So it seems the vast majority of players do not want another expansion of borrowed power, but I personally don’t know how to replace it. To me it’s either we get new abilities each expansion and get bloat or we just never gain new abilities and that doesn’t feel fun. What are your thoughts? What, to you, is the best way to replace borrowed power?
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The systems started out fun, but people complained about balance and now they’re not fun anymore.
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I feel borrowed powers should work only in the expansion you get them , since that area of wow is in a time loop.
Varian is still alive in my alts garrison btw. 
“borrowed power” is not bad by itself. its locking borrowed power behind grind and or rng that makes it bad.
take for example legion artifacts - you had to farm artifact power to unlock the the buffs to stuff.
take for example bfa azerite gear/essences - you had to farm whatever insane achievement they wanted you to do to unlock an essence (I hate pvp, but conflict and strife is to good to not do it) or farm stuff to insanity until you got your azerite essences you wanted (the weeks of saving up titan residuum to be able to get that piece you wanted only for it to proc into the one you already had)
similar will happen with shadownlads (at least from what I can tell at this point).
why is this really a problem? I’d argue its not. its like life. learn how to play the system or fail.
Very carefully crafted expansions to gameplay that are introduced with the intention to be kept around.
There’s a pitfall to that, though.
Warframe is a game that does the polar opposite. They introduce new systems every half a year or so. The criticism has sometimes been that they don’t give those systems enough development, and the game ends up being a mile wide but an inch deep.
Borrowed power doesn’t work well with how WoW is designed.
Classes, specs and talents should matter. Let gear be gear.
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Easy fix. Add a spell and a talent at each cap. If we end up with spells we do not use then so be it. Better to have tools in the box that you only use rarely than to not have them at all.
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Immersion. Borrowed power is the most un immersive gimmick that Blizz has ever devised. Here is your artifact, the most powerful weapon on the planet…this xpac. Next xpac you will stick the most powerful item in the world in your bank and replace it with a cheesy looking green.
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Screws up lower leveling. In Legion and soon BFA part of the leveling experience was getting your gear as part of the leveling. You abilities that helped you progress and give you that sense of that progression. I am a shadow priest going through legion and it is channel, channel, channel because other abilities I would of gotten are not there so my buttons reflect that so I channel…a lot and that is boring.
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Wasted Dev time. Tremendous waste. All the man hours that could of been used on making a bigger map, more quests, perhaps a bit better balance all out the window because Devs want to change things up, treating WOW like Microsoft treats windows. “Lets more this over here…reasons.” To top it off, when they are developing the new xpac everything has to be re written, waste of time on a scale that is mind blowing.
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Chases players off. Truly. I know people who have left the game because the spec they loved was nuked into a mess. I was really close to a quit going into WOD when my Lock became a turret/punching bag.
Blizz will sell 12-14 million copies…again and by the end it will trickle down to around a million, rinse and repeat for the next xpac. BLIZZ YOU NOT HAVE TO CHANGE THE GAME FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE!
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at the risk of sounding defeatist - but you have been following the news right. seems like most of the old-school devs are gone and activision is stepping in. seems like this rinse and repeat is what wow will be in the future…
I’m a big fan of borrowed power and rental abilities.
Heaven forbid we give expansions their own identity and feel. I wouldn’t be here if our characters always played the same for 15 years. That sounds boring, no thanks.
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Some is fine, too much is no good.
I would very much like just having the Legendaries as well as the Conduits (but without the soulbinds, basically just old glyphs). They alter classes and make them powerful without being too over the top.
Everything else just seems unnecessary.
Thank you for your detailed response. So you don’t mind bloat as it provides a variety of tools to use, but you don’t need to use each ability and can just play the way you want. I kinda like that.
Source?
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I have said this on so many posts it makes my head hurt. If you learn how to make a flame float and then years later you learn to cast a fireball you do not un learn the flame float spell. I’m doing animation as a hobby. I had a program called wings3d, had it’s uses. Later I picked up Blender, a better program. Now just because I use Blender (more advanced) does not mean I have forgotten how to use wings3d(more basic). I sometimes think that the WOW designers are so cut off from reality that they forget that progression does not mean loss.
Let’s not muddy up the forums with things like “facts” and “figures.”
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They need an entirely new talent system. An idea I heard a while back was a mix of what we have now and what SWTOR does.
Left half of the window is current system. Middle half is our leveling oath so we can see what we’re getting when. Right half is something like SWTOR utility points (we can call them traits), where it’s smaller generic things that don’t really impact DPS/HPS stuff, but give small bonuses.
Then just have it be a swap: get to choose a talent sometimes, get to choose a trait sometimes. Whole new system with more choices, yet nothing so game changing that it would be OP or broken.
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Blizzard should not copy a dead game: it’s dead for a reason.
Game isn’t completely dead. And their new talent system is actually pretty nice. I also never said to copy it. I said something similar.
The game started dying way before the new talent system. Just because a game failed for other reasons doesn’t mean everything they did or revamped later is crap. Open your mind. Read what I wrote and stop focusing on bs reactions like yours.
Remember at each level cap where we got a new ability or two and a few more talents? Yeah, that was cool.
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“Borrowed power” is turning into the new “player agency”.
I’m okay with this, if we can get across that this concept is what we dislike, hopefully we can get rid of it. It’s just adding extra grinds to unlock your character. Its dumb and I hate it. Gear should determine your characters power, not how many months you’ve farmed for corruption, essences, traits, conduits, soulbinds blah blah blah. I just hate it all.
Honestly I agree with you. I like the flavor borrowed power give and how much they alter my abilities. But I do get people’s complaints over it. Some specs feeling incomplete until they have stuff unlocked, replacing legendary items with just stuff found killing mobs, and the transition between expansions when suddenly all your power seems to vanish.
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