Heya.
Regarding the caster part of your feedback… I find that pressing tab when a caster is casting, the game will automatically select the casting caster for me to interrupt their cast.
That’s a lot of cast for one sentence.
I know it isn’t a fix, yet it may prove useful for now?
The reddish box that appears around the icon is actually the pandemic timer.
It seems like it may be computing this value incorrectly for longer dots. On my feral, it works fine for Rake and Thrash, and even Rip most of the time. But if I spec for Veinripper, which increases Rip duration, and don’t take Circle of Life and Death (which decreases duration), it’s a very long DoT (~25 seconds) and the Pandemic timer hits around 5 seconds left, which seems wrong. Maybe I’m misunderstanding how Pandemic works, and the 25% increased duration from Veinripper doesn’t extend the pandemic window? Though even a non-Veinripper Rip would have a larger Pandemic window than that, I think. I’ll investigate more…
Outlaw rogue has two major painpoints that really need to be addressed: There is no reason for Between the Eyes and Dispatch to be 2 different buttons. Dispatch should proc and upgrade into Between the Eyes like Hammer of Light or Tempest. There is never any moment where Between the Eyes is off cooldown where you would rather press Dispatch, so it adds an extra keybind and an extra CD to keep track of without any decision making.
Roll the Bones has also been turned into a pretty simple maintenance buff where you’re more or less going to be pressing it on cooldown. If it’s going to continue existing, which I’m okay with even if many aren’t, it should be made to feel good. Similar to Empower Rune Weapon or Putrify, it needs to do something when you press it. Make it damage your enemy if in combat, or do some AOE damage. Something that makes it not a boring maintenance buff.
There are still specs like Windwalker where you’re juggling multiple resources. In their case Energy, Chi and CD’s.
The only complexity that was removed were all the overlapping damage amps. It still feels like a spec a “new” player could never perform well on out of the gate if that was the whole goal of this nonsense.
So far no addons is not as terrible as I originally thought it would be, with that being said there are a few things that need improvement.
The Healing over time icons on the party and raid frames need to have their own size adjustment bar. They could also use their own tracking list like the Cooldown Manager has so healers can prioritize what they see on the raid frames.
For nameplates there needs to be option to not track other players debuffs. It makes it hard to keep track of my own damage over time effects when there are other players dots being tracked also.
Alright Blizzard, let’s talk. By now most of you guys know me as the crazy gnome whose been all over the beta forums detesting class changes and trying to rally an army.
In regards to combat accessibility, yes, you made combat more accessible. But the problem is, it’s not engaging or really even fun. I 100% understand the want to simplify things because right now, combat is not approachable. The issue is so many specs have been pruned to the point that they just aren’t very fun anymore. Classes can be accessible and approachable while still being fun. It’s not a mutually exclusive relationship, and we’ve seen many times in the past where classes were approachable while still being fun. WoW’s peak in terms of players was Wrath. The combat was accessible enough to pull people in, but the classes were still fun! There ofc were some outliers, because there always will be, but for the most part, classes hit a very sweet spot.
Right now, I don’t feel like I have the tools for all forms of content, especially PvP. I get that a lot of classes had an absolutely insane amount of utility across the board, and for the health of PvP, that had to change, but you’ve gone too far. I really don’t understand how a MM hunter is going to be able to compete in its current state. I don’t feasibly see a way a mage can reach upper brackets with the utility they have now. The most difficult part of a mage in PvP is sticky melee classes. Warriors with their charge and leaps, DKs with their grips, rogues with their slows and stuns, etc. Putting Supernova and the fire cone on a choice node was… A decision for sure.
We really need Blast Wave back. I’m not going to sit here and petition for slow and double blink + Displacement, mass barrier, etc. Because Mages really did have an unfair amount of utility and it showed in PvP. I’m sure I’ve made my fair share of warriors slam their keyboard in frustration.
I also really need the game to treat me like an adult and let me customize my CDs how I want. Right now YOU guys are deciding what I NEED in my CD manager and it’s so frustrating. Just please let me include anything and everything in CD manager. Let me drag and drop things like trinkets, consumes, etc. Please just let me have the ability to decide what I need. To add on with that, please let me decide what I WANT to have alerts for and what I want proc icons to appear for. Right now there’s some buffs and CDs that don’t support alerts. Why? Let me be an adult and decide what I want to put alerts on.
Let’s address the other elephant in the room. Why are you deciding that interrupts are too complicated for healers to manage? If healers do not want to manage an interrupt, then they can simply just not chose the talent, ez gg. This also extends to things like Paladin hammer of wrath. Why was it not just made a choice node? Either have an ability that works like an execute, or have the judgement replacement during our major CD. The same with crusader strike on holy paladin. Why remove the button? Just keep the button and remove the holy power generation. If people don’t want to use it, then don’t. This relentless onslaught on buttons is so frustrating when a lot of things could be choice nodes.
