Final Changelog for Class Changes coming in 1.16.1

[Warmane]

Why so far you've only implemented things that were orginally in game and later removed, and now all of a sudden you want to create new things? i mean even with the additioal architecture you've put in game, its all models that were created by blizz beforehand.
I think i speak for many saying that we want to play 2005's Blizzard Wow, not a game designed by turtle team. So far you did great bringing back interesting removed things, and it would be great if you guys kept doing just that when it comes to class balance. (new quests and new gear i don't mind as they dont interfeer with the experience)
Please don't alter the beautiful equilibrium that vanilla classes have. To your eyes they may be imperfect but to many they are perfect as they are.

i may be wrong but if these class changes are implemented and transmog goes live this will become a meme server

[Velite]

Why so far you've only implemented things that were orginally in game and later removed, and now all of a sudden you want to create new things? i mean even with the additioal architecture you've put in game, its all models that were created by blizz beforehand.
I think i speak for many saying that we want to play 2005's Blizzard Wow, not a game designed by turtle team. So far you did great bringing back interesting removed things, and it would be great if you guys kept doing just that when it comes to class balance. (new quests and new gear i don't mind as they dont interfeer with the experience)
Please don't alter the beautiful equilibrium that vanilla classes have. To your eyes they may be imperfect but to many they are perfect as they are.

i may be wrong but if these class changes are implemented and transmog goes live this will become a meme server

we already had transmog before, so I guess it already is a meme server? /s

wait until you see the new instances! oh no, too much change!

[Suwuxiv]

Please don't alter the beautiful equilibrium that vanilla classes have. To your eyes they may be imperfect but to many they are perfect as they are.

Many times in your post you go on a limb and try to speak in 3rd person on behalf of others.

Frankly speaking, there is no "beautiful equilibrium" between classes. Some classes are just better than others and the "meta" of this solved, 17y old game dictates many of them be left out. All these changes primarily aim to do is fix that.

[Kazgrim]

Welcome to Turtle WoW, a custom vanilla server.

[Taelan]

For Paladins Judgment of Justice with a taunt doesn't seem to make sense since they build their aggro with holy damage through Righteous Fury. It would almost need a spell overhaul of converting damage to (%)holy while active, like;

Seal of Justice
Fills the Paladin with the spirit of justice for 30 sec, converting paladins physical damage into holy damage (possibly scaled down) and giving each melee attack a chance to stun for 2 sec. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy preventing them from fleeing for 10 sec. Your melee strikes will refresh the spell's duration. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.

Then adding the taunt talents to it, as you have listed.

This could solve the problem of switching from Seal of the Righteous, to Seal of Justice, then Judging Justice, 2+ seconds of global cooldowns (which could kill a team member) and mana of constantly switching seals to hold base aggro. Scaling the holy damage converter down could also keep is on a more defensive level and not take the complete place of Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command for damage. Right now you mostly use Seal of Righteousness to tank with, and only Judge to spike threat or really use as a taunt, but as your DPS members gear up it gets harder. This change could effectively make Seal of Justice a Threat and Control seal, not a damaging one.

If that's too much in one spell, then maybe a new Seal created that would do something similar to control threat better in PVE.

The last thing I would want to do is to spam Greater Blessing of Kings to hold aggro against geared DPS.

At the end of the day though, you've given the Paladin a taunt.

[Dragunovi]

For Paladins Judgment of Justice with a taunt doesn't seem to make sense since they build their aggro with holy damage through Righteous Fury. It would almost need a spell overhaul of converting damage to (%)holy while active, like;

This is intentional, its a bit hard to explain, but the simple way is that the intention was to give them a tool to handle tank swaps, not a free "face me" card basically, like how Druids are the jack of all trades, master of none, hybrids shouldn't be the best at everything and overshadow dedicated specialization classes, but have the tools to make a dedicated player be able to perform the functions of other tanks like Warriors. You can't subsitute the lack of taunt with anything from profession or other gimicky items, its a must for some encounters to be a fully functioning offtank with enough dedication. Its not perfect, but good enough to serve its purpose.

This could solve the problem of switching from Seal of the Righteous, to Seal of Justice, then Judging Justice, 2+ seconds of global cooldowns (which could kill a team member) and mana of constantly switching seals to hold base aggro.

The taunt was designed this way, as its a very last resort and not something you should be using often, tankadin aggro outshines even warriors in dungeons, the GCD problem is pretty minimal as Judgement isn't affected by it so you can activate your seal and immediately judge.

The last thing I would want to do is to spam Greater Blessing of Kings to hold aggro against geared DPS.

Personally I've only see this happening when a lot of mobs have to be nuked fast like Nefarian's Skeleton Zerg or Princess Yauj's Minions, otherwise most paladins prefer swinging their weapons, its a boring way to tank for almost everyone.

[Dragunovi]

The additional priest Holy Champion abilities seem a bit overly complicated. That is a whopping six additional separate abilities tied to one talent/buff/concept.

I would honestly consider condensing them into one ability like this:

Holy Champion | 250 Mana Cost | 10 Second Cast | 2 Hour Cooldown
Proclaim the friendly target as your champion for 2 hrs. Increases armor by 230, all resistances by 10, all healing done by the priest by 10%, all healing and spell damage done by up to 25 and attack power by 30, and when the priest takes damage up to 20 will be taken by the Champion instead.
Note: Persists through death and continues its duration and cooldown countdowns while offline.
Note: Armor buff does not stack with Scroll of Protection IV
Note: Does not stack effects with Greater Arcane Elixir or Juju Power/Elixir of Giants

I'd scrap "Summon Champion" and "Revive Champion". Leave the summoning to the warlocks, and priests already have a resurrection ability, so a second one seems kinda redundant.

Funnily enough this change was also experimented on by Blizzard around the end of WotlK.
I personally think Summon Champion could be used for repositioning in fights like Thaddius or pulling Chrommagus, its not a direct subsitute for Warlock summoning as you need to proclaim champion when your target is next to you, making long distance summoning without any prior interaction impossible. I do have agree that the revive feels a bit redundant.
This spell is under a lot of discussion internally and likely to change before the final changelog.

[Dragunovi]

wait... um the new rogue spell "Flourish (20% Parry)" is almost the exact amount of avoidance needed to reach a 100% avoidance Rogue tank.

This would now mean a Rogue Tank can now focus more on threat from Buffs/Debuffs/gear, etc...

This is HUGE for rogue tanking!

İntentional, no clue who can pull off rogue tanking, but they should have the required mitigation tool now.

[Darreno]

wait... um the new rogue spell "Flourish (20% Parry)" is almost the exact amount of avoidance needed to reach a 100% avoidance Rogue tank.

This would now mean a Rogue Tank can now focus more on threat from Buffs/Debuffs/gear, etc...

This is HUGE for rogue tanking!

İntentional, no clue who can pull off rogue tanking, but they should have the required mitigation tool now.

anyone who is willing to put in the effort and learn. If you have questions, let me know.

I'm super excited by this change, since it means players are not as penalized as much by going horde rogue tank.
This also opens up the gearing to allow for more +stamina and such

[Borzy]

There are many things to say about how I feel, but most has been said already.

These changes are too drastic: you no longer have a RP/PVE “Vanilla” WoW server. Anyone looking for a drastic overhaul to skills systems are probably already playing Ascension WoW.

This server does not have a population base large enough to implement changes like these. Especially drastic ones like paladin. There isn’t going to be the base to guide a paladin guide or something like that, and it will just end up being a confusing mess.

