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if you’re maining that shaman you’re playing one of the most bloated specs.
i recommend playing something like hunter, evoker or warlock for an easier time. keep apm under 50/55 & you should be gucci as well.
if you do decide on evoker though, devastation is looking to be heavy hitters next season.
Sort of, also the layout of some trees are just awful giving you very poor or broken choices. Trying to avoid a particular talent often forces you to take significant damage losses and/or an extremely similar option to what you wanted to avoid in the first place.
This is well put.
I feel like this problem is often amplified by the fact that design intent doesn’t match reality due to min/max culture and the availability of Weak Auras and such that make min/maxing a fairly core part of the end game.
To be clear, I don’t have any real objection to min/maxing or high skill ceilings, I just feel like the “button bloat” (or maybe “complexity bloat” is a better term) is creating too large of a gap between the skill floor and the skill ceiling, particularly if you start looking beyond your own auras and start having to keep track of augmentation buffs, power infusion, and so forth.
I would be content with the approach you suggest, where there is just a more critical review of whether an ability or talent is adding anything to the game.
Primordial Wave is a fantastic example of this. For Elemental Shamans, Primordial Wave is just a better version of Flame Shock… but on a different cooldown and requiring a separate action.
It could have just been a straight upgrade to Flame Shock (not in its current form, but in the spirit of the ability it could easily have been reworked to something like “after you cast flame shock, your next lava burst will hit up to 3 targets for 50% damage and flame shock on your primary target ticks faster for 3 seconds”).
Another good example would be Gust of Wind, which is a mobility action that propels the shaman forward. This could have been a passive along the lines of “Spirit Leap: When activating Ghost Wolf, you leap forward X yards. This effect can only occur once every 30 seconds”. Achieves the same outcome, but with one less button.
Taking a more complex scenario, Icefury causes frustrations because it adds two more buttons to your rotation without removing any. Icefury could be reworked to change up the Shamans “Fire/Earth” play style to “Fire/Ice” through some passive chaining interaction that allows you to take Earth Quake and Earth Shock off your bar (e.g. “Your fire spells do more damage to targets effected by Frost Shock and Lava Burst crits on targets effected by Frost Shock cause them to shatter doing damage to near by enemies”). Or even simpler and perhaps more satisfying, it could promote the “Ice/Lightning” play style and replace Flame Shock and Lava Burst (e.g. “Targets effected by Frost Shock take 20% less damage from your fire spells, but conduct electricity better causing them to take 10% more lightning damage and propagate some of that damage to near by enemies.” with Icefury being a Lava Burst like nuke that interacts with Frost Shock instead of Flame Shock). These are silly examples, that have not been thought through properly, but just meant to highlight that reducing complexity doesn’t mean you have to make everything class the same (though the “Ice/Fire” example is pretty Frost Magey 
)
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I can easily skip the Azure Vaults portals with ghost wolf + gust of wind, but I wouldn’t be able to if they were fused. I get where you’re coming from though, having more abilities fused simplifies gameplay, but splitting them opens up more possibilities. There is a fine balance in there somewhere.
PWave being a FlShock upgrade should work though, but tracking its CD would likely involve UI upgrades (or weak aura usage, which is what we’re trying to avoid).
Even your aforementioned Whirlwind example (counting to 4) is already such a strain on my “mental bandwidth” that I made a WA just for tracking it, putting the tracker near the middle of the screen, upper-right from my char.
It’s better to use my mind on strategic decisions based on “counts and timers” rather than those themselves.
P.S.: My alts are in order: -
Ele Shaman (rarely resto, for TW),
MM Hunter (rarely BM, more for soloing and spirit beast self healing),
WW Monk,
DEvoker (rarely Pres, for TW),
FWar (rarely Prot, for TW. Used to be Arms up to BfA),
FDK (rarely Blood, for TW),
ARogue (used to be outlaw in Legion, used to be sub in PvP),
HDH (rarely Veng, for TW),
BDruid (used to be Feral, rarely Resto, for TW),
Destro Lock (used to be aff on occasion),
HPriest (miss old shadow).
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You people just need a gamer friend to come over to your house and explain keybinds to you, priorities, ergonomics, etc. I had someone do that for me back in 2000 at LAN for Counter-Strike, that’s what ya’ll need, tutoring.
