I’m not saying it’s classic, and it’s not null, void, or pointless.
Blizzard has taken inspiration for retail from classic in the past.
A notable example is when they did the initial change to add a GCD to many abilities that didn’t have one in the first place. At the time it had become a game of who can macro as many abilities together at once, or who can press them the quickest/has the fastest reaction time.
The current iteration is a decent balance, allowing many classes to choose between which abilities to press, as having GCDs added to them adds a greater risk/reward for pressing the correct abilities at the correct moment.
You also have to keep in mind that classic is a past iteration of the same game, as is Dragonflight or any other expansion. It’s not out of their scope to look at the past and see what was done good, and what was done right. It’s not a negative to learn from the past expansions and what was implemented.
I would even go as far to say that the pruning changes back in WoD/Legion (I think?) were also inspired by Classic, assuming internal development had taken place at that time.
I remember specifically in MoP every class had many spells and abilities, and when it came to PvP, had an answer to just about everything other classes could throw at them.
I recall PvP in mop had a higher skill ceiling than currently and a lot of it came down to was knowing what you could press and when to press it to counter what.
I wouldn’t doubt there’s a few new devs on the WoW team, and learning from the past of what previously made WoW great should never be outside their scope.
Yes, doing nothing is an alternative, one that does not feel good in the slightest.
Manually shifting still wastes potential damage, but again, using the time of 2 GCDs instead of 1 if you include the time it takes for forms to go through their cooldown (provided you don’t use an ability to instantly shift back into form). The shred/rake should be a given, yes, but even the act of using shred to psudo-shift back into form still uses energy, and is still a waste if you’re already max combo points. Granted you can somewhat mitigate this by using one of the new talents they implemented like Coil to Spring (it still doesn’t make up for bad class design).
I’m not putting it under the assumption that your target is immobile or standing in one place (however they very well could be if you use predatory to root, or they’re trying to cast something). If you use a GCD or two to shift while running up to them, most likely you’ll be off GCD around the time you catch up to them, provided you aren’t slowed or immobile to do so. This would allow you to use an ability like maim once you’re within melee range.
However, if you have to shred (within melee range) first, just to get back into form if your form is on cooldown still, then that is still considered wasted time. Note, that if skull bash is off cooldown, then great, immediately skull bash after shredding, but if it’s not then yes, you have to wait the full GCD to be able to maim or otherwise.
Also, if you spec into tiger dash or wild charge, you could indeed catch up to them within a GCD’s time, many times that’s how I do, you can instantly shift out of a root and tiger dash into a jump (to avoid snares) to catch up, granted it varies depending on how far away your target is, but tiger dash is generally a safe bet. Wild charge is also an alternative since it also snares, and roots your target if used in bear, and it’s off GCD so you can instantly go bear and charge if you get rooted (this was something done even in classic). The downside is these are again cooldowns, so you can only do these every so often while you’re being spam slowed or rooted by other classes. It was bad enough they nerfed feral slow down to 20%, where other classes have upwards of 50~90% slows.
They later somewhat fixed this by letting infected wounds stack twice with a pvp talent, but that becomes another issue because we’re using 1 of the 3 PvP talents we’re given just to somewhat get back what we originally had, and what other classes have superior versions of. Druid mobility isn’t even at the top anymore, and having gimped slows only contributes to that fact.
It does, but incapacitating roar is also situational, and you don’t want to take it in many situations due to the DR tables (it DRs with hunter’s trap and other important CC spells iirc). Not only that, but it replaces bash, which might be okay in PvE, as I run incap there as guardian, but in PvP you almost always want to take bash as feral or otherwise.
This also doesn’t remedy the issue of shifting forms as it turns you into bear form for using it, meaning you still need to use another GCD to re-enter cat form, whereas bash is usable in cat form.
Actually it is an option and it is possible, as I have already stated you can with cooldowns.
-Prowl to enter cat form (provided you’re out of combat.)
-Tiger Dash or Dash to instantly enter cat form once you leave form
-Shadowmeld to drop combat, then prowl to instantly enter cat form
-Tiger’s Fury to enter cat form.
-Berserk to enter cat form.
