Board 8 > Are you going to play WoW classic?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Im not planning to play, I spent way too much time on it in high school. Played a paladin back then.
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No, cant afford the timesink again. Id probably be a warlock as usual if I did, though, since I never got to experience Vanilla (started in TBC)

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Nope
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When I saw what the poll was I had to check to make sure there wasnt any options missing.

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As a current WoW player and one since the days of TBC, I can't understand why anyone would want to play a game that's intentionally bad and broken like Vanilla was. I mean, even TBC wasn't balanced. So many of the classes and specs are downright useless, like laughably bad. I guess the people they are looking for here are players who maybe quit playing WoW and now they are going to capitalize on it by luring them in with this (since I believe you have to have an active account to play this, which is free with a standard WoW subscription).

About the only thing I can imagine with older versions of WoW is yes the difficulty is higher, and the world feels more dangerous and "fun" as a result. At the same time though, that world is so dangerous because unless you're like 1 of 3 class/spec combos, you suck and it's an uphill battle to stay alive.
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It seems to me like the type of thing that sounds really cool in concept, but then once you play it a bit you'll be like "holy shit this is awful why did i think this was a good idea"

Even I'm tempted to try it for a bit though.

Nostalgia, y'know.

Have a retail account, not interested in Classic at all.
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I'll definitely give it a go as I played WoW the most during vanilla, and it'll be a trip for about 10 levels.
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Gonna be playing Classic. Can't be worse than the trash that is current WoW.
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Yeah
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Dropping WoW was probably one of the biggest improvements I ever made to my life so no, I don't believe I will.
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no, that sounds like a tedious and bad time. I didnt make significant progress on a character until post-Burning Crusade.

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Nah. I played WOTLK PS for 2 months quite recently which was incredibly enjoyable, but I don't plan to go back and play it again.
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The only Eeveelution name I was able to get on my guilds server was Glaceon so I think I am playing Mage by default.

I'm not actually playing though i'll likely just dick around through the starting zone.
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Maybe, I don't know

But one thing for sure - I will not play it until I play Reforged
Who the fuck was the idiot ar Blizzard that thought releasing Classic before it was a good idea

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I've never played a MMORPG, and I don't intend to start because I know I'll become addicted.

My BF says he wants to play it for nostalgia but he's sure that having a job and other responsibilities will make raiding and PvP pretty much impossible.
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v_charon posted...

As a current WoW player and one since the days of TBC, I can't understand why anyone would want to play a game that's intentionally bad and broken like Vanilla was.

As a classic WoW player and one since the days of beta, I can't understand why anyone would want to play a game that's intentionally bad and confining like Retail is.

I tried to play a character to 20 for some Hearthstone incentive about 2 years ago, and I absolutely could not stand the current iteration of the game. It scrubbed basically everything I liked about WoW, and replaced it with a bunch of streamlined crap and controls that didn't make sense to me. What I liked about WoW is that it had all of the charm and mystery of playing a game like EverQuest, but that it took out the awful parts -- you could do things solo, there were quests and objectives besides just grinding, battles were more meaningful then just pressing A and watching. But the rest of the experience was there. Most of that's been removed in favor of catering to the LCD and ignoring the leveling experience entirely. Or at least that's what it felt like to me.
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azuarc posted...

I tried to play a character to 20 for some Hearthstone incentive about 2 years ago, and I absolutely could not stand the current iteration of the game. It scrubbed basically everything I liked about WoW, and replaced it with a bunch of streamlined crap and controls that didn't make sense to me. What I liked about WoW is that it had all of the charm and mystery of playing a game like EverQuest, but that it took out the awful parts -- you could do things solo, there were quests and objectives besides just grinding, battles were more meaningful then just pressing A and watching. But the rest of the experience was there. Most of that's been removed in favor of catering to the LCD and ignoring the leveling experience entirely. Or at least that's what it felt like to me.

