I am seriously struggling to find a spec that I enjoy playing because of the button bloat that was introduced in Dragonflight with the new talent trees, it’s annoying having to press over 10 different abilities in your opener…
If I take sub rogue for example, you need to press like 11 different abilities in your AoE opener, it’s ridiculous.
Shadowstrike
Symbol of death
Shadow blades
Shuriken tornado
Thistle tea
Shadow dance
Rupture
Black Powder
Cold blood
Secret technique
Shuriken storm
The same applies to other specs like WW monk, Enhancement shaman etc…
Am I the only one to think it’s getting a tiddy bit ridiculous?
Part of the problem is that there are just so many cooldowns and of course you want to stack as many of them as possible, particularly during lust. We’ve gone way too cooldown heavy, and it really makes learning a new class / spec feel more like a chore than anything else.
Edit: Heck, Arcane Mages even have Evocation as one of their prepull cooldowns, instead of being a mana recovery tool like it was intended to be…
Devastation Evoker. Opener: Potion, Living Flame, Kharnalex, Trinket + Dragonrage, Fire Breath, Eternity Surge. That’s four abilities, two items, and a consumable. For normal rotation you just have Fire Breath, Eternity Surge, Living Flame/Azure Strike, and Disintegrate/Pyre.
Disc doesn’t have anything as useless as Holy Priest’s Renew, but there’s just so many buttons.
A totally normal sequence right now is something like:
PWS
Radiance
Scov
PtW
Schism
Reprimand
Dark Star
Mindbender
Mind Blast x2
Solace
All of this actually feels really good and Disc is about as strong right now in M+ as it has ever been. But it’s a lot of buttons! And there’s a lot of other buttons I don’t press constantly, like Flash Heal, Renew, and PWL! And my five cooldowns!
edit: I had to edit this post twice to add more buttons that are part of my average mini ramp! There’s also SWD, but that’s not always cast during the start of pulls.
If you don’t like button bloat, Frost Death Knights are always looking for more deathlord comrades. We have:
Howling Blast
(If you have it) Puzzle Box Trinket
Remorseless Winter
Pillar of Frost + Empower Rune Weapon + Raise Dead + Trinket macro
(AoE Only) Death and Decay
And then we spam between Obliterate, Howling Blast, and Frost Strike depending on priorities until Pillar of Frost expires, with Obliterate at max priority if Killing Machine is available, Howling Blast at second priority if Rime is available, and Frost Strike in every other spot to trigger Killing Machine and keep up Icy Talons and Unleashed Frenzy.
Look at that streamlined beginning to a button-masher’s paradise. Truly wonderous for those who don’t want to think!
And if for some reason you want to bloat yourself, Unholy Death Knight is a couple clicks away!
Yes, agree that most classes and specs have too many buttons. I play with right hand on mouse, left on keyboard. qweasd are used for movement so that leaves not a lot for buttons. When I start having to press shift, ctrl, or – goddess forbid – alt, that’s stretching the capabilities of not only my memory of what ability is bound on which button, but the agility of my fingers. Unfortunately my +agility equipment doesn’t work on me!
I think there’s a sweet spot where each class has enough capabilities and flexibility, but doesn’t need so many buttons. Of course, if you don’t have enough, it can get a bit boring.
I can’t play rogue right now. Did some dungeons as sub and my hands hurt afterwards. I doubt they will remove anything in DF but I hope a few things get made passive or something. It’s definitely not every spec in DF but Sub, Sin seem extra bloated
You definitely aren’t the only person and it’s certainly getting a bit ridiculous. There are a few exceptions but most classes and specs work harder for the same or similar returns that those simpler specs provide.
I’ve become a broken record repeating it but I compare the playstyles of many classes to learning a piano routine that, especially if you play alts, becomes very difficult to get down to muscle memory.
OMG, the buttons!!! I dusted off a LVL 40 disc priest alt, and already I have 3 bars full of buttons… How am I gonna make room for 30 more levels of abilities? WTF?
What I don’t like is hitting the cooldown used to feel awesome, but now because we have half a bar or more of them on some specs they’re all watered down as hell. This is the problem with too many abilities – they stop feeling impactful because they can’t be that impactful in a rotation or you end up overpowered. Like on brewmaster I’ve got 3 ground targets (ffs), ToD, Weapons of Order and Invoke for DPS plus an on use trinket. Half of them are forgettable or do so little on their own I barely notice their use. Invoke is noticeable, but it’s a stupid pet so it has the pet jank attached to it. Compare that situation above to Sentinel or Avatar where both of those buttons feel like I’ve hit 3 of the brewmaster ones at once.
Then there’s a half bar of defensives (or more if you’re playing dwarf or specced certain ways) on brew, heals, detox, CC, and 7-10 standard rotational abilities. It has so many abilities that its more an issue of GCD limitations where you can’t pump out enough power in the short windows you want to at times. It’s not weak by any stretch of the imagination, but rolling some of the abilities into stronger ones with slightly longer durations would be much better. I like stuff like Celestial Brew where I’m rewarded heavily for using it at certain times rather than just pushing it on cd even if it’s not 100% ideal.
You can spec out of some it but it’s extremely detrimental to performance to do so, and you still end up with more buttons than almost 2 of some specs combined. Those other specs tend to have stronger CDs and more impactful abilities in general because of it.
It reminds me of playing FFXIV PLD (in early endwalker or late shadowbringers) where you had a lot of binds and very little effect to show for it vs warrior where you slam the bright unga bunga key to unga bunga harder than the PLD could ever dream of. You had niche abilities that … had no niche usually, and on top of this did less damage than other tank specs with fewer actual rotational keys. Everything was watered down to accommodate having a million things to push vs some really strong keys.
ESO is a good example of where you trim the bloat, and still have 16 binds plus the light attack weaving. It’s still a fairly busy rotation and extremely high APM, but man your cooldowns in ESO hit like trucks not to mention have some absolutely amazing effects to them plus interactions with the rest of your rotation in some cases.