r/classicwow • u/erre94 • 15d ago

Forever Beta Feedback When you finally get that sweet rank upgrade

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Technically a dps upgrade.

3.2k Upvotes

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1.1k

u/elensar748 15d ago

I get wanting gear to matter more to casters but all they have done is remove the feeling of getting a new spell rank that hits harder and you notice. Same same

692

u/Coolmyco 15d ago

Ironically new spell ranks used to be the “new weapon” feeling for casters

313

u/MarcAbaddon 15d ago

It also worked out nicely in the end that when you stopped getting new ranks (also knows as hitting level 60), you started getting access to gear with spell power and got your upgrades from there.

210

u/DankuTwo 15d ago

It's almost as if the real Blizzard devs knew what they were doing 20 years ago!

80

u/BookerLegit 15d ago

Yeah, that's why Boomkins were functionally useless lol

None of them knew that it felt good to get spell damage at 60, because you didn't bring any.

35

u/kane49 15d ago

I dont think the owl form even existed until well into vanilla

40

u/a_type_of_tree 15d ago

It didn't, I still have memories of when it was added and when innervate was made baseline instead of being in the resto tree. I'm old.

27

u/A_Hobo_In_Training 15d ago

I remember getting moonkin form unlocked. The second I shifted into it, world chat erupted with news of Steve Irwins death. Long story short, I was convinced for a brief moment that my moonkin was an abomination so awful that killed steve irwin.

2

u/Think-Big-7411 15d ago

Damn your boomkin looked like a stingray? It definitely was an abomination then

2

u/Whyskgurs 12d ago

Doomkin

6

u/Sh1rvallah 15d ago

Yeah hurricane was the capstone. And it was bad

12

u/exuberant_elephant 15d ago

Well, that, but if you did load up on Spell Damage gear (which included a lot of cloth) then you'd go OoM after like three Starfires.

2

u/Buddha8888 15d ago

I'm hoping they fix stats in Forever to make more sense. Not Retail level but maybe wotlk level

0

u/Squally160 15d ago

This is an honest question, but what about retail stats on gear is bad right now compared to wotlk or even vanilla?

2

u/Buddha8888 15d ago

I guess I just mean the gear doesn't feel as good to get, Epics mean nothing, you replace stuff very fast and the stats are more or less interchangeable. Though it is nice to not need a whole new set of gear to switch to tank/heals if you do it off-spec

5

u/an_agreeing_dothraki 15d ago

one of the best original machinimas was about how druids were useless. It gave us the "with the strength to tank 5 gorillas" line.

1

u/Aggressive-Juice4162 14d ago

spec design =/= basic RPG design. one class being bad does not mean the original spell rank decisions were bad too.

1

u/BookerLegit 14d ago

Missing the forest for the trees. The comment was about Classic Blizzard "knowing what they were doing" when, in many ways, they clearly did not.

1

u/Aggressive-Juice4162 14d ago

classic blizzard knew how to make an MMORPG. The did not know how to make classes.

174

u/redux44 15d ago

Let's be real, the optimal raid set up in classic is having 70-80% warriors with the rest a few token classes that buff them.

They absolutely had no idea about class balance.

Now you get power upgrades via gear instead of a vendor.

57

u/itsaaronnotaaron 15d ago

But that's after 20 years of knowing the game. The meta in Vanilla was vastly different and largely unknown. Like pummeler feral wasn't a thing in Vanilla. Hard to balance when no one knows what specs are capable of.

50

u/Seeryous2020 15d ago

There was no meta in true vanilla other than we needed enough healers and tanks. Was a blast i was there.

What wasnt a blast was the 4 hour mcs because we had no idea what we were doing even months into the raid.

2

u/Sweaksh 15d ago

Mostly true but even back then all those years ago nobody was playing shadow or balance

3

u/Seeryous2020 15d ago

Youd have one every now and then. I went shadow on my main after i got benediction. We werent as focused on finding the absolute best dps shit back then and the healing VE gave was really good.

20

u/bagelsaget 15d ago

Yes, and that’s why we have forever. The no changes crowd had their turn. Now it’s time to evolve after 20 years and change the experience

5

u/itsaaronnotaaron 15d ago

I didn't say otherwise? It was a discussion about the poor classic class balance.

-3

u/hery41 15d ago

The 'no changes crowd' stopped being a thing when they launched with 1.12 and added stuff like dual spec or collectors edition cosmetics.

It has been years. You are fighting ghosts.

2

u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst 15d ago

The #nochanges crowd is still very much alive. They've moved their goalposts in the 7 years since classic launched, but they're still absolutely kicking around these comments sections.