The base issue with paladin was very simple: itemization for a class that needs mana to deal physical damage with a base stat of strength, augmented by judgements that needed intel. TBC fixed this fairly easily in principle by adding a talent that converted a % of your strength to intel.

The new Crusader Strike needing a sizeable mama pool to build and refresh a stack of 5 debuffs, and moving SoC down so you can no longer dual reckoning with SoC, fixes nothing about paladin needing mana to deal primary damage that needs strength, and instead changes your leveling builds into something unrecognisable.

Paladin taunt is also unnecessary. Homogenization is one argument. Even TBC pally tank didn’t have a taunt. Paladin tank was always supposed to be different, in that it’s AOE superior, and more based off damage. If you wanted a paladin tank, the TBC Avenging Wrath that boost holy damage, and Avengers Shield that allows you to open with big burst of holy damage should be how you give paladins a burst of dmg upfront to take aggro. A slow stacking holy damage that eats up half your mana solves none of those problems.

Not to mention that all classes have at most 2 viable specs. Paladin has heal, and just need a slight dmg fix to make ret good for dps. The limited utility of their tank ability should have been left alone.

As someone who has always mained a paladin, I do say that these changes sway too far from vanilla. If I wanted to play Ascension, I already wouldn’t be here.

[Spook]

Not a lot to say for Rogues. If anything, Combat being the only viable talent spec in PvE

Yes not a lot, considering the 3 levels below mobs see you from a mile with 5 points in improved stealth.
But don't fix what is reliably not working anyway, buff already overpowered classes.
Warlock and Priest already insanely safe and boring class to play why overbuff them? When rogue is fragile and can't even use stealth reliably at all.

[Spook]

If I wanted to play Ascension, I already wouldn’t be here.

Same thoughts here. "Turtle" was good due to being close to Vanila.

[Rwhook]

So much exaggeration here.

1. These changes are NOWHERE near what Ascension is. I mean come on, saying something this absurd invalidates all of your other arguments to me.

2. Trivializing raid content? What you really struggle with almost 20 year old content that has been plotted out to the second?

3. The original WoW devs were actually the opposite of professional. There's plenty of interviews out there with senior members saying they had no idea what they were doing and were rushed to market. The classes in the game were not finished nor planned. Even the patches we got in vanilla were basically hotfixes.

4. You can go make a no changes server if you'd like.

[Andima]

"Turtle" IS good due to being an improved vanilla

[Velite]

Paladin taunt is also unnecessary. Homogenization is one argument. Even TBC pally tank didn’t have a taunt. Paladin tank was always supposed to be different, in that it’s AOE superior, and more based off damage. If you wanted a paladin tank, the TBC Avenging Wrath that boost holy damage, and Avengers Shield that allows you to open with big burst of holy damage should be how you give paladins a burst of dmg upfront to take aggro. A slow stacking holy damage that eats up half your mana solves none of those problems.

Except they did give paladins a taunt in TBC. Righteous defense. Because it was the right thing to do.

https://tbc.wowhead.com/spell=31789/righteous-defense

Their taunt spell works radically different than druids and warriors, so if anything it is anti-homogenization, and what we currently have now is very homogenized.

[Pawpaw]

First of all - praise and honour to the turtle team for picking up the slack and fix some of the inherent flaws in vanilla wow class design. Many of the skill/talent decisions I have seen so far are absolutely logic and obvious fixes to some of the problems with the old game.


Beautiful, no notes


I dont think these changes will do much for hunters endgame - unless Trueshot is in addition to autoshoot?
Regardless, Aspect of the Wolf? *chef finger-kiss*


Some much needed love for Arcane. Nice.
- Brilliance Aura? -very- nice.


I play a lot of Paladin myself here, I do have some notes to the changes.
- Consecration is no longer a talent? YES! Great decision. This opens up for more talent diversity.
- Scaling for Retribution Aura? Just YES.
- Redoubt change? OMG YES. It has always been retarded a protection ability only procs from crits.
- Holy shock dmg increase +12% scaling from Holy Light Talent? A bit OP. Will make it a bit more viable for raid healadins, but its gonna boost battleground shockadins a ton (and they are already really strong). Good thing I play alliance.
- Precision works for BOTH spell and melee hit chance? Great for tankadins, but a tad op for 3 low tier talent points. I would consider moving them deeper into the prot tree to not become mandetory for Ret and Shockadins
- Improved Shield Specialization now recovers 1% mana per block? OMG YES. Would be nice for mana recovery options for rets too.
- Ardent Defender is gonna make AoE-grinding pimped af. Especially with Skullflame, improved ret aura, and improved consecration. I just cant shake the feeling it will feel a tad too OP for vanilla.
- Is crusader strike spammable, is it damage added to a swing, or does it have a cooldown?

Is fixing of the scaling on Holy Strike among the changes? Or was that worked out already? Crits with rank 1 are still devastating for 20 mana, maybe it could be considered making the mana cost like 8-12% of base mana to encourage upgrading the ability to higher ranks?


A lot of these changes are puzzling to me... some of them even seem to contradict what you set out to achieve. Also, why not mainstream fear ward, and give dwarf priests a new racial?

Shadow priests are notorious for being good, but also not. Their mana economy is horrendous and comes with several downsides other dps+caster hybrids don’t have to work around. The challenge for Shadow is to boost its utility and mana economy without increasing their power, as their damage per second is actually very good already.

....

New Abilities

New Passive: Improved Shadowform. Reduces the Mana cost of your Shadow spells by 15% while in Shadowform.

Improved Vampiric Touch has been replaced by Vampiric Embrace: Vampiric Embrace also restores 2/5% of shadow spell damage you deal to the target as mana for your party.

Goal achieved. Right?

New Ability: Pain Spike | Learned at Level 60 | 15 Second Cooldown
Causes 225 Shadow damage instantly, but the damage caused will begin healing itself over 5 seconds after landing.

New Ability: Shadow Nova | Learned at Level 60 | 635 Mana Cost | 30 Second Cooldown
Causes an explosion of cursed shadow around the caster, causing 181 to 209 Shadow damage to all enemy targets within 8 yards. This effect causes increased threat.

I dont see how these abilities will do much for the PvE scene outside of grinding normal mobs. It is a HUGE boost to the already top-tier shadow priest in battlegrounds though, by giving them 2 additional finishers.

The champion mechanic seems absolutely fine for group PvE of any kind. To not completely wreck balance in battlegrounds, I suggest summon champion and 2seconds revive champion will be disabled here though, as it is really easy to get out of combat for 2 seconds in pvp.


I completely agree that it is unfortunate that only combat is viable until late AQ/Naxx. I dont think these changes will change that. But maybe if the debuff cap is lifted in a patch some time in the future, this can change.


I love the addition of Bloodlust and Lightning Shield, and how they relate to their WC3 shaman abilities .
- Can we add dualwield to complete the fist-weapon shaman wc3 fantasy ?
- The addition of racials is nice, the tauren racial seems a bit lackluster for a 10min CD outside of very specific raid encounters.
- Do the orc spirit wolves damage scale with gear?
- Is there a limit on how many people shamans can cast Bloodlust or Lightning Shield or is there a cooldown?

To be honest I like that the shaman class deepen the support aspect. But, on top of all the boosts to paladin, I feel a bad for the shaman players. I mean, these changes boost holy paladin damage more than all shaman specs combined.



