Button Bloat from the Perspective of a Middling Player

Community General Discussion
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Button Bloat from the Perspective of a Middling Player

I do not expect this post to be seen by many, let alone anyone at Blizzard, so I share it mostly to move the thoughts from my head to “paper”.

Button bloat is also a highly subjective matter on which many have spoken before, so this post is simply intended to share my perspective.

This is a hard topic to talk about without visualizations, so I have created a PDF version of this post that includes some basic visualizations:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I7XMo4-83f9bN57A70JQe0RMYSU588E1/view

Context

I am 42 years old, and I have been playing WoW — on and off — since 2004. I currently play the game 10 to 20 hours a week.

I almost exclusively play retail, and rarely engage in PvP.

In Season 3 of Dragonflight, my highest rated mythic+ character reached 2,946 with 31 timed runs of 20+ dungeons. The highest key I have been able to time was 23.

In the same season, my highest rated raid character reached 9/9 normal and 6/9 heroic.

With such a broad player base, my performance is undoubtedly above average, but only in the most dry and technical sense. I consider myself to be a player of thoroughly average skill, whose performance is slightly boosted by the amount of time I put in to the game and the company I keep.

I am struggling to play more than a handful of classes due to the button bloat currently present in the game.

I will be using Elemental Shaman as my example in this analysis because the current tier set mandates fire builds, which happen to align closely to what I find comfortable when it comes to button count. Yet this class still manages to slightly exceed my comfort in fully optimized single target builds.

Key Bindings & Comfort Level

I run a key binding setup that supports up to 35 active abilities (abilities I could trigger with a key bind or otherwise practically access during combat).

I feel truly comfortable when I only need to use 17 or fewer active abilities but find myself able to practically use up to 25 abilities without getting too overwhelmed. However, my comfort is also highly contingent on abilities falling in to certain categories.

Broadly speaking I am comfortable with the following:

  • 4 x High Frequency Rotational Abilities
    • 2 to 3 Single Target
    • 1 to 2 Multi Target
  • 3 x Medium Frequency Rotational Abilities
  • 2 x Kick / CC Abilities
  • 2 x Self-Healing Abilities
  • 2 x Power-Up Abilities
  • 2 x Defensive Abilities
  • 1 x Combat Movement Ability
  • 1 x Combat Utility Ability (Dispel, Blessing, etc.)

My comfort using more abilities than this without becoming overwhelmed is contingent of those abilities being low frequency (40 seconds or more) and primarily in the Kick / CC, Defensive, or Power-Up categories.

An attempted visualization of my key bindings and comfort level is provided in the referenced PDF version of this post.

Practical Example: Elemental Shaman

The current preferred mythic+ build for Elemental Shaman is the “bushfire” build, which requires 25 to 29 active abilities, depending on affixes and other requirements.

  • 4 x High Frequency Abilities
    • All: Lava Burst
    • Single Target: Earth Shock, Lightning Bolt
    • Multi Target: Chain Lighting
  • 4 x Medium Frequency Abilities
    • All: Primordial Wave, Flame Shock
    • Multi Target: Magma Totem, Earthquake
  • 2 x Low Frequency Abilities
    • Fire Elemental, Totemic Recall
  • 3 to 4 x Kick / CC:
    • Wind Shear, Capacitor Totem, Thunderstorm, Hex
  • 2 x Self-Heal:
    • Healing Surge, Healthstone / Health Potion
  • 4 x Power Ups:
    • Stormkeeper, Nature’s Swiftness, Lust, Combat Potion
  • 1 to 2 x Defensives:
    • Astral Shift, Earth Elemental
  • 3 x Combat Movement:
    • Ghost Wolf, Gust of Wind, Spirit Walker’s Grace
  • 2 to 4 x Combat Utility:
    • Dispell, Purge, Wind Rush Totem, Situational Totems (Tremor, Binding, etc.)

An attempted visualization of the build mapped to my key bindings is provided in the referenced PDF version of this post.

I would classify this build as “doable but borderline excessive” when it comes to my level of comfort executing the required openers and rotation.

The larger number of utility spells are manageable because of how situational each one is, and movement abilities feel quite natural, even if I would personally prefer Gust of Wind was changed to an enhancement of Ghost Wolf.

The only things that make this build a little uncomfortable for me are the unnecessary functional overlap of Primordial Wave and Flameshock (PW could upgrade and replace FS), and the relatively awkward way that Nature’s Swiftness interacts with the rotation.

