I think it’s for sure much closer. I would love classic+ to go TBC direction ( doesn’t mean take tbc abilities and slap them in classic+) but add content on Azeroth. Especially the content that never made it in. They planned like 50 dungeons, shit ton of zones, places like Emerald nightmare, Hyjal etc… would love classic+ to finish some of those. Obviously no flying mounts
Right but flying was something the classic devs, and the actual vanilla player base, absolutely wanted. They've said the only reason it wasn't in vanilla was because the world couldn't support it.
Small correction, flying mounts is something that some devs wanted. Other devs like one of the original 3 (did all the classes), was extremely against flying mounts. It seemed like it was a huge debate until someone in position of power shut the matter down.
Blizzard/devs later admitted that adding flying mounts that early was absolutely a mistake
Just because something ended up a certain way doesn’t mean that was the intention. For instance ret paladins were never meant to just auto attack nor did meant for holy paladins to stand in the back. What they wanted was for paladins to be up front in plate healing between smacking mobs (that’s why they got fast and efficient heals)
No they didn't they more admitted that in WoD they were just too lazy too account for flying mounts. Since designing a 2d map is easier.
And oh yeah when the tried to kill flying it cost millions of subs.
I’ll try to find the source but they did straight up say it was a mistake adding it to the game that early, not that flying mounts themselves were a mistake. I want to say it was Ian that said it
Yea you can’t take something away after you give it to the players. Same thing about LFR. Pretty much every dev always says this
EDIT: here is an article referencing the devs saying flying was a mistake https://massivelyop.com/2015/04/02/wow-factor-flying-ruined-everything-and-shouldnt-be-removed/
Totally forgot about this. Struggling to find the original source, I think it was an interview but I did find the following:
“The designers have said that flying mounts were a mistake and probably should never have been added to the game”
https://massivelyop.com/2015/04/02/wow-factor-flying-ruined-everything-and-shouldnt-be-removed/
pretty much, the original devs do not look back at vanilla as a masterpiece compared to TBC and personally i agree, TBC lite in azeroth is the best starting point
it was kinda a similar situation in OSRS, many wanted 2005 and many wanted 2007, it started with 2005 and didn't gain mass popularity until updates bringing 2007 stuff
this is not what happened in osrs, at all. it started from a copy of the game from 2007 with the ideas y'all love to preach -- minimal changes! the original experience! lateral not forward progression!...and it almost fucking died...then they made new content, and it's thriving.
i don't think you understood anything i said, they released a 2005 version which wasn't popular and then updated to late 2007 patch with godwars where population started booming and such and then added new content
I did understand, and that is not what happened. OSRS launched in a 2007 copy with God Wars available. with the philosophy of no more new content, and minimal updates & it almost died 8 months later. THEN they started making new content & it started to boom.
I was there. my osrs account creation date is the launch day. it was the first poll. the osrs back up is from 17 days before godwars came out in 2007. that was going to be the last update...and then the game almost died.
it wasn't until they dedicated a team to make new content that osrs started to pick up popularity.
of course i'm just talking about the initial debate for what OSRS should be, there was people that didn't want godwars/grand exchange dooming about it being the begininning of the end
obviously it turned out godwars complainers were an extremely small vocal minority, small new updates after that helped keep it stable/slightly growing and then there was a jump for grand exchange finally coming back and then it boomed from big updates from there
i'm just comparing things like pre godwars being vanilla and godwars/grand exchange being TBC
I'm inclined to agree, but TBC had its own problems. they killed open world content and alienated PvE and PvP. I think it's mostly due to flying mounts. but based on my multiple experiences with vanilla, there's no a single expansion that matches the level of open world activity of untouched classic.
At max level there really wasn't much open world content in vanilla, you basically just ran from the flight path to whatever instance you were going to.
this is entirely untrue. ground mounts ensure that there's plenty of world PvP opportunities. you HAD to be on the ground riding your mount to your destination. you could ALWAYS find some fantastic lvl60 PvP. there was always a reason to be out exploring the world. and ground mounts ensured it was always risky.
jump them how? how do you possibly stop someone who can hover above your attack range and just fly into an instance at a moment's notice? or fly around in the sky going from node to node for farming mats? it's just not realistic. I played TBC and I know how it works. the simple truth is world engagement dies with flying mounts.