Removing the debuff limit would probably be the best way to make warlocks not boring in pve. I -love- the changes to the infernal spell, Intensity, and Pyroclasm


I also play warrior a lot. All good changes to be honest. I am only a bit puzzled about the running-slam ability.
- Thunderclap in Defensive Stance. YES. Thank you. While I like the challenge behind stance dancing, my keyboard will be forever grateful.
- Intervene? Nice.
- Die by the sword? Nice. It should encourage players to use challenge more mobs with this ability.
- Decisive Strike? It seems like an overpowered Slam. Does it reset swing timer? This is very important, since it could absolutely decimate people in battlegrounds.
- The talent changes are logic and welcome.
- If you want to solve the problem of warriors scaling like madmen, just reduce the %speed on flurry. Easy. It might also encourage experimentation with other talent builds.

All-in-all: Much love for what you are doing here.

[Velite]

This server does not have a population base large enough to implement changes like these. Especially drastic ones like paladin. There isn’t going to be the base to guide a paladin guide or something like that, and it will just end up being a confusing mess.

There's actually a fair few of us playing the meme specs in raids here. As someone who mains protection paladin, I do pretty much everything you need a raid tank to do but it's a bit clunky, and it would be nice if it wasn't as clunky. The design is not preventing me from doing my job anyway in raids, apart from fights that require taunt, so I do not see the justification in leaving protection paladin the way it is but changing ret.

[Lahire]

The fact pala tank is "a bit more clunky" than war tank is a design choice coming from the fact paladin can perform adequatly the 3 roles, which is an oddity (only druid does the same).
If you make pala tank as easy as war tank, why play a war tank then ? It would just become less versatile, so worse than pala tank.

[Sonpansatan]

With so many people talking about Paladin changes, I think that Brilliance Aura is being overlooked. Historically some specs have struggled with mana issues, and this might be a needed boost to them. Perhaps they'll be carrying around two sets, one with Spirit to take advantage of Brilliance Aura.

[Velite]

The fact pala tank is "a bit more clunky" than war tank is a design choice coming from the fact paladin can perform adequatly the 3 roles, which is an oddity (only druid does the same).
If you make pala tank as easy as war tank, why play a war tank then ? It would just become less versatile, so worse than pala tank.

It is not as easy as warrior tank, and will not be with these changes. A warrior tank is still a better MT. Paladin Tank still lacks gear and a good "oh shit button" like shield wall. Unless you mean "viable" in which case, why should it not be viable? Druid tank is very viable. As a paladin tank, you currently and will still need to overgear and over consume for that tier of raid content.

Simply having a taunt does not make a class equal to warrior. And an inferior one at that, one that 1) costs mana 2) costs talent points 3) requires GCD, all 3 of which warrior doesn't have to deal with.

[Lahire]

If I want to say viable, i say viable. Palatank is already viable, so these changes are aimed at another purpose. Which I can't completely get. Must be "give qol to palatank" if it is not to make it the optimal option. But qol is unnecessary as one of the appeals of vanilla is its particular vanilla feel (which qol goes against).

And I'll point out again that one of the core principles of vanilla which make it a good rpg is the inequity of classes. If all tanks perform the same, feel the same, are equal in potential, it is a boring and bad game design. Players shouldn't get what they want, because what they call "balance" is actually the most boring and flat game one could design.

[Velite]

If I want to say viable, i say viable. Palatank is already viable, so these changes are aimed at another purpose. Which I can't completely get. Must be "give qol to palatank" if it is not to make it the optimal option. But qol is unnecessary as one of the appeals of vanilla is its particular vanilla feel (which qol goes against).

And I'll point out again that one of the core principles of vanilla which make it a good rpg is the inequity of classes. If all tanks perform the same, feel the same, are equal in potential, it is a boring and bad game design. Players shouldn't get what they want, because what they call "balance" is actually the most boring and flat game one could design.

Thing is, Kevin Jordan wanted all tanks to have the same potential/usefulness, but in different areas. So what they are doing, which is bringing the tanks more in line with how the healers are balanced, is actually more true to the Blizzard design. As opposed to only having warrior tanks as the preferred option. Warriors are defensive, Feral druids are more of an offensive tank and paladins are better at dealing with trash and aoe. But they all have that minimum standard to how they work for a boss fight, and that minimum standard for a tank in WoW is a taunt.

It would be similar if all 10-12 of your healers were just priests. Obviously they are not, because a good balance of healers is needed. Same applies to tanks, but the execution in vanilla was poor on that end. Each of the tanks has their strengths and weaknesses and they are supposed to complement each other like the healing specs do. That was the intended design by Blizzard.

I don't understand the logic when we say that having a balance of 3-4 healing specs is good design but having more than 1 tank spec isn't? What is the difference there?

Also most people agree that paladin tank in vanilla raids is not viable. That's why it's a meme spec. If you need to minmax and overgear the content to be viable, that is not viable. And if your spec doesn't even have gear designed for just that spec in raids, there is also a strong chance it's not viable. Otherwise, the sweeping changes made in this patch for the purposes of viability wouldn't be necessary and we'd have raids with 2-3 paladin tanks already, which we don't.

[Lahire]

Thing is, Kevin Jordan wanted all tanks to have the same potential/usefulness, but in different areas.

Yes, ans that's good asymetric design.
But you want them to be equivalently good in similar fields = homogenization of a correct design.

I don't understand the logic when we say that having a balance of 3-4 healing specs is good design but having more than 1 tank spec isn't? What is the difference there?

I never said that. You have built your own demonstration from axioms never brought to the discussion and I don't think these axioms are valid ones. Healers are constructed exactly like tanks in the original design. For example druid's specificity is HoT ; priest's specificity is best overall healer (the price being bad in other fields like leveling, dps, farming) ; paladin heal has been openly described as an error during design. The players found an optimal way to target heal with 1 button, and then the designers were too cowardly to remove this unwanted gameplay. The original design for paladin heal was a melee doing some heal on the side ; the play pattern of paladin in cloth outside of melee is an oversight that could have been branded degenerated, but wasn't because it would have gone against all what players were doing and how they were having their fun.

So yeah, healer is exactly built with the same philosophies as tank, you are inventing a story from incorrect axioms to support a refutation of a position which does not exist and I don't hold.

Also most people agree that paladin tank in vanilla raids is not viable. That's why it's a meme spec. If you need to minmax and overgear the content to be viable, that is not viable.

That's exactly why democratic design is a failure : most players don't understand what they are talking about. They think they want something, but they don't (never say that directly to players, it would outrage them ; but the fact is... it's true in game design). Because players usually don't take into consideration all the facets of the design ; how their fun is actually produced by hundreds of moving parts.

The most notable example of that in the wow community is the cumulative process of raid-centric narrowness and confusion between viable and optimal ; both are identified in your post. The combination of these 2 errors is literally what bred retail. Retail was born from players asking to be all equal in raid. Everybody wants the first place and a medal, like children. Blizzard concurred. And what was born from that is a botched experience, because a homogenized raid design actually goes against the complexity of the other parts of the game (hence the non-experience of leveling in retail), against the fantasy of playing a rpg and being part of a believable world (hence the gamy feel of retail) and even against the pleasure of achievement (if everybody is equally first place, nobody really wins).

But as players are auto-centered, they all want to be the winner, they all want their spec to be a superman doing all the stuff everyone else can do, they all want to be wealthy easily, they all want to have the coolest gear, etc. That's player behaviour 101, and the role of a designer in a MMORPG is to say "no" to that. Or you obtain a modern shitfest like FFXIV or Retail.