Where things get truly uncomfortable is when you need to move away from the “bushfire” build and adopt the “mountains will burn” built to optimise for single target, as this single target build requires the introduction of Icefury and Frost Shock into an already crowded core rotation.

While added movement and situational utility is relatively easy to deal with, moving from 10 to 12 core rotational abilities moves me entirely outside my comfort zone, particularly given that Icefury and Frost Shock are both relatively high frequency and interact with the other core rotational abilities in an awkward fashion that is almost entirely dependent on tracking multiple buffs (another bane of the middling player’s existence).

(It is worth noting that I have not included trinkets or “on use” armour effects in this analysis, because there are usually “on equip” alternatives that are viable – however this is another factor that should be considered when it comes to button bloat.)

66 Likes
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I’m in the same boat. I can comfortably use 25-30 keybinds, but outside of that it’s a no go for me.

I don’t play frost mage for example because in PvP their keybind requirements are ridiculous. My brewmaster monk is also shelved because they have way too many.

And while some specs are ok now, I wonder what will happen down the road as more and more things continue to be added.

I think it would do a lot of good for the game if they streamlined some things where possible. Something like what they did to disc priest, how they moved Schism into Mind Blast, and merged Shadow Covenant into Mindbender. Changes like that where button bloat is reduced but the spec remains largely intact would be ideal

15 Likes
3

I’m getting up there in age and I can relate. Returning to WoW after a few expansions off and the button bloat is a bit overwhelming.

I also am not sold on the rehashed talent trees. Seems like nearly everyone is running one of a handful of builds and while you can customize it, most people don’t and in some cases your looked down on when you do. It also feels like quite a few abilities that should be core class abilities have found a way to be placed into the talent trees themselves which I dislike.

8 Likes
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Agree. Every spec probably has a couple talents that could be made passives, instead of use abilities. And said in other threads before that trinks should be passives. That would be a start on helping with button bloat imo.

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Considering you’re only 6/9 heroic it’s actually below average.

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Hard disagree.

Also hard disagree.

The new talent system allows me to run talents based on the content I’m doing.

Example being I have an mplus build for tyranical weeks and one for fort weeks, eaxh prog boss gets its own talent build.

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Tell us how you really feel about being forced to tolerate other people in your game.

25 Likes
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One problem you are facing is that “the community” doesn’t agree with you. Or at least the people who rage about “borrowed power” and claim to speak for “the community” don’t agree with you.

Borrowed power people are OUT-Raged that they get powers given to them in one expansion then get them taken away in the next. So it’s the Buttom Bloat people vs the Borrowed Power people.

As for button bloat, the way I handle it is to only take those talents I like then I take passives to make them more powerful. Not everyone’s cup of tea but it works for me.

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It’s only a matter of time before you get some brilliant responses accusing you of wanting three-button specs because their brains can’t process nuance.

14 Likes
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Considering most specs active rotations are 5-7 buttons and people want button reduction 3-5 buttons is literally what’s being asked for.

Or people want to be braindead and just spam damage without worrying about utility.

Either way this game has already tried catering to the people that want this and doubled back on that decision.

6 Likes
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The idea that the “average player” is a mythic raider with a 3000+ mythic+ rating is hilarious comedy. You need to crawl out from under your log and stop insulting other people with rambling about random stuff intended to puff your own ego.

30 Likes
14

Ooh, look at the epeen on this one.

20 Likes
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Considering I never said that shows you completely lack the ability to read.

You should actually read what people say before getting triggered and responding based on emotions over something that wasn’t even said.

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Oh my. That didn’t take long.

7 Likes
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Has zero to do with an epeen. Anything under aotc is below average considering aotc is easily pugged.

If you’re only 6 of 9 you either haven’t tried or aren’t good which is the definition of below average.

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I’ll take that as you being unable to refute the facts laid out.

19

Don’t bother with that dude. They’re toxic as can be and incapable of having a good faith conversation.

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I’m actually not toxic at all and can have a good faith conversation with anyone that also can.

However I’m not going to sugarcoat facts.

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Gotta disagree with you, homie. You can macro active trinkets to your cd’s and be fine in 99% of situations. Let people have the option if they want to micromanage their trinkets.

2 Likes
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Except that AoTC means very little these days since it can be bought for a few 100k gold. It’s a personal achievement, not something to judge others on.

2 Likes