I haven’t heard much about Blizzard pushing to make wow combat more in-line with how it used to be. I’ve seen the blizzcon classic panel where they were like “look how we fixed the lighting here” and that’s good, but what about how the game actually played? So I just wanted to touch on something that may need adjustment if they’re going to build this game on a 7.3.5 client and I can’t recall seeing it discussed, and also ask Blizzard to consider… letting us know if these things are on the docket.
Being “in combat” and combat manipulation: Being in combat is a big deal. You can’t stealth, shadowmeld, eat, mount, normal health regen from spirit isn’t happening (except you trolls and your 5health per second! And I can’t stop it!) . But you also can’t be sapped while you’re in combat, and warriors don’t lose rage in combat, and warriors with the Anger Management talent GAIN rage by staying in combat. So sometimes you wanted to be in combat, sometimes you wanted to be out of combat.
In Vanilla you had some of the normal ways to put yourself in combat, like attacking something. A warrior could also use bloodrage to put themselves in combat. You could also buff other players or heal them to put yourself in combat. And if you were in combat and you buffed yourself? Combat extended.
Right now you can make a 110 trial priest and go give someone attacking a target dummy (they’re in combat) Fort. That will NOT put you in combat. In vanilla, putting fort on someone who was in combat would have put you in combat, and casting fort on yourself while in combat can KEEP you in combat. Applying buffs to someone in combat, including yourself, holds you in combat. And when you think of buffs, don’t think of JUST the normal buffs like fort and mark of the wild. If you were a rogue in combat and you wanted to extend combat, you could use sprint, or evasion, these are both buffs you’re applying to yourself and yes, they would extend combat. Battle shout as well. You could also bandage yourself to keep yourself in combat, or bandage anyone who is in combat. This is why in old rogue pvp videos you’ll sometimes see a rogue who wants to blind-bandage and then go for restealth. But… bandage kept him in combat, and they’ve be forced to vanish if they want a new stealth opener.
I’m not saying I don’t appreciate them trying to make the game look the same, I do, but to me looks have always been a secondary issue to gameplay. Just in general in video games I’ve always felt that way, because… it’s a game, not a painting. How you play it matters more than how it looks (unless you’re causing seizures with how it looks, RIP virtual boy). I hope blizzard is seriously looking to replicate the gameplay itself, and if they haven’t looked at this specific issue already, I hope they will. The lighting of lamps in goldshire mean so much less to me than spell batching, combat manipulation, and the mechanics of how we actually played the game, I just feel like I hear more from blizzard about the preservation of the art assets rather than the ruleset. Which to me sounds like preserving monopoly by creating an accurate representation of the board, making sure boardwalk and park place being the right color, but not mentioning preserving the number and type of dice rolled to determine how the board is traversed or what happens when you land on certain tiles. Recreated monopoly that looks the same but plays different is less authentic than a recreated monopoly that plays the same but looks different. Unless you’re framing it and putting it on a wall.
Combat mechanics, spell batching. This is what I want to hear about. I’ll give you a dollar, Ion.
![:skull:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/skull.png?v=6" ":skull:")