I'm not going to deny the game was streamlined for people who probably aren't usually very good at video games, but at the same time, I feel like they've done a great job with class balance and I don't feel you can objectively say they haven't compared to older versions of the game. You shouldn't feel like you're restricted to choosing only certain classes or roles when you play a game; I mean, what's the point of having them there if they aren't any good? Like I have played Retribution all my gaming history in WoW; back when the final point in the talent tree was as it is now, Repentance, which is not even a DPS ability but rather a CC one (and a limited to enemy type one, at that). Why on earth is the final thing you learn, what you assume to be your best ability since you get it last, one that is in no way beneficial to your play style? That was the huge error in classic WoW, and they kept it that way. No disrespect to them keeping it that way since it highlights what they are going for, but that's simply bad game design. Imagine playing Final Fantasy VII and Cloud finally learns his last limit break and it's a self healing spell or something. There's no reward to be had there.
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I played survival hunter. The original talent tree had a final talent that was a pitiful melee dot. I don't want to go back to that. But the revised tree from version 1.7 was fantastic. So were the trees from BC and Lich King. And then when I tried to come back, there was no talent tree, no choices, just "pick a spec and we'll randomly give you stuff at certain levels."

I mean, sure, under the old versions you had the chance to gimp yourself, but you also had the chance to do something really cool, too. I never followed cookie cutter specs precisely, even if what I ended up with was moderately close. But I also found ways to explore my character in ways that other people didn't. Nobody brought a hunter to their group expecting them to CC 4 or 5 mobs at once, but there were time periods where I was doing just that. What kind of flexibility or freedom is there in character building now?
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Technically it still exists in the form of Talent selection, where you pick from 1 of three talents at 6 different intervals. It isn't dramatically different from the talent trees really; most of the points spent in there were filler stat boosts.
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v_charon posted...

azuarc posted...

I tried to play a character to 20 for some Hearthstone incentive about 2 years ago, and I absolutely could not stand the current iteration of the game. It scrubbed basically everything I liked about WoW, and replaced it with a bunch of streamlined crap and controls that didn't make sense to me. What I liked about WoW is that it had all of the charm and mystery of playing a game like EverQuest, but that it took out the awful parts -- you could do things solo, there were quests and objectives besides just grinding, battles were more meaningful then just pressing A and watching. But the rest of the experience was there. Most of that's been removed in favor of catering to the LCD and ignoring the leveling experience entirely. Or at least that's what it felt like to me.

I'm not going to deny the game was streamlined for people who probably aren't usually very good at video games, but at the same time, I feel like they've done a great job with class balance and I don't feel you can objectively say they haven't compared to older versions of the game. You shouldn't feel like you're restricted to choosing only certain classes or roles when you play a game; I mean, what's the point of having them there if they aren't any good? Like I have played Retribution all my gaming history in WoW; back when the final point in the talent tree was as it is now, Repentance, which is not even a DPS ability but rather a CC one (and a limited to enemy type one, at that). Why on earth is the final thing you learn, what you assume to be your best ability since you get it last, one that is in no way beneficial to your play style? That was the huge error in classic WoW, and they kept it that way. No disrespect to them keeping it that way since it highlights what they are going for, but that's simply bad game design. Imagine playing Final Fantasy VII and Cloud finally learns his last limit break and it's a self healing spell or something. There's no reward to be had there.

hmmm

it's the conundrum of Retail in general. they've done many things to improve the game. Have they done a bad job to get Retail where it is? Was creating the group finder and raid finder to objectively make it easier to find groups so people don't have to waste time looking for a group a bad move? Well, it certainly succeeded at making it wayyyy easier to actually play the game. Was adding portals to take you all the different corners of the world not an improvement, even though it saves you sooo much time? Both these changes had major quality of life improvements but also significant costs to the DNA of the game that can't really be undone.

A feature of early WoW was that classes had unique strengths and weaknesses. some had no real strengths like Ret and just sucked. Most specs had a reason you brought them to a certain raid or why you used them in PVP. You'd bring a warlock to a raid to banish a certain target. You'd bring Mages because their AOE is objectively better than everyone else's. Classes did not do equal damage, so there was no reason to bring certain classes. Does that suck? yeah. But the current design philosphy is homogenization - which erases the reason anybody in particular is there. If a third of the raid has a bloodlust, then it's not special if a shaman is brought to the raid or not.

It's a cool effect when you say a certain class is being added to your group because then a certain ability is provided. That effect doesn't really exist in Retail right now. Yeah, it sucks that some specs just suck in Classic, but there's also positives in how it works.
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A thing that REALLY bugs me in retail is world quests. I remember when I first did them in Legion I thought it was a cool way to get gear. Then I realized that was my entire pre raid gearing process. Just do world quests every day until I get the best pre raid gear I can get. But like.... gearing up is really fun to me. Going into a specific dungeon or completing a quest line to get an important piece of gear I need as a stage in my character's growth is the best feeling in the world. And in retail... it's just attached to some random world quest unrelated to the item itself. They've completely taken out the investment in progression in the game. But if you look at the world quest mechanic in particular, you can say - okay, this is a more streamlined version of daily quest that gives you a choice on which content to repeat every day. There is genuine improvement here over what we were already doing..... but man does it take the soul out of it. I don't feel like I earned having a full set of best in slot pre raid gear. I just followed the quest markers until I got it.