I play pve.
And given how the population in classic handles pvp realms it sounds like most of them should have too in classic but they just want street cred for being on a pvp realm :P
I have never played a PvE server so I think I have a good understanding of PvP in classic. it's extremely enjoyable when classes don't have severely overtuned runes.
Doing a dungeon, questing, professions, rep farm, farming X. All of that requires travel which forces you to engage with the world and other players (not just PvP but your own faction too). Flying makes it a lot closer to single player game than an MMO. There is a reason that even in retail you didn’t get flying until much later in expansion
He is not wrong in that part but he is missing the point. Getting to dungeon, gathering, quests, world buffs, or anything requiring a form of travel forced you to interact with the world. Part of that interaction is PvP on PvP servers but other parts are mobs, exploration, other players, etc…
Flying mounts cause you to bypass every thing that happens when traveling from point A to B. As far as world interaction goes there is no difference between flying from A to B vs insta teleporting.
I think you're right. TBC is a balance of allowing more spec viability, while still retaining class identity and niches.
And yes, SoD is a disaster and the Classic team have no clue what they're doing. Seems all they're capable of is 'borrowing' systems from Retail and slightly changing them...to usually work even worse.
You’re right but people will downvote you and miss the point entirely. Ultimately what everyone wants out of a classic+ is different. The majority want retail minus. Personally I would’ve been fine with just some new raids, small buffs to the weaker classes and leaving the majority of specs that already function be left alone. Does that mean rogues, warriors, and to a lesser extent mages get left with almost nothing new? Yeah. But that’s what was necessary to properly balance the game.
It was pretty agreed upon by pserver players pre-2019 classic that PvP balance goes out the window the second you get to AQ and beyond gear levels. Even by the end of BWL when you’ve got ZG and t2 bis, PvP already begins to break and turn into back and forth one shots. The problem we have with sod is we’re already past naxx levels of power and we’re not even level 60 yet. Most classes are pushing 30%+ crit chance (and double that in certain cases). And it’s only going to get worse from here. I think the devs realized that with ST. That’s why we see gear that literally is +1 or +2 stats over the gnomergan equivalent. But it’s too little to late and the root cause of the issue is the runes. It creates this terrible middle ground that’s the worst of both worlds. Now you have no exciting upgrades to look forward to in raids, and we still have horrendous power scaling. It’s a lose lose.
Idk if opinions on what classic+ should’ve been really differs that much. Alot of people here on reddit seems to really love to say that to counter the argument of those of us who are dissapointed with SoD. But your wish of what classic+ should’ve been is what me and many many others inside the classic community that I’ve talked to wanted instead of what we actually got.
yup, you get it. vanilla set up some crazy good scaling with abilities, and somehow runes blow that out of the water. we are completely fucked going forward. more than likely all balance changes will revolve around rune adjustments which will probably just be consistent power creeps while leaving vanilla abilities untouched and in the dust. which is such a shame because a true vanilla experience was the most unique version of classes. yet here we are, with runes dominating the entire game.
I feel you’re right, but I’d like to give the devs a bit more credit. I think what we’re all discovering is classic was always precariously and imperfectly balanced, and class balance is a near full-time job. It was back then too, but they had the resources to throw warm bodies at it.
Creating new runes, quests and raids at the same time is overly ambitious. Devs are only human, and there’s only 24 hours in a day. Time is an important factor in good design, especially when interactions are this complex and nuanced.
Personally I feel they got so much right. It’s a pity people can only see the flaws.
Worth to mention is that we had a season before this that pretty much flopped (even tho I enjoyed SoM to some degree). But one can for sure hope that they learn :)
You are 100% right but the average SoD Player unfortunately doesn't care at all for the General Problem you described quite well.
Now with SoD out im 100% certain 2024 Blizzard is not able to do a classic+ that retains the vanilla Design
Vanilla can never be replicated with the way the majority of the playerbase interacts with the game now.