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It doesn’t really, as there are times where you’d want to hit ghost form without gust of wind activating (IE: using it as an extra defensive during a phase where the raid/party needs to stack)
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The complexity of the game in 2007 was much lower than now. It’s not even close. Rotations, boss encounters, systems – everything was significantly more simple and accessible. Arguably, rotations at the time were almost too simplistic, but that was when the game was the most successful.
It depends on the class and the spec. There is a large difference between the Outlaw rotation and the Fury rotation, for example. But it’s not just about difficulty, it’s also about whether or not the game is fun to play. The frequency of complaints about button bloat, and the 35 million downloads of Hekili, imply that many players don’t much enjoy the button bloat that a fair number of specs suffer from.
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I don’t really think this is the issue. It isn’t really about physical comfort or reach (for me at least - others wisely point out that people with disabilities or physical limitations should also be able to play the game).
I am already using 1, 2, 3, 4, Q, E, R, F, Scroll Wheel, and Mouse 3 and modifying all of them with both ALT and SHIFT. I also use F1 through F6.
Obviously I am not using every single one of these for every fight, but on my ret paladin it is not unusual for me to use 1-4, ALT 1-4, Q, ALT-Q, SHIFT-Q, E, F, ALT-F, F1, F2, R, and Scroll Wheel in a single pull. ALT-E, ALT-R, SHIFT-R, and F3 are also not uncommon.
That is 18 to 22 different buttons I am pressing every pull, most of them many times. Call it 15 to 20 if you want to be conservative.
And ret paladin is one of the more streamlined and “easy” classes.
The issue isn’t that we don’t understand key binds, or that we don’t understand macros, or priority, it is simply that when you start getting up in to the 20+ different buttons per fight range, it starts to be come too much to track for us mere mortals. As others have put it, it consumes too much mental bandwidth (and this isn’t even considering the fact that you aren’t just tracking where all of these buttons are and what they do, but also tracking 5 or more auras or resources that modify the behavior and effectiveness of the abilities… most of which have no in game visualization beyond the aura icon).
My feedback isn’t “rah give me a three button rotation” it is more along the lines of “please consider merging a few abilities or having harder points of differentiation in builds so adding a button to your bar also removes a button from your bar… and please improve the rotational visualization of auras that impact effectiveness.”
Unrelated to the comment I am responding to, but because I can only respond once between other responses, others have pointed out my ghost wolf / gust of wind idea is a bit silly. I agree, was just rapid firing some thoughts and that one was a flopper.
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You need to run PVE content with Details open and track what spells are actually doing things.
If stuff is on the bottom, you need to be removing it from your bars. In my original post I mentioned priority, it seems like you have no idea what you should be prioritizing.
You’re just arbitrarily putting every single thing possible on yours bars. That’s not how it’s done. You need tutoring.
Yeah this is bad. That means you have no idea what to prio. On my Resto shaman I use like 5 main heal spells. Riptide, Healing Surge, Healing Stream, Healing Wave, Primordial Wave.
18 to 22 is just absolutely psychotic. You’re your own worst enemy here.
Counter-Strike is a lot more intuitive than Retail WoW. Even high end utility usage can at least be understood when viewed should someone have even a passing interest whereas Retail WoW is frankly unwatchable to anyone but the sunk cost faction that is killing it.
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I think you would benefit from looking at DPS rotation guides. Advice like removing abilities whose damage is at the bottom of the damage meter displays a fundamental lack of understanding how rotations work.
Some of the hard hitting abilities are only hard hitting because of their synergies and interactions with the abilities that you advise to remove. Abilities do not exist in a vacuum. You also have to use fillers or your overall damage tanks.
We’re not talking about healers here. Healers work differently.
But if you only use these five abilities when you heal, you won’t get very far in M+ content. Are you not keybinding your interrupt, your stun totem, your hard-cast CC, the various utility totems, the four damage spells you’ll be using even as a healer, Ancestral Guidance, Spiritwalker’s Grace, Acendence, Nature’s Swiftness, Ghost Wolf, Totemic Recall, your AoE stop (Thunderstorm), Purge, the Spirit Link Totem, the Healing Tide Totem?
