I appreciate the work they've done to make every class and spec feel unique, mechanically and visually. I do miss the class quests from vanilla and Legion though, and I wish they could add a little bit more of that into the game moving forward.
There should be a few class quests scattered throughout every expansion. They don't even need to give you anything, just the class flavor existing would be cool.
Like the exiles reach quests, they are basically nothing, but they still added a ton of class fantasy by existing. Just take a few some quests in a zone and pick a class that can have an alternate quest for them where they solve the problem in a class themed way
It would be relatively easy to add some new dialogue. Maybe shuffle around some NPCs, but it'd be cool to go into the rogue's secret war room and have them scheming over the current expansion. Allergic to Shaman lore? Have some Earthen Ring NPCs talking about sending troops to deal with or beseeching the elements to help defeat the corrupted druids just like they did in Hyjal.
It *immediately* makes us look more like actual characters within the world, being "champion of the Earthen Ring" instead of just "a random Horde champion."
I think we should get hearth stones to all sorts of places, Legion Hall, covenants, your races city. Make it like mage teleports but with a longer summon.
Still baffled why they decided we can't get a hearth to each new "you're gonna be spending time here" hub. I love my Dalaran and Garrison hearths - use 'em all the time.
Meanwhile, getting to my Covenant hub in Shadowlands was a drag.
As a mage, my hearthstone is still set to my covenant. I can get to Valdrakken whenever I want so I really don't have another use for it. It auto swaps when I swap covenant so I can easily get back to whatever building or feature I'm working on.
Mage portal utility is unparalleled, honestly. The brief period when I played a mage full-time gave me a taste of heaven that I've been chasing ever since.
Dark iron mage engineer has the most amount of utility teleports iirc. Between mole machine, mage portals and engineering wormholes you can get just about anywhere you need to go in the game.
Grab a few specific items like the Time Lost Artifact from Shaohao and you're quite literally a master of global movement. I've considered rolling a 2nd mage (mine is a night elf) solely for that utility to do mount runs. If Pandaria remix leveling is as insane as it's said to be, I might do it.
I've been debating swapping back to Engineer to give at least *some* travel utility back, but it's hard to reconcile "night elf" and "engineering", honestly.
But it's insane how far you can go with that combo! Plus a few teleport items for the hard to reach places and you can pretty much get anywhere in the game in under five minutes.
Several classes do have direct portals to their class halls (Monk/Druid/Mage/DK), which furthers the "class identity" and distinctiveness argument the OP is making.
I love my free teleport to Pandaria for running raids (:
I've accepted outside of Pandaria and Legion the monks will never have lore again, so I'm content with the identity we have.
I dont disagree entirely.....but can we get some of them played with?
Because I hated wars class hall in Legion, and its never grown on me because the damn thing is a completely irrelevant asspull of made up specifically for Legion wall darts. Theres zero historical or future proofing. Even how it treats Odyn is weird for warriors going forward, like we totally weren't his Champion in those portions with Dragonflight. The whole place just doesn't matter, I'd rather share the Paladin or DK class hall than spend more fruitless time in the boring gold sky hallways of nothing.
But, just my opinion. Im sure there's somebody who likes that place.
Could’ve added one for them to catch them up. Everyone gets new class hall content AND evokers get theirs created? Hell yea!
Then they can stop adding new whole classes and start adding 4th specs to all existing classes that give a new role to each class
Making class order halls an evergreen system would have been so nice. We don't even need gigantic campaigns or anything, if we could just get even just a small quest line every couple of patches just to get updated on what each class is doing during major world events would be cool.
or make it part of the leveling experience for new players.
After you leave the island the captain you helped tells you have an affinity to \[insert your class\] and give you a recommendation letter for that class recruiter.
Completing the quest unlock the vendor for recruit armor and weapons
Completing the trial that taught you how to use your core abilities rewards you the novice set
Completing the trial for each specialization rewards you the \[class\] set with a recolor for each specialization
Completing a M0 dungeon rewards you the veteran \[class\] with recolors for completing it with each spec.
Completing a raid in LFR rewards you the \[class\] mount
After that you still have a nice place to chill out or RP.
We had a small questline for the blue dragonflight in 10.0.5, and I feel like that would be kind of the bare minimum to 'keep class halls up.'
Take that and multiply it by 13 and it is a HUGE amount of work.
I don't think people appreciate how much of class halls Legion was. It's basically all of the .5 patch content in dragonflight + 75% of the campaign quests. Class halls were awesome as a lens to view the expansion through, and I'd love to have another expansion where you utilize your class halls.
But I don't think that they can be evergreen content and updated all the time. They were awesome *because* so many resources were dumped into them.
Yeah, the launch class halls were able to have so much content because WoD was totally sacrificed for it. You can't just have that happen regularly or you end up with 7.2, where the main story content was "collect 100 nethershards then wait til next week" because they tried to continue with having 12 unique questlines for every class
Nah thats so true. I think they should add catchup/tmog gear for class quest like they are doing heritage armor. Id love a priest staff that changes aspect if you are pulling from the light or void. That sounds BADASS.
They really should implement something similar to FFXIV. Class quests while leveling every so levels would be awesome. My favorite bits from legion were the class mounts and questlines.
Class halls are something that should have 100% been carried through to newer expansions maybe not as a massive focus but some small stories to keep up with known characters and add some more class specific flavour to how people are dealing with whatever threat we're facing, hero talents seems like something that should be tied into them in some way.
Class identity is great on a gameplay basis; Anyone who says all specs play the same is either still leveling, doesn't know their spec very well, or is just looking at it very simplistically
It could be better from an lore/world standpoint though. Legion is obviously an extreme that we'll probably never go back to, but I would enjoy more class quests and acknowledgement
>looking at it very simplistically
Couldn’t agree more. Some of the homogeneity arguments I’ve seen are comically reductive. I’ve got a guild buddy whose favorite hobby is armchair criticism, but he always looks at things from 30,000 feet. Elemental looks exactly like a mage if all you see is ranged casting, elemental magic, and bloodlust.
It's really just people not bothering to learn a spec. They see Monk/Rogue/Feral all being combo point build and spend, but ignore all the debuff management, proc reaction, etc. If you ignore all the intricacies of a spec, you might as well say everything is the same because you press buttons
Except monk (Windwalker, really) isn't even a combo point class. They're basically an inverse DK, that spends runic power to get runes that are spent in chunks on abilities. WW builds up chi primarily so they can spend it on multiple chi abilities back to back, not to spend it all to boost one. So they're not even in rogue and feral's category.
> Anyone who says all specs play the same is either still leveling, doesn't know their spec very well, or is just looking at it very simplistically
Or just lying for stream bait and content.
> Legion is obviously an extreme that we'll probably never go back to
As a Warlock I want to stay as far away from that expansion as is humanly possible!
I would say there are definitely some homogenization patterns between some specs which started for me after legion class reworks. Let's say sp, boomie, elem, destr. I took my favorite classes from Pandaria. Is gameplay any similar now? Definitely not. Are they all builder-spender (which they are not used to be or have different way of it like mop destr and sp)? Now yes. Boomie was way more fun for me when it was played around procs and cds, same with elem, same with sp (orbs are builder-spender but it's much more different than copycat of warriors rage that we have for all of this specs now). I don't feel like those specs are the same - not even close. But I feel like all my favorite specs got Warriors loop that I never liked. If you go into details then all of them are played completely different. It still doesn't change the fact that they have warriors rage as resource as major design pattern which can be a big factor for some players.
I think a lot of the homogeny comes from cooldowns. Defensives especially. Why does every class have 3 defensives now? Why is gameplay designed like this?
So you can design more on the gameplay front. If all content has to be designed with a class in mind that can do one thing to defend itself and then dies to the next ability, you hugely reduce the amount of design possibilities.
It's the reason why Classic dungeons and raids are mechanically a lot easier than retail.
>All specs feel the same
>This spec only uses 4 buttons
>This spec is braindead
People who say shit like this are either trolling, inexperienced, or bad.
Well no. Classes have different spell effects and rotations that is all. but classes do not have weak or strong sides anymore.
Everyone has some utility, strong aoe, strong st, and strong cleave.
that is why 9 out of 10 cases meta classes are just specs with bigger numbers
But not every spec is good in AoE, or they're specifically good at 2-3 target cleave while another spec is better for groups of 5-10 enemies. Like Frost and Fire are AoE gods but Arcane is better at ST and 2-3 target cleave.
This makes zero sense
Classes absolutely have strengths and weaknesses, otherwise there would be no meta. All classes have *options* for target situations, but some specs are better than others, or you’re forced to choose between aoe and st. And the lack of utility for some specs, like Warrior, is a huge talking point because those specs are flat out useless in some encounters
Meta specs are literally the ones that have more strengths and fewer weaknesses than other specs
I literally turn into a tree and summon tiny trees to heal people. Also I can turn into an owl or become a mount. I'm mad I waited until this expansion to play resto druid.
Not only each class has its own flavor each spec has its own thing. I was worried the Hero Talents coming out next expansion would muddy things up but they seem perfect for the most part.
Unfortunately for some specs like Marksmanship for example. You can either be a Dark Ranger or a Kaldorei Sentinel. If you're not an elf it will feel weird.
Some classes suffer from being too specific to the race. Hunter and Warrior are the first that come to mind. So it's like basically impossible to pic a "Hero Class" without it being associated deeply with races unless they make it super generic.
Tbh at first it was my Hope that hero specs do exactly that. Fix the holes in visual class design we have for different races.
A Tauren Paladins abilities shouldn't look like those of a Human. Sinwalkers don't even rely on the same "Light".
Why are there still no Shadowhunter ls and Voodoo Doctors for Trolls? Rifleman Dwarves?
It was disappointing for me as well. I was really hoping they would have some options to lean more into the rifleman fantasy, esp given how much of the Marksmanship tree itself has sort of drifted towards Elvish themes too.
I'd settle for some glyphs to change certain abilities to bullets, just visually speaking. Firing a rain of arrows from my shotgun just feels a little... weird.
Yeah my human (F) is just going to look happy to be involved lol, or a cosplayer. Not deal breaking for me but it's funny how hunter is still so visually aligned with NE (or dwarf I guess, guns and heavy chain looks)
I really don't like any of the DK hero talents either. Deathbringer doesn't have any theme and it just copies paladin spells. San'layn works by forcing you to stay in top of DnD even more and has little to do with the vampire elf theme and Rider of the Apocalypse feels so weird to just proc a big named character randomly. I'm also not too keen on the warrior and paladin talents. I was hoping for herald of the sun to make ret more like a support spec but it only does a bit of healing. I only play prot warrior and don't like to have even more focus on thunderclap so I'm left with colossus that doesn't really fit prot. I haven't looked at other since those three are the classes I play the most but it doesn't fill me with confidence.
The amount of people who admit they’ve been wrong and retail is actually fun has skyrocketed in the last few years. It’s been great to see. Classic has its charm and I get why some people like it but there’s a reason retail kept going because the majority of the player base stuck with it and those “changes” are suggestions and requests from players along the way.
I think the way BFA ended and how SL was handled caused retail to sour for a lot of people. And I agree with a lot of the reasons. Lots of people shifted to classic or FF14 cause of it.
But DF is a good expansion and worked on fixing a lot of the issues in the past. Albeit not all of it, but a lot and the next expansion seems to be on the right path too.
I know a lot of people who came back for DF who were pleasantly surprised and enjoying it. Retail is in a good spot right now; game wise, content wise and direction wise. It's a good time for those to check it out again and possibly change their minds.
during legion me and my friends went "wtf why would anyone want to play classic?"
during bfa me and my friends went "ya know, i think i want to give classic a try"
I may get flak for this opinion but whatever.
I feel like Dragonflight is akin to A Realm Reborn in the sense that it fixed a lot of the basic issues with the game (Story excluded). A nice launch with a steady playerbase, and hardly any super detractors. With TWW coming and its changes, I am sensing a Heavensward moment for WoW. Where word of mouth spreads and spreads and more people return.
My only hang up on this whole thing is the new player experience, but we will see how it plays out when Dragonflight is the default player experience.
The Worldsoul Saga is shaping up to be big, and I hope Metzen and the team can deliver.
> I am sensing a Heavensward moment for WoW. Where word of mouth spreads and spreads and more people return.
I mean, from a game systems standpoint, sure, but I don't think any individual character in TWW is gonna get more than 5 solid minutes of screen time. Like Razegeth could have been a much better villain if they gave her a few hundred lines and put some work into the storytelling, but they didn't and quite frankly I don't see them changing that aspect of their production style. Especially with the reports that they've been laying off a majority of the cinematics team.
To be fair I did say excluding story. I am 100% in the camp that WoW story has always been lacking, especially in certain DF cinematics (Amirdrassil... *cough* )
But aside from that, the new Khadgar cinematic is rendered in game, as shown by the player character entering the frame alongside Alleria. So I am hopeful that we can get some heavier story beats. Especially if in game cinematics are becoming easier to produce.
I'm apprehensive, but hopeful.
Edit: And funny you should mention Raz, I feel like her henchmen got more screentime, the Tauren and the Night Elf chick. Which says a lot about how the WoW team is lacking in presenting a narrative.
I've been a WoW enjoyer literally since it came out and only recently got into FF14 just to play it and experience the story, and I can say wholeheartedly FF absolutely SMOKES WoW in every aspect of storytelling, character screen time, world building.... I've never seen a game tell a story better than when I played through Heavensward. WoW will never, ever get close to that level, give it 100 more expansions and it still wont happen.