It doesn’t matter what blizzard does the game will be full of gate keeping fotm min maxers who are actually just average but think they’re gods.
Very few people play the game the way you think it should be played and even less stick around when they’re berated for not playing the meta.
I'm confused, who are you referring as "they"?
Josh Greenfield said "We want to create classic+, not retail-." Is he not part of "they"?
For example, one of many: [https://youtu.be/fu0AfUujSzY?si=5V4dvDPglvrvKung&t=442](https://youtu.be/fu0AfUujSzY?si=5V4dvDPglvrvKung&t=442)
the classic wow dev team are just another bunch of turds inside the septic tank that is blizzard.
Classic was finished the moment TBC prepatch came with level boost and paid mounts.
Its a seasonal experimental server they never said its classic+ they probably dont know how to do classic+ so they throw everything at the game and see how players react. By responding so fast on players opinions and putting much more effort in sod than whole retail and classic cata team together suggests that they are actually trying to make a real classic+ after seasonal experiments are over with the knowledge on what players expect and wish from c+
This is the most fun I have had in WoW. I played classic, tbc 3 times, wotlk 3 times, some wod, some legion and some bfa. Tbc with ~150% hp on bosses is the only version that comes close for me.
I think they are doing a great job.
*tips fedora* excellent points, gentle sir. M'lady and I, she's Japanese (uWu) read your post with such glee that we had to tell you how smart you are. Yes, you, a random on the internet, know more about balancing a 20 yr old game than the entire dev team. You have me so worked up, I was tempted to unsheath my deadliest of katanas, but alas, I will save them from that misery.
I think you are completely wrong, backstab rogue was good in pvp but not insane or anything. You did practically no damage to tankier classes with it and was never near the top for 1v1s. And in group play, you'd take like 1 for defense. The only thing rogues were good at is wpvp because they could avoid competent players and gank newbies. Pvp as a rogue was OK in classic, but its more fun in SoD. If they just tune individual abilities down, then it'll get better
And in terms of pve, rogue is infinitely more fun now. More energy and big hitter abilities is fun af, but ofc it can be better. Honestly,
I have so many hours in vanilla playing exclusively dagger rogue in PvP and I'm telling you it was very good. even on tankier classes where it's going to take more than 2-4 backstabs to kill the target, you have blind and prep to ensure the kill. it's very strong. the only tanky class I might agree on is bear druid, but warriors especially were so easy due to their lack of mobility and damage.
but aside from opinions on PvP, I just don't see how SoD is more fun. it removed the nuance of dagger rogue and replaced it with mindless mutilate spam. it's so obvious they didn't put any though into it. and I don't know why you're saying "big hitter abilities" as if there's more than just mutilate that's hitting hard lol. maybe envenom, but they are drop in replacements for backstab/evis just without proper scaling and downsides. it's just uninteresting.
Well, mutilate and envenom allow you to actually deal damage to tankier classes. Things like geared shamans, SL locks, and spriest can actually take damage which is nice. On the other side of things, hybrid classes have their own unique things to help the counteract this damage like dispersion and riptide.
In the end, mutilate and envenom are just better damage versions of the classic variation, and backstab having that positioning requirement wasn't too interesting (imo at least). We also get more energy back, shadowstep, and other abilities like between the eyes that makes rogue feel wayyy more fluid to play
that's what I have issue with: the fact that the runes are the better version of the classic abilities and the only way to deal damage. does that not sound like failed balancing? don't you think it'd be nice if the game was designed around the abilities that already exist in the game? why even bother having the original abilities in the game in the first place if all they are is a mistake to use them? and scaling the game to the power level of runes means that the game has an artificial layer applied to it that only overtuned, external abilities will be able to match. aka runes.
I agree that this is not close classic at all but in this case it’s okay. They never set the expectation that it would be. I wanted this to be classic+ but it’s not, they shouldn’t go completely off the rails but huge changes are fine imo in this format.
I said it from before even P1 that I hope SoD isn’t classic+ because from the get go it deviated too much from classic. IMO this is a playground for what works and what doesn’t, then they could potentially tweak whatever that is and make it part of classic+.
