Rotations are old, boring, and outdated

Community General Discussion
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ROTATIONS ARE OLD, BORING, AND OUTDATED
The ramblings of a neckbeard

I believe it’s time that we consider fundamentally changing how classes operate on an ability level.

When I consider - for myself - what component is most engaging about a character’s “rotation”, it’s less about the damage/healing based abilities and more about the utility, cooldowns, fantasy, and quirks that the class offers.

When you analyze other games, especially ones that are popular today with a large (and growing) player-base, there really is beauty in simplicity. The focus is shifted away from “playing the piano” and more towards mechanical skill, reaction, timing, etc.

One of the most prominent reasons that I’ve heard when exposing new players to WoW (and why they eventually quit) is the overwhelmed feeling they experience when attempting to understand their class as well as its abilities. This is made worse with the default key-bindings, as well as the pacing that the abilities are thrown at the player during Exile’s Reach or when boosting.

Why could it not be a possibility to shift WoW’s class design philosophy away from damage rotations where you’re simply pressing a sequence of buttons in a particular order for the best DPS? Why could we not consider doing away with rotations ENTIRELY (the horror) and instead having the classes focused around 12 or so high impact and meaningful abilities that augment our playstyle as well as reinforce the class fantasy.

Are there people out there who REALLY do prefer having more low-impact abilities than less high-impact abilities. Are there people out there who REALLY enjoy sequentially pressing damaging abilities in order to perform their “rotation”, as opposed to their damage being fundamentally baked into their “auto-attack”?

Plenty of fantastic games have stood the test of time for decades, and some of them with incredibly simple input requirements (i.e. up, down, left, right, a, b). And with this simplicity there comes a shift of focus from being on the internal (i.e. your character) to the external (i.e. the world).

I believe that, within the context of WoW, these changes would yield some tremendous long-term benefits. It would lower the barrier to entry for new players, creating opportunities for future growth. It creates the potential for official console compatibility, further assisting that growth. It also shifts the focus away from low-impact damaging rotations to high-impact situational abilities and mechanical play. It also greatly simplifies the balancing process for Blizzard.

A simple example of how this could be implemented is for each class to have access to, core abilities, additional abilities, specialization abilities.

Core abilities:

  • Each class contains 6 core abilities. These abilities are meaningful and help identify the class and its capabilities. These are present at all times regardless of specializations.

Additional abilities:

  • These provide further utility for the class and help define it in the direction that you prefer. There may be a choice of approximately 10 individual abilities, with the ability to choose 3.

Specialization abilities

  • These abilities are dependent on your specialization. Each specialization has a different list of abilities. There may be a choice of approximately 10 individual abilities, with the ability to choose 3.

This provides you with 12 abilities in total - 6 core abilities, 3 additional abilities, and 3 specialization abilities. These can be selected depending on what you find most interesting, the content that you’re doing, for player identity, or some other criteria.

Example core abilities (Warrior):

  1. Slam - Slams an enemy for (x) damage and causes them to bleed for (y) damage over 10 seconds. The shock of impact also reduces their movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds. If the enemy has 35% or less health, execute them for (x + y) damage.
  2. Charge - Charge the enemy, emitting a shockwave upon arrival. The shockwave damages all nearby enemies for (x) damage, roots them in place for 2 seconds, and reduces their attack speed by 10% for 10 seconds.
  3. Empowering Shout - Depending on the weapons wielded, empower yourself and your allies for 30 seconds:
  • 2H: Increase critical strike chance and mastery by 10%.
  • 1H/1H: Increase haste and movement speed by 10%.
  • 1H/Shield: Decrease damage taken and increase health by 10%.
  1. Pummel - Interrupt the enemy’s spell, preventing casts from that school for 4 seconds. Additionally, decrease the casting speed of their next spell by 30%.
  2. Taunt - Throw your primary weapon at the enemy, dealing (x) damage and taunting them to attack you.
  3. Shield Block - Raise your shield to protect you and your allies - increasing your block chance by (x)% for 6 seconds and reflecting the next spell cast on you.

In conclusion - anyone that has played WoW for a decent amount of time knows that times are changing and if WoW is to survive another “era” then it needs to continue adapting to the changing world and player interests - all whilst encouraging new players to join. I believe that one prominent area that needs addressing is the array of “damaging abilities” that classes have that provide nothing other than “how accurately can you play the piano”.

By shifting the class design philosophy away from large amounts of low-impact damage abilities to small amounts of high-impact abilities, the barrier to entry is lessened for newer players (providing opportunities for future game growth). Another side effect is that player focus is shifted away from ensuring that they are pressing buttons in the correct sequence, and instead responding to mechanical circumstances as they arise in the way that their toolkit is meaningfully designed for.

Please leave your comments below,
Eric.

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You could just play devo evoker if you want that

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Or we can leave WoW alone as it is because It does what it does very well and I don’t want another clone ‘action RPG’ Style game.

I like Tab targeting
I like hotbars
I like rotations
I like Intricacy

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I think rotations need to be reexamined along with the necessity of haste being required to make a class feel payable.

But you’re not going to find any out-of-the-box thinkers on these forums. People cling to old beliefs like you can’t imagine.

How do I know this? I proposed doing away with leveling. The response was as hilarious as it was sad.

