WotLK and making classes more and more identical

Flex

Hey, has anyone else noticed the strong trend currently underway in the new WorLK talent trees and abilities that classes are becoming pretty much identical?

Examples Ive noticed in particular would be Paladins and Warriors in tanking.

Paladins now have a carbon copy of Warriors Shield Slam and get the Thunderclap debuff added to Judgements, whereas Warriors have had their 30 minutes cooldown on Shield Wall reduced to 5 minutes and the damage reduction reduced to 50% to mirror the new version of Divine Shield Paladins get. Plus, Paladins have a version of Evocation. Rogues are getting a new AoE attack whereas before they were purely a single target DPS class...

Theres lots of other examples, but basically from what I can see Blizzard seem to have given up on the concept of making classes equal in the roles they can fulfil but keeping them different and unique, theyve gone on a new course of giving classes very similar abilities but just different names. Oh, and theres the whole stupid thing of putting talents that seem to have only useful applications in PvP in the Warrior Protection tree...

Anyway, just wondering what other people make of this, if they seem to see this trend themselves or not and if theyre happy with it?

Psycopat

what they are trying to do is allow many classes to be able to do similar jobs, for example if you take illhoof, it was always pretty much needed to have a warlock to aoe the adds. they want to take away the need to have a particular class for 1 fight of a 10ish boss instance. they are also trying to allow each spec to have a viable role in pve and pvp so ice mages will be usefull in raids.

i think the changes will be pretty good tbh but there are so many of them that it will be impossible to know for sure if they are gona be good or not till it comes out. also wotlk is not finished so there will be many more changes.

Flex

Psycopat wrote: »

what they are trying to do is allow many classes to be able to do similar jobs, for example if you take illhoof, it was always pretty much needed to have a warlock to aoe the adds. they want to take away the need to have a particular class for 1 fight of a 10ish boss instance. they are also trying to allow each spec to have a viable role in pve and pvp so ice mages will be usefull in raids.

i think the changes will be pretty good tbh but there are so many of them that it will be impossible to know for sure if they are gona be good or not till it comes out. also wotlk is not finished so there will be many more changes.

Yea I can understand it from that point of view, but I still prefer when classes were more unique. And having a Warrior and Paladin both Protection I thought they had done a fairly good job of making them 'different but equal' regards tanking and letting each havea niche they were better at. And with Warriors as an example again I liked the way each tree seemed to have a clear place in the game where it performed great; Arms for PvP, Fury for PvE DPS and Prot for tanking. I find the idea of trying to make Protection a PvP viable spec stupid :P Even when I was leveling my Warrior Prot I thought I could be helpful to my team in BG's just hamstringing, silencing, stunning and so on against opponents.

Shall have to wait and see what they have in store!

Ivan

I'm definitely in agreement with the OP here.

The recent changes to class unique buffs, like shadow priests mana regen and survival hunter's great utilities has changed things for the worse, imho.

If they want to change the game, so that no one class was required for an encounter, then they could stop designing encounters that required a specific fúcking class

WellyJ

Yeh have been noticing this lately,

And I agree that it's not a good change to be making to WOW.

One of the things that got me so hooked was the diversity between the classes,

Its getting to the stage where the only difference is gonna be Tank/Healer/Dps

And that is a really really bad way to go.

Who cares if certain classes are required for certain situations? It's worked perfectly fine up to now, and it's what makes WOW what is it imo.

Cant really see why Blizz are doing this, it's a shame.

xeni

I have to agree that the classes similarities are starting to be more and more noticable. I trust blizz enough to wait and see how it all ends up. But on the other hand I would not be suprised if one day the only unique classes would be hunter/lock and that would only be cause of pets :P

PS. Oh and Death Knight with proper spec :P

Flex

WellyJ wrote: »

Yeh have been noticing this lately,

And I agree that it's not a good change to be making to WOW.

One of the things that got me so hooked was the diversity between the classes,

Its getting to the stage where the only difference is gonna be Tank/Healer/Dps

And that is a really really bad way to go.

Who cares if certain classes are required for certain situations? It's worked perfectly fine up to now, and it's what makes WOW what is it imo.

Cant really see why Blizz are doing this, it's a shame.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

The bolded part is what I really dont wanna have happen. As I see it now each class has an area where they excel at when specced right;

Tanking:

Warrior - Single target
Paladins - Multiple targets
Druids - Off tanks

DPS:

Rogues - single target
Mages - Multiple targets
Warlocks - DoTs
Hunters - ranged single target

Healing:

Paladins - Single target
Shamans - Multiple targets
Druids - HoTs
Priests - most versatile

I can defintely see the need to change things and buff classes to make them more on par with each other in their roles or whatever, but I really hate that classes are losing so much diversity... (and the above 'list' is a very very condensed short version of things by the way just to try help illustrate my point).

Psycopat

Flex wrote: »

DPS:

Rogues - single target
Mages - Multiple targets
Warlocks - DoTs
Hunters - ranged single target

Warlocks - DoTs, Ranged single target, Multiple targets, Tanking

Fixed.

nix

TBH i cant see the rogue becoming "AOE" with fan of knifes

WE wont be able to spam it, its either gonna have a long CD or require energy to use, and we only get 100 energy unspecced and most of our moves costs like 35energy+. and plus we can do splash damage with blade flurry which im predicting will still be alot better than FOK.

tbh i dont mind the pala/war thing, they will have different strngths and moves with the new expansion. And atleast this way it will make paladins wanted in something else other than holy specc.

][cEMAN**

Psycopat wrote: »

Warlocks - DoTs, Ranged single target, Multiple targets, Tanking

Fixed.

Specced correctly, and with the appropriate skills and professions...

Warlocks - DoTs, Ranged single target, Multiple targets, AoE, Tanking, Healing, Resurrection (they changed this a couple of patches back though*), Transportation, Crowd control - single target, Crowd control - Multiple targets, Debuff causing extra damage for DPS classes, less damage on tanks.


*You used to be able to summon a dead character back into the land of the living.

Dr Bob

Flex wrote: »

DPS:

Rogues - single target
Mages - Multiple targets
Warlocks - DoTs
Hunters - ranged single target

<cough> you missed boomkins.

Schism

luas_dublin wrote: »

<cough> you missed boomkins.

I think he was just naming pure DPS as opposed to hybrid classes.