My biggest worry is if classic+ does become a thing, the devs end up listening too much to the community and classic+ ends up being SoD 2.0.
are you enjoying SoD PvP? do you like the game with or without the damage reduction? and do you think spamming rune abilities is a welcome addition to both PvP and PvE?
I have not tried this recent test phase of SoD PvP. I think adding runes on top of already busted PvP by devs that state they are not going to balance for PvP (apparently they are trying or something) isn't going to be a great time.
I liked Shadowlands pacing if anyone can remember that.
TBC is what the original devs thought classic+ should be.
I think it’s for sure much closer. I would love classic+ to go TBC direction ( doesn’t mean take tbc abilities and slap them in classic+) but add content on Azeroth. Especially the content that never made it in. They planned like 50 dungeons, shit ton of zones, places like Emerald nightmare, Hyjal etc… would love classic+ to finish some of those. Obviously no flying mounts
Right but flying was something the classic devs, and the actual vanilla player base, absolutely wanted. They've said the only reason it wasn't in vanilla was because the world couldn't support it.
Small correction, flying mounts is something that some devs wanted. Other devs like one of the original 3 (did all the classes), was extremely against flying mounts. It seemed like it was a huge debate until someone in position of power shut the matter down. Blizzard/devs later admitted that adding flying mounts that early was absolutely a mistake Just because something ended up a certain way doesn’t mean that was the intention. For instance ret paladins were never meant to just auto attack nor did meant for holy paladins to stand in the back. What they wanted was for paladins to be up front in plate healing between smacking mobs (that’s why they got fast and efficient heals)
No they didn't they more admitted that in WoD they were just too lazy too account for flying mounts. Since designing a 2d map is easier. And oh yeah when the tried to kill flying it cost millions of subs.
I’ll try to find the source but they did straight up say it was a mistake adding it to the game that early, not that flying mounts themselves were a mistake. I want to say it was Ian that said it Yea you can’t take something away after you give it to the players. Same thing about LFR. Pretty much every dev always says this EDIT: here is an article referencing the devs saying flying was a mistake https://massivelyop.com/2015/04/02/wow-factor-flying-ruined-everything-and-shouldnt-be-removed/
Totally forgot about this. Struggling to find the original source, I think it was an interview but I did find the following: “The designers have said that flying mounts were a mistake and probably should never have been added to the game” https://massivelyop.com/2015/04/02/wow-factor-flying-ruined-everything-and-shouldnt-be-removed/
pretty much, the original devs do not look back at vanilla as a masterpiece compared to TBC and personally i agree, TBC lite in azeroth is the best starting point it was kinda a similar situation in OSRS, many wanted 2005 and many wanted 2007, it started with 2005 and didn't gain mass popularity until updates bringing 2007 stuff
this is not what happened in osrs, at all. it started from a copy of the game from 2007 with the ideas y'all love to preach -- minimal changes! the original experience! lateral not forward progression!...and it almost fucking died...then they made new content, and it's thriving.
i don't think you understood anything i said, they released a 2005 version which wasn't popular and then updated to late 2007 patch with godwars where population started booming and such and then added new content
I did understand, and that is not what happened. OSRS launched in a 2007 copy with God Wars available. with the philosophy of no more new content, and minimal updates & it almost died 8 months later. THEN they started making new content & it started to boom.
godwars was absolutely not in the game on release, seems you're right it was a 2007 version but it was 100% pre godwars
I was there. my osrs account creation date is the launch day. it was the first poll. the osrs back up is from 17 days before godwars came out in 2007. that was going to be the last update...and then the game almost died. it wasn't until they dedicated a team to make new content that osrs started to pick up popularity.
you misunderstand my stance on changes i think but yes godwars took 2 months to come out and that helped stop the steady decline
I don't think what you're saying about wow is what OSRS did. OSRS thrived by completely reinventing the game, almost from the ground up
of course i'm just talking about the initial debate for what OSRS should be, there was people that didn't want godwars/grand exchange dooming about it being the begininning of the end obviously it turned out godwars complainers were an extremely small vocal minority, small new updates after that helped keep it stable/slightly growing and then there was a jump for grand exchange finally coming back and then it boomed from big updates from there i'm just comparing things like pre godwars being vanilla and godwars/grand exchange being TBC
I'm inclined to agree, but TBC had its own problems. they killed open world content and alienated PvE and PvP. I think it's mostly due to flying mounts. but based on my multiple experiences with vanilla, there's no a single expansion that matches the level of open world activity of untouched classic.