-1

u/hery41 15d ago

They've moved their goalposts

That's not what no changes means. It stopped being no changes after the first goalpost move.

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u/riddlesinthedark117 15d ago

No, that’s not true, I was there for Phase 2 and played private before that

Even a couple of months ago QoL improvements were being fought tooth and nail

1

u/redux44 15d ago

Yea but this isnt about the player base not knowing but the devs

The devs back then created the best mmo ever but with time we know there was obvious some problems.

I played a paladin back then. I leveled as ret but not much after raiding to was clear my only choice was being a healer.

And to highlight another point, my plate wearing paladin was competing for cloth healing gear lol

So yea, they made some mistakes that took basically an expansion to fix.

-2

u/Feathrende 15d ago

It literally wasn't. There were other MMOs before WoW you know.

28

u/rufrtho 15d ago

Now you get power upgrades via gear instead of a vendor

now you get power upgrades via gear instead of both*

37

u/Visual-Cry94 15d ago edited 15d ago

Theres a few things wrong with this statement.

  1. Sure, having 70-80% warriors is optimal for the highest DPS, but, then you're also competing with all those other warriors for loot, NO ONE would want to be in a 20 warrior guild and be 20th in line for the loot back then. you'll pretty much not ever get shit. This meta got slightly more popular over time (Private servers, Classic) and the main reason it got MUCH more popular now on Era/Anniversary is because of the easy mode rank 14 gear so every warrior gets full Rank 14. If they were sitting in full Pre-BIS and didn't play any BG's this meta wouldn't have been so popular.

  2. Original classic got balance changes over time, there were regular patches, in Classic, we started on the final patch.

  3. World buffs being so powerful on Warrior. World buffs are gone now.
    No world buffs + No easy mode rank 14, that's how the original game was intended.
    Blizzard never expected people to fully world buff for every raid, and in OG Vanilla, people didn't. You might drop an Onyxia buff for progression. My guild did that once and awhile.
    And you could never have full world buffs on all the time because Songflower is only 60 minutes and unless you're some giga speed runner guild no one has all their buffs on for a full raid night, There was also no Chronoboon to save your buffs and re-pop them later.

In short, you're comparing 2025 hardcore sweat meta and saying that means the design in 2004 was bad?
That's like saying the developers of Super Mario 64 are idiots because speedrunners can beat the game in under 2 hours.

  1. And lastly, the game wasn't balanced entirely around raids. You have a retail mindset of "Raids are all that matters, if my damage number isn't the highest I am underpowered" No, raids were 1 part of the game, many players played the game never even raided at all. You could argue Warrior is bad because a Frost mage can kill a warrior while naked with no gear on.

1

u/7figureipo 15d ago

The design in OG Vanilla was still bad. It was very clear, even back then, that warriors were superior tanks and superior dps in literally every way. The exception might have been through P1 (I mean, I certainly tanked Ragnoros on my pal often enough, but this was also during a time when your raid absolutely planned for a submerge or 2, not to dps before even the first could occur) or maybe early P2. By the time AQ40 came out, at least, it was definitely the case that some of the modern meta was starting to exist even then, even if it wasn't quite so bad, and in spite of the fact that "nobody" knew what they were doing.

5

u/LettersWords 15d ago

By the time AQ40 came out, at least, it was definitely the case that some of the modern meta was starting to exist even then, even if it wasn't quite so bad, and in spite of the fact that "nobody" knew what they were doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CNN_Cn2L2A

There isn't a single DPS warrior in the top 10 on the DPS meters in Nihilum's W1st kill of KT in 2006.

-6

u/WestBase8 15d ago

I mean the design was still bad, as nobody else did any damage except warriors. Just that 2004 players were also bad (it was a new game, without the power of google)

7

u/Visual-Cry94 15d ago

We had google in 2004...
Nobody else did ANY dps? Stop posting nonsense. Even on Classic Era the most minmaxed server out there, there's mages and rogues in the top 100, plenty of them.
Ok, so a warrior does 1500 dps and then the rogue does 1300 dps. WHAT TERRIBLE DESIGN, the rogue does NO damage !!

"2004 players were bad" Is such a stupid thing to say. Like if you went back to 2004, and never played the game before, You'd be better than all of them? No you wouldn't, you'd be on the same level and there would be many many players better than you.

