branyawn: Simple design can be inviting and still intricate under the surface. They definitely lost the scope trying everything to turn PvE into an Esport.

Ninjuhz: Most of what you're describing is much closer to "Complexity Creep" - There are increasingly more things you need to know BEFORE you can start playing and having fun; Base concepts become more involved; Interactions become more abundant and layered; and Face-value of effects (spells) are just the tip of an iceberg of modifiers that all add up to what a spell ACTUALLY entails.

"Power Creep" is an escalation of direct power, and part of what you're describing does fit the description -- mostly the parts about game pacing increasing and how the game used to be 'slower.'

I think pointing out Helya is interesting... you said (paraphrased) that it felt epic and rewarding, but I worry sometimes that the feedback about it gets interpreted as: "Please do every single encounter like this or even crazier!" // instead of the more correct: "That was the right amount of challenge for an epic end-boss! Please do encounters that are this difficult and complex about one time per raid!"

Regardless, thanks for the commentary and I also hope things trend in a good direction

gapplebees9295: The power creep for dps is mostly okay. The power creep for healers has caused encounter designers to kill us over and over until we can figure out how to survive. It gets exhausting to play after a while.

hehexd2363: soft quitting raiding in a video is next level, absolute banger vid

doublezug7193: Just got done editing an intro video to mistweaver for MOP classic and its actually cartoonish to directly compare the complexity creep and level of modifiers/random abilities/procs that the spec has gained over the years.

Healers feel better when you can actually tell what your spells do and feel/see their impact on raidframes when you press them.

RiseSoup: I don't play Classic but I love how much impactful the gameplay felt and how slower things were. Sadly modern retail will never go back to that because Blizz is obsessed with making top 1% players have a challenge rather than making it just a fun game to play.

sweggles7925: ME > _)_)========D - - - - 0: < YOU

PuzzleboxxGG: The more I play Wow since DF the more I wish we had simply just stuck with “6 rows pick 1”.

ictinuswow: Swiftmend is the example that actually spawned Voulk talking about this in Dreamgrove the other day. It's not as egregious as Renewing Mist (I doubt anything is), but still has like 9 effects attached to it or something.

TheKalazar: Banger vid 100% agree. The game is complex in all the wrong ways. The mere idea of figuring out a rotation from tooltips is insane. We are all sheeple following theorycrafters' prio lists.

illiberalautist2222: The Final Yap

WeDemandGlitterhoof: Blizzard never understood why talent trees worked in Classic WoW when they brought them back in DF after the success of Classic. Talent trees worked in Classic because the talents were a progression system and it took forever to level from 1-60 or 1-80. Given that leveling in DF and Warthin is basically non-existent they basically do not have this progression system effect.

So what we are left with is this massive bloated mess, that never occurs in Classic due to how easy and simple Classic is, as well as almost every talent point in Classic being a passive. The average WoW player is completely put off by the complexity and the bloat the talent trees add to the game. From gameplay (no abilities feel meaningful), needless WA complexity and massively overdesigned dungeons the talent trees have been nothing but a disaster for the game.

The hero talents of course have only added to this mess. The irony is that Blizzard touted the Talent trees as evergreen content, but there is no way Blizzard don´t eventually see the error of their ways, sadly given their known stubbornness this might take an expansion.. or two.. or three...

ztormur6504: completely agree with this. im so sick of rocket science being instilled into every tooltip,every encounter and every method to progress your character. any time i get the itch to log into wow, it's immedietly followed by a feeling of dread by the thought of it.

Fruggie: I think adding hero talents when the trees are already bad was a big mistake. Great video. You basically never swap talents, a good third of my tree I never want to pick under any circumstances.

From a holy paladin point of view I've been doing a lot of complaining about how our heals start a little rube goldberg machine of healing and it's unfortunately not getting better. Removing glimmer was a step in the right direction, but most of our healing still comes from random fluff.

I quit this tier myself because I couldn't take how the game has evolved, not only in the raiding scene but also the amount of bugs and poor balancing. I hope you find a new game you enjoy as much post wow.

khoitrieu: I play a destruction warlock. This made me realize that even when chaos bolt is strong it’s because of procs, it’s because of havoc, it’s because of empowerments from other talents. Chaos bolt which is supposed to be our huge nuke, is relatively weak on its own.

aaronkettelhut: 10/10 Yap. As a more casual player of WoW from other MMOs hearing this from a high end raider feels very liberating, I started in Legion and even from that era it's felt like the game has massively accelerated the level of spec complexity and speed of gameplay; There's so much information to track that I feel more like I'm playing DDR with my buttons than actually interacting with the game bc 1 spell will have like a million interactions and effects attached to it and I need to use them all 100% efficiently to be even semi-competent or I'm letting my teammates down on like a fucking 8 key.