I suppose you’re also not dispelling, casting Earth Shield, Water Shield, Healing Rain and Blood Lust? Not using Astral Shift? Do you manually click on your health potion and your health stone?
You won’t need most of those when you heal in a leveling dungeon, but you’ll be using all of them in M+. But if you do any challenging content, you’ll keybind all of those.
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I must disagree with you on this one. I am not just including every ability I have, and I do understand prioritisation.
This is the basic AOE rotation for ret paladin, which is priority based:
- Avenging Wrath
- Final Reckoning (with as much Holy Power pooled as possible)
- Divine Storm (5 Holy Power)
- Wake of Ashes (2 or less Holy Power)
- Divine Toll (0 or 1 Holy Power)
- Blade of Justice
- Judgment (3 or less Holy Power and Judgment debuff isn’t up)
- Divine Storm (3-4 Holy Power)
- Hammer of Wrath
That is 8 abilities just to execute your basic damage rotation.
You also need to perform interrupts and crowd control. That is another 3 abilities you will be using every fight in higher content (2 in lower content). For reference the three abilities are Rebuke, Hammer of Justice, and Blinding Light.
So we are already up to 11 abilities.
If you are doing higher content you will also need to use at least one of your defensives on every pull (usually more), but you absolutely need easy access to all 3 of them so that you can rotate through the two main defensives (Divine Protection and Shield of Vengeance) as well as have access to Divine Shield for emergencies.
That means we are now up to 14 abilities you need access to during any fight.
15 when you consider you also need access to your self-heal (Word of Glory) for the same reason as your defensives. 16 when you chuck in your movement ability (Divine Steed).
I won’t even include potions, flasks, and health stones.
So that is 16 abilities you need easy access to at all times.
11 of them are required simply to execute your basic AOE rotation, and you will use at least 12 to 13 of them in every single fight.
But there is also Templar’s Verdict, bringing the number up to 17, because there is no macro in the world that can detect if you are doing single target versus multi-target, and at some point you need to use verdict instead of storm, something that will often happen within a single fight (e.g. the flower or abomination packs in everbloom).
So there are 17 abilities that I think I need to have on my bar. Are there any you think I can remove?
Also, I am a Paladin, so I have Cleanse Toxins, Lay on Hands, Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection, and sometimes Blessing of Sacrifice. All of which I may need to use during a fight, and am expected to use during higher content.
This is also the “auto attack” build that removes both Crusading Strike and Consecration from the rotation.
But lets ignore that added complexity for now and just focus back on the 17 abilities. Because I honestly don’t think there are any I can remove from my bar… but if there are, I would certainly be glad to hear it.
And for the record, I don’t actually think the paladin has button bloat. I am just using it as an example because it has one of the simplest rotations to articulate (because the rotation is almost entirely priority based).
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Yea, his example of ghost wolf and gust wind seemed strange. A better recommendation would have been to get rid of feral lunge as a keybind and give shamans two charges of gust wind. Feral lunge is kinda stupid because you need an enemy targetted for it to work. I’d rather have two charges of gust wind and be able to jump in any direction I want like mage blink.
And flame shock should have been baked into lava lash. When you are in melee range lava lash goes off. When you are out of melee range flame shock goes off. That’s another example of where they could have reduced keybinds.
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Considering most of the player base doesnt raid outside of lfr.
No its not below average he even said
That means everyone that plays the game.
But i do find it funny that you ignored everything else in his post soley to try to insult his raid progression you bring literally nothing to this thread.
Oh well guess i’ll just have to clean house and deal with little keyboard warriors like you myself.
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Now I can respond, yes my Gust of Wind example was pretty silly. Didn’t think through the implications of not wanting to always yeet yourself forward when you activate Ghost Wolf.
Was just throwing some ideas out, and that one was a big old flopper.
Doesn’t lava lash spread only work if flame shock is already active on the target?
Yea, but there could be workarounds. Flame shock can take priority even in melee range only when the timer runs out. But if there is a flame shock timer ticking away, the lava lash is used.
I like having buttons to press and would prefer it remain that way.
Arcane’s core rotation consists of 4-5 buttons. That increases to 8-9 (based on build) if you count their major cooldowns.