2

u/ShelterSudden 15d ago

I'll agree with both of you, there absolutely were sweats and hardcore raiders that pushed the limits of all available classes and specs, and Google was most certainly a thing, but at least before the end of vanilla (pre naxx/aq), there was a lot of misinformation out there, misunderstood game mechanics, as well as add-ons generally feeling less "mandatory" beyond some basic raid alerts/timers and a threat meter leading to a nonzero chance of several raid members simply not having any add-ons installed

1

u/HomicidalTrader 15d ago edited 15d ago

2004 players were bad, the notion of meta didn't catch on with the general population until 2006-2008. Prior to that it was almost entirely confined to the TTRPG community and the very upper echelon of hardcore gamers.

It literally didn't use to occur to the majority of people to optimise, people just made whatever choice felt right in the moment with hardly a thought given. Talents and gear were mostly picked for the rule of cool over performance.

Like if you went back to 2004, and never played the game before, You'd be better than all of them?

I would be confident the average milktoast player from today thrown into a time machine, would crack the top 5% without breaking a sweat.

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u/dump_cakes 15d ago

Elitist Jerks forums, which were the source of therorycrafting in wow for around a decade, were opened sometime in early 2005. The meta and min maxers have been around basically for as long as the game has.

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u/Visual-Cry94 15d ago

That doesn't make any sense at all. I'm talking you're teleported back to 2004 with 0 knowledge of the future at all and on the same starting plane as everyone else, you think you'd be better than them? How tf does that make any sense at all?

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u/Guilty_Turn8903 15d ago

doing a naxx/aq40 clear when you can't just watch a strategy guide on youtube is several orders of magnitude more skillful than running BiS geared, fully worldbuffed raid group who all watched a strategy breakdown on youtube 20 times

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u/WestBase8 15d ago

Picking one class and it's already doing more than 10% less DPS, and that was the second on the list I guess, so the rest are absolutely not close. (We don't even need to speak about hybrids...)

The balance was nowhere close. If you want to support your claim post some actually logs/statistics so we can see how it truly is.

Players were bad in 2004 because we didn't have all the information we have now. If they did we would see 25 warrior raids (they knew warrior was busted back then already)

1

u/Visual-Cry94 14d ago

No, we wouldn't have 25 warrior raids because then most of the warriors will never get any gear. Mass warrior only works because they changed the pvp system and gave everyone full rank 14 gear for spamming AV.

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u/Mr_Rockmore 15d ago

Optimal, min-max raiding wasnt a thing in original clasic. People didnt care about class balance because they were too busy having fun.

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u/BookerLegit 15d ago

They might not have known how cracked warriors were, but they understood (and cared) that bringing a mage was better than bringing a boomkin.

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u/Mrbiag 15d ago

Boomie was my first toon and all people wanted me to do was heal. I switched to Lock and it has been my main ever since.

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u/Capital_Gap_5194 15d ago

People who actually raided absolutely cared

Most people didn’t raid or didn’t make it past BWL if they did

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u/ASaGHost 15d ago

True. I played on an RP realm and I'm not sure anyone got further than nefarian. There were rumors that some guild got some bosses down in naxx, but having now played it, the trash pulls are some of the harder parts, and that was with 15 years of info sharing. I'm doubtful that ever happened.

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u/Astra-Fang 15d ago

We had three ret paladins and cleared up to Twin Emps and like 4 bosses in Naxx.

It was not as big a deal as people make it out to be

Having people reliably show up mattered way more than specific class. Tha5s outside of the dwarf priests who were god damn divas.

1

u/randomnounadjective7 15d ago

Top20 US guild for KT back in vanilla. Our main tank keyboard turned, one of our priests healed in shadow spec, one of our rogues did 30% more DPS than everyone else (which was still well under what bottom parsing warriors did in classic). 

There's maybe like 5 guilds in the entire world who cared.

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u/Lowelll 15d ago

lol. Lmao even.

Listen to the interviews of Kevin Jordan.

They absolutely knew and it was absolutely a problem. Which is why class balance was largely fixed by TBC.

The thing is that they had limited time and obviously way more limited experience and data. Almost every class received a major overhaul at somepoint during vanilla.

The reason that they didn't balance most specs for PVE wasn't that they didn't know they were unbalanced, it's that they were busy trying to balance at least one spec for every class so that they get invited to raids. They didn't want the Shaman to be forced to play resto in raids, but that was better than Shamans getting no raid spots at all.

You also obviously weren't around back then if you think people didn't care about balance.

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u/Mr_Rockmore 15d ago

Class balance and min maxxing are two different things. Im not talking about class balance, im talking about min maxxing culture.

Lol for misunderstanding what I was talking about. Lmao even.

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u/Lowelll 15d ago

"People didn't care about class balance"

That's from your post man.

