elaborate on this… you mean the paladin class changed a lot or you dropped paladin and picked up rogue?
Paladins were given Combo Points – something literally nobody asked for. But instead of being Combo Points, it was called ‘Holy Power’. Totally different.
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lol wtf…
I guess they were tryin to make them opposite of deathknights or something? like holy runes instead of deathrunes? i dunno
I ran a 25 man raiding guild during Cata and I’m pretty sure that’s why I have good memories of the expansion. In the beginning the guild achievement stuff was pretty fun and the raids were challenging and that was good.
I insisted that we keep our raids 25 man and we ran those the whole time. We had members who wanted the larger raid size too.
Unfortunately, I had a job change and I could no longer raid at one point. That was during Dragon Soul which lasted WAY too long. We did clear DS and did some of the Heroic bosses before this. Anyway, a bunch of our core people stopped at the same time so that was that. It was pretty fun while it lasted though.
I’d play Cata again but It’s in no way perfect.
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This is really not true. Almost every spec is desirable in TBC raiding. Arena has always been about the meta, though.
Cata had a large content drought with one of the worst (and smallest) raid tiers ever, Dragon Soul. It also had half of its 2nd raid tier cut, though Firelands is a good raid. Also, is Cata when downranking was all the way removed? That is sooo much depth removed from classes like mage.
I will say though, having not played Cata until DS was out, I would play it for the first two raid tiers.
I specifically remember two things about Cataclysm.
First they gave Warlocks an ability called “Soul Swap” which was fun! Truly, it was a really interesting addition to their abilities.
…then Blizzard nerfed because it performed too well. So, at first it was exciting to play as a Warlock and then it was far less exciting knowing Affliction builds were being balanced around a brand new ability.
Also also played a Shaman. Goblin Shaman, to be more specifc. And I found the experience to be super interesting. Shaman Mastery gave Resto Shamans the the capability to do more healing depending on how low your targets’ health was. This made fights like Chimaeron super cool since Chimaeron had an ability that always set your raid to extremely low HP percentages and made Resto Shaman incredibly useful!
I loved Healing Rain too! Resto Shaman healing was super fun!
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The only quest I recall was a quest with I think 3 dudes and the 1 guy is a gnome and he tries to make himself grow into a giant to punch Deathwing in his face.
They each had like their own version of what happened then you find out what really happened and it’s the complete opposite of their story.
Was hilarious.
Found the quest!!
" I’m going to punch that dragon in his face!!"
Lmfao
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This and Falcon Punching goats off a mountain made my day the first time I did it. I still keep some Billy Goat Blaster DX’s for when I’m in the some nostalgia.
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IMO Cata was the last good expansion, at least the first two tiers were good, Dragonsoul was garbage.
We still had talent trees, really awesome hard heroic dungeons at the launch, and the raids were some of the best the game has ever had. BWD, BOT and Firelands were IMO up there with the very best.
This is a clear sign of a dysfunctional mind.
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This isn’t true. Paladins were given a secondary resource system because one of the single most celebrated design triumphs of the Death Knight class was the fact they had a secondary resource system.
And really, it isn’t like Paladins cared about their Mana (outside of Holy) so really Prot/Ret just gained a resource system in Cata. A ton of classes (more or less all single-minded DPS specs and tanks) got additional mechanics to consider, we just didn’t get them all in the form of a new UI element. Ferals were either Rogue-lite (Energy and CPs) or had Lacerate stacks as our secondary management thanks to Pulverize. Balance Druids had the Eclipse management.
Cata made everyone have more things to juggle because people frequently complained in Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath that you could just macro your rotation or hit one or two buttons to maximize DPS and it was boring. Blizzard made it not boring, as requested, and then people whined. What’s funny is that Paladins kept Holy Power, and Paladins are still popular as can be to play, so really it just pissed off the folks that liked having mindless rotations/priorities in the first place.
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Eventually, the same conclusion would be made concerning Enhancement Shamans. Even now, the way Water Shield and Shamanistic Rage works, mana really isn’t an issue unless it is with regard to some of the longer fights or if you’re twisting more than one set of totems.
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I just want them to figure out what on earth they want to do with shadow priests because every time I come back to the game they have completely reworked it. I liked MoP shadow and I want to go back
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Yeah I think Blizzard realized in some point during Wrath that mana restrictions were… lame… unless you could juggle the ebb and flow of your mana bar more actively. As they stand now, mana just is something you want to not run out before the boss dies, so you pump and push max DPS strategies and nullify what should be a “meaningful choice” in preserving your resources.
