Why I Dislike Modern DPS Spec Design, Summarized:

Community General Discussion
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DPS Specs in modern WoW have been given more and more buttons over the years. More abilities to stack, more cooldowns to juggle, more procs to burn, etc. This is supposed to make the spec “more fun.” But the cost of increasing the number of buttons, DoTs, amplifiers, etc. is that the individual base damage of each spell has been lowered substantially.

For example…Restoration Druids have access to a handful of basic Balance Druid spells. They get Moonfire and Wrath by default, and can spec into Starfire, Sunfire, and Starsurge.

On my level 47 druid, I level as Resto because it’s nice to be able to infinitely outheal the damage of any enemy I fight while still doing decent damage.

The weird thing is…the base damage of my Wrath is ~310. The base damage tick of Moonfire is ~95.

When I’m in Balance spec, you’d think those numbers would be higher, but they aren’t. Base Wrath damage as Balance is 217, and the base Moonfire tick is 84.

Granted, when I have an eclipse going, my Wrath hits for about 330, but it’s billed as “Nature spells deal 15% more damage and Wrath deals 40% more damage,” but actually what it should say is “doesn’t even do 10% more damage than a Restoration wrath without all the hoops to jump through.”

I get it. Flashing buttons, tons of numbers, lots of different modifiers exist to make your damage feel really pumped up…but the truth is, I just want my abilities to hit for good damage all the time.

I don’t want to have to apply a 55% damage boost to my Wrath to make it hit as hard as a basic Wrath in resto spec does.

It’s silly. Why doesn’t Wrath always hit for 330 as Balance? Why does the Eclipse mechanic exist at all? It’s just a layer of faux-complexity with very little tangible reward.

I just want my abilities to feel strong all the time. The modifiers, procs, boosts, etc. that go into making a spell’s damage half-decent are like the inflatable tank decoys from WWII that made the enemy think the numbers were higher than they really were.

It’s just window dressing. It makes things harder to understand, and makes the actual base damage of the spell way lower to offset the absurdity of gaining 40, 50, 70, even 100% bonus damage on things during procs and cooldown pops.

I just…want…to deal…decent damage…all the time. I don’t want 14 buttons and procs just so I can deal the same damage that 5 buttons could do.

120 Likes
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It’s not hard. It’s just unnecessary.

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Hmm maybe minesweeper then. It’s pretty simple and yet challenging.

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5

You’re not providing valuable feedback.

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Saying hello can be hard for me I am shy, this would not work.

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Dude, you can play your dps how you want. There’s literally content curated just for people who want to press 1 button like you’re suggesting and it’s in this game right now! You can go progression raid on LFR right now and you are allowed to hit your favorite button over and over!
There’s also mission tables if you want to add more difficulty content in your skill level!

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I want a reduction in modifier/proc bloat overall.

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I agree OP. I’ve been playing Arms recently and I can’t fanthom how one is supposed to navigate the complexity.

My bars are a complete mess :

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Clearly an exception and not the rule. In general, stacking modifiers and playing proc whack-a-mole is how the average DPS spec has been designed since at least the Legion days, probably before that even. Exceptions exist, but I’m talking about the trend.

I don’t like the trend. Though, Dragonflight seems to be easing up on some of those trends thanks to the customization of the talent trees. It obviously isn’t optimal, but this hunter is spec’d not to use Rapid Fire and I couldn’t be happier about it. I hate buttons that exist just to be buttons.

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It sounds like you want wrath designed specs? Which personally, I don’t think is a great idea. There is minimal complexity there.

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Butters will be waiting for you!

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Basically, sure. Wrath had some of the best class/spec design in the entire history of the game.

Complexity on its own is not a positive trait. If pressing 14 buttons in perfect sequence while adapting on the fly and applying procs reactively in accordance to a priority flowchart gives you 10k DPS, and laying down 2 DoTs then spamming a Nuke spell gave you 10k DPS, which would you rather do?

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Ok, now I know you’re trolling.

There was some good design. It was going the right way compared to Vanilla and TBC, but it wasn’t the “best in WoW history”. They’ve improved in some areas and slid backward in others since then as well.

Personally, I think Enhance is more playable now than it was in Wrath.

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You’re entitled to your opinion, but I think the satisfaction of playing DPS in WotLK has never been equaled.

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Hot take considering some of the topics GD has had over the last several months:

I like playing specs like resto sham and hpal because the flow of their rotations (damaging and healing) feel better and more fluid than their dps counterparts. :dracthyr_comfy_sip:

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That’s certainly… an opinion.

One based on completely wrong data, but sure, go on thinking that.

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i have an idea, every dps class should have only
one button that does damage, like a beat ‘em up and call it a day

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As long as it’s instant cast and I can just hold it down due to the new “Press and Hold” option, I’m down.

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My opinion is based on my personal experience playing the game from Vanilla until now. I have played every expansion and experienced every iteration of DPS spec design.

WotLK did it best, for my time and money. MoP and WoD had some really good features and choices, too, but ever since Legion the DPS design philosophy has been awful.

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Don’t you think it’s good that there are things that separate the good and the bad players? That a player can take advantage of their dps cooldowns more effectively than a bad player should reflect in their throughput. But if we’re just pressing the same 4 buttons in a sequence, you lose that.

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