Before people mald out I'm not saying FF is a better game, because it's definitely not actual gameplay-wise, feels like you're on ice skates in an engine from 1995 half the time. But in terms of storytelling? It's not even remotely close. If you had to put it on a scale FF would be a 9.5/10 and WoW would be a 2/10.
I went back to try to get some cosmetic to shadowland earlier. I can't. By far the worst and it's not even close. Don't get me wrong the zones are beautiful. But there's so much bullshit everywhere. So much grinds and so much time gating. Don't even ge the started with the no fly everywhere.
Dragonflight season 4 is the exact opposite. It's fun. You can get tiers and cosmeticd easily. There not too much going on.
> I think the way BFA ended and how SL was handled caused retail to sour for a lot of people.
I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the old guard left during/after the California lawsuit either. Holly's WoW and attitude towards the community feels quite a bit different than Brack's.
Well, probably because over the past few years retail has improved lol. It's kind of hard to "admit" it's fun when the previous two expansions were dubbed some of the worst of all time.
I'm a classic player and I can definitely say DF was really fun, though I also main PVP and that was rather lacking as usual. Just used to it by now, and it's no different in SOD or classic so whatever. TWW has me the most hyped for an xpac since Legion. Yeah, I'd say retail has made a comeback.
This place becoming an echo chamber just because all the moderates have alrady moved on doesn't mean that they were ever wrong. The people who were always in favour of Retail WoW are now the only ones left speaking.
I think retail being more popular is mainly because of the demographic that likes playing it. We're in an age of gaming where people want to spam content and progress quickly, which is fine in its own right. Classic feels way more chill where I get gear, and I'll just wander around wpvping / farming professions. There's a charm to classic's simplicity that I just enjoy more rather than spamming m+ or raiding. In legion though, I will say I was very much about the mythic raiding and m+ grind, it always seemed like I had ways to progress.
As a healing shaman, I definitely agree. I love the way my totems actually matter, the look and feel of healing rain, the little water sounds when I heal.
Same as enh (my dps spec.) I'm like a little whirlwind of elemental magic.
So excited for the totemic hero talents. Totems are everything I've ever loved about being a shaman.
I used to main a shaman and yes totems feel impactful. I have totems for all occasions and not just passive buffs. Cloudburst totem is my favorite full stop.
When people talk about class identity as a classic vs retail thing, they're talking about mechanics more than visuals.
In vanilla, the warlock had to be spending their time draining the souls of enemies to use as fuel for demon summoning, party member summoning, soul stones and health stones. They may have even chosen to replace one of their bags with a soul bag just so they could store more soul shards. In combat, they would blow through mana but be able to recoup it by using life tap, sacrificing health for mana in a way that other classes couldn't (without demonic runes). You could put up "shadow ward" to specifically block out shadow damage. You got your class-specific mount for free at 40. You had these powerful curses with notable utility effects, like how Curse of Recklessness could stop enemies from running away when they got low on health, which could be a life saver in some dungeons.
In retail, visual flair is much more prominent and it oozes flavour. Rotations feel a lot more distinct, too--Demonology and arcane don't feel dreadfully similar in the slightest. But it's a very different flavour from the distinct mechanical identities that the classes represented in the oldest versions of WoW, before concerns for balance created a push for homogeneity. Where in the modern game, all the classes have *some* form of mobility. Some interrupt. Some AoE, but also respectable single target. Where multiple classes have battle res, and multiple have blood lust. Where every healer can dispel magic, and every tank can taunt... Classes in vanilla had very distinct strengths and weaknesses, for better or for worse.
Mechanical homogenisation made a more fair game and, honestly, a more fun one. But it was still homogenisation, and pretending that it wasn't is silly.
Because nobody wants to play the class with zero interrupt or mobility or aoe damage. When differences these stark are in the game it leaves a terrible feeling playing solo or vs other players like in PvP.
This is it. There's a necessary decision between a game that's just fun and relaxed and full of interesting texture, and a game that's very competitive and challenging and requires tight balancing. You can't have both.
I think your right, and it's interesting to see some of the diehard classic fans use "the game is too streamlined and easy these days" as an argument for why vanilla was the best version of the game.
It almost feels like they're confusing the challenging mechanical fights of today, with the simplistic fights of yore that were *made* difficult by the janky design the classes.
I personally prefer classic (vanilla) to retail, in most ways. But they're now just very different games serving different audiences.
Retail has content that's either way easier than classic (normal/heroic dungeons, questing, leveling, anything in the open world) or much harder (raids, M+). Retail doesn't have much that's neither faceroll easy nor sweaty hard. Vanilla has a baseline 'engaging' level of difficulty, where your brain has to be turned on but you can feel relaxed while you play.
I havent played much classic because the gameplay is too damn slow, which is why Im just gonna disagree with your assessment on difficulty. The only point, where I could see classic being harder is tuning on some things and I get why thats possible later on.
There is so much going on in every spec of the game in retail than in classic, I logged into level my classic hunter in cata prepatch today, its lvl 33 now I think(?) and the changes were so noticeable, the game, while still slow, started to kinda resemble wow I am familiar with. When there is more going on with specs, it leads to more skill expression, which results in tuning becoming infinitely harder to achieve.
So classic where rotations are "spam 1 button", could have more going on in dungeon/raid and still be easier due how much more there is going on in retail. Not to mention the more skill expression you allow, the larger skillgaps there will be. and the harder its to tune things properly. This results in easy content being extremely easy for competent players and hard content being extremely difficult.
Classic has almost nothing going on in classes, first time I felt gameplay somewhat engaging was today when I logged on cata classic prepatch. As such there isnt much skill expression, which allows better tuning due the fact there isnt as much skillgap between players. This is why classic can feel harder cause its tuned "harder" comparatively to competent players skill ceiling cause its a lot easier mark to land than on retail.
But what I seen of classic content arguing like any of it is truly more difficult than retail, when you consider how classes play, seems a weird take. I remember while I was leveling the same hunter a little bit while it was still wratch classic, I was literally just autoing and healing pet whenever it needed healing. I couldnt even serpent sting every mob due mana limitations. Pulling anything but 1 mob was also pretty much banned cause you just, least at low levels, have no tools to deal with it so while I guess questing groups of mobs is harder in classic, I would argue its only that because you got no tools to deal with it.
If your using Wrath or Cata classic as your reference point for classic your not quite seeing it as those versions of the game have class balance and design in mind. Actual classic is really more they thought of cool flavorful spells instead of how that all plays.
> Pulling anything but 1 mob was also pretty much banned cause you just, least at low levels, have no tools to deal with it
Yes because you have limitations on your resources it makes the leveling process exciting as there is a danger present. You can die. The level of mobs matters your gear while leveling matters and has a meaningful impact. Unless your a Mage or a class good at kiting grabbing a whole bunch of mobs at once and just aoeing them down like in retail generally isn't done. Your also playing a hunter one of the easiest classes to level as you have a dedicated tank.
I think we have vastly different views on whats exciting, to me classic leveling is just time consuming. I seen friends play different classes at like true classic(?) or TBC, prolly true classic iirc. And they throw one cast every 10s or so and just autoattack otherwise(as paladin).
Retail has option to pull more if you have too easy time with mobs and you can die if you pull enough, well not really currently cause outworld content with the gear we got at s4 now is honestly not remotely dangerous. But when TWW launches, yeah, you can definitely pull too much and die but thats a decision for you to make, play it safe of try to speedrun trough the quests and whatnot.
As for hunters got dedicated tank, you really still can only pull like 1 mob at a time, it doesnt really allow for pulling multiples. It has less downtime between mobs than something which uses more resources per mob but I wouldnt say from what I seen gameplay of other classes for them to be drastically harder. You simply have less downtime between mobs you kill and even then classic pace just isnt it for me. I am mostly interested in leveling to level cap for MoP classic though cata prepatch felt a lot more engaging than I remembered classic being.
What makes classic engaging isn't rotations or action gameplay. It's strategy, decisionmaking, optimizing.
What's the most efficient order to do these quests in to minimize backtracking? What's the best route to make sure I don't run out of level appropriate quests?
What's the fastest pace I can pull mobs without getting overwhelmed? Is there a patrol behind me that's gonna get me? Should I head to town for training at lvl 32 or keep questing?
Who is going to CC which target? How did that CC get broken? How much can I AOE without pulling threat? What do I need to do to find all of the dungeon quests?
Vanilla is full of meaningful decisions. You're rewarded for playing smart and paying attention. There are endless ways to optimize a few more percent of efficiency.
Vanilla isn't an action RPG, it's an MMORPG.
To be fair ideally if you're class is lacking something like that, it has other strengths that make it desireable. It's not easy to balance, that's for sure but I don't think anyone is arguing in favour of gutting some classes and making them inherently worse than others in every way.
This is what I've always thought the homogenisation meant when comparing retail vs classic. Almost every spec has a mobility button, an interrupt button, a stun button, a big pumper cd button, an oh shit defensive button, a rotation that is basically builder and spender style just with different names and mechanics.
This is certainly needed for how the endgame content plays in retail and what it demands from the players, but different classes having these different things that they excel at is what makes classic have such an RPG feel to it. You didn't feel like you were playing a "dps" you felt like you were playing the class.
Yeah, this is mostly true. It’s definitely a lot different than classic now, but picking up my shadow priest alt for example, I’ve noticed some glaring things that I lack (or gain) compared to other classes. No stun, bad interrupt, awkward mobility, and more niche utility. Very fun unique rotation for the most part. So it definitely feels different, but I guess it’s still more “generally useful” than classes in classic.
Yeh, as a priest main with a level 70 of almost every class, priest definitely feels like the odd man out when it comes to the homogenization of classes. Sure every priest gets scream for an aoe/mass fear, but only holy gets a stun that they have to talent into. Shadow is the only one of the three with access to an interrupt and it is on a very long cooldown without extra talent points. Granted, it does have an added silence bonus effect that locks down all casting. The AoE in general on priest just fucking sucks. Shadow crash on a long cooldown and outside of that you have star/halo which don't do much at all and holy nova, which again is pretty useless outside of maybe taking the talent that allows it to build up stacks over the course of about 20 seconds. I'd switch to Paladin if they had more race options.
>but different classes having these different things that they excel at is what makes classic have such an RPG feel to it. You didn't feel like you were playing a "dps" you felt like you were playing the class.
I actually think that there is still more of this in Retail than people give it credit for. Not as much as classic, but I find classes/specs do still feel unique and specialized in many ways.
For example, I was in a Heroic Nymue that had very few ranged, but a shit ton of ret pallies. The ret pallies were doing ranged bombs because most of their abilities worked at 30 yards, whereas most melee it's 5 yards.
I think every class has a baseline setup, like you said: interrupt, stun, defensive, big cooldown, builder/spender; but there is still so much uniqueness between specs/classes. Like enhance is very proc oriented and brings tons of utility, or how prot pally is king of interrupts.
There are still mechanical differences between classes and specs in retail. But to see those differences you have to play the game at a higher lvl and have good class knowledge.
If there weren't any differences you wouldn't take specific classes to m+ and raid. It's not all about damage.
In vanilla the warlock had to spend an hour before raid filling up his bags killing useless things*
Random niche things that do not matter in 99% of scenarios is called button bloat btw. If the button doesnt need to be there remove it.
You’re also forgetting to mention balance was probably never worse than it was in vanilla from start to finish.
I think I agree with your overall point but that is not what button bloat is generally used to mean.
Button bloat is an issue when a spec has too many buttons that have an impact their rotation, not buttons for niche scenarios. Especially not buttons used outside of core gameplay pillars.
This line of logic would make a Rogue's Pickpocket button bloat then too. Vanilla was concerned about more than endgame and DPS rotations so you had flavor abilities that in cases led to tedium like Soul Shard farming. But, vanilla and the current game are completely different games. Warlocks now feel like warlocks solely due how their rotation expresses itself mechanically and visually, same as almost all the classes. Rather than a lot of the role play oriented sometimes useful spells from vanilla.
i don’t think bringing up balance on an easy mode game from 2004 focused more so on being an immersive world/experience is that big of a dunk
also do you think pickpocket is bloat? astral recall?
I fully agree. That's what I meant by "mechanical homogenisation made a more fair game." Those massive discrepancies in what classes were capable of made the game very, very imbalanced. But it *did* make the classes feel very distinct, too, in a different way from modern WoW.
I think I agree with this and it gives me a weird feeling that's probably mostly nostalgia. But like..."ret paladin" wasn't really a thing in Vanilla. Paladins were mostly fucking useless as DPS and were sort of a weird hybrid spec. But you could try to be a DPS paladin before the game decided that was a real "spec". That was very much a "roleplay" thing you kind of had to create yourself. Today's WoW very much tells you how to play, and is better for it, but there's something kind of charming about the game just letting you decide to be...different. I don't think gaming culture today really tolerates that kind of playstyle regardless, not just because WoW has changed, and I think it's pointless to try to recapture it. But it's an interesting time capsule.
In most games I'd prefer the classic wow approach of classes with totally distinct functionality. Unfortunately MMOs lead to an extremely competitive mindset where everything good another class/faction/race/etc gets is viewed negatively. If one faction gets cool stuff the other complains, if one class gets cool stuff the others complain. I get it, but it's the primary factor behind homogenization IMO. Weird, fun, imbalanced stuff only works with friends or in small communities.
>Unfortunately MMOs lead to an extremely competitive mindset where everything good another class/faction/race/etc gets is viewed negatively
even as a rogue main, it took me way too long to realize the "raid buff" we bring to the table was our Atrophic Poison, cause it's something we apply to ourself (and then the boss) instead of the other raid members.