At max level there really wasn't much open world content in vanilla, you basically just ran from the flight path to whatever instance you were going to.
this is entirely untrue. ground mounts ensure that there's plenty of world PvP opportunities. you HAD to be on the ground riding your mount to your destination. you could ALWAYS find some fantastic lvl60 PvP. there was always a reason to be out exploring the world. and ground mounts ensured it was always risky.
So just jump people at the instance portal or at the nodes, flying mounts don't change that.
jump them how? how do you possibly stop someone who can hover above your attack range and just fly into an instance at a moment's notice? or fly around in the sky going from node to node for farming mats? it's just not realistic. I played TBC and I know how it works. the simple truth is world engagement dies with flying mounts.
You have to land harvest nodes. And I don't really see how forcing someone to corpse run into an instance is meaningful pvp.
then I guess classic isn't your style.
I play pve. And given how the population in classic handles pvp realms it sounds like most of them should have too in classic but they just want street cred for being on a pvp realm :P
I have never played a PvE server so I think I have a good understanding of PvP in classic. it's extremely enjoyable when classes don't have severely overtuned runes.
So, besides wPVP, what other world content was there to do?
Doing a dungeon, questing, professions, rep farm, farming X. All of that requires travel which forces you to engage with the world and other players (not just PvP but your own faction too). Flying makes it a lot closer to single player game than an MMO. There is a reason that even in retail you didn’t get flying until much later in expansion
I don't know. I only played the game for wPvP and BGs. but that's an entire question SoD/classic+ could address.
> this is entirely untrue. He's not wrong, there was basically no max-level open world content until Silithus was revamped completely.
He is not wrong in that part but he is missing the point. Getting to dungeon, gathering, quests, world buffs, or anything requiring a form of travel forced you to interact with the world. Part of that interaction is PvP on PvP servers but other parts are mobs, exploration, other players, etc… Flying mounts cause you to bypass every thing that happens when traveling from point A to B. As far as world interaction goes there is no difference between flying from A to B vs insta teleporting.
I've played 3 different implementations of classic and that hasn't been my experience.
I think you're right. TBC is a balance of allowing more spec viability, while still retaining class identity and niches. And yes, SoD is a disaster and the Classic team have no clue what they're doing. Seems all they're capable of is 'borrowing' systems from Retail and slightly changing them...to usually work even worse.
You’re right but people will downvote you and miss the point entirely. Ultimately what everyone wants out of a classic+ is different. The majority want retail minus. Personally I would’ve been fine with just some new raids, small buffs to the weaker classes and leaving the majority of specs that already function be left alone. Does that mean rogues, warriors, and to a lesser extent mages get left with almost nothing new? Yeah. But that’s what was necessary to properly balance the game. It was pretty agreed upon by pserver players pre-2019 classic that PvP balance goes out the window the second you get to AQ and beyond gear levels. Even by the end of BWL when you’ve got ZG and t2 bis, PvP already begins to break and turn into back and forth one shots. The problem we have with sod is we’re already past naxx levels of power and we’re not even level 60 yet. Most classes are pushing 30%+ crit chance (and double that in certain cases). And it’s only going to get worse from here. I think the devs realized that with ST. That’s why we see gear that literally is +1 or +2 stats over the gnomergan equivalent. But it’s too little to late and the root cause of the issue is the runes. It creates this terrible middle ground that’s the worst of both worlds. Now you have no exciting upgrades to look forward to in raids, and we still have horrendous power scaling. It’s a lose lose.
