Why did the Damage Number Display change so much from Classic?

Community General Discussion
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Just to establish this: I’ve been playing this game since launch day in 2004. I was there for every incremental change to the system over the course of ~20 years.

I still don’t understand why the damage display numbers were changed in such a drastic way leading into the current retail version.

The numbers in Classic, TBC, WotLK, and Cata Classic are so, so much more satisfying to look at. The big crits of both yellow and white color, in bold font, erupting onto the screen and giving that immediate audio and visual feedback when you get melee crits…

It felt so, so good to get critical hits with the Classic number display.

Why did Blizzard turn the damage display into some dinky little fountain of numbers, of which some of them are very difficult to see because they just kinda plink off to the side and make no visual impact whatsoever? The current number display is low impact, dissatisfying, and weak-feeling.

There are add-ons which try to restore a system similar to the Classic version, but many of them are clunky and are tied to the enemy unit frame. Not perfect by any means.

I would love it if Blizzard themselves implemented an option to change our own damage display numbers. They gave us edit mode for all sorts of UI features and placement, so I would like to officially request some damage display number customization features.

Font, size, white crit prominence, DoT damage prominence, etc.

Because one of the main reasons I think retail combat is incredibly unsatisfying compared to Classic is the display of the damage being dealt. Make the damage display feel good again.

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2

I dunno. To each their own I guess. One of the first things I always do is turn off floating combat text.

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Like, all of it? How do you even know how much damage you’re dealing then?

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I run details so I can see my dps, and other combat break downs.

Not saying one way is better than the other. Its just what works for me. Esp in m+. Floating combat text just becomes (for me) screen clutter. I am not going to look at the numbers as they pop up and go “yeah, I see a 4% improvement”. For me, I will just run through combat, then compare my over all numbers from a logger.

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I also turn my numbers off. Started off as a tanking thing. Getting rid of the numbers makes it much easier to see bars, casts and buffs. A dps meter does fine when I play a dps

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Wow. Today is the day I learned that some people actually play this game with no damage numbers on. That’s actually kind of unfathomable to me lol

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Out of curiosity. Do you use any damage meters?

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I used to. Stopped caring about my DPS after a while since I was just doing mostly solo content and LFG queues.

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Why would I care much my auto attack crits 50 times a dungeon run? The big flashy feeling would run off with how fast and chaotic the numbers come out now.

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I have them on but it’s more a habit. I’m too focused on whatever encounter I’m in to really pay attention to the individual numbers.

I can see why you’d like it in classic since the combat is so much slower with less going on.

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That’s kind of the point I’m getting at, though. The current system makes the numbers feel “fast and chaotic” instead of impactful and satisfying. They could pretty easily design a system that isn’t so chaotic.

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‘Easily’ You thinking cranking the class/game design back to vanilla would be easy?

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One of these days I need to try and convert to just a personal damage meter and see if I can deal with that or not. I care too much about performance vs. others for a game that has such a massive ilvl range participating in the same content.

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I’m strictly talking about the number displays. Maybe that means consolidating the chip damage into a ticking damage number that comes up every second or two. Combining all the various AoE damage numbers into one huge damage number when it all comes from the same spell.

Idk, I have plenty of complaints about the whole “30 sources of chip damage” gameplay style, too, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. I’m strictly referring to the display.

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And thats fine. But it also makes me wonder why its a big deal to do things such as knowing how much damage you are dealing.

I am all for more cosmetics. More customization. Make your UI your own.

I mean. Yeah.

Bring back 1 button rotations, remove 90% of mob abilities.

But if one isnt worried about their DPS, do you see why this creates a weird ask?

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16

Haven’t there been addons to do this in the past, I remember there was one that consolidated windfury into a single number that was used way way back in vanilla. It seems like a somewhat easy, if cpu intensive, thing to do on a larger scale.

Personally I disable damage numbers the second I make the character.

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I don’t care about my DPS relative to others, but I still like seeing how hard my individual abilities are hitting. I’m starting to realize that there are some people who care about “the big picture” of their total damage, and others like me want to see high individual spell/ability/attack damage.

I feel like we can both have our way without changing much about the overall game design.

Though I would also love to reduce the number of random chip damage filler spells and inconsequential DoTs/procs as well.

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Sure. It wont change any of the design in the game, and I am absolutely for more UI customization.

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It’s also kinda spec by spec too. Like as a Shadow Priest I don’t have any big numbers, the whole thing is built around fast ticking dots / spawning ghosts and doing large amounts of small hits. Meanwhile something like an MM hunter has Aimed Shot which dominates the core rotation and hits like a truck.

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Its fine just solo/questing like.
When a rugby scrum like scenario of players, you can’t really see much anyways.