I want to start by saying I haven’t played BFA due to no longer having access to a computer capable of running modern WoW so I can’t comment on BFA class design, but I played during Legion and the older laptop I currently have is strong enough to at least run classic. But from some of the guides I’ve read on sites like Icyveins and wowhead it doesn’t look like much has changed between legion and BFA for a lot of specs.
So, my main for the first half of legion was ret paladin, but gave it up after awhile as it got too boring for me. I then moved to frost mage which also eventually got boring. But after playing these classes on classic…well I don’t think I’ll ever criticize modern wow ever again. It’s like night and day. Paladin’s can only auto-attack, the endgame mage rotation in the first few raids is cast nothing but frostbolt over and over, etc. Playing classic has honestly made me miss those “boring” legion classes. Though I am still having some fun in classic and will continue to play it, as I need my WoW fix, but as soon as I get a good pc in the near future I’m switching back to retail. Anyone else have similar thoughts?
I’m with you there. Classic is definitely not my cup of tea. However, I do dislike that every class has a self heal, a gtfo ability, an interrupt, and multiple stuns. Makes battlegrounds a nightmare.
AFter spending 5 long days on my orc warrior in classic, and quitting the game due to horrible design (slow, dull, unsophistacted combat that a retarded elephant could do) I decided to pull out my old gnome warrior and do some world quests. IT was an extraordinary revelation. Now I cant stand the pruning that occurred and BFA as a whole, but Classic as the solution question mark. Yes, lets drink a bowl of piss because it supposedly tastes better than the alternative: a bowl of sht.
I’ve been playing Classic a lot lately, and while it has its particular charms, I’ve missed the countless QoL improvements of Retail. I’ll probably keep playing both on and off, but Retail will remain my favorite version of WoW.
Classic is better for classes, in my opinion, because you have access to everything. There’s no missing spells or abilities. No watered down rotations. It brings utility to the table. Run Affliction? Fine. Use your normal dots and spells for that on long fights. On multiple pulls you can throw down some AoE to help the mages burn things down. Can’t do that in retail though. Rain of Fire is specifically for Destruction. You can’t even have it on your spell bar. There’s an AoE option for Affliction but you can only change talents in an Inn or a rest place. Can’t switch on the fly to have competent AoE on trash pulls and full single target on boss pulls.
The reason most players, myself included, enjoy Classic class design is because while it may be slower-paced or boring compared to BFA design, it is much more flavorful and full of class-fantasy. Ideally, going forward post-BFA we can get the best of both worlds.
I see your point, but you don’t need to have good combat to have an enjoyable game. Just look at the popularity of OSRS. Although, I do also prefer the higher skill capped rotations.
Essentially this. Classic class design is awful, broken and literally unfinished in places (apparently the code for Paladin has several comments that say something along the lines of ‘finish later’, lol) - but it has an undeniable amount of character.
Every class plays fairly shoddily in comparison to today, buuut each one is a very different kind of shoddy, whereas in BFA, many classes can feel very similar.
I think MoP had a nice balance of homogenization and class fantasy, without skewing too far in one way or the other. It was the beginning of making many classes simple builder-spenders, but they also added a lot to make it feel like they weren’t.
Playing Classic reminded me of a world where Shadow Priest Shadowform looked amazing and Void Form did not exist and it was pretty nice. I guess it depends on your class i guess.