These are ok in their own rights, but are not classical MMORPG, which require stratified social and rpg design born from inequity. MMORPG is one of the only game genres where "no" is the actual correct answer to 99% of players' demands. Because the integrity of this kind of design is extremely precarious, and because players always lean towards quick satisfaction (qol, easy achievement, no friction, class equality, etc).

To a player asking for palatank buffs, the answer should be "you want to be the best tank ? go reroll warrior. Have fun." Because all players will always ask for buffs for all specs ; that's how players operate. So you have to draw the line in the sand to preserve the asymetry of player experience. Because it's the less understood, but the most important part, of the design.

In a nutshell : in each field, to have lords, you need peasants. And there should be less lords than peasants. From this inequity come various core vanilla design patterns, like social recognition, rpg and world feel, etc. But of course, the mass of peasants will always ask the king to be made into lords. If the king accepts, the design falls eventually.

[Aomiaz]

Maybe take baby steps. You gave Paladin holy strike last time. This time mabye just give one ability to another class. Maybe give druid a range spell. Next time maybe give hunter a melee ability. For all classes.
With small incremental changes are better I think.

[Evillord]

Which since retail is getting brought up alot here. I would just like to point out one thing. For the past couple of expansion packs. Here is how blizzard handle things. They would create a new system, test it out. Players would give feed back, they would refuse to listen to it. Blizzard would go we know better. release their version of the system, turns out it bad and has alot of flaws. Than near the end of the expansion players would say what their issues are again. Which turns out to be the same issues from the original feed back. Blizzard finally listens and makes the systems way better. Listening to feed back made the system better. Than bizzard release a new expansion pack that has new systems that make the old ones pointless and worthless, along with restarting the whole circle again of refusing to listen to feed back, only to make their systems better near the end of the expansion pack when they finally listen to feed back. even one dev on twitter recently said, something along the lines of basically shut up if you are not a professional game designer. When it been blizzard the professional making poor choice after poor choice that has negatively impacted wow. Along with being rather hostile towards their player base. This does not point to signs of it the players fault. Rather the blame is on blizzard, since they are the ones that keep making these poorly made systems, not taking the time to make good ones or refusing to listen to the feed back that ends up improving their design in the end over and over again.

The idea that one should flat out refuse to listen to feed back, is a bad idea. Lucas had nothing but yes man around him, no one there to really point out or go and say this is a bad idea. Leading to episode one to three being the way they are. Which these movies were far from the greatest thing around. For the thing with feedback, is you should take it into account. Both good and negative. For if you only have people praising you, it can make something look better than it really is. Leading to a negative result in the end. negative feedback is not always bad. Since it can point out the flaws in something and in the end, lead to a positive result due to making changes and improving on things. Of course both positive feedback and negative feed back can be equally useless or helpful, one is not merely better than the other by default. Since going this is good or this is bad. Are equally useless. One should look for the feed back that goes into depth about the reasoning. take it into account, figure out does this apply to reality or is this just random nonsense they made up. If the feed back is worthwhile, take it into account and think it over, should you apply that feed back to the game or not. Than make up your mind, should you choose to listen to it or not. For feed back should be given a fair shot and at least listen to. Should you do everything said in feed back? No you shouldn't. While on the flip side, you shouldn't just ignore all feed back given. For refusing to listen to feed back, normally leads to becoming out of touch and not seeing clear flaws in the design of something, that others if allowed to give feedback could of pointed out and fix these downsides before it was released.

[Lahire]

That's retail player bible right there. And that ignores facts which could contextualize more correctly what happened with the retail debacle of these last few years.

Contrary to popular belief, SL is not "bad" because "blizzard refused to listen to player feedback", and 9.1.5 is not "better" because "finally blizzard listened". That narrative has been created by streamers and youtubers who spear-headed the retail players' demands.
Or more precisely, yes there is this dynamic of "not listening" (9.0) and then "listening" (9.1.5) to retail players, but for a very different reason than what you suggest.

What happened then ? It is a long story, so I spoiler it :

RETAIL'S BIRTH :
1. Over the years, since at least 2010, WoW's design has been directly influenced by players' demands. Less friction, more class utility, teleportations, easy access to raiding for all, group finder, etc. all come from players' demands, originally.

2. Blizzard recruited players to become designers. Ion and cie. Circa 2010. That's also a blunder, because it brought a specific vision : high-end raiders who designed for high-end raiders. These new designers thought "the game only begins at the endgame" and rebuked non-raiders players, calling them "casuals". So they designed the game in a way that dungeons and raids became the only content to do, and put to a side all the other activities, either by killing them, or by trivializing them. Leveling became not a game experience, but a narrative experience (vehicule for a storyline). Crafting, fishing, etc. was never expanded upon. PvP was put in a corner and marginally worked on over the years.

3. The parasitic systems come also from this mindset : player power for raid progression is foremost, so all new systems are linked to player power. The rotation of systems come from the lazy idea that it would be easier to canalize the bloat content problem inherent to any old mmo game : instead of adding infinitely new systems, they rotate them every 2 years (that's what players call "borrowed power")

RESULT, A NEW AUDIENCE :
4. This long evolution resulted in a change of players composition. Because Team 2 listened from TBC to raiders, and bent to their demands, they produced a design more and more made for them. Most players quit : there was no more place for RP players, explorers, crafters, levelers, etc. WoW went from 12 millions to 2 millions players in 10 years (2010-2020). Players became more and more toxic : frictionless design means you can kick anybody from your group without cost, and raid-centric design means you spit to the face of any "casual" who is not 100% efficient in the raid.

5. So was born a specific player crowd. The retailers. They can be described as : players who like 1/ action gameplay 2/ loot showers and power progression 3/ hard endgame content 4/ optimization of power 5/ no friction while pursuing all this. The retailer wants to be able to perform in all fields without roadblock, to try all spec and gameplays available, so he can find the optimal course of action to victory and power. That is a very specific kind of player, and the best representative of this crowd was Preach.

SL AS AN ATTEMPT TO DO CLASSIC IN RETAIL :
6. Here comes the success of Classic and Ion's doubt begin. For the longest time, Team 2 thought Retail was the correct way to do WoW. That's why they did it, with a passion. They were aligned with their playerbase, from wotlk to legion, even if there was bumps along the way. They were giving retailers what they wanted, essentially. Even during the worst expansion, WoD, it was more a problem of how they did it than what they aimed to do. Classic's success changed all that. Because it doubled the paid subscribers (conservative estimate). Ion was faced with the realization he designed for a minuscule crowd while there was millions of players waiting for the return of the real WoW.

7. SL systems come from this realization. Ion said it so himself in recent interviews : he studied the work of his predecessors to try to copy the vanilla feel and implement it into retail. And you know what ? He succeeded. K. Jordan applauded the covenant system, but predicted it would be a tough pill to give to retail players. So what happened ? Retailers' anger happened.

8. Retailers were faced with a product very different from what they paid for and were used to. In SL, because of the rpg design, there was a lot of friction. Like in vanilla. You couldn't do all you wanted how you wanted. But it was a bit of a frankenstein, because other retail systems were still here too. The uproar was massive. The unsubs were massive. And retailers were right, in their own way : they knew what they wanted and paid for, and were asking for it. Ion was trapped by the audience he himself built over the years.