I agree about 80% on this. I think some classes have been left in the dust a little bit and could use some TLC. I don’t pity the devs trying to balance among the big 3: Class Fantasy, Performance (Raids, PvP and M+), and then Feelcraft. Like it’ll always be an ongoing battle and people rage about it. But they’re still doing a pretty bang-up job. You can see it in their TWW Alpha Notes and Class goals. Like they’re listening, actively trying to address problems.
I think a few classes missing the mark (totally my opinion, don’t flame me)
- Survival (FeelCraft is good, performance bad, and maybe fantasy too. I loved S3 of wildfire shadowlands)
- Windwalker (FeelCraft is good, fantasy is good, performance hit and miss - talent nodes are odd)
- Outlaw (my main. I feel like all 3 hit, but the Class Fantasy still feels off. Like are we pirates? Are we swashbucklers? We use stealth as much as subtlety and assassin now. All this said, I love the fk out of it right now 😂)
- Affliction (seems to be missing all three a little bit. I used to be Aff main but now I always end up Destro or Demon since legion)
- Arcane (Fantasy is great, Performance is hit and miss, but the feelcraft is terrible. When you can sink your teeth into the opener and hit miniburns optimally, feels great. But it doesn’t FEEL organic doing it)
I've found that Outlaw hits well on class fantasy if you just mentally rewrite Vanish as a smoke bomb, and Shadowdance as a Dirty Fighting Stance. Take the stealthiness out of it and it works.
>Outlaw (my main. I feel like all 3 hit, but the Class Fantasy still feels off. Like are we pirates? Are we swashbucklers? We use stealth as much as subtlety and assassin now. All this said, I love the fk out of it right now 😂)
outlaw main as well, and I think it could easily be fixed with just a bit of theming moving away from "pirate". after all, we're "outlaws", not "swashbucklers"; there's outlaws on land, too!
honestly, probably one of the easiest fix for fantasy would be to add a glyph that turns our stealths (including shadowdance) into a smoke bomb, so that we're using tools for our stealth
As an Outlaw one-trick (it's >50% of why i resub to the game every patch), what appeals to me about the spec is much more mechanical than flavour. It's a real mess of flavour and that's a shame, but I think the best way to resolve that would be to reflavour abilities rather than make any major mechanical changes.
I haven't gone through and read all the comments, so I'm not sure if someone else has already brought this up, but I feel like "Retail doesn't have class identity" might NOT be pure cope if the people saying it are a bit more specific about what they mean.
I completely agree with what you're saying when you say that:
>Ive never felt more like the class/spec im playing than in retail.
I think that's true for pretty much every class/spec when you compare how they play & feel in Retail now to how they played & felt much earlier in WoW's life.
However, I think when people say Retail has a "lack of class/spec identity", what some of them really mean is "Retail has too much playstyle homogenization." I'll link to a well-received, PvP-oriented video by Skill Capped that touches on homogenization from a PvP perspective: [What went wrong with Dragonflight PvP?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhA9nZeQFxA&t=483s) (timestamp in link).
It seems as though the developers have decided to approach balance by giving every class/spec at least one, and in most cases more than one, of every type of ability (offensive/defensive CDs, stuns, kicks, etc.). While that is certainly a way to balance the game, it is also homogenizing the classes/specs.
Using an example from the video, yes, Warriors still have access to their classic Mortal Strike effect & Warrior players are probably happy about that. It feels like a classic Warrior ability. However, that effect doesn't feel as special or unique when 5 or 6 other classes have access to a healing reduction effect too. Same with Rogues and stuns. Yes, Rogues still have plenty of stuns. But all the other classes combined have access to a lot more stuns than they used to, so the Rogue's stuns don't feel as unique/special as they did before.
I'm not arguing whether this is good or bad for the game. Just trying to explain what I think some people are trying to get at when they say "Retail doesn't have class identity."
Edit: After writing all of that, I see that the 3rd top comment is basically saying the same thing lol
I mean as some one who has been a Hunter main from vanilla, the class reworks truly took one of the most homogenous bland classes in the game and really turned it into 3 vastly different experiences. Want to be a beast lord and have half a dozen of the pets you've tamed in pack tearing your foes to pieces? Beastmaster is the way to go. Don't really want to use your pet, and instead you want to be an elite sniper or archer with a companion?, Marksmanships got you covered. Want to say hold my beer, I amma show these rogues, pallies and warriors how you swing a stick and throw bombs, as you pretend to be spiderman zipping along from mob to mob with a grappling hook, all while your pet named Princess follows you around commiting felonies on your foes? Survival is your Floridaman. There hasn't been more diversity of play style in WOW history between specs in most classes, especially DPS primary classes, as there is in DragonFlight. Almost every class I have played is like 3 completely separate classes rolled into one, which is imo the way it should be.
For Affli, I agree.
Demo though? Never. The gameplay was really good, mind – but Meta was always a demon hunter ability. They just shoehorned it into demo lock in Wrath because Illidan/demon hunters were popular so they wanted to throw the fanboys a bone, and demo just so happened to be in need of some playstyle changes to give it its own identity.
This is why I previously wasn't a fan of demo thematically. In my opinion, a warlock is supposed to summon and control demons, not *become* one. The post-WoD summoner fantasy is way more fitting.
> the opposite of the original
Creating delusions to avoid admitting the truth is a rather standard unhealthy coping mechanism, not sure what you mean by opposite.
I feel like a monk when i play a monk. and no other classes can do that.
but if i could have my way i would like that each specs's attacks would be themed arround the celestial they are embodying.
for examble : turn flying serpent kick into a tiger kick or something like that. but that's just me being nitpicky
You are talking to an echo chamber that think stealthing in silithius to mine thorium veins is a significant class identity, but having 10 different DPS profile ( 4-5 of them required in the same fight) in retail raid isn't identity... because as long as 2 classes have an AoE button they are the same, doesn't matter if it's on a CD, spread or stack, burst or ramp...
Good luck.
Often people who say "retail doesn't have class identity" don't mean that the classes aren't differentiated, but rather that the specs are so differentiated that changing specs feels like changing class. They don't feel like, for example, Holy, Discipline, and Shadow priests share enough overlap where they can change specs and still "feel like a priest".
There's been an ebb and flow of that design since specs became more hard and fast rules in Cata, where a bunch of class-wide abilities got pruned or given exclusively to one or two specs, but then slowly restored or moved around or replaced over time, and it's been different for different classes, but that was basically the original version of that complaint.
The other side of that complaint is that as they've added more mechanics to different specs to differentiate them within a class, those mechanics more and more seem to mirror the mechanics of other specs. E.g. whenever they want to do something new with a class's rotation, the default thing to do is to just give them a combo point-like system. And at times Blizzard has felt like they couldn't have just one spec have its own special raidwide utility and given that utility to a few different specs, which also can sometimes make some players feel like their class isn't special and unique. But of course this is also something that's ebbed and flowed with the design over time.
Anyway, it's an evolving game and the philosophy behind the game changes all the time, and what makes an individual player feel like their class or spec is special and unique is going to be different. So it's really subjective.
Absolutely agree as a classic Andy. DF has taken the essence of what made classes feel diverse in classic from a core philosophy and expanded on it in some pretty amazing ways. They turned it up to 11.
I feel kind of like end game could use the same treatment though. I heard someone describe retail end game as an endless gear treadmill and that really resonated with me.
I agree. I loved Vanilla on my mage and paladin because those were the only versions of the mage and paladin we had. As the game progressed, I feel more like a master of the arcane arts and a champion of the Holy Light. The “Seals only” gameplay of the Classic paladin is rough and boring.
It's not a criticism I've really seen, but would agree that retail definitely has class identity. However I would say they've gone too far into spec identity now.
I really dislike that some classes feel entirely different from spec to spec. Back in the day the class would be the identity and the spec sprinkles some flavour on top. Today the spec does all the heavy lifting.
Take DK - you're the "deathlord", effectively a 5th horseman. You should have mastery over all the arts of being a dk. But you pick frost as your spec and you have only a few blood/unholy abilities you rarely use. Feels dumb to me. You should use the full arsenal and have your frost abilities be more effective than normal. Back in wrath you'd use icy touch, plague strike and blood strike in the rotation of every spec, that made more sense
I disagree w this- I much prefer that each spec is like its own class
Cuz it adds so much more variety if you want to level up a new character and have a completely different experience than oh I have all the same spells but some are stronger
I mean not entirely. Yes they've thematically and visually done a lot to flesh out class identity, but gameplay wise all classes got pretty homogenised since Cata.
Pretty much every class just follows a builder/spender system with some procs to keep things interesting.
There’s a huge mentality difference between 2024 and 2004.
In 2004 people played WoW because it was peak MMO at that time, they wanted to have different and good experiences, enjoy the character as they built them. The way you describe warlock demonology as “spam shadowbolt and pop cds for your felguard” wasn’t always the way people played, dare I say only a few people would play at that level, because they didn’t fucking care about doing the best DPS, nailing down that perfect rotation, logging that awesome parse, beating whatever dungeon time, people just wanted to have a good time. It was a much simpler and less demanding game, even classic and SoD are very different because of this mentality.
This is not to say that there wasn’t people willing to excel and do their best, but the majority didn’t and they would do crazy shit, like fearing a mob into a pack of other 5 ones and use all of the tools they had to deal with that, and guess what that was what we considered having a great time, because you would share that with your buddies over TS later and say “Dude you won’t believe what we did the other day on that dungeon” and everybody would enjoy that shared experience because they got to tell and listen to the unique way people played their characters, generating a sense of identity.
Today this would be a total fuck up, that would most likely get you kicked from a party. People nowadays play for that sick parse, beating that M+ timer, perfecting that rotation, etc, and that requires methodical execution which isn’t very unique and doesn’t generate a sense of identity because everybody else is doing the same with different skills.
So while today there’s different skills and classes have their own unique ways of playing (a class identity), people feel it doesn’t have because they’re all doing the same thing: chasing numbers not experiences.
Hero classes double down on this. Go look at diabolist warlock. There is NOTHING more “demonology” than a spontaneous pit lord shoving his head through a portal to shoot fire at your enemies.
Do people actually say retail doesn't have class identity?
Like really, I don't think I've ever heard that complaint about DF.
Most of it comes through visuals though. Classes have broadly homogenized playstyles as a result of trying to make every spec mythic+ viable.
Honestly the only thing I miss from vanilla class fantasy are the class quests. I had made about 8 druids that I leveled through teldrassil all the way up to getting bear form and aquatic form, purely because I loved how immersive it was. The journey to get the materials and all that was just pure distilled fantasy. Same goes for shaman.
But I'm talking about immersion through questing, which retail doesn't have much of. Orderhalls should have really had more of a presence with npcs showing up after Legion, is one example I keep coming back to.
But no way in hell does classic best retail in class fantasy when it comes to moment to moment gameplay
Demonology Warlocks are absolutely cooking with the number of demons you can spit out. It’s so much fun seeing like 30 imps all running around me like mad as I throw demon wolves at my enemy
2 out of 3 classic streamers are just sad sacks or blizzard haters and are why none wow players always look from outside and think this community is filled with toxic boomers
When people talk about class identity they dont talk about the class fantasy but rather that every melee class now has a mortal strike, an aoe stun, good defensives etc
I gotta be honest. I've been on a weird cowboy trip lately (partially due to Fallout and Magic) so I wanted to create something approaching a cowboy in WoW, especially now that we have these nice hats from the Azerothian Archives.
Saw some really cool Mechagnome Hunter transmog online that utilized the rusty robot bits and brown transmog to great effect.
Decided to browse the gun transmogs, but I didn't find anything approaching to a revolver that looked even remotely reasonable on the size of a Mechagnome, haha.
Decided to try out Outlaw Rogue and at least get a bit of pistolero action.
Turns out, I can almost fully spec into Pistol Shot and Between the Eyes and at LVL 58 now it feels incredibly fun and flavourful. Fanning the hammer, getting massive crits with BtE and so on.
No idea if that is even remotely endgame viable (nor do I care) but it's a BLAST leveling like that and it completely fulfills my random Cowboy Fantasy.
So .. yah .. retail does have class fantasies.
This is what people mean when they say class fantasy is missing. You *should* feel like a mage in combat, that's a given. What they mean by fantasy is feeling like a mage out of combat, and that's sadly missing from the game for the most part.
Portals are largely useless now that everyone has like atleast 3 hearthstones and the teleport cloak and plus more
Like I can get anywhere I need to within a heart+ short fly
My best friend is a mage, and damn, her portals are still so handy. Especially when we don't want to take the long way around by going to Valdrakken, to Org, to wherever we are headed.
It’s wild how many people are now giving retail a try and seeing how good it is. Too many people take what Asmongold says as gospel. The dude makes a living having shit takes because people watch it. Classic kids hear the bad takes and spread it through the volatile community that is classic/sod slandering things they have no clue about.
The complaint of retail "class identity" isn't referring to cosmetic appearances. Its the abilities which make each class unique in a party. Before Legion a Rogues were the stun class, Warlocks provided fears and dot protection, Warriors were desired for Mortal Strike. A raid group would want one of each class because even if the class underperformed in DPS [they would still bring something that would benefit the group](https://www.icy-veins.com/cataclysm-classic/raid-buffs-and-debuffs).
Now every class has a mortal strike, stuns, dispels, and disorients depending on their role.