WoW Classic is not a perfect game. that's why did so many improvements to it that led us to today. It will have tons of things that make people quit playing it. But it has a lot of really strong pro's that Retail does not deliver on. that maybe no other competitor delivers on.

Retail just doesn't offer the experience I'm looking for. It's hard to say or not if WoW Classic will deliver on it again like it did in the past either. But I definitely don't get what I want when I play Retail wow. The only thing that really keeps me playing a bit each expansion is that I love the world and characters so much that I just want to keep finding out what's going on.
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azuarc posted...

I played survival hunter. The original talent tree had a final talent that was a pitiful melee dot. I don't want to go back to that. But the revised tree from version 1.7 was fantastic. So were the trees from BC and Lich King. And then when I tried to come back, there was no talent tree, no choices, just "pick a spec and we'll randomly give you stuff at certain levels."

I mean, sure, under the old versions you had the chance to gimp yourself, but you also had the chance to do something really cool, too. I never followed cookie cutter specs precisely, even if what I ended up with was moderately close. But I also found ways to explore my character in ways that other people didn't. Nobody brought a hunter to their group expecting them to CC 4 or 5 mobs at once, but there were time periods where I was doing just that. What kind of flexibility or freedom is there in character building now?

Talent trees are a really funny one - I absolutely agree with their design philosophy that the old trees did not have any choice, and the new system actually offers you a lot more relevant decision making on what your character can do. Really, the way the old system worked is that you had to pick most of the talents that mattered for your spec the same as everyone else, and the ones you didnt pick were garbage that didn't do anything. When there was choice, it was just on like "increases the damage of your frost spells by 2%" vs " increase crit damage bonus on frost spells" which comes down to a mathematician somewhere figuring that out for you, or just picking which one sounds better to you without really knowing which one had a bigger impact.

There are SOME cases where you would have a choice of going into a different secondary tree to get a 1/1 ability that actually matters... but that's pretty much the same thing as just picking a tier in the new system.

So trying to turn this into a system where your choices actually matter sounds great. But somehow it just doesn't work out. Despite not actually offering you much real choice, the old talent tree just has this cool feeling that gives you the illusion of choice. And the new system somehow feels more limiting. It's a really strange phenomena. From a design perspective I completely agree the new system is better, but it just doesn't feel that way in practice.
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While the old talent system had a lot of no-brainer choices, at least some of them were fun choices. i.e. ret paladins got Vengeance which gave them increased damage after critting, and made their hands glow. Cataclysm removed that and replaced that with... nothing.
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Asks question in title, poll asks a different question and doesn't include "No"

Classic Anagram

LavaLord posted...

Asks question in title, poll asks a different question and doesn't include "No"

Classic Anagram

To be fair, that's very par for the course on this board. i.e.:

Topic: Caravan S vs Dariusb, Zakuzaku vs Rorona, Tekken 7 vs Iridion II

Expected Poll Title: Caravan S vs Dariusb, Zakuzaku vs Rorona, Tekken 7 vs Iridion II

Expected Poll Options:
Caravan Stories - Muddy Warrior & Zakuzaku Actors - Battle of Mao
Caravan Stories - Muddy Warrior & Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland - Dark Domain
Dariusburst - Good-bye my earth & Zakuzaku Actors - Battle of Mao
Dariusburst - Good-bye my earth & Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland - Dark Domain

Actual Poll Title: Saddest loss?

Actual Poll Options:
Granado Espada
etc.
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CoolCly posted...

Both these changes had major quality of life improvements but also significant costs to the DNA of the game that can't really be undone.

I don't see it that way. People that still want to raid in the classic way are still allowed to do it, and they get extra bonus rewards for doing it that way. This just opened the game up to different players that weren't willing to dedicate their lives to WoW fighting through the ranks of a guild and kissing the Guild Master's ass so they could raid and get loot. It doesn't damage the game's DNA in the slightest little way. Only elitists could think that.
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it doesn't sound like you are trying to look at this from any perspective other than your own

I agree that this "opened the game up to different players that weren't willing to dedicate their lives to WoW fighting through the ranks of a guild and kissing the Guild Master's ass so they could raid and get loot."

that doesn't mean it didn't have other consequences.
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Yes.