9.1.5 : A RETURN TO RETAIL'S CORE DESIGN
9. Team 2 bent (again) to this audience with 9.1.5. Ion said it was a "mistake" to try to copy vanilla, excused himself and removed all friction in the game systems. Retailers won (again). And it's quite normal : they are the last remaining paying customers of retail, so they should obtain the experience they pay for.

So you see, it's not a question of "good" or "bad" design here. The problem is : Team 2 fabricated a particular audience over the years by always designing for them, and when they tried to open the design to new audiences, to try to transform classic players into retail players, it produced a cultural clash and decapitated Team 2's ambition with popular anger.

OFC it didn't help that SL was a mediocre narrative experience, mediocre zone and dungeon design, etc. on top of that. But the core story is what I described, according the the actors of the story themselves.

----------

If there is only 1 point I want to make from all this is : when you compare Vanilla and Retail, you compare a cow and a dog. They are opposite games designwise. But one came from the other. And it came from answering to players demands for 10 years, so much so that only retail-lovers are left. Retail built its own audience by only catering to 1 kind of players (the loudest kind), and now they cannot pivot their design because these players know exactly what they want to play.
And those players demands that made retail into existence are exactly the same I see on this topic. It began like this.

[Sonpansatan]

I find the idea that the devs made the classes deliberately unbalanced as very strange. Before patch 1.12 they were trying to balance the classes, after 1.12 they were trying to balance the classes, every other game tries to have game balance, even super hard-core ones like Everquest and Final Fantasy XI, but the state of classes in 1.12 wasn't because they were a new team trying out a new type of MMO and had to find out the hard way what worked and what didn't, but because of some genius 30D chess plan that they somehow immediately abandoned due to player feedback.

Also. player feedback that is "don't listen to player feedback" will always be funny.

[Chaossonic]

Greetings amazing community!

Since the start of Turtle WoW our mission has always been to provide a unique Vanilla experience by either picking up where Blizzard left off or, in this case, altering or enhancing certain existing aspects of the game to uphold current standards.

Since Turtle’s earliest days we’ve seen and heard players suggest class changes, all with differing opinions and viewpoints, each and every of these has been taken into account and we all wish to thank you for your passion and insights.

After much deliberation, many discussions and lots of tinkering the Turtle Team would like to announce our upcoming class changes that are planned for 15.2.

DISCLAIMER: All of these changes are tentative and subject to change. The final changelog will be published alongside the release of 15.2.

New to Turtle WoW, but definitely not new to WoW. I'm not too worried about changes and hope they bring more life to the server. I know some people here are conflicted, but there is nothing worse than leveling a character only to find at the end game that the specialization you leveled with is not very effective.

Vanilla WoW was not perfect, especially in the class design department. The original developers did not plan for all 3 specs in all the classes, and if dungeon/raid loot is any indication it was mainly up to the player to figure out their situation. With Blizzard having the approach they had back in 2004 and beyond, it wasn't until expansion releases that genuine support could be felt for neglected specs.

Establishing perimeters is important, as this server is focused on RP/PvE with a Warcraft 3 feel, I will try to give feedback in that vein with classes I know I have extensive experience in, for this post I will focus on the shaman.

Elemental and Enhancement both have struggles in PvE that can be addressed somewhat easily. Restoration is pretty solid in vanilla, but its talent tree leaves a lot to be desired - something to keep in mind for the future.

Enhancement shamans are amazing in PvP but as said have difficulties in PvE. If focusing on dps, Enhancement shamans generate too much threat, with no way to reduce it aside from standing still for a while. Enhancement shamans also have vestigial talents that show that Blizzard had some intention of them tanking, but this was never fully developed, these talents persisted until WoLtK where they were finally removed.

The big gambit is to determine the direction of the Enhancement tree and align the plethora of abilities for the task much like a Feral Druid bouncing between cat and bear. Will Enhancement strictly be for dps or will it start to be fully realized to have better tanking potential?

Elemental shamans have a difficult time with mana, even with a supply of Demonic/Dark Runes with Mana Pots, Mana Spring Totem, and even if someone is luckily enough to have Blade of Eternal Darkness the cost of Lightning Bolt eventually sets in, this is especially noticeable on Razorgore, Nefarian, and other fights that have multiple phases. The mana problem is so bad that Blizzard's fix for it was Water Shield in TBC.

Restoration doesn't really need changes except if talents are being moved to help out the other 2 specs, even then moving talents for Elemental and Enhancement may not fix issues those specs are having.

Changes to Baseline Spells

New Rank 2 of Stormstrike added, learnable at level 60. Differences from Rank 1: Cooldown is 12 seconds as opposed to the 20 seconds of Rank 1. Costs 12% of your base Mana as opposed to 21% of your base Mana with Rank 1.

This is a small cure for Enhancement and to help them with their mana consumption.

The troubled nature of Stormstrike is that increases the damage of the next 2 nature spells against the target as a debuff. An enhancement shaman is not built to channel a 3 second Lightning Bolt or 2.5 second Chain Lightning, meaning they default to Earth Shock, which leads to part of the threat problem.

Suggestion: Have Stormstrike put a buff on the shaman instead of a debuff on the target. Have the buff act differently based on the current shaman weapon buff that is active. Example. Windfury Weapon does not generate extra threat with Earthshock.

Talent Changes

Enhancement

Two-Handed Weapons (Row) and Parry (Row 5) are now baseline for all Shamans and trainable at level 20.

New Talent: Thunderhead (Row 3).
Allows your Lightning Shield to be cast on allies and reduces its mana cost by 20%.

Stormstrike has been moved from Row 7 to Row 5.

New Talent: Bloodlust (Row 7)
Increases melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 20% for a party member within 30 yards. Lasts 15 sec.

Bloodlust and Lightning Shield getting closer to their Warcraft 3 equivalent. Bloodlust is welcome, especially this toned down version, the whole group buff lead to shaman becoming a requirement in later TBC raids.

The Lightning Shield talent, I want to understand how this will interact with the T3, The Earthshatterer's 8 piece bonus, and any other piece of gear that alters Lightning Shield. This will need to be heavily tested, and I need to understand the design intent besides it being how it was in WC3. Will this cause extra threat to the target when it procs on them, or will it give threat to the shaman?

Folding Parry and 2H Axe and Mace into the base class is fine, but again the question is, what will be the end goal of the Enhancement tree be?

New Shaman Racial Spells

Orc: Feral Spirit | 21% Base Mana cost, 5 minute cooldown
Summons two Spirit Wolves under the command of the Shaman for 20 seconds.

Tauren: Spirit Link | 21% Base Mana cost, 10 minute cooldown.
Link the spirits of an ally and their 3 closest allies within 15 yards together. When linked targets take damage, 10% is distributed among the other linked allies. Lasts 20 seconds.

Troll: Hex | 21% Base Mana cost, 5 minute cooldown.
Transforms the enemy into a frog that cannot cast, and does 60% less damage for up to 5 seconds. Only works on Beasts, Humanoids and Critters.

I love these, but it they need to be tested. The CDs seem really high, especially the Tauren ability. With the Tauren ability we need to understand what the damage type is going to be applied to the linked targets. Will the incoming damage be able to be mitigated with Armor or resistance?

Hex should be just like Polymorph with the same diminishing return. Kinda like the Zul'Farrak version.

Restoration

Tidal Mastery (Row 1) and Totemic Focus (Tier 2) have switched positions.
Ancestral Healing (Tier 3) and Nature’s Guidance (Tier 4) have switched positions.