Lastly, a lot of this just begs the question, “why?”
I thought the reason for combat simplification was so that people could play without the need of add-ons. Is this you guys outwardly admitting that what you’re going to offer isn’t going to be satisfactory? If that’s the case, why couldn’t this all wait until later down the line?
I urge you to please take a step back and take another look at everything and ask “Did we really need to prune/merge this ability? Are there unique use cases of when you may want separate buttons for this?” And if the answer is yes, then please consider choice nodes.
The Demon Hunter class hud display from weakauras usually had a texture bar for displaying both Fel Rush charges and Vengeful Retreat which was VERY NICE. Aside from being visual pleasing it also made gameplay feel more smooth. Any chance something similar could be implemented into the base ui hud?
There’s nothing approachable about even more reliance on tracking debuffs on targets with the new frost mage freezing mechanic. It’s even more ridiculous to do so on multiple targets whether it’s a cleave scenario or mass aoe.
It’s significantly less intuitive than the current retail form of winter’s chill.
You changed combo points from being on target to being on the player for rogues for a reason. To do that for another spec when the main reason for the change being complexity and difficulty tracking is not an ok change.
What makes combat more approachable is making class abilities and mechanics more understandable. This is what addons have been solving for the devs for twenty years.
i need to be able to read and understand what talents are doing and what they’re intended to work with (or not work with) further up and down the tree. FFxiv abilities have a Potency stat that puts all abilities into the same context - WoW has never done that, but should. This would make the lack of a working Damage meter less problematic
I need to have a better way than a small icon in a forest of other icons on an enemy nameplate to track how long my DoTs and debuffs have to tick on my active target. I need buff active durations displayed preferably on the button I have to press to activate it, rather than duplicated somewhere else on my screen (be it cooldown manager or personal resource display) lost in a forest of other icons and timers. LiteButtonAuras (historically AdiButtonAuras and InlineAuras) did this for me, but this is just going away. Please add that back.
Sorry best we can due is prune half the buttons in the game
Seriously though, the point was to reduce the need to track so many things and then they go and make some specs need to track more. I’m really confused on what Blizzards overall plan is here.
Addon death leads to class prune which somehow led to more complexity with less buttons?
Is that really what you’re supposed to do though?
I only tried it for a bit, but I watched the one button rotation to see what abilities it’s suggesting, and it’s definitely not really caring about the freeze stacks.
TBH I think it only exists to limit how much you can spam ice lance.
When I first fired up the mage,I figured it was like unholy dks on retail where you put up wounds and burst them, but you don’t want to either cap or deplete them. But I see no real evidence that this is how it works. IDK maybe the obr is just wrong?
Problems:
Suggestions:
Suggestions:
I do not feel as though the gameplay has become dramatically simpler for most of the specs I have tried. Some quick feedback for each spec I have played.
Note – for me, combat feel is heavily reliant on the class I am playing.. so I feel like this information is important in that scope.
Assassination:
- Still has energy problems.
- Thistle Tea and having an enormous energy pool isn’t a solution.
- Thistle tea automatically deploying against my will is frustrating.
- It frequently goes off as a killing blow on an enemy, which is useless. It requires constant babysitting of my energy – which doesn’t make it simpler or more fun to play.
- Deathstalker’s Mark is punishing for target swapping.
- Crimson Tempest is too expensive to only apply to two targets.
- I burn through thistle tea accidentally trying to spread my bleeds around.
- The Apex talent adds complexity – it doesn’t simplify anything.
One problem with Rogues was solved, we don’t rely on stealth now – and that is great. But the energy issues weren’t fixed, Deathstalker’s mark punishes you for swapping targets, and the Apex talent adds more stress to energy management because you’re somehow supposed to pool your energy now while spending all of it to spread your bleeds around.
It’s just one step forward, two steps backwards.
Fury:
- The Apex Talent:
- It frequently falls off during boss RP.
- It’s another buff to watch.
- The spec is still basically doing zero damage outside of major cooldowns.
- Bloodthirst and Raging Blow have the same purpose, build rage to spend on Rampage.
- Improved Whirlwind isn’t a fun buff to keep up.
Nothing really feels different from before. No problems were fixed, and now we have a new problem because the Apex talent sucks.
Ret:
This spec was actually really fun to play.