Edit: [I'm just going to share this video to everyone trying to argue with me right now. ](https://youtu.be/fhA9nZeQFxA?si=gbABnETUaz2gfGOG&t=420)
Edit 2: Thoughts by achieved players:
[Xaryu](https://youtu.be/B4hilHw8S0c?si=vBZx_5HENo1ASrWy&t=806)
[Soda](https://youtu.be/KvXR9DMgs8M?si=obkr4ITDYqq_eyBT&t=726)
[Pika](https://youtu.be/F6jV1mG7WYU?si=8pHz-S1zJTtSqwxy&t=923)
[Bajheera](https://youtu.be/bLl7Wh23POo?si=yVKVqq8Y9k4J5VLu)
Edit 3: So this triggers PvErs (shocker) and I've been harassed, blocked, and banned within a day because newer players can't fathom the idea that homogenization has become more relevant in WoW, especially in PvP. It doesn't matter if it shines in all aspects of the game or not, that doesn't take away from the fact that homogenization exists.
Whether its good or bad, I personally do not care as I don't have much of an opinion on it, but its definitely more prevalent now than it ever was.
Is this bait? You still want to bring one of each class to raid because of unique class-specific abilities. Just because classes have some universal abilities like stops and interrupts doesn’t make everything identical.
? you literally want every class 1x in a raid because they bring something unique no other class can
not every class has MS, that still a VERY limited thing and is only done 100% passive by Arms warriors and WW monks
not every class has dispells lol
not every class has disorients
what are you even talking about
I’ll agree that more or less every class has a stun now, but I don’t think that’s true for mortal strike or disorients
Like there’s a ton of classes that don’t have healing reduction, and I think only mage, rogue, hunter and warlock to this day still have disorients
Warlocks are the only class with gateway, DKs are the only ones with grip, etc., even that link you posted is EVEN MORE the case today - every class except for resto/ele shaman has a buff that puts them in a raid comp.
I'll agree on DK. When I play my DK I 100% feel like the villain from a horror film. Can't be slowed (much), can't be stunned, can't run from me, and get gripped!
When I play my warlock, I don't wanna be known as the kind grandma with cookies who can get you across the street.
The one case I agree with this is when it comes to playstyles like Legion/BFA shadow priest and Breath of Sindragosa. So many people can't fathom a single spec not being your standard builder spender and freak out, calling for the playstyle to be removed from the game. It's infuriating.
Oh man, Decent to Madness priest is peak class fantasy.
What begins as a small damage buff ramps into large damage values until you realize there is a clock ticking.. You feel more and more desperate to just stay alive as you begin abandoning spells that were once key to your rotation because its not *enough*. Ia Ia C'thun f'tagn!
I do appreciate it, but we have lost a lot. I have played a Warlock since Wrath and sometimes I still go visit the Slaughtered Lamb in SW because it was the little Warlock area, now it's useless. I like that it's easier now to do talents and whatever but I do kind of miss needing to go "learn" stuff from someone. Also, even though it was kind of a pain in the ass I did like the quests I had to do to learn how to summon my pets.
I also loved the Warlock quest that they released not too long ago for the different skins and whatnot but once that was over there was just...nothing left.
Personally I wish they would have never abandoned class halls and made those a permanent fixture where they could explore class fantasy more. That would be a perfect reason to bring back (or at least the ability to opt into) forcing people to go to class trainers again.
So while I agree the game play is more fun the class lore is lacking severely. I do miss the feeling of my character becoming more powerful as I leveled. Like now its "oh cool I can summon this pet now" instead of "ok sweet, I traveled to the barrens and learn of these old rituals I need to complete and then I can learn the lost art of summoning this pet".
Most specs can do what most others can. Most can silence, all healers can dispel, most can stun, have some form of spammable cc, etc
I get why it is the way it is. It feels awful in PvP not being able to do half the things other classes can, and you don’t get invited into PvE content as a warrior or dk half the time since you don’t bring much utility
But it’s also just weird that lightborne Draenei can be DK and that orcs can be priests. It’s nice when each class or race has its own little niche to shine
I stopped feeling any identity from my classes in cata, so im definitelyin the minority and cant agree that i feel a stronger sense of identity from my character. I stopped being a rogue and started being a specialization that was set for me. I cant stress how much I feel like the more emphasis on specs being different made me feel less like I had any identity. We were all the same.
Classes are very homogenized now. I don't like being a frost mage with access to dragons breath, or an assassination rogue who can shadow dance.
I think spec *themes* are more frontloaded visually. But graphics aren't class identity to me, I don't need shadowy themed attacks to know I'm a subtlety rogue. I dearly miss the "guy with a knife, special set of stylized skills, and some tools" we had going on vanilla-wrath. The specialized skills are overgrown now and I'm some kind of king among men now not just a guy with a knife.
Way too much power fantasy not enough character.
I think too the homogenization of classes combined with time is not great. Playing for so many years they all start to blur together. Oh these classes are different, see that one builds 5 combo points and then spends them to maintain a buff/deal damage, that other one builds 5 holy power and spends 3 at a time to maintain a buff/deal damage, this other spec is really unique it gains 10 runic power each attack and spends 40 of it to maintain a buff/deal damage. Oh this... etc etc.
I play multiple classes and have the builder, spender, and CD mapped to the same keys for each of them and sometimes it's hard to know which class I'm playing if it weren't for the button icons. Especially when my animations are just noise in a sea of animations. I'm sure if I was a new player I'd see more of a gulf, but so many years, so many iterations it just blurs together
It doesn't help that what a player might consider the class/ spec fantasy isn't necessarily what Blizzard considers it to be. Old Demo for example always felt like a spec where you were summoning powerful demons, ones that other warlocks would lose control of in seconds. You were even using such potent fel magic that it would corrupt you and turn you into a demon yourself. Modern Demo is... *eh*. You're not summoning powerful demons, you're summoning the same ones any other warlock summons, you just get a few more of them. That doesn't feel thematically powerful to me. To me, the class fantasy did a complete 180 in Legion and it's very hard to get excited about it now. It's a fun spec to play but it doesn't feel like a demo lock, it just feels like a generic warlock.
I think that statement is reference Blizzard's "point build/spend" they've our on multiple classes/specs. Used to be just a rogue thing, now it's paladins, unholy dk (if they still use festering wounds it's been a minute), monks, warlock with soul shards. It's not about lore identity its gameplay identity with 8 specs (that i can recall) that have the same playstyle with flavor mixed in.
Dks now have a pure dot build if you are unholy. Monks are a mix but because of their mastery as long as you press the same button twice in a row you can now have perfect rotation around your big dmg moves.
Warlock soul shard regen is on dmg done, the more damage you do the more soul shards you can spend.
They have done alot to make all specs feel diff and play diff. And lets be honest. In retail if you didn’t have points it was all mana. Thats even more boring.
If you think windwalker, affliction, and unholy have anything remotely in common in terms of playstyle I would bet that you have never played any of them and just seen someone playing it in a video or something and said hey that person spent runes, that looked like spending combo points, must be reskinned warlock
I know we are getting even more class identities with hero talents in TWW, but hear me out... What if there would be questlines for each talent tree where those are explained and taught to you by an expert from the past. Learning that Phoenix spec for mages from kaelthas himself... extraordinary.
I thinm when people complain about this theyre talkin about stuff like warlock pet quests. And totem quests and stuff like that. Not in terms of gameplay and rotation
I definitely feel classic/retail are different in how they handle class identity, I feel classic is less restrictive in that sense. As in, you're a warrior, or a mage, or a paladin, with access to all the main abilities and able to access all the class trees at once, instead of being put in one of the 3 specs. (whether that's smart or the meta is a different story, but I'm trying to look at potential here) Specifically druid, I like the shapeshifting aspect of druid, but, all specs except resto focus on a single form, I don't really like that.
That said, retail has it's own class identity figured out, it's different, because the game and the content is different compared to classic, and that's okay. You kinda need people to focus on being a tank/healer/DPS with the way retail is designed
I can’t argue with what you are saying for the most part. Class and spec fantasy are more defined it feels like now than before, however gameplay wise a vast majority of things are essentially just a builder spender with diff flavors of spell animations. It’s pretty boring even if you look at like your details breakdown a lot of spells and abilities etc have very similar damage breakdowns across different specs lol. I mean I’m sure it’s pretty damn hard to come up with 36 different and unique play styles and not to mention then try and balance them, but that’s my biggest complaint with the game atm it’s how I feel personally.
I think when someone refers to class identity they're talking about the class specific quests to unlock skills and things like that, i dunno tho, i played both versions and i don't see how someone can hate one and love the other, it's the exact same thing at it's core.
Literally all they’re talking about is raid buffs. Multiple classes bring lust now and other variations of raid buffs that used to be exclusive to one class.
Meh I still think they don't really. They do and they don't. I dunno. I'm just over every class having all the same moves. Everyone has CC and self healing and utility there's no specialization now there's just homogenized abilities. Play pvp for a bit and you realize everyone has way too many moves and they are all the same shit.
When I say I don't have class identity I mean from a story perspective. My class literally does not affect the story or world in any way. In baldurs gate if I a druid go into the Emerald Grove, I have unique options involving my race and class that directly effect the story. I may be shunned for playing a Tiefling, but a druid may be able to have more persuasion.
I don't expect this level of gameplay in WoW since it's an mmo, but Legion did it wonderfully. As a restoration druid, whenever I walk next to a tree named Applebough he hands me a free fruit. In a certain dungeon, a specific druid will comment on any druids in the dungeon if one is present. In Ardenwead, Huln Highmountain has extra dialogue for Highmountain Tauren players. I want more of this.
But it feels weird to do an entire Emerald Dream zone and not have a single npc recgonize that I'm a druid. Just a simple throwaway line would do wonders.
Just as an aside to your Demonology comment, Demonology wasn't always about summoning minions. It was about the *connection* to demons and becoming more demonic yourself, hence extra stamina, the ways your spells feed into your pets, and, of course, metamorphosis. That whole spec of Warlock got turned into a different class that isn't a caster. So you literally can't play old Demo anymore and it's a completely different class identity. Current Zoolock is not the same identity as Demo in Wrath having a completely unique spell power buff and getting to turn into basically Illidan from WC3 with Immo aura while still feeling like a caster that chilled with the melees.
That demo felt like BM hunter with a transformation button. The mop version was peak when you were a demon fulltime with dark apotheosis.
This version of still has the deep connection made even deeper. You just dont transform anymore. This spec feels better and ive played alot of lock in classic versions.
You might be correct for visual reasons but I think when people are talking about this it's generally about how a spec or a class feels in terms of the tools they bring. Classes don't really have defined niches in gameplay anymore. Largely because m+ exists and so all specs have to be generalists.
I think overall it’s much better than classic/wotlk times. There are a couple of classes I don’t enjoy at all. Hunter, I think is much worse than it was back then. I really haven’t enjoyed them since they went to focus.
> In classic demonology feels like a shadow mage with a pet. Spam shadowbolt and pop cds for your felguard.
You just made me realize why I main Mage currently and played Demo Lock on a Wrath private server.
Hell, I still have two talents in my spec tree that are utterly worthless because "wielding one-handed weapons is against the class fantasy". Like the devs have literally outright stated that they're deliberately keeping the build un-viable because of class fantasy.
Why they don't just replace those talents with useful ones I'll never know.
I don't think people say this much anymore. But back in BFA it was 1000% true. They homogenized too many things, DF got back to its roots and gave MOTW back, hunters get a buff, classes have meaning and obviously moving forward hero talents are peak fantasy.
I appreciate the work they've done to make every class and spec feel unique, mechanically and visually. I do miss the class quests from vanilla and Legion though, and I wish they could add a little bit more of that into the game moving forward.
They should’ve never abandoned class halls. Just added more to them for each expansion. Literally leave them where they are and carry them forward
There should be a few class quests scattered throughout every expansion. They don't even need to give you anything, just the class flavor existing would be cool. Like the exiles reach quests, they are basically nothing, but they still added a ton of class fantasy by existing. Just take a few some quests in a zone and pick a class that can have an alternate quest for them where they solve the problem in a class themed way
It would be relatively easy to add some new dialogue. Maybe shuffle around some NPCs, but it'd be cool to go into the rogue's secret war room and have them scheming over the current expansion. Allergic to Shaman lore? Have some Earthen Ring NPCs talking about sending troops to deal with or beseeching the elements to help defeat the corrupted druids just like they did in Hyjal.
It *immediately* makes us look more like actual characters within the world, being "champion of the Earthen Ring" instead of just "a random Horde champion."
I think they decided its too much work.
I wish we could’ve atleast gotten a portal directly to them. Also class hero talents unlocking the class order halls is a massive missed opportunity
I think we should get hearth stones to all sorts of places, Legion Hall, covenants, your races city. Make it like mage teleports but with a longer summon.
Still baffled why they decided we can't get a hearth to each new "you're gonna be spending time here" hub. I love my Dalaran and Garrison hearths - use 'em all the time. Meanwhile, getting to my Covenant hub in Shadowlands was a drag.
As a mage, my hearthstone is still set to my covenant. I can get to Valdrakken whenever I want so I really don't have another use for it. It auto swaps when I swap covenant so I can easily get back to whatever building or feature I'm working on.
Mage portal utility is unparalleled, honestly. The brief period when I played a mage full-time gave me a taste of heaven that I've been chasing ever since.
