You can't really choose between Flay and Spike as a Shadow Priest

[Hpellipsis-whisperwind (Hpellipsis)]

@Möuse-silvermoon

And tbh that feels like a design flaw. I’m unsure why Blizzard doesn’t see that. The tree looks like it wants to give us 3 playstyles, but only one CD is worth it, and it only benefits 2 of those playstyles.

And now they say they’re done with the talent trees, so that makes me nervousss

It honestly feels like they gave the impression of three playstyles but didn’t fully realise any of them, and the optimal build is some hybrid monstrosity of all three which barely makes sense to play.

[Capslockfury-thrall]

@Phoenickz-sargeras

Classic felt much better to play vs retail for a lot of players. This is, in part, because there were a lot less cooldowns, and less impact on cooldowns.

For PvP players, sure. But for hardcore PvE players from modern, classic tends to be very boring, and even the highest level content feels extremely easy and forgiving. It’s why Blizzard is moving to buff every raid in wrath and add ‘heroic plus’ difficulty modes.

There is no world in which a ‘cooldown-less’ build works so long as the cooldown is on the tree, unless it’s in a choice node with ‘you do 20% more damage period’

This is because cooldowns, by their nature, modify the base damage of the kit. It’s the entire problem with PvP. Player healthbars are not curated like boss health bars are. So burst windows in PvP create some wild scenarios. That’s why PvP players have been praising classic so much - the sustained damage there feels great.

@Phoenickz-sargeras

They don’t have to neuter CDs, they just need to tone down the burst a bit.

This reads as ‘they don’t have to neuter CDs, they just need to neuter CDs.’ Burst is a result of CDs. Your proposal below is just a fundamental change of CDs that neuters them, in effect. 15s on 15s off windows is barely a CD in WoW, and I honestly think it wouldn’t be very fun to play - even to people who liked classic. CD management is one thing. CD management on such short windows makes every scenario that forces you to do anything but your set 15s rotation feel awful for you, which leads to the real point:

CDs are a result of modern WoW fight design.

Partially because Blizzard learned that it’s fun to have ‘burn phases’ in fights, and they use them frequently. But it’s also because losing a ton of your damage as a result of a mechanic has never felt great. Losing 15 seconds to run a bomb across the arena outside of your CD window where you’re weaker feels considerably less bad than losing 15 seconds when your damage is consistent.

Fights have changed to force players to deal with mechanics. Class design has changed to suit those mechanics in many ways from damage profiles, to immunities, to mobility, etc. A lot of things are very intertwined when it comes to modern WoW’s design. Going back to the ‘good old days’ isn’t as simple as you’d like it to be. A cooldown-less spec would have all kinds of poor gameplay feelings in many of current Mythic raiding’s encounters.

@Hpellipsis-whisperwind

It honestly feels like they gave the impression of three playstyles but didn’t fully realise any of them

You guys are getting what I was somewhat afraid might happen to Disc priest (and I’m still feeling that with the current iteration) if they tried to bring back the shield healing.

A lot of people want choices to play their old Cata/MoP spec. But fitting a whole new playstyle into a tree with a limited number of nodes seems like a fools’ errand. It’s not that I think they’re wrong for wanting it, but I think it’s an unrealistic goal.

[Mystakai-zuluhed]

It’s possible to do. Instead of actually bringing back any playstyle, they just stamped the names of old abilities onto new versions that are vaguely reminiscent. They did not go deep enough to properly implement the older playstyles.