I started in like month 2 of Burning Crusade. Group of friends who had all played from launch but quit some time in '06 were getting back into it and recruited me.

Spent...most of BC leveling up. Piddled around at 70 for a while then rolled an alt which would quickly become my main. Lich King was my peak of playing end game stuff (freshman/sophomore year of college).

I carried on through cata and mists, and didn't play any xpac since then.

I just want the vanilla experience at this point.

OrangeCrush980 posted...

To be fair, that's very par for the course on this board. i.e.:

Topic: Caravan S vs Dariusb, Zakuzaku vs Rorona, Tekken 7 vs Iridion II

...that's a match topic for a contest, where the expectation is that people vote by posting in the topic, rather than using an easily-stuffed poll to do so. Meanwhile, it still has bonus polls to make things more fun.
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v_charon posted...

So many of the classes and specs are downright useless, like laughably bad.

Sure, some specs in classic aren't viable compared to others. I don't see why that's inherently a downside, though.

The most recent version I played was Mists so I have no clue what current stuff is like these days. But I have a hard time believing there are actually, what let's see...9 classes plus DK plus Monk plus DH...12 classes, times 3 specs except druids have 4, right? So...37 specs(?)...that actually feel distinct?

Like, if you need 1 more melee DPS to get your raid started...does it make any difference to you which class or spec it is?

I'm asking earnestly. Without a doubt over time the decision of which class to play has become less significant. I'm curious how much difference it actually makes in current retail WoW.

turbopuns3 posted...

Sure, some specs in classic aren't viable compared to others. I don't see why that's inherently a downside, though.

The most recent version I played was Mists so I have no clue what current stuff is like these days. But I have a hard time believing there are actually, what let's see...9 classes plus DK plus Monk plus DH...12 classes, times 3 specs except druids have 4, right? So...37 specs(?)...that actually feel distinct?

Like, if you need 1 more melee DPS to get your raid started...does it make any difference to you which class or spec it is?

I'm asking earnestly. Without a doubt over time the decision of which class to play has become less significant. I'm curious how much difference it actually makes in current retail WoW.

It's a downside because if it doesn't work, it shouldn't exist in the game. Blizzard wanted that many classes because even though a lot of them play the same type of way sure, there's flavor and subtle differences in how they play and look. Retribution paladin is a DPS spec, and it features attacks dealing Holy damage and it gives you the look and feel as if you're battling as this holy swordsman with light based attacks. Meanwhile there's something like Arms warrior, which is another two-handed dps spec but they play pretty differently. The abilities play into more hard hitting combat, weapon swinging and if you're looking to play a character that's going to fight with a two-handed sword but you don't want to be this righteous knight as you do it, then this spec works for you. I mean, if you don't inherently see what downside there is to forcing people to all play the same character, one which they may not be as interested in aesthetically, then yeah I just don't know what else to say. Again, Blizzard created the classes. They ought to work, and explaining it away as "it isn't that big of a deal" was why it took years for Blizzard to make a game where everything they put in actually functions.

CoolCly posted...

it doesn't sound like you are trying to look at this from any perspective other than your own

I agree that this "opened the game up to different players that weren't willing to dedicate their lives to WoW fighting through the ranks of a guild and kissing the Guild Master's ass so they could raid and get loot."

that doesn't mean it didn't have other consequences.

But I've already said it made the game too easy. I'm not sure what else you want out of me here. I'm saying that claiming the raid finder "changed the DNA" of the game is very false, because it's an optional tool and if you actually want to keep playing WoW the way you were, you can. If you have a problem with the raid finder, then you just want to keep people out of content you view as solely for yourself. No one should have a problem with the raid finder because it either helps you or you ignore it. I'm not saying that everything about Classic is bad, otherwise I never would have played the game. I'm just saying one of your points was false.
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v_charon posted...

. If you have a problem with the raid finder, then you just want to keep people out of content you view as solely for yourself. No one should have a problem with the raid finder because it either helps you or you ignore it.

Do you really believe that it's impossible to think something had good and bad consequences without being a person that hates casuals and thinks everything should be catered to them? Is that the only possible outcome?