The post you replied to also directly talks about class balance.

What the fuck are you on about? Its okay to be wrong sometimes but stop embarrassing yourself like this.

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u/Mr_Rockmore 15d ago

Your counter to telling me people didnt care about class balance was to tell me the devs cared, who arent the player base.

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u/_leeloo_7_ 15d ago

in the real retail version of the classic game we are talking about that took place over a decade ago, not a single raid stacked 80% warriors, people played whatever they had.

stacking warrrior is just something people did in "solved classic" so yeah a decade ago things seemed pretty balanced at a glance?

(no one realised warrior was this bustedoutlier)

1

u/Lundetangen 13d ago

Class balance didnt exist people had no data in vanilla. Was only until Elitist Jerks started to publish their spreadsheets people started to even think about it, and that was very late in vanilla.

Not uncommon for people to spend 6-8 months to reach lvl 60. I remember I was the only dps warrior in our guild and everyone laughed at me for going fury and focusing on str/AP, while most were arms and getting agility gear for more crit.

Biggest issue back then, and particularly for dps warriors, was the lack of threat from tanks. I remember when I reached lvl 60 I was tanking, and I was still using Ardent Custodian, because people said it was so good with +defense and armor, but of course couldnt keep agro for shit. All tanks focused on dmg mitigation, nobody thought about more dps or hit% for more threat.

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u/Lochen9 15d ago

They absolutely did not. Spell Damage on gear outside of green ‘of frost damage’ and a couple niche items from MC did not exist all the way until patch 1.4. It was patch 1.5 when tier sets got spell damage. It also wasnt until all the way in patch 1.10 until we saw the full caster itemization changes land.

The first 5 months of this game’s release there was no spell damage option.

0

u/rufrtho 15d ago

crazy how they worked it out by 1.12. if only those guys had 20 years of knowledge to go off like forever devs huh?

3

u/Lochen9 15d ago

I am not defending their choice here, especially since I think it will probably be too strong at 60 just how they chose to scale it.

Im just saying lets not rewrite history. Blizzard didn't know what they were doing back then and not much changes

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u/MarcAbaddon 15d ago

No, I would not go that far ;) Caster itemization in the early patches was horrible. In 1.12 it works out well.

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u/CamoraWoW 15d ago

They really didn’t, the gear itemization was changed later in classic to be better, but it still was very, very poorly balanced. Don’t forget that T1 and T2 had their bonuses and stats completely remade.

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u/imasammich 15d ago

Yeah thinking the ranks should be the feels good and dial way back the spell power at leveling times. Or during leveling do what other games do, only have specific stats end up on certain pieces. So you are not really stacking SP its only on chest or something and dial back the other sp factors. So you can balance around. Since there will be a known max sp that even the average playing can get. Once you are at max level max rank then open the can of worms

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u/riddlesinthedark117 15d ago

If only one of the main ones were petty bitches about their other MMO tank not being the best and deliberately sabotaged the other potential tank classes

1

u/ferrofibrous 15d ago

lvl 60 blue caster gear had agility on it, they were definitely shooting from the hip on class/gear design 90% of the time.

0

u/kane49 15d ago

absolutely, preraid bis in 2004 being that you had 10k mana and like 50 spellpower was absolutely peak game design

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u/AntonineWall 15d ago

So THATS why Paladin didn't have taunt and Shaman had shield specialization

-1

u/Undella_Town 15d ago

it's so fucking funny how butthurt warrior and mage players are over the changes lmfaooaoao.

meanwhile every other class is hyped asf

1

u/Chlearcus 15d ago

Yeah why aren't they hyped about getting nerfed into the ground and nothing interesting getting added to their classes?

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u/Lundetangen 13d ago

That was also a cool part of the AQ-patch with new spell-rank tomes dropping from bosses.

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u/Electrical-Safety226 15d ago

Exactly, early itemization was for increasing your mana pool so you could cast more or on the off chance you got + x element spell damage.

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u/Bohya 15d ago

Activision-Blizzard fail to realise that part of the appeal was that attack-based DPS and caster DPS scaled inherently differently. Now casters scale the same way as attack-based DPS, so that's just a nuance of the game now paved over.

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u/glormosh 15d ago

This entire experiment can be seen as paving over systems.

Professions? You'd be stupid to not go your main armor profression now.

Hybrids? You're going to lose your raid utility, and never be within the top ranks of damage, all while we gaselight you that you have class identity. At least you knew what you were back in the day.

