Gear used to just be stat upgrades, so linearity was a thing. You could have a ton of haste on your purple but the green had more stamina and agility. It was the clear upgrade.
The AP system was entirely throwaway. All the neat passives and on demand abilities were stripped. So was half the spec identity.
Two entirely different issues.
It’s dumb because it links the borrowed power talents to RNG; which just feels terrible. The only think as bad as that is linking borrowed power to terribly long rep grinds.
Oh, wait a minute…
Wait we didn’t have any borrowed power in vanilla or bc or wrath? Well those legendaries sure weren’t your power. Neither were those overpowered overbudgeted stat rings that level up with rep. This game has always had a sort of borrowed power. It’s just now we notice it more because it’s LESS rng to get said power. Unlike watching rogues and warriors with glaives wax the raid for you. Or shadowmorne dps crush icc while you try real hard to keep up. Caster staff? Fangs of the father? They went from the design of a few classes will shine to everyone can.
While I don’t like it, I also feel the game would suffer from losing them. Our current dev cycle seems to have a real problem with accepting consequences for their designs, and admitting failure / being wrong. So if we take away their crutch of temporary power they can throw away… then I foresee an expansion with the potential to be far worse than any we have had. Until something gets shaken up in their whole design philosophy and how they interact with the player base, they need their temporary and meaningless power gain.
A little borrowed power is fun. Too much borrowed power is terrible for alts.
The problem is the implementation, and eventual removal. Borrowed power should feel like a buff to your character, not like a part of your character’s core. There is just too much emphasis on the strength of borrowed power. It should feel important, but not detrimental to not have.
I so hope that’s the case.
While I’m sure they will be class specific, I don’t picture the overall theme deviating from the specific Covenant. We will probably not see the variety we had in Legion which could lead to people playing less alts.
The game would THRIVE without borrowed power, ESO and FFXIV prove that.
I thought increased power through tiers was more than enough with maybe a legendary thrown into the mix to make things interesting. The covenants and unpruning maybe will make things a bit interesting as well perhaps. I’ve been keeping myself mostly ignorant of a lot of things in SL so it’s all new to me when it releases.
Well said!
borrowed power ruins class fantasy
no class fantasy homogenizes classes and creates this meta of stacking classes in M+ and other high end content because most classes dont bring anything special to groups
It’s much easier to add temprorary skills and then delete them. Don’t need to bother with balancing and bloating, just add and delete. Add and delete.
Well, ESO adds new skill lines that are availible for all classes. Just like our essences. But ESO don’t delete them atleast. So you can be Psijic vampire necromancer from mages guild with dark brotherhood and thieves guild passives (which i am playing now)
Personally, I would like to see Professions be redesigned and made to be actually useful and rewarding and have the crafted items be the “borrowed power”.
Put the entire agency of fun and progression into the players hands.
Also, this would be a great way to boost the in-game economy.
You can’t keep adding, at some point something has to be taken away or you have 20 button rotations.
WoW didn’t have borrowed power at its “apex” because it hadn’t been around long enough.
So classes are homogenized yet too different at the same time?
I don’t know why people (Blizz especially) think they NEED to keep adding or prune abilities each expac. If they can get a solid class design and stick with it, it’ll be fine. Don’t need to add in abilities to the class aside from maybe another talent row.
The playerbase is asking for another row of talents. (Which I am not against)
Of course the playerbase would be mad if a single expansion went by with nothing new added to their class.
Except you said they can’t keep adding or we’d have 20 button rotations (which is hyperbole), but players would be mad if they got nothing new?
So which is it?
Its both…its why we have borrowed power.
You can’t keep adding. If you keep adding, you either get worthless abilities or a larger and larger rotation.
But people expect something new every expansion.
The solution Blizz picked is to create a streamlined system where you get something new, but its not necessarily permanent (some borrowed power abilities work they way into the core set).
I am not saying I agree with the action picked, only explaining why I feel they did it.
I long for the good days when only gear mattered not grinding for power that is dependent upon patch to patch. That kills alts and anyone that wants to start playing mid-way. They end up so far behind they just wait for a new xpac.
Happened with one of my kids a year ago, they wanted to play again and saw the grind fest and would not be caught up for months, so they did not even re-sub.
You can get gear in like 2 weeks max and be ready to play, now it is months to catch up and then you are already behind.