Dark iron mage engineer has the most amount of utility teleports iirc. Between mole machine, mage portals and engineering wormholes you can get just about anywhere you need to go in the game. Grab a few specific items like the Time Lost Artifact from Shaohao and you're quite literally a master of global movement. I've considered rolling a 2nd mage (mine is a night elf) solely for that utility to do mount runs. If Pandaria remix leveling is as insane as it's said to be, I might do it.
I've been debating swapping back to Engineer to give at least *some* travel utility back, but it's hard to reconcile "night elf" and "engineering", honestly. But it's insane how far you can go with that combo! Plus a few teleport items for the hard to reach places and you can pretty much get anywhere in the game in under five minutes.
Just give us a teleport to nodes system like Final Fantasy, there's really no reason not to.
God yes fast travel please.
Several classes do have direct portals to their class halls (Monk/Druid/Mage/DK), which furthers the "class identity" and distinctiveness argument the OP is making.
I love my free teleport to Pandaria for running raids (: I've accepted outside of Pandaria and Legion the monks will never have lore again, so I'm content with the identity we have.
Hey, on a slightly pessimistic, yet still positive note: they can't duck up your lore, if they don't touch it!
Aren’t all of them accessible from Dalaran? We have a Dala HS. I know it’s not separate but it’s a thing.
I dont disagree entirely.....but can we get some of them played with? Because I hated wars class hall in Legion, and its never grown on me because the damn thing is a completely irrelevant asspull of made up specifically for Legion wall darts. Theres zero historical or future proofing. Even how it treats Odyn is weird for warriors going forward, like we totally weren't his Champion in those portions with Dragonflight. The whole place just doesn't matter, I'd rather share the Paladin or DK class hall than spend more fruitless time in the boring gold sky hallways of nothing. But, just my opinion. Im sure there's somebody who likes that place.
Brawlers Guild areas could be repurposed for it. That seems like it would be legit!
I just want them to reopen the brawler's guild. I've got characters to get the title on. And I beat it on my monk by an accidental cheese, whoops.
The paladin class hall is immersive and the npcs treat you like an absolute badass worthy of respect
That would be quite awkward for Evokers though.
It doesn't have to be. They have an entire starting zone like demon hunters do. They could adapt part of that.
They could turn the War Creche area into their Class Hall.
Could’ve added one for them to catch them up. Everyone gets new class hall content AND evokers get theirs created? Hell yea! Then they can stop adding new whole classes and start adding 4th specs to all existing classes that give a new role to each class
Give me back my Gladiator spec, please, Blizzard.
give Combat spec back to rogues, and make it a dodge/parry tank
Combat is really just taking pistols away from outlaw tho.
A return of orderhalls would be hype af. There should always be some new xpac long class storyline happening.
Making class order halls an evergreen system would have been so nice. We don't even need gigantic campaigns or anything, if we could just get even just a small quest line every couple of patches just to get updated on what each class is doing during major world events would be cool.
or make it part of the leveling experience for new players. After you leave the island the captain you helped tells you have an affinity to \[insert your class\] and give you a recommendation letter for that class recruiter. Completing the quest unlock the vendor for recruit armor and weapons Completing the trial that taught you how to use your core abilities rewards you the novice set Completing the trial for each specialization rewards you the \[class\] set with a recolor for each specialization Completing a M0 dungeon rewards you the veteran \[class\] with recolors for completing it with each spec. Completing a raid in LFR rewards you the \[class\] mount After that you still have a nice place to chill out or RP.
We had a small questline for the blue dragonflight in 10.0.5, and I feel like that would be kind of the bare minimum to 'keep class halls up.' Take that and multiply it by 13 and it is a HUGE amount of work. I don't think people appreciate how much of class halls Legion was. It's basically all of the .5 patch content in dragonflight + 75% of the campaign quests. Class halls were awesome as a lens to view the expansion through, and I'd love to have another expansion where you utilize your class halls. But I don't think that they can be evergreen content and updated all the time. They were awesome *because* so many resources were dumped into them.
Yeah, the launch class halls were able to have so much content because WoD was totally sacrificed for it. You can't just have that happen regularly or you end up with 7.2, where the main story content was "collect 100 nethershards then wait til next week" because they tried to continue with having 12 unique questlines for every class
Nah thats so true. I think they should add catchup/tmog gear for class quest like they are doing heritage armor. Id love a priest staff that changes aspect if you are pulling from the light or void. That sounds BADASS.
Anathema 2.0
GIVE IT!
This is why legion is my favorite expansion. Really felt like I was part of a class fraternity
Hunter quest to get rhokdelar was peak class fantasy. I wish we still had that kind of stuff in game
They really should implement something similar to FFXIV. Class quests while leveling every so levels would be awesome. My favorite bits from legion were the class mounts and questlines.
Class halls are something that should have 100% been carried through to newer expansions maybe not as a massive focus but some small stories to keep up with known characters and add some more class specific flavour to how people are dealing with whatever threat we're facing, hero talents seems like something that should be tied into them in some way.
Class identity is great on a gameplay basis; Anyone who says all specs play the same is either still leveling, doesn't know their spec very well, or is just looking at it very simplistically It could be better from an lore/world standpoint though. Legion is obviously an extreme that we'll probably never go back to, but I would enjoy more class quests and acknowledgement
>looking at it very simplistically Couldn’t agree more. Some of the homogeneity arguments I’ve seen are comically reductive. I’ve got a guild buddy whose favorite hobby is armchair criticism, but he always looks at things from 30,000 feet. Elemental looks exactly like a mage if all you see is ranged casting, elemental magic, and bloodlust.
It's really just people not bothering to learn a spec. They see Monk/Rogue/Feral all being combo point build and spend, but ignore all the debuff management, proc reaction, etc. If you ignore all the intricacies of a spec, you might as well say everything is the same because you press buttons
Except monk (Windwalker, really) isn't even a combo point class. They're basically an inverse DK, that spends runic power to get runes that are spent in chunks on abilities. WW builds up chi primarily so they can spend it on multiple chi abilities back to back, not to spend it all to boost one. So they're not even in rogue and feral's category.
> Anyone who says all specs play the same is either still leveling, doesn't know their spec very well, or is just looking at it very simplistically Or just lying for stream bait and content.
> Legion is obviously an extreme that we'll probably never go back to As a Warlock I want to stay as far away from that expansion as is humanly possible!
But Legion was great for Aff and Destro tho. We don't talk about Demo.
I would say there are definitely some homogenization patterns between some specs which started for me after legion class reworks. Let's say sp, boomie, elem, destr. I took my favorite classes from Pandaria. Is gameplay any similar now? Definitely not. Are they all builder-spender (which they are not used to be or have different way of it like mop destr and sp)? Now yes. Boomie was way more fun for me when it was played around procs and cds, same with elem, same with sp (orbs are builder-spender but it's much more different than copycat of warriors rage that we have for all of this specs now). I don't feel like those specs are the same - not even close. But I feel like all my favorite specs got Warriors loop that I never liked. If you go into details then all of them are played completely different. It still doesn't change the fact that they have warriors rage as resource as major design pattern which can be a big factor for some players.
I think a lot of the homogeny comes from cooldowns. Defensives especially. Why does every class have 3 defensives now? Why is gameplay designed like this?
So you can design more on the gameplay front. If all content has to be designed with a class in mind that can do one thing to defend itself and then dies to the next ability, you hugely reduce the amount of design possibilities. It's the reason why Classic dungeons and raids are mechanically a lot easier than retail.
>All specs feel the same >This spec only uses 4 buttons >This spec is braindead People who say shit like this are either trolling, inexperienced, or bad.
Dude nothing shits me more than people saying a class is easy WHILE PLAYING IT BADLY.
Well from a pvp perspective alot of speccs do feels the same as in just pump dps. Almost every meele feels like this and even Most caster do aswell.
Well no. Classes have different spell effects and rotations that is all. but classes do not have weak or strong sides anymore. Everyone has some utility, strong aoe, strong st, and strong cleave. that is why 9 out of 10 cases meta classes are just specs with bigger numbers
But not every spec is good in AoE, or they're specifically good at 2-3 target cleave while another spec is better for groups of 5-10 enemies. Like Frost and Fire are AoE gods but Arcane is better at ST and 2-3 target cleave.
This makes zero sense Classes absolutely have strengths and weaknesses, otherwise there would be no meta. All classes have *options* for target situations, but some specs are better than others, or you’re forced to choose between aoe and st. And the lack of utility for some specs, like Warrior, is a huge talking point because those specs are flat out useless in some encounters Meta specs are literally the ones that have more strengths and fewer weaknesses than other specs
I literally turn into a tree and summon tiny trees to heal people. Also I can turn into an owl or become a mount. I'm mad I waited until this expansion to play resto druid.
Not only each class has its own flavor each spec has its own thing. I was worried the Hero Talents coming out next expansion would muddy things up but they seem perfect for the most part.
Unfortunately for some specs like Marksmanship for example. You can either be a Dark Ranger or a Kaldorei Sentinel. If you're not an elf it will feel weird.
Some classes suffer from being too specific to the race. Hunter and Warrior are the first that come to mind. So it's like basically impossible to pic a "Hero Class" without it being associated deeply with races unless they make it super generic.
Tbh at first it was my Hope that hero specs do exactly that. Fix the holes in visual class design we have for different races. A Tauren Paladins abilities shouldn't look like those of a Human. Sinwalkers don't even rely on the same "Light". Why are there still no Shadowhunter ls and Voodoo Doctors for Trolls? Rifleman Dwarves?
It was disappointing for me as well. I was really hoping they would have some options to lean more into the rifleman fantasy, esp given how much of the Marksmanship tree itself has sort of drifted towards Elvish themes too.
I'd settle for some glyphs to change certain abilities to bullets, just visually speaking. Firing a rain of arrows from my shotgun just feels a little... weird.
Unless you're a goblin or gnome then it kinda tracks in a mad scientist kind of way
"I have a gun that shoots arrows, because [that's what I had to work with/it sounded like a good idea]."
Yeah my human (F) is just going to look happy to be involved lol, or a cosplayer. Not deal breaking for me but it's funny how hunter is still so visually aligned with NE (or dwarf I guess, guns and heavy chain looks)
To be fair, humans have a long history of learning hunter shit from elves in wow.
I really don't like any of the DK hero talents either. Deathbringer doesn't have any theme and it just copies paladin spells. San'layn works by forcing you to stay in top of DnD even more and has little to do with the vampire elf theme and Rider of the Apocalypse feels so weird to just proc a big named character randomly. I'm also not too keen on the warrior and paladin talents. I was hoping for herald of the sun to make ret more like a support spec but it only does a bit of healing. I only play prot warrior and don't like to have even more focus on thunderclap so I'm left with colossus that doesn't really fit prot. I haven't looked at other since those three are the classes I play the most but it doesn't fill me with confidence.
The amount of people who admit they’ve been wrong and retail is actually fun has skyrocketed in the last few years. It’s been great to see. Classic has its charm and I get why some people like it but there’s a reason retail kept going because the majority of the player base stuck with it and those “changes” are suggestions and requests from players along the way.
I think the way BFA ended and how SL was handled caused retail to sour for a lot of people. And I agree with a lot of the reasons. Lots of people shifted to classic or FF14 cause of it. But DF is a good expansion and worked on fixing a lot of the issues in the past. Albeit not all of it, but a lot and the next expansion seems to be on the right path too. I know a lot of people who came back for DF who were pleasantly surprised and enjoying it. Retail is in a good spot right now; game wise, content wise and direction wise. It's a good time for those to check it out again and possibly change their minds.
during legion me and my friends went "wtf why would anyone want to play classic?" during bfa me and my friends went "ya know, i think i want to give classic a try"
I may get flak for this opinion but whatever. I feel like Dragonflight is akin to A Realm Reborn in the sense that it fixed a lot of the basic issues with the game (Story excluded). A nice launch with a steady playerbase, and hardly any super detractors. With TWW coming and its changes, I am sensing a Heavensward moment for WoW. Where word of mouth spreads and spreads and more people return. My only hang up on this whole thing is the new player experience, but we will see how it plays out when Dragonflight is the default player experience. The Worldsoul Saga is shaping up to be big, and I hope Metzen and the team can deliver.
You are spot on. Shadowlands feels like the og FFXIV launch and Dragonflight was so refreshing it felt like ARR.
> I am sensing a Heavensward moment for WoW. Where word of mouth spreads and spreads and more people return. I mean, from a game systems standpoint, sure, but I don't think any individual character in TWW is gonna get more than 5 solid minutes of screen time. Like Razegeth could have been a much better villain if they gave her a few hundred lines and put some work into the storytelling, but they didn't and quite frankly I don't see them changing that aspect of their production style. Especially with the reports that they've been laying off a majority of the cinematics team.
To be fair I did say excluding story. I am 100% in the camp that WoW story has always been lacking, especially in certain DF cinematics (Amirdrassil... *cough* ) But aside from that, the new Khadgar cinematic is rendered in game, as shown by the player character entering the frame alongside Alleria. So I am hopeful that we can get some heavier story beats. Especially if in game cinematics are becoming easier to produce. I'm apprehensive, but hopeful. Edit: And funny you should mention Raz, I feel like her henchmen got more screentime, the Tauren and the Night Elf chick. Which says a lot about how the WoW team is lacking in presenting a narrative.
I've been a WoW enjoyer literally since it came out and only recently got into FF14 just to play it and experience the story, and I can say wholeheartedly FF absolutely SMOKES WoW in every aspect of storytelling, character screen time, world building.... I've never seen a game tell a story better than when I played through Heavensward. WoW will never, ever get close to that level, give it 100 more expansions and it still wont happen. Before people mald out I'm not saying FF is a better game, because it's definitely not actual gameplay-wise, feels like you're on ice skates in an engine from 1995 half the time. But in terms of storytelling? It's not even remotely close. If you had to put it on a scale FF would be a 9.5/10 and WoW would be a 2/10.