As said earlier. Moving the talents around can be more beneficial for Enhancement and Elemental but may not cure those two specs underlying problems. Moving some of the talents will definitely help their performance for quick encounters, but not extended ones.

I see Tidal Mastery (Row 1), do you mean Tidal Focus that is in row 1, because Tidal Mastery is in row 4.

Nature's Guidance in Tier 3 is blessing to everyone!

Elemental

Elemental Focus (Row 3) changed: after landing a critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature damage spell, you enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 40%.

This doesn't really fix the problem with Elemental, it will exacerbate it, especially since as written it will only get 1 proc. Considering this talent had 2 procs in TBC and Elemental shamans needed to keep Water Shield up all the time to prevent OOMing.

I prefer more with less, if I had to make a suggestion, just reduce the mana cost of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning by 3% per point with Lightning Mastery in addition to spell cast time reduction if Lightning Shield is on the shaman.

Flame Shock initial damage increased and mana cost decreased:
Example: Rank 6
Mana Cost: 450 -> 410
Initial Damage: 292 -> 309

The Flame Shock change seems like its been tacked on. I down for a 9% reduction in Flame Shock, but why not all the max level Shocks? I might be more happy if this was linked to a talent that effects all the ranks of Shocks with a mana cost reduction, maybe add 9% reduction to all Shocks with Elemental Mastery?

Also why not look into how shaman weapon buffs effect certain spells; Maybe with Flametongue Weapon applied Flameshock get increased upfront damage and refresh the FS debuff each time a different Shock or Chain Lightning hits the target. I wouldn't want shaman weapons buffs to be flat effects, like Spell Power or Healing Power, but instead some unique effect that gives shamans a unique choice when using weapon buffs.



All in all for shaman there are plenty of fun ideas here. Many need to be fleshed out and tested. Moving talents and incorporating a few into the base class is fine, but generally if there are going to be tweaks in abilities, it would be better to attach these to established talents. The general concern is what the development team's outcome for the Enhancement tree will be, kill the left over tanking talents or find a solution to better incorporate some of the lackluster abilities to make a shaman tank more viable?

Looking forward to the patch can't wait to test the new abilities and provide feedback on how they fare.

[Evillord]

I find the idea that the devs made the classes deliberately unbalanced as very strange. Before patch 1.12 they were trying to balance the classes, after 1.12 they were trying to balance the classes, every other game tries to have game balance, even super hard-core ones like Everquest and Final Fantasy XI, but the state of classes in 1.12 wasn't because they were a new team trying out a new type of MMO and had to find out the hard way what worked and what didn't, but because of some genius 30D chess plan that they somehow immediately abandoned due to player feedback.

Also. player feedback that is "don't listen to player feedback" will always be funny.

The comic industry in the last few years, has try to avoid the feed back of it's customer base and that didn't end up well for them. They try to forcefully sell you a product, rather than try and sell a product you might like to buy. leading to many people going else where to get their entertain and mainstream comics not doing so well. Which if you go to so called comic sites, they will try and spin it as comic readers being awful people. While you go to youtubers like justsomeguy, Douglas Ernst, clownfish tv, they will tell a different tale of comic creators being rather unprofessional and quality of comics being low.

Of course don't take my word for it. Be it this post or my last post or the one trying to tell a different version of the tale about the fall of retail, using just as much proof as me but pointing to it's the player fault being the root of the issue. Well when both sides, offer zero screenshots, proof or anything to back up their claims. Both are equally valid and you should do your research and not take them on their word. Which holds true for me as well and not just my counterpart. For better to be proven wrong with proven facts like video proof and screenshots, than to be right about something just to be right about something. For well when it just words, both sides can make up whatever story they want.

For I lost count of how many times a company has gone the don't listen to anything their player, viewer or reader base has to say. Has lead to negative things. Like ea case of don't like it don't buy it for their battlefield game. Which the sales for the game that year didn't do so well. Might of also not helped, their historical game wasn't very historical. For normally when companies refuse to listen to the player base in the slightest and don't even pretend they are listening, they normally do something very questionable that drives people away.

Which yes there is a bit of irony to the whole player feedback being given that is don't listen to player feedback. Since it does create well. To do what that feed back says, means not listening to players but if you do that, you are listening to a player. the one who gave you feed back not to listen to the players or you ignore that feed back and you are still following it for you are ignoring their feed back. That and even odder is this is a creative media. Creative media normally thrives on feedback. Since well you play any game these days and odds are you would see at least a few testers in the games credit. Who job would be to play through the game and make sure everything works as it should. Often by having to ask the devs question like, is this how things are meant to work or pointing out they had issues with this. communication and feed back being important. That and in other creative media like films, you normally have editors to help tighten up a story or beta readers to give feed back to learn where the strengths and flaws are in your story.

Which Yeah I would also agree with the idea the devs wanted to make classes unbalance seems odd. More so when many games care about balance in one way or another. For I think the thing is more like, well in a rts it can be easy to balance units when you have a rock paper system going on. While here in wow, it can be a bit more troublesome, due to how each class works differently and there is no real rock paper system going on. With of course some conflicting ideas of balance might not help, like say Ret paladin should do more dps or maybe they should just have more ways of supporting the party. Some thinking it ok if a class has two good specs, which does make it seem like the game is far from perfect if only two specs of a class are good and not all three of them. Think it more a issue of trying to balance all of these different classes and specs that are so different from one another. Simply harder to balance, rather than they wanted no balance. Since well, why create patches to try and balance things, if the whole point was to make things unbalance?

[Arcticwinds]

Hi guys,

The changes that you're planning are great, imo. I don't know why people want to play the exact same game for 17 years, and it is an unfinished game as well. That's evident, in the design of the classes - if they were perfect, Blizzard wouldn't change them in the next expansions (TBC to Cata, I disregard the rest). I have been going back and forth between Turtle WoW and Vanilla Plus WoW. I very much like the general way of the talents there, but prefer TWoW’s additional content and Alliance High Elves – after playing as one, I’m not willing to play on servers that don’t have them :D

That was a sidenote. As far as the class changes in specific, perhaps some of the Vanilla Plus ones are overboard, but at least they address some specs that had been criminally neglected and not widely used by players – Survival Hunter, Arcane Mage, Balance druid, etc. I was even going to post a suggestion that you implement some of their stuff several weeks ago, but you beat me to it. That’s what I like about this server, you’re always improving and one step ahead. I remember checking their talent tree a while back and I saw that it said ,,created by the Turtle WoW Team’’. Looking at what you’re suggesting now it is indeed pretty similar – Brilliance aura, Blood Lust, paladin taunt, make more abilities baseline. And it’s great that you’re doing it. Far from the people who want to play a stagnant game, I think that you should go even further for some of the specs.

For example, since you’re giving proper tanking to paladins, you should give that to SHAMANS too. They were indended by Blizzard for it. You could just bring some of the talent trees you created for Vanilla Plus, or come up with smth new. Let people choose which ability to learn – hex/wolves/spirit link, say via a quest. Spirit link should be reworked as a tank ability, imo. Perhaps linking the remaining party members to the shaman and transferring damage taken to him, mitigated by __%. If these abilities are race-based, it would kinda suck for people with high lvl shamans who end up with the ability they don’t want, based on a cosmetic choice. Also, Blood lust should affect your target and you (for a lower percentage) – that’s pretty common sense, imo.

