cash in on the ādamage and healingā ability. Make it to where if you use it on a target to deal damage, it will automatically heal a target with the lowest hp ratio or your beacon of light target. Make those crits with Holy Shock really matter to where you can get a huge burst of damage or healing.
To that note: I propose a new rune. Excess healing is converted into either a shield (not bad) or a Healing over Time effect (preferred) that will take place with the amount overhealed happening over 15 seconds. That way it gives it long enough time to where you canāt just front-load all healing but it does make it to where it rewards proactively healing.
- Letās make crit healing with holy light or holy shock on a target give them a bonus to physical mitigation (15% should be plenty, 10% is fine if that ends up being too much) that way you can pre-heal still for the bonus which would make the remaining healing a bit easier.
these are technically unofficial. if its on the forums, its official. since Aggrend is using his personal twitter, heās technically just yelling into the void ā legally speaking.
Thereās a lot of red tape with forums, as the forums are part of the Community Managers. But that red tape is directly related to the state of the forums being generally as described-- unhelpful and toxic.
For Rogues.
A) Currently all rogues rely on daggers. Fine for dps, but tanking it feels wrong.
B) Have all the non-dagger talents in the combat tree immediately trigger on parry using the offhand weapon. For fist weapons, have it return X energy.
B) Main Gauche increases 50% off hand dmg for duration. If you have Dual wield specialization this means offhand deals full damage.
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