You are just wrong about this "it's optional and you just keep playing the way you were' thought process though. If something has a big impact on the game, it doesn't just change it for whoever chooses to use it - it's a giant ecosystem and every system works with eachother.

Like here's a current example with classic: some people have made an addon that you can post you are looking for group and it will communicate with everyone else that has the addon. So you can just post "Holy priest looking for group' and everyone that needs a healer will get that message and you can just immediately form a group. This is essentially making a circumspect group finderthrough whispers, and it was actually possible during vanilla, it was just no addon developers came up with it. This undoes one of the benefits people see in vanilla which was that you had to find group members by advertising in trade chat or join a guild or make friends or whatever.

Many people argued that if you don't want to use it and change your experience, then just don't use the addon. This is wrong. It's just not true. Blizzard came out and said this directly - once it's out there in the wild, it still affects you. Other players will be using it, and you won't be able to find a group. It changes the entire environment whether you want to use it or not.

So Blizzard is disabling this addon and others like it.

I never actually said the raid finder was a bad thing by itself though. My entire argument is that many changes that caused individual improvements have added together to change Retail into an experience that a lot of fans of WoW are not looking for.
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It seems like you didn't answer my question?

Like is there depth to modern retail class selection?

Or are the "classes" just:

Tank
Healer
Melee DPS
Ranged DPS

?

That's my question in a nutshell.

no dedicated time + probably the worst/most annoying point in wow history = not playing it.

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turbopuns3 posted...

Like is there depth to modern retail class selection?

Or are the "classes" just:

Tank
Healer
Melee DPS
Ranged DPS

?

That's my question in a nutshell.

No, there's not, because no one wants to play a "support" class because you feel like a worthless idiot that isn't really doing anything. There's a reason why classes like that don't exist much in MMOs these days. They aren't popular, and the devs know it. No one wants to be the guy who keeps buffs up on other people. Blizzard did away with it because it wasn't popular.

CoolCly posted...

I never actually said the raid finder was a bad thing by itself though. My entire argument is that many changes that caused individual improvements have added together to change Retail into an experience that a lot of fans of WoW are not looking for.

That may be true, but keep in mind as I just said, I think the changes Blizzard has made over the years were in the best interest of the majority of the playerbase. I think they're looking to recapture players that may have left because of the changes, but I still think the tools themselves are positive ones that weren't inherently the real reason a lot of people quit playing. The real reason, in my own opinion, is just that WoW is an old game now. Not to say it feels like one or plays like one, but people lose interest in anything after so long and any little change they perceive as bad is probably amplified because they're already approaching burnout.

Blizzard should keep Classic WoW the way it was, without the additions they made later. I'm definitely in favor of that and at this point, I'm just wondering what we're arguing about at all.
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v_charon posted...

I'm just wondering what we're arguing about at all.

You said you cannot understand why anyone would want to play classic when it's objectively worse than Retail.

I've attempted to lay out to you why all of the improvements they've made to Retail, while improving the game for many people and in many ways, have changed the games in unintended ways that have turned other people off, and Classic might be able to give what those people are looking for.

You are just unwilling to accept that the "good changes" may have also caused "bad changes". So I guess you'll never understand why anyone would want to play Classic over Retail.
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v_charon posted...

turbopuns3 posted...

Like is there depth to modern retail class selection?

Or are the "classes" just:

Tank
Healer
Melee DPS
Ranged DPS

?

That's my question in a nutshell.

No, there's not, because no one wants to play a "support" class because you feel like a worthless idiot that isn't really doing anything. There's a reason why classes like that don't exist much in MMOs these days. They aren't popular, and the devs know it. No one wants to be the guy who keeps buffs up on other people. Blizzard did away with it because it wasn't popular.

That's not what he means.

And, yes there are. You have multidot ranged, AOE/ST/cleave melee, raid/tank healers.

You need monk/warrior/mage/DH/priest for their unique buff/debuffs but can use any of their specs.

Druids, DKs and Warlocks bring in-combat ressurection.

Some classes have good target swapping, some have on-demand burst, good mobility. Rogues for example are the best melee dps for survivability with Cheat Death, Cloak of Shadows and Feint as excellent defensive options.

You need one of the classes bringing the Lust effect.

You probably want at least a couple of people who have good execute damage for when the boss gets low.

You can't just grab 2 tanks, 4 heals and 14 dps without regard for what class they are and expect to do ok in a raid. Can you beat a normal raid like that? Sure. But once you move into Heroic and *definitely* for Mythic, it's just not realistic.