As for SURVIVAL HUNTER it is done pretty well in Vanilla Plus WoW too. Before people tell me to just go and play there, please consider rationally the suggestions, and then let loose. They have a talent that decreases range speed and increases melee. Sorry, but that’s way better that the current aspect of the wolf. I would however put aspect of the monkey (using their version with + melee crit) in survival and add an improved aspect of the monkey talent linked to it, that ,,causes your common melee strikes to have a chance equal to your current parry rating/dodge rating to let you use Mongoose bite/Counterattack respectively when not having been the victim of direct damage for 10s’’. That would make the build viable in dungeons/raids (where you can’t/shouldn’t proc a dodge/parry), as a huge part of it’s damage comes from those abilities, but their prerequisites make them useless outside of leveling/PVP.

Now the PALADIN, which has been causing the most drama in the forums and in in-game chat. Get rid of the taunt and let the 40 lvl talent be Seal of Fury/Vengance (whatever), which deals % weapon damage as Holy damage to all surrounding foes. It’s judgement would cause a large amount of threat to all foes. There you go, paladins don’t receive an outright taunt, and are buffed in their role as aoe tanks. Differentiating tanks is the better way to go indeed. Crusader strike should be 3 stacks of 50 Holy damage increase (5 stacks is unreasonable for most encounters, and would be a chore to work all the way up). Seal of the Crusader could remain, but it’s Judgement should give % melee attack speed to players attacking the mob (could be 5% baseline + a ret talent for an additional +2%/+5% for the paladin alone). For all the people crying that paladin is going to now be best at everything, make Holy be less about healing, but a hybrid tree, with offensive spell capabilities. Say a deep Holy talent that lets you use Exorcism on non-undead/demons after a (insert prerequisite), and some synergies with a offensive Holy/Disc Priest perhaps (just like Shadow Priest and Warlock compliment each other).

The HOLY PRIEST Champion mechanic is way overboard. Having all of those ramifications with just one talent is mind-boggling and would make gameplay way too complicated, imo. It should just be a several-seconds buff to a party member that increases stamina/spell/melee speed (or crit) with a few-minutes cooldown, just as other people have suggested.

I’ll finish off with COMBAT ROGUE – with all the pirate stuff you’re adding, it begs to lean in that direction and finally get some flavor. Ahoy, mates! I know that’s what Blizz did in Legion, but it was a fun and proper change, imo.

I’ll make a separate post in the Suggestions tab for some additional things for other specs.

To the Turtle WoW Team:
Hope you have all the strength to go through all the comments, and come up with the best solutions in the end!

[Chaossonic]

The vanilla design of the Druid is infamous for being pretty unfinished. Its mechanics weren’t fully realized until well into the first expansion. Because of this, there’s a lot of freedom on how to improve on the class while sticking with the “vanilla feeling.” That said, simply attempting to recreate the druid of later expansions is a cop-out, but we feel incorporating some iconic and fan-favorite abilities would be a good idea.

Druid sets in the position of being a master of none. Resto is much more polished, but didn't really see the required changes it needed until TBC. Feral is a mixed bag, Bears can be viable for solo target encounters, but the need to farm Gnomeregan for Crowd Pummelers really hurt that portion of the spec, Cats are laughable and really only there to give the crit buff. Balance is great in 5 mans but their mana problem is much more apparent than even Elemental Shamans.

Changes to Baseline Spells

Claw now also deals 100% of weapon damage in addition to its current damage.
Note: This value is calculated on the invisible Claw weapon druid forms get when shapeshifting and does not correspond with your normal weapon.

Okay, weapon is added only to shapeshift forms, not to the base form. This should help Bear and Cat really well in threat generation and a dps increase to cats. Will weapon normalization apply to abilities now? Weapon normalization would be the roundhouse the class needs to get those 2 specs moving.

Frenzied Regeneration now also heals for 1% of your Stamina.

Insect Swarm is now a Balance spell and available to all Druids starting at level 20.

Faerie Fire (Feral) is now available to all Druids starting at level 30.

A better Frenzied Regeneration is nice to see, nothing like hitting 100 Rage and feeling like the ability is still too weak. Basing this on Stamina is even better news for Taurens.

Insect Swarm and Faerie Fire being built into the core class is wonderful, I like to see these debuffs more often, but I hope that Feral Faerie Fire while in bear overrides all other Faerie Fires, because it is an effective tool to build threat.

New Abilities

Owlkin Frenzy
Attacks done to you while in Moonkin Form have a 15% chance to cause you to go into a Frenzy, causing you to be immune to pushback while casting Balance spells. Lasts 10 sec.

Savage Bite
Learned at Level 58 | Requires Bear Form | 30 Rage | 6 Second Cooldown
Savagely bites the target, dealing normal damage plus 61.

Owlkin Frenzy - Why not just fold this into the Improved Entangling Roots talent and rename it. I just don't see a need for a new ability and it would give that talent more room to shine once Moonkin Form is obtained.

Savage Bite - Bear can be pretty boring, Enrage then cycle Maul and Swipe to dump Rage and weave in Faerie Fire once the CD is up. This ability is similar Mangle added in TBC, just not a DoT. In addition to the added weapon damage to attacks, I hope abilities get these added to them as well. Adding more spells should not be required, unless you are trying to captured something from Warcraft 3; adjusting what is currently available would be a better option imo. To be forward, the Rage cost and cooldown make this ability rather underwhelming unless a debuff or massive threat generation is being applied.

Talent Changes

Balance

Natural Weapons | Now 3 Ranks (down from 5)
Increases the damage you deal with physical in all forms by 4/7/10% and increases your chance to hit with melee attacks and spells by 1/2/3%.

Improved Wrath
Reduces the cast time and global cooldown of your Wrath spell by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 sec.

Moonkin Form
Transforms the Druid into Moonkin Form. While in this form the armor contribution from items is increased by 360%, the Mana cost of your Moonfire, Starfire, and Wrath spells reduced by 20%, and all party members within 30 yards have their spell critical chance increased by 3%. The Moonkin can only cast Balance spells, Innervate, and Remove Curse while shapeshifted.

Omen of Clarity
Imbues the Druid with natural energy. Each of the Druid's melee attacks and direct damage spell casts have a chance of causing the caster to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the Mana, Rage or Energy cost of your next damage or healing spell or offensive ability by 100%. Lasts 10 min.

Natural Weapons - Druid's need hit, no complaints!

Improved Wrath - The global cooldown adjustment is nice and bring it closer to Starfire level of damage output.

Moonkin Form - You fold in the cost reduction they need, good change with all the added spells, very nice!

Omen of Clarity - Finally the Balance druid can benefit from this amazing talent that Feral has used for so long.

Feral

Primal Fury and Blood Frenzy have had their existing effects combined into Primal Fury: Gives you a 50/100% chance to gain an additional 5 Rage anytime you get a critical strike while in Bear and Dire Bear Form and your critical strikes from Cat Form abilities that add combo points have a 50/100% chance to add an additional combo point.

Reduced the ranks of Thick Hide from 5 ranks to 3 ranks.
Increases your Armor contribution from items by 4/7/10%.

Feral Instinct reduced from 5 ranks to 3 ranks.
İncreases threat caused in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 5/10/15% and reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while PRowling.

New Talent: Blood Frenzy (Row 4) | 2 Ranks
Increases the duration of Tiger's Fury by 3/6 seconds and your Enrage now also instantly restores 5/10 rage. In addition, increases attack speed by 6/12% when either effect is active.

