I understand why it made sense to add weapon style restrictions in Legion given the existence of Artifact weapons… but why have specs remained restricted to specific weapon styles in the BfA release?
For example… since it is the easiest example to call out… why are Frost Death Knights restricted to dual wielding instead of being able to use a two handed weapon?
Why are Survival hunters restricted to two handed weapons to use all of their abilities instead of being able to use dual wielding as well?
I’m not sure what justification exists for continuing the weapon style restrictions for the different specs within a class that was established in Legion when the Legion based artifact weapons are no longer a thing in the game.
Except that the art style was already there. They haven’t really introduced any new skills outside of the artifact abilities since they added these restrictions… not to mention that they are continuing to develop new art styles for old skills.
TL:DR: Adding weapon restrictions that weren’t there before bothers me a lot. It’s important to me to be able to at least xmog to previously available weapon types (2h frost, 2h ww monk, 2h enh shaman, dw blood/unholy, dw bm monk, etc.).
Now for the wall of text:
This is one thing that bugs me a ton on my warrior, DK, monk, etc. who have lost the ability to effectively use various weapon types over the years.
Frost DK - I understand eliminating having 2 sub-specs that are hard to balance, and in the case of frost that was based on weapon type. I’m glad frost doesn’t have 2 sub-specs anymore, but I absolutely cannot stand the fact that I can no longer effectively use a 2h weapon on my frost dk. The ability to choose between 2h and dw was a big selling point for me on DKs and on fury warriors when I made mine during Cata. I want the cosmetic option available to xmog to a 2h weapon as a frost DK or, for those that prefer dw, to xmog to 2 1h weapons as blood or unholy. I wanted to call this one out specifically because it is the one that directly affects me the most.
SMF Fury - I always felt that warriors should be wewapon masters, capable of using any weapons except for those silly caster wands. As a fury warrior, a berserker, I don’t feel like I should have to care which weapons those are whether they are 1h or 2h weapons. It’s not fulfilling my class fantasy to be restricted to 2h weapons only. Even as someone that prefers 2h weapons and I’m overall glad that TG fury has stayed, I feel that SMF fury should still be available as it was in previous xpacs where both SMF and TG were available.
Those are the two that affect me the most that bother me on a daily basis. That being said, there are other classes and specs that removed various weapon options, and I feel like those options should at the very least be available through xmog such as dw -> 2h and vice versa or caster 1h/oh -> 2h and vice versa.
Character customization options should never be removed. Weapon choice is an important part of character customization for me personally. At this point cosmetic options through xmog would be acceptable except for SMF fury (which needs to be restored like it was in MoP/WoD).
I’m sure it’s not a balancing problem as before legion you could use any weapon that fit into your classes weapon skills giving attack speed for dual-wielding and attack power for 2 handed but I’m not a dev so I can’t be certain it could mess something up.
I really hate that ww monks can’t use staves. The dw only started in legion because of artifact but they don’t even have animation for dw, their weapons just stay sheathed. They have great animations for staves though. It makes no sense.
Also it bothers me that rogues use diff weapons for diff specs. I want to dual stabby stab no matter the spec
I want to use Fist Weapons on my Subtlety Rogue… but no… it has to be Daggers only… also, I thought Outlaw could still use Daggers, are their skills disabled when using Daggers for some reason?