I desperately pine for the game to just ease back and be a little more approachable for normies, I can't be bothered to watch a bunch of MW tutorials (as much as I do stan Meg's content) or read a 2k word article on wowhead just so I know when I should and shouldn't be pressing a core spell like Renewing or Enveloping Mist. That information should be naturally discernable from just playing the game.

ewan4996: Nost sends his regards.

serena-yu: "The game with so many panels that looks like a jet cockpit"

Unitos_: If you time ported a Classic player into 2025, and made them play MW or Pres, their head would explode.

Revion91: Just killed queen ansurek on mythic with my guild as a resto shaman. Finerys were a complete fucking mistake. It's criminal that they increase healing and not health instead. Threw in the towel and told my GM I won't be raiding next tier and I've raided mythic every tier since Nathria (except sepulcher).

TramRide: I remember people saying this about SL conduits, and Azerite powers before that, and Artifact modifiers before that

Szardz: THAT'S MY HEALER!

Hearing that you're done after next tier blows, but I get it. Hopefully things change for the better soon.

driiifter: This power creep nonsense stuck out like a sore thumb to me after I started TWW as Sin Rogue. They purposely made Shiv only last 7 seconds and then purposely gave it 2 charges just for the sole purpose of complexity. It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. It's like taking a pizza and slicing it into a strange fractal shape that makes zero sense and has tons of tiny random slivers of pizza and then a couple giant misshapen slices and then telling everyone to divide it out equally. Why? Why does Kingsbane need to be buffed by 5 GCD usages???? Why can't Shiv just last 14 seconds with one charge?

Holy Priest is the opposite of power creep. They have garbage in their trees that literally don't interact with anything, therefore they're unusable and weak, waste of points. Blizzard has decided that everything from kingdom come needs to have complexity and they don't say anything about it, they just dump it on us quietly. Then when something doesn't have 500 modifiers tacked onto it, it is literally unplayable. Renew, Circle and Prayer don't even do anything and have nothing to do with the rest of the kit and heal for nothing. PoM interacts with nothing for Disc, unless you're Oracle, then you get an extra PoM I guess.

It takes me back to playing DK in Shadowlands where if your cooldowns weren't popped, you literally did zero damage. It's very similar, but in a methodical, drawn out way, reminds me of the crests and how they are just a drawn out, stretched out version of Titanforging. Only placated people aren't noticing.

Lets have Resto stack 500 HoTs that all don't do anything and they still need to spam Regrowth while also comboing Swiftmend with Wild Growth and the party is still dying even though you're pressing 5,000 buttons non stop, some in a sequence.

Priest is doing 5 million healing on PTR but the tank is still dying through Fort Brew from a tank buster. What's the point of all of the busy work if it doesn't even do anything? It's like they forgot how a video game works. Fighting games have figured it out since 1990 and have used the same formula: you do complex thing, you get very big reward. How hard is it?

Their entire modus now is "how do we draw everything out?". Even at the cost of fun.

Rylos277: Intro was great and sells the point perfectly imo

Edit: It's funny cause I typically main disc and have complained since DF that every other healer has tools to help correct a group wipe in an M run and Disc just has to watch it happen. But I've long been on the train that disc shouldn't get an interrupt, other healers should loose theirs. Resto sham can keep theirs imo. Unique utility should go to 1-2 classes across the spectrum. Not nearly everyone.

SirLunchAL0t: Not only do you need an exact choreography for every boss, you also often need very specific weakauras. You cannot just simply be "good" at the game anymore and react correctly to what is thrown at you, you have to know everything in advance. This complexity also made raiding for the bracket at which I used to play at (around WR 200-300) very painful, because we played such limited hours per week so that many players would need to re-learn so many mechanics and it felt frustrating to progress. Tindral was absolutely absurd and no fun at all, so much that I quit afterwards.

imatooltoo: every spec needs to be as simple as ret pally is, including tanks and healers.

Feb 09 2025

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