I haven’t played wow in a while, only recently jumping back into it so not sure if I recall there’s more, but these are the ways I remember to instantly shift back into cat form to avoid the cooldown when leaving form. These ways (except dash/tiger’s dash) also do not trigger the GCD so you’re freely able to act instantly once in cat form.
Dash/Tiger’s Dash is the exception because it does trigger the GCD if used outside of cat form, but it can also bypass the form cooldown after you leave it.
The fact is powershifting as it was is still possible, just very limited. This might be good as you do need to play more tactfully with your uses of it, but also severely limits your mobility options when other classes can spam slow and root you. Again, Fluid Form does somewhat mitigate the clunkiness, but it’s situational since it’s melee range if you’re guardian or feral and Just having these limited options still doesn’t prevent the chunkiness of how it feels to shift once you run out of them.
Also I want to mention I’m using the term powershifting as the ability to instantly return to the form you shifted out of solely to remove roots/slows, not allowing us to regen more energy or rage like we were able to using the wolfshed helm and furor.
I don’t see how you don’t see it being clunky?
Waiting the time of 2 GCD’s instead of 1 doubles the amount of time it would take to properly and efficiently remove slows/roots while returning to form. The time it takes to do so drastically increases if you were to spam change forms in order to do so, provided you’re being constantly slowed.
1/2
2/4
4/8
8/16
going from 8 shifts using only 8 GCDs to 16 is a massive difference in time consumed and this time only drastically increases the more you shift. I stated before in situations where a single GCD can mean life or death, every second counts.
This isn’t too much of an issue in PvE as there aren’t many situations where you would need to shift immediately in and out of form, but if you’ve done arenas you should know how fast paced they can be. The only way I can see it not feeling “clunky” is if your reaction time or decision-making isn’t fast enough to account for the extra delay.
I’m not sure if classic would make it that far to Legion, I assumed they would probably just experiment and do remixes of the later expansions like they did with MoP.
Ideally, a Classic+ would be a great route to go, but not in the way they currently are going with Season of Discovery. There are some great ideas there, but I feel like they went a bit overboard. Classic/Vanilla was great because every class had a use, everyone felt unique. Retail feels a lot more homogenized in comparison.
That’s why I said psudo, as it’s more or less a crude version of what we were capable of doing in the past. It’s become even more situational as the only option to do so is with cooldowns or if a target is in melee range and you’re using the Fluid Form talent. I believe a lot of the tools you have like dash to shift back into cat form were still possible to do when the cooldown to forms wasn’t a thing. Currently the most efficient way to remove spam slows/roots would be to alternate between cat/bear or cat/travel while also cancelling the current form you’re in midway through the GCD, since each shift in or out of form removes slows/roots, and to do this I believe you would need to disable SecurityAbilityToggle.
For nearly a decade it has felt awful, yes. I had a druid friend that used to play wow and quit for the same reason as well, it’s been an issue ever since then, yes.
I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice this, or post about it, granted the posts about the issue were probably more frequent then than now. Most new players joining past that point wouldn’t even know about this issue unless maybe they went back and played classic.
It is dumb, yes I agree, most of the time you’ll use TF off cooldown and using it to remove a root or slow would be very situational. You wouldn’t always need to shift out and back into form using TF, and in most cases you would only do so the moment it comes off CD and you want to break a root or slow, but doing so for every TF, or saving it specifically for that reason would be pretty dumb?
It again depends on the situation, it’s situational for sure, but being unable to slow/root a target would bring you back to the original point of it being very strong.
What if your healer is oom and attempting to drink behind a pillar and you have no hard CC available to stop a moonkin? If you spam roots/slows he would easily be able to instantly get out of every single one of them without using a single GCD simply by pressing wrath and moving.
I can see how for the most part it’s not as important because it’s a ranged class, but there are situations where it’s pretty broken and the only class that can spam remove roots/slows without using any GCDs.
You can technically look at shifting back into form on a single GCD as a “dispel”, as if you’re dispelling the slow/root. The fact that it now takes the time of 2 GCDs to be able to enter your previous form again while other classes can usually spam roots/slows on you within a single GCD makes it incredibly inefficient. I have stated some ways around this, but your options are limited.