Simply put, the old design philosophy was about measuring risk and reward, and making choices based on a given situation.
Circle of Healing is an example of this.
The TBC version of the spell could be broken down into a simple pro/con list:
Pro: -Heals multiple players at once -Able to cast while running -Spammable
Cons: -Does not heal for a lot -Costs a lot of mana
So a player had to weigh the situation and determine if it truly called for CoH. Do I need to be able to move and heal right now? Do multiple players need healing right now, or should I save my mana and use a more efficient spell? If a player spammed CoH they would very quickly be out of mana, so they had to be wise with their choice.
Now lets compare it to the Wotlk version of the spell:
Pros: -Intelligently selects and heals the the 5 lowest health players -Able to cast while running -Spammable -High healing output -Mana efficient
Cons: -None
All the decision making was removed. There was no risk/reward anymore, it was all reward. There was no reason to selectively pick the right tool from your tool box anymore, CoH was always the right choice.
This philosophy permeated throughout the game. Everything was “good”. Every ability had to be fun and powerful and without a downside.
I love that choices matter in Classic. There is a logical order to things. Stealth is a powerful ability, and you run slower as a penalty for this awesome buff…as opposed to retail where (last I checked) you actually fun faster.
The new philosophy is why I hope we never see Wotlk.
I agree that the old design is fundamentally about trade offs. If you look a shaman totems, stances, warlock pets, shadowform, the game is always asking you to make a decision where there might not be a totally right answer.
The design shifted over to counter based gameplay. Now, there is always a “right” next move that you need to know about.
The trade off they made is that now raiding isn’t just spamming shadowbolt, the rotations are more fleshed out. But it cost the situationalness of the game.
They also removed the idea that WoW is about buffing and debuffing. That is why professions and class speicifc abilities are no longer there. Buffing and debuffinf means a player can fundamentally win by preparing outside of combat rather than outplaying in combat.
So you give one example of how wrath class design was worse- I can give you a LOT of how it was better.
The biggest is there’s WAY less rng in wrath. The orc racial doesn’t give an extra 25% chance to resist stuns- it just makes them last a little less time. So every time you stun an orc you don’t have to flip a coin about whether you win or not.
Same with a lot of talents - there are plenty of rng talents in Vanilla that lost their rng in wrath. For example, improved concussive shot in Vanilla just rolled the dice about whether a target would get stunned if you used concussive shot on him. In wrath, improved concussive shot just adds 2 more seconds to the duration of concussive shot. Infinitely better design- and there are a lot of rng talents like that in Vanilla.
Why are you using a spell that wasn’t in classic in a classic forum discussion as an example of changing design philosophy when all you had to do was look at dailies and DRs added to items 60 and below without level 70 replacements to see the dramatic drop in quality and reduction in fun toys
I mean, yeah. You also never ran out of resources as a DPS and tanks were suddenly far more durable alone and dealt a lot of damage. Going from Wrath → Cata was hilarious because tanks would drop like flies, and people who only ever spammed the fast and strong heal OOM’d insanely fast. Triage healing was fun, honestly.
You’re talking about situational things while ignoring the other RNG it added. Hot Streak being the core of Fire, for example, or Hunters changing out a PvP talent for a PvE one (Lock and Load) making Survival, which was for most of Wrath the best tree for DPS, also RNG-based?
Wrath added a lot of RNG to make the game flashier for people. Procs became the style and it only got worse as time goes on and now virtually everyone has proc-based gameplay.
They reduced the RNG involved when it came to CC and tier gear but increased the RNG for gameplay across the board really. The problem was the RNG became less fun and more of a relief when it happened in my opinion.
Pretty much. Your rotation boiled down to not really doing anything unless something proc’d. Ret was also pretty bland, as your rotation could be macro’d (as could Prot’s) and all you did was hit whatever came up first. I think it was Cata that added Exorcism procs? I know Art of War reduced the cast time but I don’t when it reset the CD as well.
Art of War was added with WotLK. Exorcism lost its cooldown in patch 3.2 when it reverted the 3.1 change that removed it from being cast on players. At that point it became a 1.5 sec. cast and Art of War (allowed instant cast FoLs) was changed to let the paladin cast Exorcism or Flash of Light instantly. Leveling a Holy paladin at this time was great (still hated the xp changes for bgs though).
Keep all of these things you loved about Vanilla, community, journey, difficulty, risk/reward, and hold tightly to them.
If there’s ever a time Classic moves forward (new content/expansion), then we continue to voice what made the game great and keep it that way. Make a WoW how it was supposed to be.
I actually like rng lol… Idk why it’s turned into such a bad word.
One of the biggest reasons why I love vanilla pvp… the unexpected happens/sometimes the stars align in your favor…sometimes not… and it feels great lol
RNG becomes a issue when the game becomes so simplified… becomes then ultimately it just comes down to math…and everything else become obsolete.
I find I like a bit of RNG because it keeps the game unpredictable, and creates room for skill to be able to play around that randomness.
When going up against an Orc, I couldn’t guarantee my Hammer of Justice would always work. I had to plan around that fact.
I think it gets a bad rep because of people who look at one bad dice roll and go “I lost because of the RNG!!” without realizing that they lost because they made numerous mistakes before that dice roll ever happened.
I found Wotlk class design to be pretty darn good. I still believe you had to make tons of choices while playing your class and customizing it too. I think it was only after Wrath we truly saw the philosophy shift to become more “convenient” and simplified.
Warriors, for example, still needing to stance dance and swap in and out of 1H/shield to spell reflect while disarm and pummel required rage wasn’t convenient or easy. All this required you to manage resources while thinking what I should do next to win in combat. But sure, maybe the philosophy started to shift for other classes earlier, either way I’d take any class design Vanilla, TBC, or Wrath other modern WoW ANY DAY!!!
Well ill take classic-beginning of wotlk design most of the time.
Yeah wotlk seemed to have been where huge changes I did not enjoy started appearing like revamping lfd, it was actually very fun on pvp servers to pvp at the meeting stone.
Haha Yes, I was a healing priest at the time and it was my most used spell, It was just too ez to heal a 10 man raid solo, when we did those bosses underneath wintergrasp.
But at some point they added a cd to it so u couldn’t spam anymore… like we fixed this broken op spells guys… I was disapointed!
Do you understand what risk means? It indicates possibility or chance. Risk vs reward would be flash heal vs greater heal, DPSing until the last second instead of moving early, saving or blowing a tanking CD. Picking the right tool for the job isn’t risk, it’s just decision making.