World of Warcraft: Current Year

Lol... doing LFR, on Thok, and some DPS DK says hey hang on, gotta change something in HB... dudes don't even give a flip anymore. lol

Crone_sl said:

Lol... doing LFR, on Thok, and some DPS DK says hey hang on, gotta change something in HB... dudes don't even give a flip anymore. lol

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I dont know why they would be ballsy like that. New ban threads pop up everyday on HB forums. Much less all the people that dont even say anything about it. I guess.. I personally just wouldnt be so blatant about it. HB is pretty secure, but Im sure if you're under the magnifying glass they have a way.

One of our raiders got banned for botting when she "totally doesn't bot," for some reason her performance dropped drastically after her reroll and has never gotten back up to par despite being fully geared again...

jdfording_sl said:

Hunter is about the only class I can stand to play in WoW anymore. I used to main a mage but they added too many stupid mechanics and I just don't enjoy playing one anymore. With a hunter I can just hang back and see everything that's going on and not be in the cluster fuck group of melee and still do good dps. Plus they are fun as hell to do old content with. Invis, feign death and tons of cool pets and abilities that mesh well together. They just make sense and haven't been cursed with too much ability bloat. Only other class I can stand to play is a blood spec DK but rarely. Great for soloing old content but so is a hunter. I haven't used my free 90 yet because no other class is as fun as my 90 hunter imo.

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they also don't have any of this stupid secondary resource tacked on like all the other classes now.. soulshards, burning embers, holy power, lunar/solar power, shadow orbs and whatever other crap there is...

sure you have to gamble around a bit, maybe save up some energy because some big ability is coming off cooldown soon, but it doesn't feel as stupid as on the other classes for me.

Can someone provide a somewhat objective explanation for what Blizzard is doing with the WoD class changes? I'm reading the beta forums to try and get an idea which class will be the most complex to play in WoD and all I see is "the sky is falling", "Blizzard hates <insert every class build>" whines and rants. Are the class changes going to have a positive affect on gameplay and the players are just being whiny or are the complaints justified?

Rescorla_sl said:

Can someone provide a somewhat objective explanation for what Blizzard is doing with the WoD class changes? I'm reading the beta forums to try and get an idea which class will be the most complex to play in WoD and all I see is "the sky is falling", "Blizzard hates <insert every class build>" whines and rants. Are the class changes going to have a positive affect on gameplay and the players are just being whiny or are the complaints justified?

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That all depends. Every time anyone changes anything in anything ever, you're going to get a large uproar from your current users. WoW sub numbers have been on the decline after topping out in WotLK, so they're trying to get people back in (as always), which is of course part of the reasoning for making things simpler again. FWIW, MMOs tend to accumulate a ton of cruft and garbage over time, so I think it's healthy to prune here and there.

Their overall goal though is to trim down the amount of buttons you have on your hotbar. Having tons of those is a barrier to just picking up the game and going, as well as a barrier to returning players. Anyone who buys WoD gets to jump in right at 90, which in particular is going to be very overwhelming to a new player (and even returning players, depending on how long ago they played). They're looking at ditching a lot of the rare-use-case-but-you-better-have-on-your-hotbar-in-case-its-that-one-time-a-month-when-its-useful-as-an-oh-shit-button things, as well as getting rid of redundant things. Some rotations are simplified. Looking at the game as a whole, fight mechanics continue to get more complex, and if rotations and hotbutton layouts continue to get more complex as well, that leads to a frustrating game. I think they'd rather keep interesting fight mechanics with lots of movement, switching up where you DPS is going, etc, than having more complex rotations. Personally, I agree with that. I'd rather the fight be interesting than just executing my rotation.

Some people want more buttons and a billion oh-shit buttons. Some people want that plus complex crazy fights, but the mass market WoW has always targeted does not. Just like when they killed spell ranks, then simplified skill trees, then ditched skill trees, etc, this is all an iterative process of reducing the barrier of getting people into the game and playing, without having to spend a few hours reading the internet to be reasonably effective at their class.

So, is complaining justified? It really depends on what you like. The sky is only falling as much as it was from all the other large sweeping class changes they do every expansion. I'm looking forward to more streamlined gameplay. From Blizzard's POV, changes in this vein also make things easier to balance (not that things will ever be perfectly balanced, but the easier it is on them, the better, probably.)

Aw thats cute. Try playing a Demonology Warlock.

Also, check out this post for their thoughts on it:

Dev Watercooler: Pruning the Garden of War - World of Warcraft

Ability Pruning

Over the years, we've added significantly more new spells and abilities than we've removed, and the game's complexity has steadily increased. We're to the point now where players are starting to get overwhelmed, sometimes feeling like they need dozens of keybinds (in a few extreme cases, over a hundred). While the game is loaded with niche abilities that could theoretically be useful in some rare scenario, in reality, many of these are barely used at all-and in some cases, the game would simply be better off without them.

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(more on the page itself)

Played some dungeons in beta, assume the design was to fuck Disc Priests out of the most enjoyable style of spot healing and return them to dick grinding single target heals, joy.