You had enough holy power generation to fire many Divine Storms in a row, which was very fun and satisfying to do. That was possible because you could make Crusader Strike proc on auto attacks for extra holy power. So now you have to add Templar >Strikes to your bar… and the trade off is losing access to an extra holy power generator >through Hammer of Wrath.
So the spec still functions, and there were some other very nice changes – but now it is less fun to play – and it’s mostly because I had to actually add a button to my core rotation… and removing Hammer of Wrath wasn’t a net neutral.. cause I had to add a button I don’t like and have to push all the time.. and I lost a button I didn’t mind only used sometimes. So the opposite effect.
Feral:
This spec was supposed to be dropping snapshotting. But we still have snapshotting. You still put up your bleeds while Tiger’s Fury is up. You just have fancy icons now – and they don’t really even help you know if the existing bleed was empowered… it just helps you know when if it will be empowered when you reapply it.
So it’s a nice change, but it didn’t fix anything.
Feral also has energy issues, and Tiger’s Fury is basically the same kind of solution as Thistle Tea. It’s not really a fix, it just delays the problem for a bit.
I honestly don’t think Feral actually feels better to play right now on the beta than it does on Retail. The spec hasn’t felt good since S1 Dragonflight.
A lot was changed, but it doesn’t feel like anything is different.
I guess I was just expecting that the goal of these changes, was to actually solve problems – to make the rotations feel better… and while some of them are a bit different.. for me – and the classes I’m most interested in.. it doesn’t really seem like anything is all that different.
For the record – I am 100000% on board for throwing addons into the deep fryer. I just thought the whole point in doing that was to make playing each spec feel fun without needing to track a bunch of buffs/debuffs in order for a rotation to not feel like it has a bunch of awkward moments in it.
And I want to give credit where it’s due – I know there are some specs that really have been revolutionized. I tried Enhancement and it is actually much easier to play now imo.. I just don’t feel like that happened for any of the specs I want to like/enjoy.
Lastly – I’m not trying to doom and gloom or dog on the xpac or anything like that. I just am not sure how to express the things I have issues with in a way that get through to someone who can actually do something about it…and I’m totally aware that my issues may just be completely irrelevant or insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Also – these are just my opinions and a lot of it is subjective.. and I could just be doing things wrong. I just want to put it out there so at least I can say I did my part, you know?
Great suggestions!
A couple of other things….
I play a healer (resto druid) and Blizzard took my self-heal away! Now I have one less healing spell (actually have many more that went away). I have to add myself into the mix for what few heals I have left to give everyone.
How does that make for combat approachability? I am not feeling more confident going into a dungeon. Instead I am feeling dread, praying that my fellow pug party members know their rotations and will not run me out of mana or healing spells. Combat approachability? Makes me just want to quit, honestly.
As a replacement for weak auras —- I would like(need) to have the option for custom glow options/colors for specific abilities not on cooldown with Cooldown manager. WA let you choose different glow types / colors.
Hello,
I am a Cutting Edge Mythic Restoration Shaman (as well as avid mount collector, with almost 1050 mounts in the live game, which isn’t relevant to this discussion but just to show that I play the game outside of raid logging like many people assume of Mythic raiders) and I’d like to discuss my feedback so far with the new addon system and changes to my class specifically.
DEFAULT UI
Additionally, having to deal with not only the UI changes, but a ton of class changes as well, makes me feel like a fish out of water, which is insane, because I have been playing this game since 2009 - by the time Midnight launches, that will be 17 years of playing this game in the same way. To have not only my class extremely pruned and the baseline gameplay changed, but to have to balance that on top of a complete UI re-haul - it’s made me feel like a stranger in a game that I would typically call home.
I guess what I am trying to say is: once you do something the same way for 17 years, you tend to have built a firm muscle memory, a reflex for the actions taken while doing that thing. That’s how playing World of Warcraft has felt to me. But the combination of the new UI and a completely different way of playing my class is so dueling jarring, it’s made the game feel strange and distant. I would very much appreciate a deeper level of UI customization to be able to feel “natural” again.
Thanks for reading.
As a competitive PvE Resto Druid, I have a lot of constructive thoughts and feedback on the UI overhaul as it pertains to combat approachability for all. In my opinion what feels missing for my own spec likely demonstrates a lack of specialist consideration for this tool across all classes.
Abundance has been moved way lower in our spec tree, now feeding directly into a capstone, which makes sense as it tends to determine much of our gameplay in any content we take it. Abundance stacks to 12 and comprises the ebb and flow of our raid gameplay, but is not able to be tracked directly with the Cooldown Manager.
