Before everyone violently starts laughing or calls me a troll or does a “spits water” response please hear me out.
I’m not saying the current state of the classes is good, I just think that adding a bunch more abilities in won’t solve things. To me many classes already have ability bloat but they still aren’t fun.
I feel like classes need to be more unique again. The gameplay around them needs to be about more than the rotations which is all most of the experience is now. Old school hunter is an interesting example. Our rotation was fairly simple but outside that we had a lot (and I mean a LOT) we needed to keep track of which made the class more engaging.
It would be neat if the rotations were simplified but abilities in them were more impactful and fun to use. It would be neat if our abilities could interact with the abilities of other classes. It would be neat if there were more RPG-oriented things like a reintroduction of class quests.
Flavor and fun over buttons, please. Yes BfA has fewer buttons for many classes but not much fun and barely any flavor unless you’re a Demon Hunter. I don’t want WoW to become Final Fantasy XIV, a game where most classes have massive truck loads of keybinds but no depth to how you play them beyond “do this very long, very strict rotation”.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. I wince whenever people screech about “The Prune” like it’s the main thing that made the classes worse to play.
(…Do please undo that BfA change to the GCD though, I’d like that.)
Blizzard reads what you write and grants your wish.
All abilities are now procs. Your filler spell procs off of melee/wand hits. The filler spell has a chance to proc a spender and that has a chance to actually do damage.
I feel yas Champ. More buttons don’t mean nothing if they ain’t impactful or entertaining, it just means more buttons. More bloat.
I already play classes like Monk or Druid that have three full bars of buttons and really only about half of 'em are the core rotation and the others really only ever have a direct impact outside of their niche gameplay rotation.
I’m all for bringing things back if it means hackin’, combining, or removing the boring bits to.
Its odd because some classes I wouldn’t mind having more abilities to utilize even if it’s just niche situations. My problem always comes in the form of how am I going to prioritize my keybinds around the new skills and what abilities will be most impactful. Will have to see how they handle it
MoP maybe had a few too many abilities at times, depending on class, but the abilities did feel fun and unique.
MoP era destruction warlock was one of my favorite things ever. Ability interactions like what druids had was interesting. I’m sad to see that the seed of that idea landed on rocky ground.
Try playing a rogue. I can remember when rogues were the true jack of all trades. All specs had poisons, and all specs had baskstab, etc, etc.
Now its 3 buttons (taking assassin here, but its the same for each spec). The other buttons are just filler. Granted vanish is still useful. But I remember when you needed powder to vanish.
I am SO over dumped down classes. Even the warrior - man fury is like 4 buttons. That’s all you need to do.
And don’t tell me to play Classic. I did that from 2004 to 2011. Took a long break and came back like 6 months ago. Classic is a nightmare. I don’t know why they didn’t allow a few of the retail conveniences into Classic.
Anti Magic Zone is coming back so I can let other people thank me for being better than them. It’s not good enough for people to watch me ignore mechanics with AMS and Deaths Advance.
I see two options. I’m a fan of both. Pruning or removing skills is not an option.
They add bloat so players can feel like they are a little more unique then the others of the same spec. Cookie cutter builds blow big time.
OR
They can give 3 options for EVERY skill and allow players to fine tune their build and actually have a better chance of being a different hunter when compared to others of the same spec.
Example is Hunters’ Disengage:
Option 1 = increase speed by 50% for 5 secs.
Option 2 = Drop a net that immobilizes targets around hunter for 5 secs.
Option 3 = Drop a slow trap that slows enemies in area by 50%
Even though some old skills, that were removed, had niches they were still used in those given situations. Removing them leaves a void for just such situations. Adding the so called “bloat” still gives players more options which is always better then removing player options imo.
Adding player options > removing player options
I will always be against removing skills. Just because some don’t use those skills doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t. Funneling every player’s choice down to the same exact choice is stupid. We are people not robots so some of us like to be different and make our own choices. Let us.
Things that I enjoyed that Blizz has removed and imo has made classes less fun are the old glyphs and old skill tree. After they pruned they gave us very cool Legion weapons which gave us some skills to make up for the loss but of course they removed those and left a void again. It’s a constant attempt to fill the void of pruning only to fall short and then remove what they attempt to fill it with leaving the same void.
There is no unpruning, this is just PR because they know pruning has become a big buzzword when it comes to WoW.
What they shown at blizzcon is that they ll be bringing back a few useless non rotational abillities that would only be useful on extremely niche circumstances, this isnt a real unpruning, just PR
Ability bloating thats not good and should not get back to that point ever again, adding back one or two abilities back or something thats just flavor like rogues poisons and shaman totems thats cool.
I would hesitate to call things that aren’t sitting in your normal rotation “bloat”. There’s life beyond instanced content rotations, and classes should reflect that. If we’re lucky, the unpruning in Shadowlands will fill niche holes that have been left empty since WoD.
The thing about this is no one cares about anything other than big numbers. It’s why no one wants to do the side jobs in raids, like soccer on soccer boss… “But my paaaaarse…!”
Don’t think I’m disagreeing with you. I have no interest in more buttons that just do what I did before except now I have to push more buttons to do it. I would like to see brought back the super situational things which you did NOT always use, but were useful under certain conditions.
However, I also feel people don’t play like this anymore too. People don’t seem to ever just go out in the world and find something to do for which you might need odd abilites.