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u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst 15d ago

Let's be honest, there was no such thing as a hybrid in raid in classic. No serious DPS was throwing off-heals. No serious healer was contributing to DPS. Maybe you had a flex OT depending on the fight, but dual spec handled that just fine. All hybrids were just healers, except warriors, who were top dog at both their roles.

Every raid was "stack as many warriors as you can, and bring your token classes to buff them up" as if it even mattered, because full world buffs gave more free player power to warriors than full T3.

Id rather top and bottom dps all be roughly within 10% of each other, and have every encounter benefit different classes and specs, plus the overall ranking changing patch over patch as the game is in active development.

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u/DonPhelippe 14d ago

"You'd be stupid to not go your main armor profression now."

Which literally shafts alchemists and enchanters.

To be fair, these 2 professions were the "alt" professions, but, and hear me out, how about special enchants that enchanter can only perform to their own gear or that demand a certain level of enchanting to take effect? How about special potions that are BoP for alchemists and e.g. give you that extra oomph or e.g. have a significantly lower potion cd? How about e.g. alchemists have 1 less potion cd every 5 levels of alchemy (so by getting it to 300 you have 1 minute potion cd except 2)?

Stuff like the above suggestions are not "game breaking" except in fringe cases and would make people want to level these professions as their "main" professions and not as money making ones.

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u/Lord-Taranis 15d ago

This is it! Casters felt so good getting that next spell level which mixed it up from the melee/hunter classes.

A bit more spellpower on gear would of been nice but how it is now is not good.

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u/randomnounadjective7 15d ago

Having both level ups and gear bring noticeable improvements to spell DPS is how you get retail leveling speeds. 

You can't have both.

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u/Krakitoa 15d ago

Getting new ranks felt nice for a couple levels and then the next few levels felt bad and its not like I had the option to go get gear that made much of a difference. 

Half my gear basically didn't change from 30-40ish until 60. 

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u/SnS_ 12d ago

As it should be. Especially when you got a brand new spell and you couldn't wait to try it out. 

1

u/Dashyguurl 15d ago

Which is why it had to change, it screwed up scaling at max level

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u/ForKnee 15d ago

Yeah, it was a nice asymmetry between classes that same scaled off weapons and others from spell ranks. Now they just made casters feel like worse melees because casters don't even really scale off weapon DPS like the way melee classes do. It just feels like an all around downgrade making casters feel worse.

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u/Esarus 15d ago

Yeah as a caster I freaking hate it. I leveled warlock, mage, warrior and hunter to 30 or little bit below. The difference is just staggering. Mage and Warlock feel slow and unrewarding.

Whoever asked for this whole spell rank/spell damage change anyway???

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u/MgoBlue1352 15d ago

That's what I want to know. I'm not going to sit here and think I know more than a game dev that's been around as long as Blizzard has, but does anyone know their official position as to why they changed the formula on this? Was this something they felt they had to do to make horizontal progression work?

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u/Esarus 15d ago

The reason they've given is that they want weapon drops to be more rewarding for casters. So they put a lot of spellpower on weapons and more on gear in general. To compensate for this increase in spellpower they nerfed spells.

The end result is just awful though, as a caster I am weaker compared to vanilla, until I get lots of good spellpower gear then I'm equal. Also every new spell rank I get is absolutely horrible in mana efficiency, so leveling up and training new spells does not feel rewarding at all.

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u/uzrnmechkzout 15d ago

I haven’t played any of the beta yet so is it even worth it to upgrade spells anymore? Doesn’t seem like it

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u/Esarus 15d ago

Yes, you have to, because they nerfed downranking too.

So if you don't use the highest possible rank, the spellpower coefficient will get worse and things like frostbite, fingers of frost, nightfall (or whatever talent) won't proc as often as it should.

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u/uzrnmechkzout 15d ago

Well now.. that seems pretty stupid. Thanks for the info though

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u/osburnn 15d ago

I thought it was only rank 1 frost bolt that got the fingers of frost proc removed. 

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u/EL-PSY-KONGROO 15d ago

I think it's a function of how many levels below your current level, the spell is learned at.

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u/Eretol 15d ago

its something like, a spell learned more than 20 levels below you will not be able to proc it, so i think for example a 19 twink will still be able to use rank 1 frostbolt to proc frostbite but as a 60 the lowest you can use to proc frostbite is rank 8?

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u/Esarus 15d ago

Nope:

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u/osburnn 15d ago

Oh okay ty. I didn't see the blue post and only the 0% for rank one. 