Abundance stacks are currently only displayed in a low visibility typeface that is unable to be edited in the bottom right corner of Regrowth when tracked as an Essential Cooldown. The Regrowth module otherwise tracks the uptime of the HoT on yourself (which is not particularly useful anyway) and gains an action button border glow to show only limited Clearcasting proc info (no stack count or expiry time). This is simply too much information for one module to handle, especially when the solution seems so clear to any Resto Druid player – let us track Abundance directly.
However, it’s very important to me that this example isn’t taken as Resto Druid-specific Cooldown Manager feedback. When I talk to my healer friends around the world about Midnight, I hear the same sentiment I’ve done my best to evidence and express succinctly here: I’m not confident there’s substantial healer input involved in the UI overhaul.
Considering Healer is a game-agnostic role that many new players frequently approach with anxiety and hesitation, I think it’s a really important role to get combat approachability right for.
Gameplay wise I cannot get over how difficult and annoying it is to target mobs in Midnight. The health bars get in the way, You can’t click between the health bar and mob. Clicking the screen off by like 1/2” just de-selects everything.
Tab targeting has a worse range, health bars don’t denote which one is your main target as well.
Damage meter
Needs to be moveable and resizable outside of edit mode. And the functionality of /dmg hide or something like that.
A death meter, nobody wants to open wclogs between every pull to see how people died
Percentages
Damage meter doesn’t work correctly on training dummies at 1 HP ( Most of them??) Huge oversight.
Minor but would love to be able to change names on damage meters, it’s just fun for guilds to put meme names.
UI wise
Cooldown tracker number of stacks is VERY SMALL. It also does not track overlapping buffs well, (Ironfur) a little tick in the line that shows when a stack is going to expire would be nice.
for what it’s worth, you can turn on sticky targeting in your settings to avoid this. it’s not a fix for the bigger problem here, but it at least removes that annoyance.
The current Blizzard raid frames fall drastically short of what is necessary to play the game adequately as a healer, and particularly as Preservation Evoker. This is a list of suggestions for improving them, accompanied by brief explanations for why the existing design is inadequate. While in an ideal world it would be nice for base UI to address all of these things, changes which enable addons to accomplish the below would be adequate for most high-end healers’ purposes.
This is the running theme for raid frames as they stand now. With all the unfilterable information presented on frames, how am I supposed to actually pay attention to a player’s health? The temporal anomaly shield for 2% of a player’s max health is not more important to me than the portion of their health bar it obscures. The Eye indicator to make sure I doubly know a player is out of range is not more important to me than the portion of their health bar it obscures. The over-the-top dispel raid frame filter so I absolutely cannot miss that a player can be dispelled is not more important to me than the visibility of their health bar it obscures.
Even my oh so precious Echoes and Reversions which I have been bemoaning my inability to adequately track, even these are less important to me than the immediate fact of a player’s imminent death. All of these things, all this information, it needs to be present, yes. It also needs to be out of the way. An optimized healing UI actually re-centers player health bars as the most important info a healer needs.
Raid frames as they stand now on the beta essentially do the opposite of this. They completely fill up the foreground with information, and treat the health bar itself as background. It feels like trying to drive with a windscreen caked in mud. Frames are cluttered, and busy, and hard to read, and every bit of information they give seems to come at the expense of all the other information - and I have only tested them in dungeons. In raid, with four times the players, where each frame needs to be smaller to fit on the screen, and HoT/Buff icons need to be smaller to not obscure even more of the health bar, I cannot imagine. I actually dread the experience. Even the game generated preview, seen in the raid frames options menu, is itself incomprehensible.
The solutions offered above, which have existed for nearly two decades in player-made UIs, resolve these issues. Filtering out unwanted HoT/Buff icons creates more room and mental bandwidth for information that matters. Replacing HoT/Buff icons with flat colors allows indicators to be made smaller while remaining readable. Static positions enhance this readability further, as does greater differentiation between these positions -e.g. Echo appearing in the top right of frames, while Reversion appears top left. This also addresses the “wall of buffs” problem by leaving empty space through which health values can be seen clearly and without obstruction. Dispel and range indicators need less visual weight, because they need to exist alongside so much else.
Healing in WoW is my favourite thing to do in any video game, period. It is the thing WoW does better than anything else. There’s not even really anything like it. Its complexity, and the ability to cut through that complexity to get to only what is most immediately important to make clutch, character-life saving decisions are a huge part of that. User Interface is not a small part of what makes a game fun. It’s actually most of it, to be honest, especially in a game like this, and healing will cease to be fun if this ability to meaningfully engage with the game’s depth is compromised. It frustrates me that the thing I most enjoy, the reason I play the game, could be considered acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of the development team’s other goals. I have serious reservations about playing healer in Midnight if the above criticisms are not addressed.