I’ve only recently REALLY been playing the game again, but I’ve noticed that the game seems like it’s really seemed to lean more and more towards this idea of “burst DPS windows”.
I think that totally makes sense for a couple of specs, just to have some variety. But it SEEMS like it’s become a very pervasive type of design, and to be honest, I’m not super into it.
Or rather, maybe those are things that would be better as truly optional Talents? Like “Hey, you can run at like 90-95% efficiency all the time, or truly get 100% out of your character by managing these optional cooldowns”.
Obviously, cooldown management certainly is and should be important in some capacity for all classes. However, it feels like there’s a disproportionate amount of emphasis being placed on these short, tight “DPS windows”, where an an enormous amount of your damage comes from a few seconds of damage, where you have to play PERFECTLY during that small window, instead of being more of an “overall job” you focus on.
Like on my frost DK, when cooldowns are up I’m hitting like a truck, but when I don’t have those cooldowns ready it seems to take forever to even kill basic mobs in ZM.
It’s not fun to be at 260 ilvl and without cooldowns you still have to hit a bird like 5 times to bring him down because your biggest hitter is hitting for 3k non crit.
yup I feel blizz is trying to ultra push ability cd gameplay for a higher skill ceiling; in turn it generally feels like every class does 80% of their damage during the 5 seconds of their 45 second cooldowns. same goes for defense: 100k health pools are still glass and even though you are ahead of your opponent but still need a holy priest cd or 300k lock shield to survive. this is the reason why shaman and healing outputs buffs dont matter compared to using holy priest cds; and why rot/dot playstyles have been nonexistent in shadowlands until last week compared to monk/dh/ret/war its all unfun burst. they need to turn down the ultra 500% damage modifiers and buff vers defensively
They won’t, this is partly Diablo devs coming to the wow team to blame. It devolved into a cooldown = all of your damage game. Exactly how D3 plays. It’s no coincidence this happened as M+ was becoming a thing, which mirrors greater rifting.
They want the cooldown button to feel good to press, I get it. It doesn’t need to do 10x your regular damage though. You can have buttons that feel good to press that don’t make your class feel bad to play without them up.
One of the reasons I really liked druid was because I could swap between sustained vs burst dps spec (balance and snapshot dot feral) depending on the fight. Now it feels almost the same, which isn’t… bad, but variety is the spice of life.
When everything lines up perfectly because you played very well it is so rewarding. It feels less and less sweet when it’s just the norm.
I like MM because it is very good at burst. Before the tier set, I felt like I could kind of AFK after my burst window if I needed to get a snack, use the bathroom, etc. If only the game didn’t make me move so darn much!
Like I said, not necessarily advocating any particular specs needing to change, but I do think we should have some variety. I’d happily trade a bit of extra DPS overall, for more consistent performance.
It feels like it’s just leaning even HARDER to the idea that addons (particular DBM) are all but MANDATORY to play the game anymore. Because if you pop your big CD’s, but then you have to move out of an insta-kill mechanic, then you literally may as well just die, because your damage is so paltry outside of those windows for SO many classes.
Like I said, it’s not “bad design”. It’s more that, I don’t think EVERY class needs to be designed like that.
In fact, as a total contrast but would add some much-needed variety as well, I would honestly enjoy a class that had to FOCUS on managing resources, like how back in the day, controlling your Mana usage was the primary factor for most casters. So if you mis-manage your Mana (or whatever), you can find yourself literally just standing around. Essentially, a more TACTICAL sort of character.
Part of the issue is trinket design. Any half decent on use trinket used during cooldowns will generally beat a passive one. Especially when we get really big on use trinkets that are usable every season like quantum, and ruby. Combine that with further cd stacking such as this expansion not having a sustained dps damage pot like legion and bfa did, and the existence of things like power infusion and a class in its cooldowns can massively change how much damage you are doing during cds.
I avoid tight burst-window specs like the plague. A lot of specs’ damage feel completely neutered outside of these windows, while I’d rather burst be even more damage than my sustain, not what my damage is dependent on altogether.
I don’t mind DPS windows but they are getting out of hand. Way too much of our DPS comes during the windows and far too little comes from outside the windows. That’s fine, I guess, in long single fights, like with raid bosses, where we get a few windows in, but sucks in shorter fights, like leveling open world content or PvP fights too short to get a window (for classes that have to build up to a window) or when you don’t have that window available but the other guy does.
DPS windows should be designed more as bonus damage if used right, not the main source of our damage.
Honestly, I think Trinkets (especially with the new Talent trees coming in Dragonflight) are the PERFECT way to make these sorts of DPS windows “optional”. Because yeah, on-use trinkets SHOULD be higher damage when used in the correct situation. But still giving players the option to just rock passive effects for a bit lower, but more consistent damage overall.