I know this is going to sound highly controversial, but Blizzard seems to be playing the same card they did in BfA, a card that I believe was universally disliked by the player base - shipping broken classes that are unbalanced, unfun, and incomplete and trying to “fix” them with secondary systems.
Now, Blizzard has made it clear that secondary systems are here to stay, and from a game developer perspective, there’s not a lot of difference between balancing core classes and balancing core classes + soulbinds + conduits + legendaries. But to the player based engrossed in the fantasy, having gimped and unbalanced core classes feels awful. To the player there is a difference. This is what Blizzard needs to address.
These secondary systems should add minimal amounts of very SL focused flavor abilities, and leave the core combat and rotational abilities in the core toolkits. These toolkits need to be considered for fun and balance before and after secondary systems.
If you get Beta access or already have Alpha access, I hope you’ll consider how your class feels without secondary abilities, and make posts asking Blizzard to move anything that seems like it should be in your core toolkit out of the soulbind tree or the covenant ability list.
Should not be controversial at all. Pushing broken classes to be fixed by secondary systems is terrible and lazy.
They’ve been getting tons of feedback, and with classes like Spriests the huge majority of them were similar. Adding “Devouring Plague” that didn’t took long for players to find the problems it had and being done with it is not good at all. Not something you should expect from a company this big.
I also completely agree with you. all these borrowed power things are annoying. I want to matter, not matter cause I got buddies with abilities or got a legendary magic stick.
I miss when they balanced the classes on their own merit and then added things to enhance us. Now its all balanced around the gear and the borrowed power.
Big question is: why are they there? Why? Why??? Why do they keep getting pushed when nobody likes them? It’s more work for their team, more anguish for everyone. What ulterior motive is behind this?
I thought the way the game was before Legion was fine. Spellbooks, glyphs, talents, and the PVP gear systems that were in place.
This game constantly undergoes a “new game experience” and while I get it is necessary for them to update the game I feel like they can do it without uprooting the combat and class progression systems all the time.
I was talking with a friend the other day and we were reminiscing on MoP and Cata, and he said something that really resonated with me.
“I miss the sensation of being ‘done’ with a character.”
For context, done means 'ive gotten all my gear for this patch, and no other farming needs to be done.
This gave us time to do things we wanted, farm achievements, go pick on silvermoon, hold a go kart race in orgrimarr, maybe hunt down that toy you’ve wanted for three expansions and never got around to.
I feel like the upkeep requirements of these secondary systems are just exhausting, and repetitive, it sucks the fun out of the game.
It changes it from “all right! I get to log into wow today im going to quest through wetlands i miss that place!” To “ugh…i gotta log in to wow today…i havent done emissaries for 2 days and -need- to catch up, then i have to do both assaults…then i -have- to do the warfront, if i have time i -need- to do the weekly, then I -have- to get my visions done…” Its turned a game of fun and excitement into a game of chores.
And all as a bandaid for pruned classes… If you know a class is going to need an azerite power, or weapon trait to function, just put it in the classes toolkit.
It’s like the devs have a round table discussion on how they can upset the player base the most but not enough to make us all leave!
I mean it seems most of the devs must not play the game with some of the concepts that come out and make stuff so overly complicated…Just focus on classes and scaling/balancing the classes and focus on that and the adventure/journey not all these random systems that are unnecessary!
Some classes’ borrowed power curve is completely absurd. Fire mages go from wet noodles to “OMG WHAT THE FLAMING JESUS ON CRACK WAS THAT?!??!?!” over the course of each expansion.
Yes, many people have stated this over and over again. That was the argument when titanforging was first revealed in Legion.
Most players like a BiS and a clear cut, achievable path for said BiS for their respective content.
Getting gear and finishing a character should be one of the focuses in this game, not the only focus. Blizzard lost sight of that a very long time ago.
<snark>If they can’t make classes good and have to resort to rental tools at least they could add sponsored “The Home Depot®1” and “Lowes®1” etc. factions to the game so we can rent them properly. Who knows… maybe with that power Khadgar will finally clean out the dalaran shed like they’ve been bugging him to do since he got back.</snark>
1This is not an endorsement or advertisement, merely an example of known retailers that rent tools to those that don’t normally need them around.
Only a small number of us were pointing this out. Alas the poor canaries were deep fried with “azerite will fix it” “its only alpha/beta/pre-patch”
The problem was that they gutted specs during the Legion beta to put abilities into the artifact weapons. When they stripped the artifact weapons they never reverted many of those changes. And if they keep the core Legion-era design these things are going to remain issues.
I would estimate with a fall release there is a month, month and a half window to push feedback before they have to start the tuning passes for their release window.
So the earlier you can get that feed back in, the better.
