Late Legion was a very solid expac. A few issues with the NLC, but azerite weapons were great. Mage tower was fantastic. And once you had all the legendaries they pretty much were a full on separate talent row in themselves (funny how we weren’t locked into those…).
Early Legion… Oh you didn’t get the pyro bracers? Congrats! Welcome to the bench!
The first tier in Legion was one of the worst executions of “SPEC IDENTITY GUYS!!!” i’ve ever seen. It was horrible. Once they reverted all of those crazy restrictions Legion became very fun.
Hence “from what I understand” in regards to BFA Azerite. I also didn’t say I enjoyed it because I said I didn’t play it until recently (and I haven’t really engaged end-game content). I just figured I’d be comprehensive on what I saw as “spec loyalty” mechanics across the entire game.
No, I didn’t say that at all. I stopped playing Legion for real life reasons. I’m getting up in years now and Legion raiding was distracting from lifting as well as work. When I was a younger lad I could poopsock away older expansions and it was perfectly fine.
Vanilla sucked because it was just bad in my opinion. Coming from DAOC, Vanilla had some QOL improvements but the PvP was a joke and raiding involved pressing one button. Had nothing to do with spec loyalty. Very little could have improved Vanilla without just flat out being Burning Crusade.
BC is probably my favorite expansion, and yes I did respec for different forms of content, and yes it would be much worse if I had to choose between Arena and raiding for my main raiding character, but there are a lot of circumstances in BC that make the idea of maintaining too many alts an issue (especially if you want to bring them to maximum competitive viability). If you played BC, you know all about the barriers that existed. It wasn’t particularly alt friendly, so my PvP alts were always lagging behind (trinkets cough cough).
The game is different now and can support players playing a wider roster of characters. Especially since with multiple difficulty settings, players don’t miss out on seeing cool stuff by failing to min-max.
Hold on a second.
So you don’t care at all about people playing multiple characters, but you draw the line at multiple specs??
You make no sense and are tripping over yourself left and right. Have a good day man.
edit:
and really quick, min-maxing has nothing to do with NEEDING to meet the win-condition. Min-maxing is just another way people enjoy making their characters. It is not at all reserved for people NEEDING TO DO IT to “win.”
I “beat the game” months ago. I still min-max my character.
You didn’t have to choose between pvp and pve in BC. Pvp gear was a thing. Respec was a thing. You could do both forms of content without issue.
Uhh… yeah. That’s literally what I’m talking about. In my ideal WoW, you’d be encouraged to play like 2, maybe 3 or 4 characters, and your main maybe has like one viable off-spec if you put in the work. Off-spec shouldn’t be the expected norm. If you want to be swapping around your character like crazy, you should probably have two different characters.
I view stuff like Priest having Disc and Shadow as incredibly toxic for the game because Shadow is designed as a niche passion spec, not something every single healing Priest in exist swaps into when a DPS drops. Look at the furor over Void Form from people who are only Shadow Priest hobbyists, who swap into it in order to DPS on the side rather than as a character identity. These oompa loompas want to strip out the soul of the spec in order to make it casual friendly. It’s really awful. These guys should just have an Affilction Lock if that’s the play style they want to play while acting as a DPS.
Was there some confusion on your part?
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh why?
I literally answered that.
Your verb tenses are confusing me. No troll.
Yes you did. But alsooooooo what? There are lots of declarative statements mixed with shoulds being thrown around here. I don’t know about that, chief.
I was comparing what BC was to what it would be if there was an equivalent with Covenants, and suggesting that Covenants wouldn’t be compatible with BC, but could still be compatible with a theoretical expansion like Shadowlands. Just because Covenants couldn’t work with BC doesn’t mean they’re “bad”. I can like Covenants and also like Burning Crusade.
I’m not saying should. I’m saying is. Shadow is designed top-down to fulfill a unique fantasy and playstyle. It is designed for niche play for people who enjoy that fantasy. The problem is that the reality of how every Priest swaps into it doesn’t match up with the expectation.
The Shadow Priest problem could be solved by giving Priest another spec, or some sort of “off-ramp” to avoid Void Form, but that’s a whole different topic.
The game has steadily progressed away from this for the past 10-13 years. If you want to have that style of play, then feel free to limit yourself. Don’t impose how you want to play on others.
The “should just play affliction lock” implies a lot.
So your issue is that a healer person goes shadow person? That is, it doesn’t match the fantasy? That seems like a silly reason to restrict gameplay.
I’ve never understood the argument when we’re talking about a future feature coming down the pipeline that if I don’t agree with your whine about said feature, I should stop playing, when I’m happy with what is coming down the pipeline.
Covenants look good to me for the most part. I wouldn’t mind a few compromises made for other players that don’t sacrifice my enjoyment of the system, but I will be happy. You will be the one who will be unhappy. Seems odd for you to tell me to leave when you’re the one who has a problem with what is coming down the pipeline.
“Fantasy” has more than one meaning. Yes, there is the lore fantasy, but there’s also the gameplay fantasy. There is a hardcore niche that love the insanity mechanic and how rewarding it feels. There’s this playstyle fantasy you want to hit of going more and more ham while in Voidform.
The reality is healing Priests who swap to Shadow aren’t doing it for that power fantasy, they’re doing it because they need to act in the role of a damage-dealer. They’re Shadow for the wrong reasons - not because they want to, but because Shadow is the only option they have. And with the ease of spec-swapping, they’re implicitly encouraged to force themselves to play Shadow when it isn’t designed for them at all.
Totally
Not for you to say.
It is for me to say when people who only play Shadow Priest as an off-spec say “#removevoidform” because they want their off-spec to be dumbed down so that they can perform better.
Where did I say you should stop playing? I said stop asking for a system that restricts how I play the game, when you could self-restrict yourself from playing the game in a way that you find “wrong.” It’s the flying debate all over again. If you truly hate flying, then use your ground mount.
Stop restricting my play simply because you lack the conviction to dedicate yourself to your preferred method of play.
All in all, I’m actually also excited for covenants. I’m also really excited for all the zone specific things and covenant specific doodads.
That doesn’t mean… that from a progression stand point… that these design decisions are good ones. I’m already looking forward (/s) to seeing my chosen covenant getting smashed by the nerf bat because it’s deemed “too popular” or has some form of play they now decide is “detrimental.”
I can still have all the RP and all the world building and all the doodads, without being fully locked into abilities that alter my characters power forcing me to decide not only which spec am I going to focus on for this character, but which piece of content am I going to be focusing on.
That’s not what I’ve seen. People don’t like voidform because it’s clunky.
It also has the habit of either being obscenely overpowered (EN, BoD, CoS) or underpowered. The way it operates is such that if you balance it so the average player can output competitive DPS, then excellent players can elevate it waaaaay past excellent DPS. And if you make it so that excellent players perform competitive DPS (relative to other classes), then average players look like they’re garbage in comparison.
It’s the exact same problem that feral has struggled with for years.
I’m fine with this kind of balance.