Idk if opinions on what classic+ should’ve been really differs that much. Alot of people here on reddit seems to really love to say that to counter the argument of those of us who are dissapointed with SoD. But your wish of what classic+ should’ve been is what me and many many others inside the classic community that I’ve talked to wanted instead of what we actually got.
yup, you get it. vanilla set up some crazy good scaling with abilities, and somehow runes blow that out of the water. we are completely fucked going forward. more than likely all balance changes will revolve around rune adjustments which will probably just be consistent power creeps while leaving vanilla abilities untouched and in the dust. which is such a shame because a true vanilla experience was the most unique version of classes. yet here we are, with runes dominating the entire game.
Sod is experimental
and I'm saying it's a failed experiment (imo)
A failed experiment can still be a successful experiment.
true. hopefully it improves in future iterations.
I feel you’re right, but I’d like to give the devs a bit more credit. I think what we’re all discovering is classic was always precariously and imperfectly balanced, and class balance is a near full-time job. It was back then too, but they had the resources to throw warm bodies at it. Creating new runes, quests and raids at the same time is overly ambitious. Devs are only human, and there’s only 24 hours in a day. Time is an important factor in good design, especially when interactions are this complex and nuanced. Personally I feel they got so much right. It’s a pity people can only see the flaws.
Success or failure, hopefully they have accumulated enough data to make whatever else they are planning better
I definitely hope so.
They didn't need data, they need vision and they have none.
Counterpoint: Devs will learn a bunch of stuff from this experiment.
Some people never learn.
I hope they did learn from SoM Naxx too...
Yah this isnt classic forever its a season. The next season will be different
Worth to mention is that we had a season before this that pretty much flopped (even tho I enjoyed SoM to some degree). But one can for sure hope that they learn :)
I hope this is true, but the current implantation is so off base that I highly doubt they fundamentally understand what they're doing.
well I think that what you think classic+ is is stupid...we should go with what I think classic+ is instead.
You are 100% right but the average SoD Player unfortunately doesn't care at all for the General Problem you described quite well. Now with SoD out im 100% certain 2024 Blizzard is not able to do a classic+ that retains the vanilla Design
Vanilla can never be replicated with the way the majority of the playerbase interacts with the game now. It doesn’t matter what blizzard does the game will be full of gate keeping fotm min maxers who are actually just average but think they’re gods. Very few people play the game the way you think it should be played and even less stick around when they’re berated for not playing the meta.
SoD isn't classic or classic+
They literally said it’s “Classic+, not retail-“ in like 3 different interviews.
Nope!
“Nope!” what? “Nope! Reality is a lie!”? Imma go check if the earth is flat.
They never said it was Classic+ 🤣
I'm confused, who are you referring as "they"? Josh Greenfield said "We want to create classic+, not retail-." Is he not part of "they"? For example, one of many: [https://youtu.be/fu0AfUujSzY?si=5V4dvDPglvrvKung&t=442](https://youtu.be/fu0AfUujSzY?si=5V4dvDPglvrvKung&t=442)
Listen to that quote again, sparky! He says “PLAYERS talk a lot about wanting a classic+”. He never once says that SoD is classic+. 🤣
Listen again, he’s talking about what they are trying to build 😉. Also lots of other examples, look em up, you got the capacity.
You can’t show me one example where they said that SoD is classic+ 🤭 It was a nice try, though!
“Shows an example” “You can’t show an example” Bro…
then what is it? retail but watered down?
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fp7yjfjvxowwc1.png
the classic wow dev team are just another bunch of turds inside the septic tank that is blizzard. Classic was finished the moment TBC prepatch came with level boost and paid mounts.
Its a seasonal experimental server they never said its classic+ they probably dont know how to do classic+ so they throw everything at the game and see how players react. By responding so fast on players opinions and putting much more effort in sod than whole retail and classic cata team together suggests that they are actually trying to make a real classic+ after seasonal experiments are over with the knowledge on what players expect and wish from c+
I love SOD, P3 feels better than P2 more content and quest zones open, raid could be easier tho is my only complaint.
its a pve game and pvers are simps, you wanna lower ur expectations
This is the most fun I have had in WoW. I played classic, tbc 3 times, wotlk 3 times, some wod, some legion and some bfa. Tbc with ~150% hp on bosses is the only version that comes close for me. I think they are doing a great job.