Planning on following Cata and returning to retarding it up as something still somewhat useful but face roll, Prot Paladin, Consecrate moving with you? Where do I sign up.

Reduction of abilities is at least a step in the right direction, things like multiple damage cooldowns that you could macro but shouldn't really was annoying.

It really doesn't seem like they are removing much, but good riddance to disarm/silences for fucking sure.

Something about blood using blood boil/pestilence for single target tanking is kind of against the "stike-based" flavor the dk was originally sold as. I miss heart strike even though it was weak and needed redesigning.

We'll see if I play. I think I'll be back though.

Baghwan_sl said:

Played some dungeons in beta, assume the design was to fuck Disc Priests out of the most enjoyable style of spot healing and return them to dick grinding single target heals, joy.

Planning on following Cata and returning to retarding it up as something still somewhat useful but face roll, Prot Paladin, Consecrate moving with you? Where do I sign up.

Reduction of abilities is at least a step in the right direction, things like multiple damage cooldowns that you could macro but shouldn't really was annoying.

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What did they do to disc priests? the patch notes don't really show any nerfs regarding atonement or anything that i can see.
Apparently they're nerfing divine aegis a bit but that makes sense... high end geared disc priests are pretty OP in MoP lol

I'm most likely going back to my paladin in WoD as well, i've been gearing his ret spec up the past day or two as a just incase lol

The slow 'everything at once' iterative pruning seems kind of dumb from the outside. Blizzard has almost every class complaining every step of the way. It's like they decided to have 5 cell phones in the car giving directions to different places and just randomly pick which ones to follow with no clear path to get anywhere. They seem to have an idea of where they want every class to be, but are having real trouble making it go from paper to game without enraging everyone along the way. I think the smart money is just sitting back waiting to even peak under the hood until 6.0 out of fear of seeing shit they don't want to see.

Well, they're pretty much done with the actual rotational revamp. What's on the beta now is what we're gonna get for live, just with different tuning numbers.

Needless_sl said:

What did they do to disc priests? the patch notes don't really show any nerfs regarding atonement or anything that i can see.

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Mostly the dumbing of smart heals, so the player missing 5hp randomly gets chosen over the tank getting wrecked missing 200k hp, its hard to compare with the stat squish to live, Atonement damage to healing is actually buffed in beta to a 1:1 ratio but Smite/Penance/HF damage isn't the work horse that it is in live against mob damage and player health pools, Disc also suffering the most from tier 90 talents getting nerfed to the ground, needed tho with Divine star basically the most OP spell in the game.

All it's going to take is some more number passes, but the whole stupid smart heals is enough to frustrate.

Baghwan_sl said:

Disc also suffering the most from tier 90 talents getting nerfed to the ground, needed tho with Divine star basically the most OP spell in the game.

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I actually didn't know this until i saw the blue post regarding that.. I assume this is only fixed in WoD? I'll have to swap from cascade on my priest tonight to try it out while it's still good.
Basically it was ignoring the aoe cap and healing everybody it touched for the full amount or something?

Some of the abilities removed are just baffling though. Hunter changes are retarded overall. Like why the fuck did they need to remove Dismiss Pet from hunters, just so I am forced to make a macro into a new button??? Serpent sting tied to arcane shot and not refreshed by cobra anymore, lock n load explosive shot costs focus now - shit makes no sense.

Bruman_sl said:

Their overall goal though is to trim down the amount of buttons you have on your hotbar. Having tons of those is a barrier to just picking up the game and going, as well as a barrier to returning players. Anyone who buys WoD gets to jump in right at 90, which in particular is going to be very overwhelming to a new player (and even returning players, depending on how long ago they played). They're looking at ditching a lot of the rare-use-case-but-you-better-have-on-your-hotbar-in-case-its-that-one-time-a-month-when-its-useful-as-an-oh-shit-button things, as well as getting rid of redundant things. Some rotations are simplified. Looking at the game as a whole, fight mechanics continue to get more complex, and if rotations and hotbutton layouts continue to get more complex as well, that leads to a frustrating game. I think they'd rather keep interesting fight mechanics with lots of movement, switching up where you DPS is going, etc, than having more complex rotations. Personally, I agree with that. I'd rather the fight be interesting than just executing my rotation.

Some people want more buttons and a billion oh-shit buttons. Some people want that plus complex crazy fights, but the mass market WoW has always targeted does not.

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Thanks for the response. I'm fine with ability pruning as long as gameplay is still fun. Wildstar and TESO are the recent MMOs I have played that restrict the number of abilities you can slot. They have also tried to make MMO combat more action based. TESO only allows 6 skills per action bar (12 total with weapon swap) while Wildstar gives you 8. Combat in both TESO and Wildstar have mobs throwing out a lot of telegraphs with Wildstar punishing you the most if you don't avoid the telegraph.

Based off what you are saying about fight mechanics getting more complex with lots of movement, do you foresee gameplay in WoD becoming more action-based similar to Wildstar (but not as punishing/difficult).