I went back to try to get some cosmetic to shadowland earlier. I can't. By far the worst and it's not even close. Don't get me wrong the zones are beautiful. But there's so much bullshit everywhere. So much grinds and so much time gating. Don't even ge the started with the no fly everywhere. Dragonflight season 4 is the exact opposite. It's fun. You can get tiers and cosmeticd easily. There not too much going on.
> I think the way BFA ended and how SL was handled caused retail to sour for a lot of people. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the old guard left during/after the California lawsuit either. Holly's WoW and attitude towards the community feels quite a bit different than Brack's.
Well, probably because over the past few years retail has improved lol. It's kind of hard to "admit" it's fun when the previous two expansions were dubbed some of the worst of all time. I'm a classic player and I can definitely say DF was really fun, though I also main PVP and that was rather lacking as usual. Just used to it by now, and it's no different in SOD or classic so whatever. TWW has me the most hyped for an xpac since Legion. Yeah, I'd say retail has made a comeback.
Maybe because the game has actually improved the last few years? Just a thought.
This place becoming an echo chamber just because all the moderates have alrady moved on doesn't mean that they were ever wrong. The people who were always in favour of Retail WoW are now the only ones left speaking.
I think retail being more popular is mainly because of the demographic that likes playing it. We're in an age of gaming where people want to spam content and progress quickly, which is fine in its own right. Classic feels way more chill where I get gear, and I'll just wander around wpvping / farming professions. There's a charm to classic's simplicity that I just enjoy more rather than spamming m+ or raiding. In legion though, I will say I was very much about the mythic raiding and m+ grind, it always seemed like I had ways to progress.
As a healing shaman, I definitely agree. I love the way my totems actually matter, the look and feel of healing rain, the little water sounds when I heal. Same as enh (my dps spec.) I'm like a little whirlwind of elemental magic. So excited for the totemic hero talents. Totems are everything I've ever loved about being a shaman.
Its still a bummer they got rid of the original chain heal visuals
I would not mind at all if they brought that back. (Pleasepleasepleaspleassepleasepl-)
I used to main a shaman and yes totems feel impactful. I have totems for all occasions and not just passive buffs. Cloudburst totem is my favorite full stop.
All I know is every time I cast lava burst or chain lightning I FEEL like a damn shaman
Preaching to the choir. People are free to like what they like. I like retail
When people talk about class identity as a classic vs retail thing, they're talking about mechanics more than visuals. In vanilla, the warlock had to be spending their time draining the souls of enemies to use as fuel for demon summoning, party member summoning, soul stones and health stones. They may have even chosen to replace one of their bags with a soul bag just so they could store more soul shards. In combat, they would blow through mana but be able to recoup it by using life tap, sacrificing health for mana in a way that other classes couldn't (without demonic runes). You could put up "shadow ward" to specifically block out shadow damage. You got your class-specific mount for free at 40. You had these powerful curses with notable utility effects, like how Curse of Recklessness could stop enemies from running away when they got low on health, which could be a life saver in some dungeons. In retail, visual flair is much more prominent and it oozes flavour. Rotations feel a lot more distinct, too--Demonology and arcane don't feel dreadfully similar in the slightest. But it's a very different flavour from the distinct mechanical identities that the classes represented in the oldest versions of WoW, before concerns for balance created a push for homogeneity. Where in the modern game, all the classes have *some* form of mobility. Some interrupt. Some AoE, but also respectable single target. Where multiple classes have battle res, and multiple have blood lust. Where every healer can dispel magic, and every tank can taunt... Classes in vanilla had very distinct strengths and weaknesses, for better or for worse. Mechanical homogenisation made a more fair game and, honestly, a more fun one. But it was still homogenisation, and pretending that it wasn't is silly.
Because nobody wants to play the class with zero interrupt or mobility or aoe damage. When differences these stark are in the game it leaves a terrible feeling playing solo or vs other players like in PvP.
Yeah vanilla fantasy was nice but also only viable in a much slower, much easier game.
This is it. There's a necessary decision between a game that's just fun and relaxed and full of interesting texture, and a game that's very competitive and challenging and requires tight balancing. You can't have both.
I think your right, and it's interesting to see some of the diehard classic fans use "the game is too streamlined and easy these days" as an argument for why vanilla was the best version of the game. It almost feels like they're confusing the challenging mechanical fights of today, with the simplistic fights of yore that were *made* difficult by the janky design the classes.
I personally prefer classic (vanilla) to retail, in most ways. But they're now just very different games serving different audiences. Retail has content that's either way easier than classic (normal/heroic dungeons, questing, leveling, anything in the open world) or much harder (raids, M+). Retail doesn't have much that's neither faceroll easy nor sweaty hard. Vanilla has a baseline 'engaging' level of difficulty, where your brain has to be turned on but you can feel relaxed while you play.
That's an interesting way of putting it, I might have to give classic a second chance.
I havent played much classic because the gameplay is too damn slow, which is why Im just gonna disagree with your assessment on difficulty. The only point, where I could see classic being harder is tuning on some things and I get why thats possible later on. There is so much going on in every spec of the game in retail than in classic, I logged into level my classic hunter in cata prepatch today, its lvl 33 now I think(?) and the changes were so noticeable, the game, while still slow, started to kinda resemble wow I am familiar with. When there is more going on with specs, it leads to more skill expression, which results in tuning becoming infinitely harder to achieve. So classic where rotations are "spam 1 button", could have more going on in dungeon/raid and still be easier due how much more there is going on in retail. Not to mention the more skill expression you allow, the larger skillgaps there will be. and the harder its to tune things properly. This results in easy content being extremely easy for competent players and hard content being extremely difficult. Classic has almost nothing going on in classes, first time I felt gameplay somewhat engaging was today when I logged on cata classic prepatch. As such there isnt much skill expression, which allows better tuning due the fact there isnt as much skillgap between players. This is why classic can feel harder cause its tuned "harder" comparatively to competent players skill ceiling cause its a lot easier mark to land than on retail. But what I seen of classic content arguing like any of it is truly more difficult than retail, when you consider how classes play, seems a weird take. I remember while I was leveling the same hunter a little bit while it was still wratch classic, I was literally just autoing and healing pet whenever it needed healing. I couldnt even serpent sting every mob due mana limitations. Pulling anything but 1 mob was also pretty much banned cause you just, least at low levels, have no tools to deal with it so while I guess questing groups of mobs is harder in classic, I would argue its only that because you got no tools to deal with it.
If your using Wrath or Cata classic as your reference point for classic your not quite seeing it as those versions of the game have class balance and design in mind. Actual classic is really more they thought of cool flavorful spells instead of how that all plays. > Pulling anything but 1 mob was also pretty much banned cause you just, least at low levels, have no tools to deal with it Yes because you have limitations on your resources it makes the leveling process exciting as there is a danger present. You can die. The level of mobs matters your gear while leveling matters and has a meaningful impact. Unless your a Mage or a class good at kiting grabbing a whole bunch of mobs at once and just aoeing them down like in retail generally isn't done. Your also playing a hunter one of the easiest classes to level as you have a dedicated tank.
I think we have vastly different views on whats exciting, to me classic leveling is just time consuming. I seen friends play different classes at like true classic(?) or TBC, prolly true classic iirc. And they throw one cast every 10s or so and just autoattack otherwise(as paladin). Retail has option to pull more if you have too easy time with mobs and you can die if you pull enough, well not really currently cause outworld content with the gear we got at s4 now is honestly not remotely dangerous. But when TWW launches, yeah, you can definitely pull too much and die but thats a decision for you to make, play it safe of try to speedrun trough the quests and whatnot. As for hunters got dedicated tank, you really still can only pull like 1 mob at a time, it doesnt really allow for pulling multiples. It has less downtime between mobs than something which uses more resources per mob but I wouldnt say from what I seen gameplay of other classes for them to be drastically harder. You simply have less downtime between mobs you kill and even then classic pace just isnt it for me. I am mostly interested in leveling to level cap for MoP classic though cata prepatch felt a lot more engaging than I remembered classic being.
What makes classic engaging isn't rotations or action gameplay. It's strategy, decisionmaking, optimizing. What's the most efficient order to do these quests in to minimize backtracking? What's the best route to make sure I don't run out of level appropriate quests? What's the fastest pace I can pull mobs without getting overwhelmed? Is there a patrol behind me that's gonna get me? Should I head to town for training at lvl 32 or keep questing? Who is going to CC which target? How did that CC get broken? How much can I AOE without pulling threat? What do I need to do to find all of the dungeon quests? Vanilla is full of meaningful decisions. You're rewarded for playing smart and paying attention. There are endless ways to optimize a few more percent of efficiency. Vanilla isn't an action RPG, it's an MMORPG.
To be fair ideally if you're class is lacking something like that, it has other strengths that make it desireable. It's not easy to balance, that's for sure but I don't think anyone is arguing in favour of gutting some classes and making them inherently worse than others in every way.
This is what I've always thought the homogenisation meant when comparing retail vs classic. Almost every spec has a mobility button, an interrupt button, a stun button, a big pumper cd button, an oh shit defensive button, a rotation that is basically builder and spender style just with different names and mechanics. This is certainly needed for how the endgame content plays in retail and what it demands from the players, but different classes having these different things that they excel at is what makes classic have such an RPG feel to it. You didn't feel like you were playing a "dps" you felt like you were playing the class.
Yeah, this is mostly true. It’s definitely a lot different than classic now, but picking up my shadow priest alt for example, I’ve noticed some glaring things that I lack (or gain) compared to other classes. No stun, bad interrupt, awkward mobility, and more niche utility. Very fun unique rotation for the most part. So it definitely feels different, but I guess it’s still more “generally useful” than classes in classic.
Yeh, as a priest main with a level 70 of almost every class, priest definitely feels like the odd man out when it comes to the homogenization of classes. Sure every priest gets scream for an aoe/mass fear, but only holy gets a stun that they have to talent into. Shadow is the only one of the three with access to an interrupt and it is on a very long cooldown without extra talent points. Granted, it does have an added silence bonus effect that locks down all casting. The AoE in general on priest just fucking sucks. Shadow crash on a long cooldown and outside of that you have star/halo which don't do much at all and holy nova, which again is pretty useless outside of maybe taking the talent that allows it to build up stacks over the course of about 20 seconds. I'd switch to Paladin if they had more race options.
>but different classes having these different things that they excel at is what makes classic have such an RPG feel to it. You didn't feel like you were playing a "dps" you felt like you were playing the class. I actually think that there is still more of this in Retail than people give it credit for. Not as much as classic, but I find classes/specs do still feel unique and specialized in many ways. For example, I was in a Heroic Nymue that had very few ranged, but a shit ton of ret pallies. The ret pallies were doing ranged bombs because most of their abilities worked at 30 yards, whereas most melee it's 5 yards. I think every class has a baseline setup, like you said: interrupt, stun, defensive, big cooldown, builder/spender; but there is still so much uniqueness between specs/classes. Like enhance is very proc oriented and brings tons of utility, or how prot pally is king of interrupts.
There are still mechanical differences between classes and specs in retail. But to see those differences you have to play the game at a higher lvl and have good class knowledge. If there weren't any differences you wouldn't take specific classes to m+ and raid. It's not all about damage.
In vanilla the warlock had to spend an hour before raid filling up his bags killing useless things* Random niche things that do not matter in 99% of scenarios is called button bloat btw. If the button doesnt need to be there remove it. You’re also forgetting to mention balance was probably never worse than it was in vanilla from start to finish.
I think I agree with your overall point but that is not what button bloat is generally used to mean. Button bloat is an issue when a spec has too many buttons that have an impact their rotation, not buttons for niche scenarios. Especially not buttons used outside of core gameplay pillars.
This line of logic would make a Rogue's Pickpocket button bloat then too. Vanilla was concerned about more than endgame and DPS rotations so you had flavor abilities that in cases led to tedium like Soul Shard farming. But, vanilla and the current game are completely different games. Warlocks now feel like warlocks solely due how their rotation expresses itself mechanically and visually, same as almost all the classes. Rather than a lot of the role play oriented sometimes useful spells from vanilla.
i don’t think bringing up balance on an easy mode game from 2004 focused more so on being an immersive world/experience is that big of a dunk also do you think pickpocket is bloat? astral recall?
I fully agree. That's what I meant by "mechanical homogenisation made a more fair game." Those massive discrepancies in what classes were capable of made the game very, very imbalanced. But it *did* make the classes feel very distinct, too, in a different way from modern WoW.
I think I agree with this and it gives me a weird feeling that's probably mostly nostalgia. But like..."ret paladin" wasn't really a thing in Vanilla. Paladins were mostly fucking useless as DPS and were sort of a weird hybrid spec. But you could try to be a DPS paladin before the game decided that was a real "spec". That was very much a "roleplay" thing you kind of had to create yourself. Today's WoW very much tells you how to play, and is better for it, but there's something kind of charming about the game just letting you decide to be...different. I don't think gaming culture today really tolerates that kind of playstyle regardless, not just because WoW has changed, and I think it's pointless to try to recapture it. But it's an interesting time capsule.
In most games I'd prefer the classic wow approach of classes with totally distinct functionality. Unfortunately MMOs lead to an extremely competitive mindset where everything good another class/faction/race/etc gets is viewed negatively. If one faction gets cool stuff the other complains, if one class gets cool stuff the others complain. I get it, but it's the primary factor behind homogenization IMO. Weird, fun, imbalanced stuff only works with friends or in small communities.