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u/gnarl_foot 15d ago

Frostbite is a terrible mechanic and I just won't use it. Randomly rooting mobs in a dungeon is how you wipe

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u/Esarus 15d ago

Ok

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u/gnarl_foot 15d ago

It's a lazy way to improve frost mage. Rooted mobs turn around and hit whoever is highest on threat table at melee range - this is how you melt non-tank melee players. Dungeons require you to position mobs so as to avoid patrols, randomly rooting is a terrible gameplay mechanic. You need precise control over where you place mobs.

Frostbite is only viable for pvp

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u/Chlearcus 15d ago

It's just an extremely poorly thought out redesign. You need between 2-400sp to get to the 0sp baseline of classic. Meaning you'd have to add absolutely bonkers levels of sp on all low level caster gear even before considering the weapon. And then add like 50sp atleast for every level bracket to make it have a similar impact as melee weapons. And now you have lvl 50 caster weapons with stats like something out of Black Temple and have to add even more absurd loot in raids.

If they had reduced baseline spell damage by like 10-50 based on lvl range there wouldn't have been a need for such a heavy handed redesign of loot.

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u/TempDanielle 15d ago

Honestly you probably aren't far off from the quality of Blizzard for game dev.

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u/iwouldeatanowl 15d ago

There's also no kind of equality between the classes with how they did this. Some classes need tons and tons of spell power to get their numbers back to baseline vanilla levels, other classes barely need any. If they wanted to start players in a spell power deficit that is compensated for with better gear, they needed to give everyone the same deficit, not a huge one for some classes and barely any for others.

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u/underhunter 15d ago

This change works best with “pure“ dps classes like warlock, mage and even priest. But for non clothies who share gear with other classes or specs that dont need spell power, its been a really rough change

0

u/iHaveComplaints 15d ago

Ostensibly this would be because they rebalanced those classes' spells. The ones that need much higher spellpower to match vanilla have similar spellpower scaling to everything else but were nerfed and the classes' damage was moved elsewhere - other spells or multiplicative scaling.

"Ostensibly" because SoD was full of obviously thoughtless math.

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u/teffarf 15d ago

I get wanting gear to matter more to casters

I don't. This is the D2 vs D3 way of itemization.

A naked D2 sorc with 20 points in blizzard can get stuff done, a naked D3 sorc can't do anything.

This was a bad idea then, it still is now.

0

u/Ida-in 15d ago

Why is gear mattering a bad idea exactly? In games where gear is one of the main progression systems.

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u/teffarf 15d ago

Gear should matter, but so should leveling your character.

D2 is absolutely a gear oriented game, but you actually feel when you put a point in a skill tree. WoW classic, you feel when you buy a spell rank upgrade.

By moving all power to the gear, you completely kill that aspect of the game.

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u/Alternative-Put-3932 15d ago

and it does. This post is using wrath as an example when they specifically talked about wrath being a problem on the podcast on how to balance it.

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u/teffarf 15d ago

It's not just wrath, they gutted base spell damage all across the board to the point where you need like 500sp at 60 to match the damage of a naked era character.

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u/Alternative-Put-3932 15d ago

And? Era casters need 0 gear to do dmg while leveling its stupid. I agree there should probably be a better middle ground here but casters should need gear while leveling and to do similar dmg at 60 for the first tier of raids.

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u/teffarf 15d ago

And? Era casters need 0 gear to do dmg while leveling its stupid.

If that's what you think, then you should be happy with this change. Just a difference of point of view.

-2

u/cantshakethefeelings 15d ago

No, wrath is an outlier, and a bad example. Not all spells were ‘gutted’ to this extreme.

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u/teffarf 15d ago

Well I had in head my planned starter, ele shaman, which is even worse than this and needs like 700sp to break even on chain lightning.

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u/cantshakethefeelings 15d ago

In wowf you feel when you spend talent points tho, imo.

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u/randomnounadjective7 15d ago

Oh no, you can't mindlessly boost yourself to 60 while ignoring all gear! 

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u/LabResponsible8484 15d ago

Gear did matter for spell casters, just less and differently than weapon based classes. Spirit and int gave you sustain and reduced down time rather than more damage.

Now blizzard is doing exactly what we said we didn't want and exactly what they said they wouldn't do: they are making all the classes fundamentally more similar. Everythinh has to come down to gear over everything else where we used to have options.

I hate it.

1

u/cantshakethefeelings 15d ago

The only stat that mattered when leveling warlock was stamina in classic. Just stack stam, nothing else, and you can’t die and can kill shit.

2

u/LabResponsible8484 15d ago

Yeah which was cool, different stats for different classes, now everyone needs spell power...