Primal Fury and Feral Instinct - Going the route of combining Cat and Bear together is going to make shamans that want to tank bang the drums louder. I'm fine with the changes, just be ready for the percussion.

Thick Hide - Why not keep it at 5 points and just add chance of being critically/crushing hit reduction or AoE damage reduction.

Blood Frenzy - I'm okay with this being merged and moved from the Resto tree. I just hope the added damage from weapons will still get added to special abilities with Weapon Normalization.

New Talent: Berserk (Row 5) | 5 Minute Cooldown
Removes all Fear effects and increases your energy regeneration rate by 100% while in Cat form, and increases your total health by 20% while in Bear form. After the effect ends, the health is lost. Effect lasts 15 seconds.

I love playing a Bear Druid, but I must disagree with this ability breaking Fear. I'm okay if it can be used in advance, but not while the Fear effect is present. There are other tools at the Bear Tanks disposal, Tremor Totem and Fear Ward. This is an MMO, force certain specs to utilize their party members more.

Please consider making a bear tank feel more proactive and less reactive when using this ability.

Restoration

Swiftmend has moved from a Row 7 to a Row 3 talent, replacing Insect Swarm.

Tranquil Spirit is no longer a prerequisite for the Row 7 major talent.

Improved Rejuvenation is now a prerequisite talent for Improved Regrowth.

Improved Enrage has been removed from the Restoration tree and has been integrated into the new talent Blood Frenzy.

Subtlety now also reduces threat generated from Balance spells.
Reduces the threat generated by your Healing and Balance spells by 4/8/12/16/20%.

New Talent: Tree of Life Form (Row 7)
Shapeshift into the Tree of Life. While in this form you increase healing received by 15% of your total Spirit for all party members within 30 yards, your movement speed is reduced by 20%, and you can only cast Swiftmend, Innervate, Nature's Swiftness, Rebirth, Barkskin, poison removing and healing over time spells, but the mana cost of these spells is reduced by 20%.

The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and Movement Impairing effects.

Swiftmend - Getting it earlier in the level experience will help out with dungeons.

Tranquil Spirit - It should become a prerequisite for Tree of Life then.

Improved Rejuvenation and Improved Regrowth - Having prerequisites is fine.

Subtlety - While I don't expect cats to be a problem, can the threat reduction be added to cat abilities and attacks?

Tree of Life Form - More druids form, yes please, I know a certain class that is about to hit the top of the meters! Just make sure it has built in prerequisite talents.

[Evillord]

Do find it odd that somehow youtubers and streamers, who would be fighting over the same limited amount of viewers somehow came together to make a story that just says blizzard bad. When some have been supporting the game for over a dozen years and would have be it due to time sunk cost or another reason have a good reason to want to see blizzard be successful[due to making money off of it and going to a different game might lose alot of their viewer base]. More so when the likes of Ansmongold has had their fair share of issues with other wow content creators, making it seem a bit questionable they all came together and agreed upon the same consistence story. When some of them are not on the best of terms. That and some make content base off the lore and so it would be in their interest to get more people interested in wow, rather than drive them away by saying negative things about blizzard.

Now the PALADIN, which has been causing the most drama in the forums and in in-game chat. Get rid of the taunt and let the 40 lvl talent be Seal of Fury/Vengance (whatever), which deals % weapon damage as Holy damage to all surrounding foes. It’s judgement would cause a large amount of threat to all foes. There you go, paladins don’t receive an outright taunt, and are buffed in their role as aoe tanks. Differentiating tanks is the better way to go indeed. Crusader strike should be 3 stacks of 50 Holy damage increase (5 stacks is unreasonable for most encounters, and would be a chore to work all the way up). Seal of the Crusader could remain, but it’s Judgement should give % melee attack speed to players attacking the mob (could be 5% baseline + a ret talent for an additional +2%/+5% for the paladin alone). For all the people crying that paladin is going to now be best at everything, make Holy be less about healing, but a hybrid tree, with offensive spell capabilities. Say a deep Holy talent that lets you use Exorcism on non-undead/demons after a (insert prerequisite), and some synergies with a offensive Holy/Disc Priest perhaps (just like Shadow Priest and Warlock compliment each other).

Well I have not seen that much drama. From my time playing at least in game and on the forums seems to only be a few people, who speak loudly about it. Which as some have point out when talking about it. Paladins are still limited by their mana, making them a less ideal choice than a warrior who has no such limits as mana to stop them from tanking, for a paladin will sooner or later run out of mana , while a warrior can always generate more rage even if pots are on cooldown and unlike the burning crusade, a paladin will have to give up something else to get this taunt. Warriors get their taunt for free. While paladins have to go down the prot tree and spend three taunt points, in order to get a consistence taunt, since before three taunt points are spend the taunt only has a chance at working. Which is something warriors don't have to do, giving them a bit more freedom with their talent points. So warriors, I would say are still going to be seen as the best or go to tank choice.

Since some of the people against it, seem to be overhyping paladins to be way better than they are or think og wow is a perfect game, even when they have admitted in the past paladins only in their eyes have two good specs. Making it seem like yeah not a perfect game, when a class has three specs but only two of them are good. That or think paladins can dps, heal and tank at once, which sounds like a fair bit of hyperbole has been at play here and might not reflect the reality of gameplay. Since I don't think there is anything more hypebole than someone claiming a game, any game is perfect. Which yeah I think alot of the paladin changes are a bit overhyped in how big their effect will truly be. Of course I could be wrong and they do have a major effect that everyone is saying but so far, it doesn't seem the case. I do believe the paladin taunt should be look more closely at, before it gets throw away. Since the main reason against the negative towards it, seems to be making paladins becoming suddenly the favor choice over warriors for tanking. When I don't think that would be the case, due to paladins still being mana users at the end of the day and the paladin having to pay for something a warrior gets fore free.

now with all that said. I do find your idea of a new aoe ability for paladin interesting. making me want to try it out. Well see how it effects tanking. I kind of want to try out a version of turtle with the paladin taunt and another without the taunt but rather with the aoe ability you brought up here. Which nothing much to add beside interesting take on the holy tree. Which I would just like to say. Thank you for sharing your rather ideas.

[Nightterrors]

Hey. I just wanted to say I look forward to the changes, and appreciate the thought and effort put in by the devs. Not going to say "this is cool, but-" or "this is bad; here's why".

Just wanted to say thanks, and I am really excited for what's to come. I noticed a lot of ten paragraph opinion pieces on here. Not my style. I've been telling my 2 friends and my cat about the changes, and doing my part to try to get more eyes on this and more bodies on the server to enjoy new content and the fruits of development labor.

From what I have seen so far everything done here is with care and love by the devs. You also do a great job communicating updates and allowing people to get on a soapbox with a megaphone to reply.

[Izax]

I'm against these changes because some of them look game breaking especially for pvp. I don't mind devs adding custom quests and dungeons, for they do little to the balance of the game, but class talent is core of the core of vanilla wow and should not be touched. I mean no disrespect to TWow devs, but I don't believe they have the proper tools to test the balancing. Vanilla wow classes are rock-paper-scissor, every class has its weakness and counter-classes. Trying to compensate that weakness without proper testing will lead to disastrous result. We like vanilla wow not only because of its questing, but also because of the imperfection and uniqueness of classes, and because the classes compensate each other. Do NOT try to "fix" the weakness of the classes please.

[Celaris]

I really like the changes for hunter! is it possible to add more improvements to the dps traps though? explosive trap is very mana hungry and doesnt deal that much damage and none of them scale at all.