You think you don't, but you do

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Jhaella-maladath

@Ssear-zuljin

That is completely disingenuous. Yes, shadowbolt existed in vanilla, it does not in any way do what it did then.

It’s not the point I was making. It adds to the complete total number of buttons and utility a class has at any time.

Example: Astral Shift. This is a defensive cooldown that Shamans only got access to in Wrath. You can’t say that has had no impact on their class because hitherto that point they didn’t really have any defensives except, what, stoneskin totem? They lacked a defensive beforehand but because there was a defensive gap in their toolkit prior to that point, they got something to compensate.

That has been going on for 20 years. And while a lot of spells have been pruned over the years, a lot have stayed, and even more have been added in DF via talents. I don’t think it is quite accurate to say that old spells have no effect on current class or content design. It is because of defensive bloat that damage profiles in fights are spiky, because developers are relying on the player to have proper defensive CD management. And this has effected some classes more than others. For example, Hunters needing to get an additional charge of SOTF because they were notoriously squishy compared to other classes without it.

Having answers to problems solves equations. Combat encounters are equations. The more answers that you have, the more devs have to compensate. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.

@Argorwal-ysera

I’m a bit worried that if too many defensives/self healing go more responsibility rests on the healer’s shoulders for keeping the group alive.

Ideally, it would also mean less spiky damage profiles. If classes have restricted defensives, Blizzard can tone down the damage. If they don’t do that, yes, pruning will absolutely be a disaster. But they have mentioned wanting to simplify combat. This could also lead to AOE heals not being tickles in 5 man content.

As long as infinite scaling exists it seems like basic math will make damage spiky at some point unless all damage is changed to rot auras only.

Which would actually be a lot worse in higher keys because you can’t out easily out skill that with solid group coordination.