3

u/cantshakethefeelings 15d ago

Specifically ONE stat, lol. Now stamina is still super important for my lock, but I can actually get and use spell power gear. Much more interesting. All it did was add a new stat for people to care about, it didn’t take away the importance of other stats.

I can agree that maybe they turned the dial too much. But to say it’s better just needed one stat the entire leveling experience is something I just disagree with.

5

u/K7avenged 15d ago

Spell power isn't an option though. You're going be taking that to the exclusion of everything else. That is the "stamina" of this version of wow now. You need it just to tread water. Any extra stats like int, spirit, or whatever is just a bonus and will be sacrificed for more SP.

1

u/cantshakethefeelings 15d ago edited 15d ago

Stamina is still going to be incredibly useful for locks while leveling. It didn’t replace stamina, I will seek out both, because they are both important. I’ll get intellect along the way, but that will jus happen more naturally and be a bonus.

They should just dial it back, like I said, not completely remove the new system.

0

u/Ewi_Ewi 15d ago

Spirit and int gave you sustain and reduced down time rather than more damage.

Intellect always gave you [a small amount of] increased damage in the form of crit chance.

Now blizzard is doing exactly what we said we didn't want

Who's 'we'? Making gear matter [more] for classes that historically didn't have even decent itemization until endgame is arguably a popular decision. Getting gear upgrades should feel good no matter the class, not just for melee.

and exactly what they said they wouldn't do

When they said they wanted classes to [still] feel unique, I doubt they meant "gear should matter less." That's sorta on you.

1

u/Chlearcus 15d ago

It does matter, a fully decked out sorc is infinitely stronger than a naked one.

It just comes down to a cool differentiation between different classes that plays into their respective rpg elements.

5

u/NoWaySomebodyTookThi 15d ago

I vastly preferred getting the progress from the trainer. Who asked for this?

16

u/AuthorIcy8097 15d ago

Homogenization strikes again

1

u/Thaodan 15d ago

Which makes it more retail IMHO. How is it? The path to hell is paved with good intentions. That's is basically how we got the current retail. Nothing to repeat IMHO.

7

u/Benja2740 15d ago

Could the different spells not have different spellpower coefficients? That way you would still feel the spell hitting for more. Idk tho

9

u/TobeyGER 15d ago

Could in theory? Yes. But they don't. Generally speaking, spell coefficients for these simple direct cast hit spells without side effects, the coefficient is simply based on cast time.  To be specific: it's the fraction the cast time is of 3.5s.  So a 3.5s spell gets 100%, a 2s spell gets 2/3.5, and so on. The only reason the higher rank would ever be really worth is when downranking penalties kick in (or when mana is a non-issue) Edit: to clarify, in forever, tooltip also already include coefficient scaling, with very few exceptions 

3

u/Sandman145 15d ago

They should tone down the spell power a little and make it 50/50 so ppl actually are happy getting both.

22

u/smomovic 15d ago

I love how they're able to think "oh this thing that worked wonders (that literally nobody complained about) for years by millions of players is unfair and broken, we sure know how to make it better!" as if the original developers were so dumb that they forgot to include this, or did not have the tools/means to do so. I am truly amazed.

"You should feel a bit better as a caster in the early game with your gear upgrades, so now we screw up a whole progression flow that's interconnected to other systems and content!" Yay!

1

u/Ewi_Ewi 15d ago

that literally nobody complained about

People did complain about bad caster itemization in Vanilla. Why do you think they became so overpowered in AQ/Naxx?

as if the original developers were so dumb that they forgot to include this, or did not have the tools/means to do so

Conversely, the Vanilla devs were not omnipotent and were capable of making mistakes and pretending they made a perfect game with zero flaws in 2004 is just wrong.

Itemization [at times] was one of those mistakes. Some specs being completely useless was another. Unfinished zones, poorly balanced classes, one button rotations, etc. Arguing against a strawman doesn't make these mistakes not exist.

-5

u/nmrf1122 15d ago

The old system is bad, you can get to 60 by simply using quest rewards while ignoring everything profession/dungeon/BoE drop related, thus rendering them pointless till you are at endgame. Gear while leveling is irrelevant outside weapons on martial classes and niche cases like mages AoE farming that need big mana pools. You can go test it on era: take the same character with the same weapon but 2 different sets, 1 full of combat stats and 1 w/o and time how much it takes you to kill, say, 10 mobs at level 30. The difference is between 2-4 seconds. And thats a full set worth of stats, a single piece replacement has no noticeable effect, your green item upgrade with +3 strength is quite literally placebo.

