After listening to the devoloper insight video, I’m pretty happy to hear they have an understanding of why a lot of folks are wanting a change in the current class design.
The first change that comes to mind is that I hope mages gain the ability to cast spells not from their school. Even if I’m playing a cool firemage, I’d like to think i remember how to use frost nova when I over commit and pull too many things at once. I was super stoked to hear that Alter Time was brought up because I really enjoyed using that as using it well was amazing.
I know they didn’t want balance druids having too much utility but I miss being able to use tranquility for the raid as a filler cooldown. It didn’t hold a candle to what a resto druid could do, but it was something and me having to halt dps for 10 seconds or so was the drawback.
Also, heart of the wild was a cool mechanic, but along with that, speaking from a thematic side. I really wish that instead of sunfire, we’d kept insect swarm, I understand moonkins are supposed to be dipped in lunar and solar energies, but insect swarm always just felt so right. And it being able to spread to targets would also fit for it, so that’s just a minor thing lol.
Oh, and shamans, my new found love in legion because I can chain heal with some success or could back in legion. I think totems no longer being as impactful anymore and not being a real important part of their kit anymore was a loss. Windfury totem in particular was the coolest thing to see proc for other people in the raid and I think having the ability to choose to have those powerful raid tools is something I miss personally.
And as with elemental and mean other classes, i’d love to see variety in how things work mechanically. My elemental shaman feels almost exactly like my balance druid. But instead of building astral power for star surges, I’m building maelstrom for earth shocks.
I appreciate that the conversation has been started, but I’d love to hear from other folks and what kind of changes they’d like to see come back for their favorite classes too.
“The first change that comes to mind is that I hope mages gain the ability to cast spells not from their school. Even if I’m playing a cool firemage, I’d like to think i remember how to use frost nova when I over commit and pull too many things at once. I was super stoked to hear that Alter Time was brought up because I really enjoyed using that as using it well was amazing.”
Definitely. It’s really weird how mages have become elementalists.
Warriors: Disarm, Spell Reflect, Revenge, Shield Bash, Shield Block, Hamstring, Thunderclap, Cleave, Whirlwind, Mocking Blow, Challenging Shout, Retaliation, Shield Wall, Heroic Strike, Execute, Ranged weapons, demoralizing shout, piercing howl, and get rid of the nonsense that limits certain skills to certain weapons when it doesnt make sense. There is no reason I shouldn’t be able to mortal strike with a one hander if I want, or use a two hander to revenge/devastate.
If you’ve played mages for a long time, remembering being able to use all your utility and then having it stripped away didn’t feel great. Also, I miss frostfire bolt, such a cool looking spell and I feel like it could have been made into a playstyle where you balance fire and ice which would have been kind of cool.
I have a friend who had played a warrior since launch and switched to his demon hunter instead because he can’t stand how bland warriors are. A tank who uses a shield shouldn’t have lost all of their shield based abilities for mitigation. I feel like ignore pain would be more of a fury beserker type cooldown, not one for protection warriors.
Heroic strike being taken so he can no longer rage dump when he doesn’t need to mitigate damage was one of the last straws for him T.T.
I think it’s crazy how they moved all these totems from PVE and then put them in pvp. Windfury totem was amazing, and I think having that controlled area was kind of a cool part about being a shaman. Also, not being able to shackle elementals anymore? That made me so angry in Legion, I think it was Aggramar and everyone was like “Hey Drlighting, can you shackle an elemental?” “NO, because APPARENTLY, thrall ruined it for everybody and we have no control over them anymore”
its kind of crazy how much class stuff was moved to PvP only. reverting those changes alone would restore so much fundamental class identity and enjoyment to the game for PvE focused players. as it is now, the game is wildly tilted toward PvP players, because PvP in WoW is so un-fun that it needs all these additional crutches just to get people to interact with the content. but i think doing that at the cost of your entire PvE focused community is a huge factor in what is driving people away from this game.
there’s other stuff too, such as warlock tanking, or prot warrior gladiator stance, really amazing fun ideas, that get removed, probably because they don’t want to invest the money in paying someone to balance the numbers for what is essentially an additional spec in the game, and we all suffer for the loss of it. in addition to that, i would like to see the return of the Legion Artifact abilities for all specs, with some hand-wavy lore explanation like, our time spent with the artifacts inspired us to create our own versions of those abilities.
I’ve mainly played Paladin and Warlock over the years, so I’m not as familiar with other classes pruned abilities, but… Divine Intervention, Righteous Defense, Howl of Terror, Glyph of Fear (not really a pruned spell, but I still miss it!), interrupts for healers… those are the ones that I always remember.
Also, I think stances could be used as temporary buffs built into the specs. Perhaps going into beserker stance to increase damage but take damage for x amount of seconds. Battle stance increasing rage generation and defensive stance reducing damage done or increase dodge chance but lowering damage in the time it’s used.
Also, if they’re going to let us have more abilities back at some point, making it so we could add one more row of bars to the right side of the screen or somewhere else would be nice as well. I don’t mind if I only hit a button sometimes because it’s cool when I get to do it.
I was glad they brought hibernate back to druids for example, because I use that fairly often. And in pvp, it’s just really funny to put a cat or bear druid to sleep just because they’re like, “oh yeah, that exists”.
I don’t understand why blizz couldn’t just give warlocks a different demon form that functions simularly to how they used to. Warlocks are masters of demons so it only makes sense they could harness their knowledge to turn into one. Just like even though I am an architect I can also bake a cake… should I be banned from making pastries because I didn’t specifically go to school for it or someone shouldn’t be able to build a shed because they didn’t get the degrees I did?