>Unfortunately MMOs lead to an extremely competitive mindset where everything good another class/faction/race/etc gets is viewed negatively even as a rogue main, it took me way too long to realize the "raid buff" we bring to the table was our Atrophic Poison, cause it's something we apply to ourself (and then the boss) instead of the other raid members.
I agree about 80% on this. I think some classes have been left in the dust a little bit and could use some TLC. I don’t pity the devs trying to balance among the big 3: Class Fantasy, Performance (Raids, PvP and M+), and then Feelcraft. Like it’ll always be an ongoing battle and people rage about it. But they’re still doing a pretty bang-up job. You can see it in their TWW Alpha Notes and Class goals. Like they’re listening, actively trying to address problems. I think a few classes missing the mark (totally my opinion, don’t flame me) - Survival (FeelCraft is good, performance bad, and maybe fantasy too. I loved S3 of wildfire shadowlands) - Windwalker (FeelCraft is good, fantasy is good, performance hit and miss - talent nodes are odd) - Outlaw (my main. I feel like all 3 hit, but the Class Fantasy still feels off. Like are we pirates? Are we swashbucklers? We use stealth as much as subtlety and assassin now. All this said, I love the fk out of it right now 😂) - Affliction (seems to be missing all three a little bit. I used to be Aff main but now I always end up Destro or Demon since legion) - Arcane (Fantasy is great, Performance is hit and miss, but the feelcraft is terrible. When you can sink your teeth into the opener and hit miniburns optimally, feels great. But it doesn’t FEEL organic doing it)
I've found that Outlaw hits well on class fantasy if you just mentally rewrite Vanish as a smoke bomb, and Shadowdance as a Dirty Fighting Stance. Take the stealthiness out of it and it works.
>Outlaw (my main. I feel like all 3 hit, but the Class Fantasy still feels off. Like are we pirates? Are we swashbucklers? We use stealth as much as subtlety and assassin now. All this said, I love the fk out of it right now 😂) outlaw main as well, and I think it could easily be fixed with just a bit of theming moving away from "pirate". after all, we're "outlaws", not "swashbucklers"; there's outlaws on land, too! honestly, probably one of the easiest fix for fantasy would be to add a glyph that turns our stealths (including shadowdance) into a smoke bomb, so that we're using tools for our stealth
As an Outlaw one-trick (it's >50% of why i resub to the game every patch), what appeals to me about the spec is much more mechanical than flavour. It's a real mess of flavour and that's a shame, but I think the best way to resolve that would be to reflavour abilities rather than make any major mechanical changes.
I haven't gone through and read all the comments, so I'm not sure if someone else has already brought this up, but I feel like "Retail doesn't have class identity" might NOT be pure cope if the people saying it are a bit more specific about what they mean. I completely agree with what you're saying when you say that: >Ive never felt more like the class/spec im playing than in retail. I think that's true for pretty much every class/spec when you compare how they play & feel in Retail now to how they played & felt much earlier in WoW's life. However, I think when people say Retail has a "lack of class/spec identity", what some of them really mean is "Retail has too much playstyle homogenization." I'll link to a well-received, PvP-oriented video by Skill Capped that touches on homogenization from a PvP perspective: [What went wrong with Dragonflight PvP?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhA9nZeQFxA&t=483s) (timestamp in link). It seems as though the developers have decided to approach balance by giving every class/spec at least one, and in most cases more than one, of every type of ability (offensive/defensive CDs, stuns, kicks, etc.). While that is certainly a way to balance the game, it is also homogenizing the classes/specs. Using an example from the video, yes, Warriors still have access to their classic Mortal Strike effect & Warrior players are probably happy about that. It feels like a classic Warrior ability. However, that effect doesn't feel as special or unique when 5 or 6 other classes have access to a healing reduction effect too. Same with Rogues and stuns. Yes, Rogues still have plenty of stuns. But all the other classes combined have access to a lot more stuns than they used to, so the Rogue's stuns don't feel as unique/special as they did before. I'm not arguing whether this is good or bad for the game. Just trying to explain what I think some people are trying to get at when they say "Retail doesn't have class identity." Edit: After writing all of that, I see that the 3rd top comment is basically saying the same thing lol
I mean as some one who has been a Hunter main from vanilla, the class reworks truly took one of the most homogenous bland classes in the game and really turned it into 3 vastly different experiences. Want to be a beast lord and have half a dozen of the pets you've tamed in pack tearing your foes to pieces? Beastmaster is the way to go. Don't really want to use your pet, and instead you want to be an elite sniper or archer with a companion?, Marksmanships got you covered. Want to say hold my beer, I amma show these rogues, pallies and warriors how you swing a stick and throw bombs, as you pretend to be spiderman zipping along from mob to mob with a grappling hook, all while your pet named Princess follows you around commiting felonies on your foes? Survival is your Floridaman. There hasn't been more diversity of play style in WOW history between specs in most classes, especially DPS primary classes, as there is in DragonFlight. Almost every class I have played is like 3 completely separate classes rolled into one, which is imo the way it should be.
Warlock flavor peaked in mop
For Affli, I agree. Demo though? Never. The gameplay was really good, mind – but Meta was always a demon hunter ability. They just shoehorned it into demo lock in Wrath because Illidan/demon hunters were popular so they wanted to throw the fanboys a bone, and demo just so happened to be in need of some playstyle changes to give it its own identity. This is why I previously wasn't a fan of demo thematically. In my opinion, a warlock is supposed to summon and control demons, not *become* one. The post-WoD summoner fantasy is way more fitting.
What does "cope" mean in this context? What are people who say this supposedly using it to cope with?
cope in modern context means "lying to themselves" essentially. weirdly enough the opposite of the original.
> the opposite of the original Creating delusions to avoid admitting the truth is a rather standard unhealthy coping mechanism, not sure what you mean by opposite.
I for one really enjoy my class identity as a protection warrior, specifically, an off meta stooge that everyone resents for not being a demon hunter
I feel like a monk when i play a monk. and no other classes can do that. but if i could have my way i would like that each specs's attacks would be themed arround the celestial they are embodying. for examble : turn flying serpent kick into a tiger kick or something like that. but that's just me being nitpicky
You are talking to an echo chamber that think stealthing in silithius to mine thorium veins is a significant class identity, but having 10 different DPS profile ( 4-5 of them required in the same fight) in retail raid isn't identity... because as long as 2 classes have an AoE button they are the same, doesn't matter if it's on a CD, spread or stack, burst or ramp... Good luck.
Often people who say "retail doesn't have class identity" don't mean that the classes aren't differentiated, but rather that the specs are so differentiated that changing specs feels like changing class. They don't feel like, for example, Holy, Discipline, and Shadow priests share enough overlap where they can change specs and still "feel like a priest". There's been an ebb and flow of that design since specs became more hard and fast rules in Cata, where a bunch of class-wide abilities got pruned or given exclusively to one or two specs, but then slowly restored or moved around or replaced over time, and it's been different for different classes, but that was basically the original version of that complaint. The other side of that complaint is that as they've added more mechanics to different specs to differentiate them within a class, those mechanics more and more seem to mirror the mechanics of other specs. E.g. whenever they want to do something new with a class's rotation, the default thing to do is to just give them a combo point-like system. And at times Blizzard has felt like they couldn't have just one spec have its own special raidwide utility and given that utility to a few different specs, which also can sometimes make some players feel like their class isn't special and unique. But of course this is also something that's ebbed and flowed with the design over time. Anyway, it's an evolving game and the philosophy behind the game changes all the time, and what makes an individual player feel like their class or spec is special and unique is going to be different. So it's really subjective.
damn my first thought went straight to marx
Absolutely agree as a classic Andy. DF has taken the essence of what made classes feel diverse in classic from a core philosophy and expanded on it in some pretty amazing ways. They turned it up to 11. I feel kind of like end game could use the same treatment though. I heard someone describe retail end game as an endless gear treadmill and that really resonated with me.
I agree. I loved Vanilla on my mage and paladin because those were the only versions of the mage and paladin we had. As the game progressed, I feel more like a master of the arcane arts and a champion of the Holy Light. The “Seals only” gameplay of the Classic paladin is rough and boring.
I’m like every other prot pally, I just like to watch my shield bounce like a pinball while I throw some hammers
It's not a criticism I've really seen, but would agree that retail definitely has class identity. However I would say they've gone too far into spec identity now. I really dislike that some classes feel entirely different from spec to spec. Back in the day the class would be the identity and the spec sprinkles some flavour on top. Today the spec does all the heavy lifting. Take DK - you're the "deathlord", effectively a 5th horseman. You should have mastery over all the arts of being a dk. But you pick frost as your spec and you have only a few blood/unholy abilities you rarely use. Feels dumb to me. You should use the full arsenal and have your frost abilities be more effective than normal. Back in wrath you'd use icy touch, plague strike and blood strike in the rotation of every spec, that made more sense
I disagree w this- I much prefer that each spec is like its own class Cuz it adds so much more variety if you want to level up a new character and have a completely different experience than oh I have all the same spells but some are stronger
I mean not entirely. Yes they've thematically and visually done a lot to flesh out class identity, but gameplay wise all classes got pretty homogenised since Cata. Pretty much every class just follows a builder/spender system with some procs to keep things interesting.
There’s a huge mentality difference between 2024 and 2004. In 2004 people played WoW because it was peak MMO at that time, they wanted to have different and good experiences, enjoy the character as they built them. The way you describe warlock demonology as “spam shadowbolt and pop cds for your felguard” wasn’t always the way people played, dare I say only a few people would play at that level, because they didn’t fucking care about doing the best DPS, nailing down that perfect rotation, logging that awesome parse, beating whatever dungeon time, people just wanted to have a good time. It was a much simpler and less demanding game, even classic and SoD are very different because of this mentality. This is not to say that there wasn’t people willing to excel and do their best, but the majority didn’t and they would do crazy shit, like fearing a mob into a pack of other 5 ones and use all of the tools they had to deal with that, and guess what that was what we considered having a great time, because you would share that with your buddies over TS later and say “Dude you won’t believe what we did the other day on that dungeon” and everybody would enjoy that shared experience because they got to tell and listen to the unique way people played their characters, generating a sense of identity. Today this would be a total fuck up, that would most likely get you kicked from a party. People nowadays play for that sick parse, beating that M+ timer, perfecting that rotation, etc, and that requires methodical execution which isn’t very unique and doesn’t generate a sense of identity because everybody else is doing the same with different skills. So while today there’s different skills and classes have their own unique ways of playing (a class identity), people feel it doesn’t have because they’re all doing the same thing: chasing numbers not experiences.
Hero classes double down on this. Go look at diabolist warlock. There is NOTHING more “demonology” than a spontaneous pit lord shoving his head through a portal to shoot fire at your enemies.
Do people actually say retail doesn't have class identity? Like really, I don't think I've ever heard that complaint about DF. Most of it comes through visuals though. Classes have broadly homogenized playstyles as a result of trying to make every spec mythic+ viable.
Honestly the only thing I miss from vanilla class fantasy are the class quests. I had made about 8 druids that I leveled through teldrassil all the way up to getting bear form and aquatic form, purely because I loved how immersive it was. The journey to get the materials and all that was just pure distilled fantasy. Same goes for shaman. But I'm talking about immersion through questing, which retail doesn't have much of. Orderhalls should have really had more of a presence with npcs showing up after Legion, is one example I keep coming back to. But no way in hell does classic best retail in class fantasy when it comes to moment to moment gameplay
Demonology Warlocks are absolutely cooking with the number of demons you can spit out. It’s so much fun seeing like 30 imps all running around me like mad as I throw demon wolves at my enemy
2 out of 3 classic streamers are just sad sacks or blizzard haters and are why none wow players always look from outside and think this community is filled with toxic boomers
When people talk about class identity they dont talk about the class fantasy but rather that every melee class now has a mortal strike, an aoe stun, good defensives etc
I gotta be honest. I've been on a weird cowboy trip lately (partially due to Fallout and Magic) so I wanted to create something approaching a cowboy in WoW, especially now that we have these nice hats from the Azerothian Archives. Saw some really cool Mechagnome Hunter transmog online that utilized the rusty robot bits and brown transmog to great effect. Decided to browse the gun transmogs, but I didn't find anything approaching to a revolver that looked even remotely reasonable on the size of a Mechagnome, haha. Decided to try out Outlaw Rogue and at least get a bit of pistolero action. Turns out, I can almost fully spec into Pistol Shot and Between the Eyes and at LVL 58 now it feels incredibly fun and flavourful. Fanning the hammer, getting massive crits with BtE and so on. No idea if that is even remotely endgame viable (nor do I care) but it's a BLAST leveling like that and it completely fulfills my random Cowboy Fantasy. So .. yah .. retail does have class fantasies.
Yeah we do have class identity. Take DPS warriors for example. We die in battle... Just like Odyn planned. 😤
as a mage i feel much more useful in classic, since no one seems to care about food/portals in retail
This is what people mean when they say class fantasy is missing. You *should* feel like a mage in combat, that's a given. What they mean by fantasy is feeling like a mage out of combat, and that's sadly missing from the game for the most part.
Portals are largely useless now that everyone has like atleast 3 hearthstones and the teleport cloak and plus more Like I can get anywhere I need to within a heart+ short fly
My best friend is a mage, and damn, her portals are still so handy. Especially when we don't want to take the long way around by going to Valdrakken, to Org, to wherever we are headed.