This is why Hunters swapped mana for focus, Paladins got Holy Power, and classes got stacking buffs/debuffs mechanics to simulate a move from “juggle CDs only” or “spam filler” to slightly more interactive mechanics. MoP and WoD continued that trend until Legion just straight up reimagined any of the remaining class/spec fantasies that were still kind of samesy with other specs.
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See the thing I remember about warlock back then was people trying to convince the lock that they were the better DI target.
And I was one of those people 
Some other fun stuff that they gave us were small situational one-target buffs or debuffs like Focus Magic for Arcane Mages, Bane of Havoc for Destruction Warlocks, or Vigilance from Prot Warriors.
Vendetta gave Assassination Rogues their own “Hunter’s Mark” as well.
Look at all these retail players discuss retail expansions.
Go away.
It you stayed subbed to wow beyond wotlk you’re retail you’re bad you’re part of the problem.
Tbc servers die fast. Wotlk servers die fast. Vanilla is the only version of wow that sustains players to it’s former glory days of 2004-2009. You can’t beat vanilla because there’s much more going on as opposed to 10 levels worth of new zones and a new gear treadmill with a lame system attached to make you log in and do chores dictated by Blizzard
Cata was the first time I really felt that Blizzard left the PvP crowd out to dry. There was a controversy around weapon-gating (you had to earn like 10+K arena points before being allowed to spend the 3K or whatever it cost for a weapon), which favored PvE players in arena.
There was a game-breaking issue with the MMR changes they made. People were abusing it to boost their MMR to like 3K and then their team ratings would gain massive points and lose little to nothin while it was trying to catch the team. They were selling MMR boosts, just all kinds of crap. Bugs happen but the issue was that Blizzard didn’t do ANYTHING about it S9, and when they DID patch a fix in for S10 they did so without a hard MMR reset, so the people who had abused it the previous season were basically able to ride their carryover MMR to another free glad title, they just couldn’t RE-boost their MMR if they hopped around or after losing too many games etc.
Aside from that, you’ve got lazy talent trees that heavily restricted creativity, dispel homogenization among healers, kick homogenization among melee (less interesting / unique classes all around). They made things smoother and flashier or whatever (thank god for S10 charge jump fix), but overall class design was worse than wrath and the skillcap was reduced it seemed for many classes.
Transmog was fun for a bit but I actually think it does more harm than good in an MMORPG where earning your aesthetic is part of the social experience. The old world lost a lot of it’s character, it was fun at first to fly around checking out all the changes, and nice I guess that leveling was easier and more streamlined… but it sucked a lot of the soul out of the experience.
When you make the entire old-world quest experience about the Cataclysm and how it has affected EVERYTHING, each individual zone, area, or quest NPC loses some novelty. You’re less-so adventuring through a world where each part of the world has it own story and moreso exploring the effects of the Cataclysm everywhere.
In general I think some of these heavily MSQ driven xpacs where the lore revolves clearly around one bad guy have a major downside in that sense. When done well it can be cool, like I think TBC was originally executed well, and LK was highly thematic, although the zones were probably held back to some extent by that central narrative constantly looming overhead, at least as compared to vanilla.
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Eventually every class was given some kind of a “combo point” thing to do. Every dps rotation amounted to smaller bits of damage and then unleashing some huge laser blaster thingy before gathering your combo points again.
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Cata was the expansion where they started out trying to fix many of the issues that popped up going from Vanilla ----> Wrath but either made poor design choices or weren’t willing to stick to their guns so that the player base molded back to a more early design.
Most of the major issues came out of that one major point one way or another. They brought tank threat back, but then caved. The brought CC back and made heroics harder and then caved on it too. They tried to make mana be a thing for healers again but totally screwed that up from a design perspective on many of the classes.
Same thing with raiding. They wanted to get away from 4 separate raid lockouts but then completely screwed the more casual raiding community that had gotten formed in TBC and Wrath with 10 man raid content. For some reason they stuck to their guns on this one though and it forced them to create LFR to give those players something to do at end game.
Cata was just a cluster of poor design choices that they wasted a ton of time on with very little reward. Many were completely overhauled again when MoP hit.
Edit: And just think how dead Cata would have been at the end without LFR, which was an MoP system that got pushed forward into Cata.
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