Additionally, I didn't pay attention to when you said you stopped, but you can swap between any of your classes specs incredibly easily now if you want to move from heal to dps, or from one dps spec to another for different fights. I know there's one dungeon which priests almost always prefer to heal as Holy instead of Discipline because of the structure of one of the fights and the different playstyles they have.
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v_charon posted...

It's a downside because if it doesn't work, it shouldn't exist in the game. Blizzard wanted that many classes because even though a lot of them play the same type of way sure, there's flavor and subtle differences in how they play and look. Retribution paladin is a DPS spec, and it features attacks dealing Holy damage and it gives you the look and feel as if you're battling as this holy swordsman with light based attacks. Meanwhile there's something like Arms warrior, which is another two-handed dps spec but they play pretty differently. The abilities play into more hard hitting combat, weapon swinging and if you're looking to play a character that's going to fight with a two-handed sword but you don't want to be this righteous knight as you do it, then this spec works for you. I mean, if you don't inherently see what downside there is to forcing people to all play the same character, one which they may not be as interested in aesthetically, then yeah I just don't know what else to say. Again, Blizzard created the classes. They ought to work, and explaining it away as "it isn't that big of a deal" was why it took years for Blizzard to make a game where everything they put in actually functions.

v_charon posted...

No, there's not, because no one wants to play a "support" class because you feel like a worthless idiot that isn't really doing anything. There's a reason why classes like that don't exist much in MMOs these days. They aren't popular, and the devs know it. No one wants to be the guy who keeps buffs up on other people. Blizzard did away with it because it wasn't popular.

You make a lot of logical leaps here though.

You've complained a lot about the class balance in vanilla and it's clear that's something that bothers you. That every spec ought to work and such. I don't disagree there - it does suck that some specs in vanilla basically dont' do anything. It's just incomplete, there's no doubt about it. And that sucks.

But when Blizz went about trying to fix this - they went with a method called "homogenization." What this means is that most classes play similarly to eachother and have similar abilities. Every class has Kick. Every class does good burst damage, every class does good aoe damage, every class does good sustained damage. Every class brings a buff. Every buff is brought by like 6 different specs. There's no uniqueness.

This accomplishes a goal - everyone can be brought to a raid or dungeon regardless of what class they are. This is a good thing.

However, just like every other change I've discussed - it has a potential bad thing. Your class loses it's uniqueness. You aren't known to your group as the guy who brings X value to the guild. That feels bad.

Is making everything viable worth losing that uniqueness? Maybe.

but your point of "because no one wants to play a "support" class because you feel like a worthless idiot that isn't really doing anything." is a stretch. Nobody wants to feel useless, but there's definite evidence that people want to have their own strengths.

Personally, I think it would have been better for Blizz to aim for diversification - giving different classes and specs more uniqueness. Balance can still be strived for in a world of different roles. Vanilla is most certianly not balanced, but it's a completely different class structure with it's own pros and cons compared to Retail's homogenized role structure.
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in an off topic note, Heroes of the Storm failing compared to League and Dota is primarily due to them trying to apply this homogenization approach to a genre that thrives on strengths and differences between characters.
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CoolCly posted...

But when Blizz went about trying to fix this - they went with a method called "homogenization." What this means is that most classes play similarly to eachother and have similar abilities. Every class has Kick. Every class does good burst damage, every class does good aoe damage, every class does good sustained damage. Every class brings a buff. Every buff is brought by like 6 different specs. There's no uniqueness.

This is factually untrue.

Every class has a kick (except Warlocks) because doing single player content without it is miserable. Does that mean the Rogue kick on an 8 second timer is the same value as the DH's 12 second 20 yard range interrupt or the Mage's kick on a 20 second 40 yard range? Absolfuckinglutely not.

Nothing in the game except a Demon Hunter brings a 5% magic debuff.

Nothing in the game except a Monk beings a 5% physcial debuff.

Mages/Priests and Warriors bring a unique 10% buff each that you can replace with a 7% consumable buff, but at the cutting edge that is a big deal.

Everything in the game having good AOE is so laughable it's not worth commenting on, they definitely don't all bring buffs, and while they can all hit a big CD and burst, those bursts are not equal by any definition.
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GildedFool posted...

v_charon posted...

turbopuns3 posted...

Like is there depth to modern retail class selection?

