Now that we’ve gotten to play around for a bit with out classes what do we think about the direction of classes in wrath vs retail?
I am so in favour of wrath design it’s not even funny how biased I could be.
I feel like after a while of doing any “complicated” rotation it just becomes second nature, my outlaw rogue on live I could do the rotation with audio queues and have my eyes closed.
However in wrath it just feels so much better to actually smack a crit with sinister strike, get a poison proc and have a white main hand crit wipe away half a health bar.
I way prefer the less stuff to press but it feels good to press it vs having something to always pretty but feels like a chore doing it
15 Likes
Retail classes are butchered versions of specs. Some pure DPS classes got better, but every hybrid just lost all utility and got shrunked to their three button rotation.
Weapons in retail being normalized just became stat sticks with no impact in combat.
When Enh sham hits target with WF in Wotlk - you can FEEL the damage. In Retail it’s just disconnected dps numbers
20 Likes
Oh yeah and it doesn’t change much if barely from tbc. As a sub rogue in tbc/wotlk it feels so f ING amazing to have options in pvp opening on someone, variations of openers that take thinking instead of retails same boring openers with shadowstrike and Mark for death that barely bursts ppl to half hp. You can NUKE people in classic, and other classes nuke me. You can trade raw damage for more cc and less damage, or just Max damage with lower cc. Opening with garrote, ambush, cheap shot, all leading to different combos for different classes.
Retails class identity is garbage compared to this. Never gets boring.
3 Likes
I do like the WotLK class design mostly but there are things.
Shaman Elemental for example. Your still smacking things at lv 40 if you want to have some resemblence of mana effeciency while questing.
Retail,. you pew pew pew right off the boat at lv 10 + when you can choose your spec.
2 Likes
Again, like most classes. Rogue in pvp is literally unplayable vs tons of classes until around level 40+ because you’re missing half of your energy and kit. They’re unplayable vs any dot caster until level 66. Whereas some classes get a lot of their kit in early levels, but even off later (hunter for example)
I was getting 2 shot by shamans in the low brackets
You mentioned pve, but that’s the thing. Retail gives you everything right away, there’s no feeling of progression of getting a good skill you need, or more resource management. It’s just here’s everything, no mana drain, no energy drain, go spam abilities. It’s fun at first but really shallow later. Classic just gives you that feeling of your class becoming more complete, identity, which retails lacks. Imo
4 Likes
It all just depends on the class. But there is no argument that the class design was at it’s best in MOP.
3 Likes
It’s like that with every class in Retail, thanks to designing the game around being an e-sport.
NOTHING feels impactful. Nothing makes you go ‘Wow!’ In Wrath things like Lava Burst hit hard. Chaos bolt hits hard. Starfall is an absolute beast. Every class has things that are very impressive. But you can’t have things like that in Retail because “Just hitting a button and seeing huge numbers doesn’t take skill!” They’ve sucked the fun and joy out of the game with this kind of design.
5 Likes
Retail class design revolves too much around “damage profiles” and overlapping 5 cooldowns to do any damage.
Dragonflight talent trees are also garbage that I never want to deal with.
3 Likes
I think it is too early for this, but anything is better than the current talent system that we have in retail today.
I think potentially having to switch two whole talent trees between encounters is the worst of both worlds. Classic talent trees weren’t designed to be switched constantly, and at least switching MoP-Shadowlands talents was straightforward.
I do admit, the talent trees from Vanilla to Wrath were the best, as it allowed for class customization. Although Cata talent trees were similar to Vanilla-Wrath, it removed the ability to customize the class, then with the introduction of the revamped talent system in MoP, it removed options all together.
Only reason why I am not commenting about Dragonflight Talent Trees is because, I think it is a little too early to speculate, and I don’t get invite to alpha/beta’s because I do not opt-in for it. Sort of, I hate spoilers.
1 Like
Wrath was the pinnacle of system advances placed on top of the deep, mathy, old-school RPG base structure from Vanilla. It was (now, is) this perfect blend of mechanics designed for fun and a lovingly complicated engine.
3 Likes
Disc is not the version I prefer (that would be Cata version), but probably better than what it is (currently) on retail.
DF talent trees are literally just smoke and mirrors. They took abilities from legendaries in past 3 expansions and put them there. Your class literally stays exactly same, and you will use your bis legendary powers for 4th expansion in a row, just in different form
Eh, I can’t speak to other classes because I haven’t really looked, but Disc is getting back a lot of stuff we haven’t had for years. I mean I guess you could still call that rehashed… but at the same time it will play a bit differently than it has for a few expansions now.
Disc either gonna be OP or completely useless, since game in retail designed completely different. Here in classic it’s all simple numbers vs numbers.
My suspicion is it will be OP. They haven’t gotten us right since Cataclysm (imho).
I still hate the fact you have to spend talent points to be able to make abilities be able to critically strike or scale at all with critical strike/haste (as I also did back in the day) and hit rating is still annoying.
But besides that I only miss minor quality of life stuff from Retail. Overall WotLK was and still is my favourite expansion for class design. Every spec was unique and viable in all forms of content (besides BM, Frost, and Sub in PvE RIP) without feeling mechanically broken and useless like Vanilla/TBC or a soulless version of their past self like Cataclysm onwards.
it wouldnt have been too hard for them to just bring back the old talent trees instead of making completely new ones from scratch, imo.
This is Blizzard we’re talking about. All they’re good at is introducing useless systems and fixing what isn’t broken.
3 Likes