Like, they removed chi from monk healers / tanks, and people act like that’s a good thing? And in TWW we’re removing more abilities and turning them into passives, and I got muted in the monk discord for thinking that’s a bad idea?
EVERYONE on the hpal discord is crying about the fact paladins have holy power, and want it removed?
Today I learned we’re removing even more buttons from priest in TWW after they were gutted a patch ago, and that’s a good thing?
We also got the hunter tree reworks, and we’re dumbing down survival, which is super cool apparently.
I genuinely don’t get why people are celebrating the removal of abilities, and dumbing down of classes. What positive is there? Why can’t we make OPTIONS to have simpler, easier classes, and have OPTIONS to have more complex classes with more buttons (maybe like a talent system or something? I donno, that’s a dumb idea.)? Instead of just ruining the game for anyone who actually wants to play a video game, not just a social engine with a dungeon in the background.
Buttons for the sake of buttons, that simply devolve into press on cooldown but only when you otherwise would would cast filler, are generally not well received. Nor are they interesting or skill testing.
Combo point mechanics for healers are stupid. Especially given the inherently reactive nature of the role. It has less to do with “difficulty” and more “does this spec feel unnecessarily awkward to play.”
Keeping in mind that any calls for changes fall on a spectrum from “blizzard disagrees” to “blizzard agrees” in that just because someone says, for example, bm Hunter has too many rotational buttons; doesn’t make it true.
Likewise, someone saying brewmaster has too many abilities is probably something that blizzard can agree with.
There are times it makes sense to remove abilities from outliers but not blanket removal from all. If you’re going to be adding new abilities and buttons every expansion or even the odd season, some specs are going to run into trouble before others.
Another point to consider is perhaps a newer power system or class like DH might take inspiration from two or more abilities/passives from older classes and the older classes might want a quick pass to update and/or consolidate old abilities where it might make sense to do so.
Tl;dr sometimes it’s necessary, sometimes it’s just quality of life, sometimes people are misguided.
Not all the magic in your grimoire needs to be part of your rotation; some are there for specific utilities or class role play. I also don’t like this simplification as done in the past. In some time, we’ll return to classes with a MOBA-like design
If you mean chi wave or whatever it’s called, that stupid ability is nothing but a filler talent node who’s only purpose is to get in the way of the talents you actually do need. Blizz turning it into a passive is acknowledgment of that fact. I had to select it but didn’t even bother putting it on my action bar it’s that stupid. They would have been better served outright deleting it but I guess this is the compromise. It’s the same with how they’re turning arcane familiar into a passive with intellect. Who the hell wants to run double hourly maintenance buffs? Nobody that’s who.
Obviously removing buttons or resources shouldn’t be done at random.
But there is absolutely such a thing as button bloat. I feel like that’s pretty obvious and that certain specs have too many buttons that are situational/rarely used and could be streamlined.
As Blood Death Knight we have the right number of skills right now to use. But it feels like we are new buttons away from having the button bloating feeling.
Optimistically you can get 2-3 skills you can use in TWW, and we’ll end up running right into that situation.
Another aspect that I forgot to mention in my original post, the game was vastly simpler and less complex at the beginning.
You couldn’t kill random trash mobs out in the world at fast, but spamming the same 2-3 buttons for 30 seconds doesn’t make the game difficulty, just tedious.
Obviously I’m not talking about vanilla if I’m talking about good gameplay. Look at WOTLK, Cata, MoP. Classes had 4-5x the buttons and infinitely deeper mechanics, but sub counts were THRIVING.
Now in modern WoW the classes are drool fests, and sub counts are a fraction of what they were.
So based on sub counts, I’d say people agree with me.
When half the kit of vanilla-wrath was utility that barely got any usage in the first place, Blizzard probably thought “WOW PEOPLE AREN’T USING THE 50 DIFFERENT ABILITIES WE GAVE THEM!”
To be fair I’d celebrate the removal of holy power because I never liked it much.
Though while I like having plenty of spells to fill out the class fantasy, I also don’t want a million and one rotational abilities or worse a bunch of cooldowns that I need to spam to not do wet noodle DPS.
If somebody needs more or less buttons is largely depending on which spec we’re talking about.