The issue with what they have done in forever is that you invest in your gear in order to get to the same point as you were in era with 0 investment. From the PoV of someone that has played older versions you are getting 0 reward for interacting with other ingame systems while leveling and all the punishment if you don't.

Incentivising players to interact with game systems that were irrelevant before 60 == good Not rewarding them with increased power for "properly" playing the game == bad

However, allowing players to actually get really strong if they use all the tools at their disposal would mean conceding that the leveling process could (and would) be trivialised, so people would bitch and moan about that too :)

2

u/smomovic 15d ago

The answer is your last sentence. People will bitch about anything. If the experience you're having is good and satisfying regardless of what other classes or players are doing, then mission accomplished. Leveling is not a competition. There's fun to be had in veeeeery different ways in an RPG game.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 15d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Playful_JungleWizard 15d ago

Notice how you had to use a melee example, and a very specific warlock build? The point was that casters could ignore all gear and have a smooth ride to 60, where melee had to give a crap about their gear.

4

u/CrzyJek 15d ago

You couldn't ignore gear as a caster and have a smooth ride. You're limited by mana. And squishy. If you ignored gear then you would have jack shit for a mana pool and barely be able to use your toolkit. And without some stamina your 8-15% damage reduction from armor may as well force you to play "no hit" because you're going down in mere seconds.

Gear did matter. Just not in the way you seem to think.

0

u/nmrf1122 15d ago

Ok dude, go to era and don't get twink gear that you have no realistc chance to ever stack while leveling like a normal person. Tell me if you feel the difference between a full green set of int/spirit and a full green set of strength/agi while fighting the same mobs with the same weapon.

~200 shadow dam at level 40

What are YOU talking about xDDDD

3

u/cantshakethefeelings 15d ago

Lol, wrath is a terrible example of this.

2

u/Sryzon 15d ago

It doesn't help that itemization isn't balanced with this new system in mind. Robes of the Disgraced Thane - which is obtained around level 15 - is BiS until like level 37.

3

u/lumpboysupreme 15d ago

Isn’t it just that they changed spell ranks to all work like seal of righteousness used to? They scale with levels up to a cap?

1

u/Brainth 14d ago

I have the same memory of spells scaling this way, and I’d never leveled a paladin until very recently, so definitely not just Seal of Righteousness.

Maybe it’s a Vanilla vs. TBC thing?

3

u/Casual_IRL_player 15d ago

I think that is noticeable here in the early stages, but id personally much rather get the “oh yes i got mageblade thats huuuge” and see a big increase, over 3 months ago getting rank 8/8.
I get what they are doing and I’m all for it, sure ranks are in a weird State, but if they do more chance for Procs at higher ranks you once again have a feeling of getting a new rank is good

2

u/HomicidalTrader 15d ago

The new rank does hit harder, the base damage hardly shifts, but the sp modifier increases.

They need to make the modifier visible on the skills.

3

u/Some-Lingonberry-211 15d ago

I'm really surprised after all these years there's not an advanced tooltip option for this.

A game like League lets you see all the ability scaling down to fractions at any time. I don't know why blizzard makes you go searching google for that same information.

1

u/HomicidalTrader 15d ago

I'm really surprised after all these years there's not an advanced tooltip option for this.

This is a new thing in forever, to discourage downranking of spells. All the ranks before would have had the same modifier, which is what made downranking so good for mana.

I.e if SP is 3/4 of output, a rank one at 90% less mana cost with the old steady bonus is substantially more damage/heal per point of mana spent. That's no longer the case.

1

u/Chlearcus 14d ago

Noone ever downranked damage spells tho except for some edge cases like rank 1 frostbolt, coc etc. It's not like you got 1000 sp and suddenly you start using rank 5 fireball instead of 13 to save some mana.

1

u/twosteppp 15d ago

i mean they just need to have fewer ranks if its too hard to fit them in

1

u/Tall-Supermarket-173 15d ago

idk for mage it feels fine and noticeable. I think they should tune it for some classes

1

u/Pomodorosan 15d ago

I get wanted to give more dopamine hits to players but all they have done is remove the feeling of getting a new thing that matters.

They filled all the valleys, removed all the frictions, all the inconveniences, so nothing actually feels good and meaningful.

1

u/Dasbeerboots 15d ago

That dopamine from a new spell rank came at the cost of feeling really weak in the later levels before the new spell rank. This new system shifts that dopamine hit to new gear upgrades and smoother spell scaling.

1

u/Aggressive-Juice4162 14d ago

getting a new spell rank while leveling felt HUGE. its something thats not really talked about enough. as a caster anyway. getting a new frank of frostbolt was such a massive power spike