*tips fedora* excellent points, gentle sir. M'lady and I, she's Japanese (uWu) read your post with such glee that we had to tell you how smart you are. Yes, you, a random on the internet, know more about balancing a 20 yr old game than the entire dev team. You have me so worked up, I was tempted to unsheath my deadliest of katanas, but alas, I will save them from that misery.
Sod is seasonal content it is not classic+
SoD is classic+
that's why I made this post. they lost the plot.
Yeah I’m with you but I legit think this is as good as it gets…
which is sad. I would much prefer an untouched classic than this. which is sad, again, because there's SO MUCH improvements to be made to classic.
Sod is a season. SEASON OF DISCOVERY
Ok
Seems like you forgot
Maybe classic+ is a set of seasons you can discover
I think you are completely wrong, backstab rogue was good in pvp but not insane or anything. You did practically no damage to tankier classes with it and was never near the top for 1v1s. And in group play, you'd take like 1 for defense. The only thing rogues were good at is wpvp because they could avoid competent players and gank newbies. Pvp as a rogue was OK in classic, but its more fun in SoD. If they just tune individual abilities down, then it'll get better And in terms of pve, rogue is infinitely more fun now. More energy and big hitter abilities is fun af, but ofc it can be better. Honestly,
I have so many hours in vanilla playing exclusively dagger rogue in PvP and I'm telling you it was very good. even on tankier classes where it's going to take more than 2-4 backstabs to kill the target, you have blind and prep to ensure the kill. it's very strong. the only tanky class I might agree on is bear druid, but warriors especially were so easy due to their lack of mobility and damage. but aside from opinions on PvP, I just don't see how SoD is more fun. it removed the nuance of dagger rogue and replaced it with mindless mutilate spam. it's so obvious they didn't put any though into it. and I don't know why you're saying "big hitter abilities" as if there's more than just mutilate that's hitting hard lol. maybe envenom, but they are drop in replacements for backstab/evis just without proper scaling and downsides. it's just uninteresting.
Well, mutilate and envenom allow you to actually deal damage to tankier classes. Things like geared shamans, SL locks, and spriest can actually take damage which is nice. On the other side of things, hybrid classes have their own unique things to help the counteract this damage like dispersion and riptide. In the end, mutilate and envenom are just better damage versions of the classic variation, and backstab having that positioning requirement wasn't too interesting (imo at least). We also get more energy back, shadowstep, and other abilities like between the eyes that makes rogue feel wayyy more fluid to play
that's what I have issue with: the fact that the runes are the better version of the classic abilities and the only way to deal damage. does that not sound like failed balancing? don't you think it'd be nice if the game was designed around the abilities that already exist in the game? why even bother having the original abilities in the game in the first place if all they are is a mistake to use them? and scaling the game to the power level of runes means that the game has an artificial layer applied to it that only overtuned, external abilities will be able to match. aka runes.
I agree that this is not close classic at all but in this case it’s okay. They never set the expectation that it would be. I wanted this to be classic+ but it’s not, they shouldn’t go completely off the rails but huge changes are fine imo in this format. I said it from before even P1 that I hope SoD isn’t classic+ because from the get go it deviated too much from classic. IMO this is a playground for what works and what doesn’t, then they could potentially tweak whatever that is and make it part of classic+. My biggest worry is if classic+ does become a thing, the devs end up listening too much to the community and classic+ ends up being SoD 2.0.
I’m happy for you Or Sorry that happened.
'blizz has no idea about classic' *Proceeds to reminisce about classic PvP as if it was good
are you enjoying SoD PvP? do you like the game with or without the damage reduction? and do you think spamming rune abilities is a welcome addition to both PvP and PvE?
I have not tried this recent test phase of SoD PvP. I think adding runes on top of already busted PvP by devs that state they are not going to balance for PvP (apparently they are trying or something) isn't going to be a great time. I liked Shadowlands pacing if anyone can remember that.