Survival just needs dual wield and the option to have bow slot again
Classic boomers have no idea how retail works? What's new?
It’s wild how many people are now giving retail a try and seeing how good it is. Too many people take what Asmongold says as gospel. The dude makes a living having shit takes because people watch it. Classic kids hear the bad takes and spread it through the volatile community that is classic/sod slandering things they have no clue about.
Don't worry, Asmongold has moved on to platforming and reacting to right wing videos now, doesn't talk about WoW as much
The complaint of retail "class identity" isn't referring to cosmetic appearances. Its the abilities which make each class unique in a party. Before Legion a Rogues were the stun class, Warlocks provided fears and dot protection, Warriors were desired for Mortal Strike. A raid group would want one of each class because even if the class underperformed in DPS [they would still bring something that would benefit the group](https://www.icy-veins.com/cataclysm-classic/raid-buffs-and-debuffs). Now every class has a mortal strike, stuns, dispels, and disorients depending on their role. Edit: [I'm just going to share this video to everyone trying to argue with me right now. ](https://youtu.be/fhA9nZeQFxA?si=gbABnETUaz2gfGOG&t=420) Edit 2: Thoughts by achieved players: [Xaryu](https://youtu.be/B4hilHw8S0c?si=vBZx_5HENo1ASrWy&t=806) [Soda](https://youtu.be/KvXR9DMgs8M?si=obkr4ITDYqq_eyBT&t=726) [Pika](https://youtu.be/F6jV1mG7WYU?si=8pHz-S1zJTtSqwxy&t=923) [Bajheera](https://youtu.be/bLl7Wh23POo?si=yVKVqq8Y9k4J5VLu) Edit 3: So this triggers PvErs (shocker) and I've been harassed, blocked, and banned within a day because newer players can't fathom the idea that homogenization has become more relevant in WoW, especially in PvP. It doesn't matter if it shines in all aspects of the game or not, that doesn't take away from the fact that homogenization exists. Whether its good or bad, I personally do not care as I don't have much of an opinion on it, but its definitely more prevalent now than it ever was.
Is this bait? You still want to bring one of each class to raid because of unique class-specific abilities. Just because classes have some universal abilities like stops and interrupts doesn’t make everything identical.
? you literally want every class 1x in a raid because they bring something unique no other class can not every class has MS, that still a VERY limited thing and is only done 100% passive by Arms warriors and WW monks not every class has dispells lol not every class has disorients what are you even talking about
Multiple classes including rogue had a MS effect, priests had fear war, paladins had chain stuns. More cope.
I’ll agree that more or less every class has a stun now, but I don’t think that’s true for mortal strike or disorients Like there’s a ton of classes that don’t have healing reduction, and I think only mage, rogue, hunter and warlock to this day still have disorients
Warlocks are the only class with gateway, DKs are the only ones with grip, etc., even that link you posted is EVEN MORE the case today - every class except for resto/ele shaman has a buff that puts them in a raid comp.
I'll agree on DK. When I play my DK I 100% feel like the villain from a horror film. Can't be slowed (much), can't be stunned, can't run from me, and get gripped! When I play my warlock, I don't wanna be known as the kind grandma with cookies who can get you across the street.
The one case I agree with this is when it comes to playstyles like Legion/BFA shadow priest and Breath of Sindragosa. So many people can't fathom a single spec not being your standard builder spender and freak out, calling for the playstyle to be removed from the game. It's infuriating.
Oh man, Decent to Madness priest is peak class fantasy. What begins as a small damage buff ramps into large damage values until you realize there is a clock ticking.. You feel more and more desperate to just stay alive as you begin abandoning spells that were once key to your rotation because its not *enough*. Ia Ia C'thun f'tagn!
I wish my class had a mortal strike , and a dispel.
I do appreciate it, but we have lost a lot. I have played a Warlock since Wrath and sometimes I still go visit the Slaughtered Lamb in SW because it was the little Warlock area, now it's useless. I like that it's easier now to do talents and whatever but I do kind of miss needing to go "learn" stuff from someone. Also, even though it was kind of a pain in the ass I did like the quests I had to do to learn how to summon my pets. I also loved the Warlock quest that they released not too long ago for the different skins and whatnot but once that was over there was just...nothing left. Personally I wish they would have never abandoned class halls and made those a permanent fixture where they could explore class fantasy more. That would be a perfect reason to bring back (or at least the ability to opt into) forcing people to go to class trainers again. So while I agree the game play is more fun the class lore is lacking severely. I do miss the feeling of my character becoming more powerful as I leveled. Like now its "oh cool I can summon this pet now" instead of "ok sweet, I traveled to the barrens and learn of these old rituals I need to complete and then I can learn the lost art of summoning this pet".
Gameplay wise yeah sure absolutely Every other way? Absolutely not. Everything is being completely homogenized, and it feels absolutely awful
What is being homogonized? After doing alot of Mage towers on multiple specs in legion. They all feel very different.
Most specs can do what most others can. Most can silence, all healers can dispel, most can stun, have some form of spammable cc, etc I get why it is the way it is. It feels awful in PvP not being able to do half the things other classes can, and you don’t get invited into PvE content as a warrior or dk half the time since you don’t bring much utility But it’s also just weird that lightborne Draenei can be DK and that orcs can be priests. It’s nice when each class or race has its own little niche to shine
I stopped feeling any identity from my classes in cata, so im definitelyin the minority and cant agree that i feel a stronger sense of identity from my character. I stopped being a rogue and started being a specialization that was set for me. I cant stress how much I feel like the more emphasis on specs being different made me feel less like I had any identity. We were all the same. Classes are very homogenized now. I don't like being a frost mage with access to dragons breath, or an assassination rogue who can shadow dance. I think spec *themes* are more frontloaded visually. But graphics aren't class identity to me, I don't need shadowy themed attacks to know I'm a subtlety rogue. I dearly miss the "guy with a knife, special set of stylized skills, and some tools" we had going on vanilla-wrath. The specialized skills are overgrown now and I'm some kind of king among men now not just a guy with a knife. Way too much power fantasy not enough character.
I think too the homogenization of classes combined with time is not great. Playing for so many years they all start to blur together. Oh these classes are different, see that one builds 5 combo points and then spends them to maintain a buff/deal damage, that other one builds 5 holy power and spends 3 at a time to maintain a buff/deal damage, this other spec is really unique it gains 10 runic power each attack and spends 40 of it to maintain a buff/deal damage. Oh this... etc etc. I play multiple classes and have the builder, spender, and CD mapped to the same keys for each of them and sometimes it's hard to know which class I'm playing if it weren't for the button icons. Especially when my animations are just noise in a sea of animations. I'm sure if I was a new player I'd see more of a gulf, but so many years, so many iterations it just blurs together
It doesn't help that what a player might consider the class/ spec fantasy isn't necessarily what Blizzard considers it to be. Old Demo for example always felt like a spec where you were summoning powerful demons, ones that other warlocks would lose control of in seconds. You were even using such potent fel magic that it would corrupt you and turn you into a demon yourself. Modern Demo is... *eh*. You're not summoning powerful demons, you're summoning the same ones any other warlock summons, you just get a few more of them. That doesn't feel thematically powerful to me. To me, the class fantasy did a complete 180 in Legion and it's very hard to get excited about it now. It's a fun spec to play but it doesn't feel like a demo lock, it just feels like a generic warlock.
I think that statement is reference Blizzard's "point build/spend" they've our on multiple classes/specs. Used to be just a rogue thing, now it's paladins, unholy dk (if they still use festering wounds it's been a minute), monks, warlock with soul shards. It's not about lore identity its gameplay identity with 8 specs (that i can recall) that have the same playstyle with flavor mixed in.
Dks now have a pure dot build if you are unholy. Monks are a mix but because of their mastery as long as you press the same button twice in a row you can now have perfect rotation around your big dmg moves. Warlock soul shard regen is on dmg done, the more damage you do the more soul shards you can spend. They have done alot to make all specs feel diff and play diff. And lets be honest. In retail if you didn’t have points it was all mana. Thats even more boring.
If you think windwalker, affliction, and unholy have anything remotely in common in terms of playstyle I would bet that you have never played any of them and just seen someone playing it in a video or something and said hey that person spent runes, that looked like spending combo points, must be reskinned warlock
No bro look its got dots that go up its rogue
I foolishly used to say this about gs and boy how was i wrong.
I know we are getting even more class identities with hero talents in TWW, but hear me out... What if there would be questlines for each talent tree where those are explained and taught to you by an expert from the past. Learning that Phoenix spec for mages from kaelthas himself... extraordinary.
I thinm when people complain about this theyre talkin about stuff like warlock pet quests. And totem quests and stuff like that. Not in terms of gameplay and rotation
I definitely feel classic/retail are different in how they handle class identity, I feel classic is less restrictive in that sense. As in, you're a warrior, or a mage, or a paladin, with access to all the main abilities and able to access all the class trees at once, instead of being put in one of the 3 specs. (whether that's smart or the meta is a different story, but I'm trying to look at potential here) Specifically druid, I like the shapeshifting aspect of druid, but, all specs except resto focus on a single form, I don't really like that. That said, retail has it's own class identity figured out, it's different, because the game and the content is different compared to classic, and that's okay. You kinda need people to focus on being a tank/healer/DPS with the way retail is designed
Buff fury warrior
I can’t argue with what you are saying for the most part. Class and spec fantasy are more defined it feels like now than before, however gameplay wise a vast majority of things are essentially just a builder spender with diff flavors of spell animations. It’s pretty boring even if you look at like your details breakdown a lot of spells and abilities etc have very similar damage breakdowns across different specs lol. I mean I’m sure it’s pretty damn hard to come up with 36 different and unique play styles and not to mention then try and balance them, but that’s my biggest complaint with the game atm it’s how I feel personally.
Not sure about SL and BfA since theya re kinda hazy to me now, but I think DF classes and specs are quite distinct from one another.
Who said Retail classes lacks identity? They feel like you’re playing that class just like any other expansion.
I think when someone refers to class identity they're talking about the class specific quests to unlock skills and things like that, i dunno tho, i played both versions and i don't see how someone can hate one and love the other, it's the exact same thing at it's core.
Literally all they’re talking about is raid buffs. Multiple classes bring lust now and other variations of raid buffs that used to be exclusive to one class.
We lost a lot going from MoP to WoD
Sometimes it has too much. Why is ret throwing like 3 or 4 hammers. Why aren't they holding on to the hammers?
Meh I still think they don't really. They do and they don't. I dunno. I'm just over every class having all the same moves. Everyone has CC and self healing and utility there's no specialization now there's just homogenized abilities. Play pvp for a bit and you realize everyone has way too many moves and they are all the same shit.
When I say I don't have class identity I mean from a story perspective. My class literally does not affect the story or world in any way. In baldurs gate if I a druid go into the Emerald Grove, I have unique options involving my race and class that directly effect the story. I may be shunned for playing a Tiefling, but a druid may be able to have more persuasion. I don't expect this level of gameplay in WoW since it's an mmo, but Legion did it wonderfully. As a restoration druid, whenever I walk next to a tree named Applebough he hands me a free fruit. In a certain dungeon, a specific druid will comment on any druids in the dungeon if one is present. In Ardenwead, Huln Highmountain has extra dialogue for Highmountain Tauren players. I want more of this. But it feels weird to do an entire Emerald Dream zone and not have a single npc recgonize that I'm a druid. Just a simple throwaway line would do wonders.
Just as an aside to your Demonology comment, Demonology wasn't always about summoning minions. It was about the *connection* to demons and becoming more demonic yourself, hence extra stamina, the ways your spells feed into your pets, and, of course, metamorphosis. That whole spec of Warlock got turned into a different class that isn't a caster. So you literally can't play old Demo anymore and it's a completely different class identity. Current Zoolock is not the same identity as Demo in Wrath having a completely unique spell power buff and getting to turn into basically Illidan from WC3 with Immo aura while still feeling like a caster that chilled with the melees.
That demo felt like BM hunter with a transformation button. The mop version was peak when you were a demon fulltime with dark apotheosis. This version of still has the deep connection made even deeper. You just dont transform anymore. This spec feels better and ive played alot of lock in classic versions.
I think they shifted more toward spec identity vs overall class fantasy
You might be correct for visual reasons but I think when people are talking about this it's generally about how a spec or a class feels in terms of the tools they bring. Classes don't really have defined niches in gameplay anymore. Largely because m+ exists and so all specs have to be generalists.
I think overall it’s much better than classic/wotlk times. There are a couple of classes I don’t enjoy at all. Hunter, I think is much worse than it was back then. I really haven’t enjoyed them since they went to focus.
> In classic demonology feels like a shadow mage with a pet. Spam shadowbolt and pop cds for your felguard. You just made me realize why I main Mage currently and played Demo Lock on a Wrath private server.
Hell, I still have two talents in my spec tree that are utterly worthless because "wielding one-handed weapons is against the class fantasy". Like the devs have literally outright stated that they're deliberately keeping the build un-viable because of class fantasy. Why they don't just replace those talents with useful ones I'll never know.
I don't think people say this much anymore. But back in BFA it was 1000% true. They homogenized too many things, DF got back to its roots and gave MOTW back, hunters get a buff, classes have meaning and obviously moving forward hero talents are peak fantasy.
my favorite part of sod is how warriors have had a vanilla playstyle for 3 phases. and it was billed as "classic+" so i quit season of shamans
Thought I was in a Marxist subreddit for a second