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Fair comment - I like those things too.

I just think “intricacy” can be better achieved in other ways.

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It’s actually something I’ve thought about as well. The toolbar bloat is insane.

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Out of curiosity - would you replace the leveling “progression” with something else or just completely embrace end-game content going forward?

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Honestly, I don’t even have a good answer to that other than, “yes.”

If a player wants to jump into endgame content, why not let them? Why force them to do quests they don’t give two figs about? Why make them level? Let them play the way they desire.

People who enjoy the story and questing and memorable characters would still find those things, as well.

In a way, this is already in place as mobs from all zones now level up along with you and you only get weaker every time you level due to stat weights.

Basically character progression would be whatever you want it to be.

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Flag on the post

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And how would these 12 abilities play differently than the ones we have now? Most of the specs I play now only have a 3-6 button rotation with maybe 2-3 situational buttons.

I agree that button bloat is a thing, but you don’t really mention how you will change things game play wise.

Maybe give an example of how you would change Arms Warrior’s playstyle since that’s what you posted on.

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Okay, well for example let’s examine the damaging abilities that we have access to using the “starter build” for a level 60 Arms Warrior.

Currently, there’s:

  • Execute
  • Shield Slam
  • Slam
  • Whirlwind
  • Mortal Strike
  • Overpower
  • Rend
  • Thunderclap

My opinion is that it’s too many, each one of those abilities doesn’t really add anything special to the equation that couldn’t be “wrapped up” in 1-2 core abilities.

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Ok, so say Warrior class has a single target high damage and a multitarget high damage ability as 2 of its 6 core abilities. Most of your outright damage comes from those abilities with auto attack making up a good bit of the rest of your damage. What would the other core abilities be? Buffs like shouts? Maybe interrupts? And what sort of abilities would you make spec specific to make them unique?

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I think your huge post can be summed up with one word: pruning. The developers do this every once in a while, though probably not to the extent that you are suggesting.

I think you need to explain in greater detail how limiting abilities to 12 would eliminate rotations. I think you would need to even go so far as to provide an example class whereby you explain what each of the abilities actually do and what their use-cases are. My suspicion is that it would likely fall right back into being a rotation. I think anything other than a rotation makes for extremely boring play styles where you end up just pressing the same buttons over and over again.

Usually fleshing these ideas out exposes problems like this. I think what you’ve done is come up with an idea without actually drawing it out to see what it actually plays like.

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imagine whining about button bloat just to get dh esque specs lol. get out of here. i do think they should of completely reworked every spec by now and made them totally different just to change things up quit asking for things to change that don’t really need changed. but at this time in wow i’d really rather them basically leave my specs alone cause most their reworks they do try to do are fail and takes forever to make them somewhat decent. people love the combat in wow quit trying to ruin something that truly don’t need fixed.

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It does so well the developers see saw balance pvp abilities practically every other week. And that’s just the icing on the cake.

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This one posts about old rotations while on one of the original classes that were introduced in the game. Are you asking for every class’ rotation to be changed, or only the original classes from the game’s start? Where’s your cut off point?

Would the DK’s, or DH’s be changed? There’s nothing boring with the vengeance DH’s rotation, and is very active. This goes the same for a BM monk’s rotation.

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If that’s your opinion then you’re welcome to go play a different game :man_shrugging: there are plenty of us who DO like this kind of gameplay, otherwise WoW and FF14 would both be dead instead of sitting at the top of the MMO genre.

If that’s all it was then it WOULD get boring pretty quick, but that’s why classes have procs and cooldowns to mix things up.

Vanilla Ret Paladin had much of their damage come from auto attacks augmented by buffs, and it was one of the most boring things I’ve ever played.

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WoW rotations are incredibly simplistic compared to FFXIV, and it has far more movement based fights and does fine. There’s entire diagrams detailing their rotations. My hunter has two bars of abilities, but I think 5-6 make up vast majority of rotations, contrast that to FFXIV where the entire two bars plus 3 bars are used. Same with Evoker, hell most classes are like that, just look at their rotations on WH.

TLDR, I don’t think people care about learning rotations, if anything complex rotations are better for casual games because they make content feel more engaging.

Where complex rotations suck is PvP, and that’s why WoW feels better than FFXIV PvP wise, along with lack of GCD/OCD abilities.

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I can’t compare to certain other games, but games without rotations, I imagine they have something else they need to focus on - say targeting the right body part for example.

With the tab-target system WoW is based on, you can’t do a whole lot there. Rotations are meant to make up for that, and honestly they do a pretty good job.

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Yes, I like having a rotation.
As for the abilities just being thrown at players - this is true and a problem as, especially utility abilities and abilities gained after level 10, are not properly introduced to new players. It’s not great when new players aren’t taught how to properly use interrupts, dispels, shroud, etc. just to then be expected to know these things by other players.
However, personally I think that doesn’t call for a redesign of how all classes work but for proper extensive tutorials that include difficult to handle situations. Think dungeon training with NPCs filling the other roles and tips for ability usage.

Exiles Reach is a great start but people will intuitively know how to use an ice lance or frostbolt (for example) without being told. The problem arises when they have all their talents and abilities, are never taught how these interact with one another, but are (rightfully so) expected to know how to use them, what talents make sense etc. - or go check out external sources like wowhead.