Or are the "classes" just:

Tank
Healer
Melee DPS
Ranged DPS

?

That's my question in a nutshell.

No, there's not, because no one wants to play a "support" class because you feel like a worthless idiot that isn't really doing anything. There's a reason why classes like that don't exist much in MMOs these days. They aren't popular, and the devs know it. No one wants to be the guy who keeps buffs up on other people. Blizzard did away with it because it wasn't popular.

That's not what he means.

And, yes there are. You have multidot ranged, AOE/ST/cleave melee, raid/tank healers.

You need monk/warrior/mage/DH/priest for their unique buff/debuffs but can use any of their specs.

Druids, DKs and Warlocks bring in-combat ressurection.

Some classes have good target swapping, some have on-demand burst, good mobility. Rogues for example are the best melee dps for survivability with Cheat Death, Cloak of Shadows and Feint as excellent defensive options.

You need one of the classes bringing the Lust effect.

You probably want at least a couple of people who have good execute damage for when the boss gets low.

You can't just grab 2 tanks, 4 heals and 14 dps without regard for what class they are and expect to do ok in a raid. Can you beat a normal raid like that? Sure. But once you move into Heroic and *definitely* for Mythic, it's just not realistic.

Additionally, I didn't pay attention to when you said you stopped, but you can swap between any of your classes specs incredibly easily now if you want to move from heal to dps, or from one dps spec to another for different fights. I know there's one dungeon which priests almost always prefer to heal as Holy instead of Discipline because of the structure of one of the fights and the different playstyles they have.

I feel like you opened this post trying to explain why classes are so varied, but all your examples showed that they aren't.

Like true not every single class can battle rez but at this point it's not a unique trait. If you make a raid of random classes you are gonna end up with some battle rezzes.
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CoolCly posted...

Like true not every single class can battle rez but at this point it's not a unique trait. If you make a raid of random classes you are gonna end up with some battle rezzes.

And you think that's worse than 80% of the specs in the game not getting to do lategame 5-man content because they don't bring a brez?
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Sounds like you are putting words in my mouth? It's the same thing vcharon is doing - taking something I said and then adding a conclusion to it that I didn't state.

I'm not saying somebody shouldn't be brought to content because they don't have a brez. I'm saying I don't like that so many people have battle rez. To me, the ideal balance is that somebody is brought because they have something else just as useful as brez.

My ideal vision for balance is the way dota 2 does it - which is perfectly illustrated by this comic. In dota 2, there are no bad heroes. In fact, every single hero is overpowered in it's own way. Every hero is played, every hero is good, they are just all good for their own unique reason.

https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/737

This is not the balance strategy Blizz uses for WoW classes. The vanilla balance IS a lot more like this method (though obviously, not perfected because it's so rough).
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CoolCly posted...

You said you cannot understand why anyone would want to play classic when it's objectively worse than Retail.

I've attempted to lay out to you why all of the improvements they've made to Retail, while improving the game for many people and in many ways, have changed the games in unintended ways that have turned other people off, and Classic might be able to give what those people are looking for.

You are just unwilling to accept that the "good changes" may have also caused "bad changes". So I guess you'll never understand why anyone would want to play Classic over Retail.

I tried to make peace and whatever but you're just a thick skulled dude who claims that the person you're arguing with doesn't want to see anything but his own way, while blissfully ignoring anyone else's points of views (as you did there, writing off what were legit examples of class differences because you didn't like it). So yeah I'm done with the argument. To each his own, keep defending a broken game I guess.
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CoolCly posted...

Sounds like you are putting words in my mouth? It's the same thing vcharon is doing - taking something I said and then adding a conclusion to it that I didn't state.

Maybe, just maybe, you're not realizing the way you're coming across.
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Alright dawg. Peace out.
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CoolCly posted...

in an off topic note, Heroes of the Storm failing compared to League and Dota is primarily due to them trying to apply this homogenization approach to a genre that thrives on strengths and differences between characters.

It had a lot of problems and a lot of very poor rollouts that turned a lot of their playerbase off. Basically all of the new maps for the last few years were fucking awful. Then you had them constantly trying to remake things like Haunted Mines and taking Dragon Shire off the rotation despite Dragon Shire being by far everyone's favorite map.

Then lots of talent retooling that just made the game less fun for the sake of balance.

They also were constantly retooling the pace of play, end of game time expecation, and catch up mechanics which made actually being competitive at the game impossible.
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