WoW XIX: This is my Artifact. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

[Icewraith]

I'm not sure how necessary that stuff is in the Legion-era ability pruning meta. Most classes boast a 4-5 button rotation. My hotkey setup is I use the 1 through = keys as per normal, plus I added hotkeys for r,t,f,g,x, & c. For the letter hotkeys, i also use the odd shift-macro, and my 0 button is also bound to my mouse's thumb button. So that's a maximum of 25 abilities I can have hotkeyed. Now if you want a clean layout, I could see getting fancy with an OPie ring, but for fluid access you can get what you need with just BT4 or the default bars.

As for a keyboard shortcut to open all bags, that's shift+b. Or did you want a keybind that would pop open your OPie ring and then let you pick inventory, group finder or bags, depending on what else you do? If so, you want to get into macro programming. For a button that opens all bags, write a macro with this:

/script ToggleBag(0);
/script ToggleBag(1);
/script ToggleBag(2);
/script ToggleBag(3);
/script ToggleBag(4);

I rebound zxrfcv to use instead of 7890-=, then rebound 7890-= and [] to extra mouse buttons, then added shift combinations to hit extra bars instead of writing a bunch of macros.

Things I put on my mouse:

Interrupts.
Abilities that bring up the ground targeting reticule (Heroic Leap, Blizzard, etc).
CC breaks (gnome racial).
Mounts. (Random Mount, Water Strider, Tundra Mammoth, Sandstone Drake, and Sky Golem all have their uses)

[Sian]

I swap to using esdf as movement keys, and have allocated wqazrtg to my assorted cooldowns

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Looks like the Legendary 940 upgrade will be based on collecting stuff and not the Illidan quests as rumored previously. I just picked up the quest from the elf blacksmith in Dalaran and it seems like a simple collect, turn in, then use the consumable on the Legendary item of your choice. Not sure if it's repeatable or how easy it is to get the quest items but I scored 3 pieces off an Emissary cache, just 47 to go.

[Sian]

Blizzard went out a week ago (or something among those lines) explicitly denouncing the belief that the Illidan questline was needed, questioning where the rumor even started...

Its been mentioned several times that its repeatable for each of your 910 Legendaries.

the Essence of Aman'zhul drops from Emisarry Caches (2-5?), M+ weekly challenge chest (15), NH bosses (2-4 i believe I've heard, and it should be per boss in that if you kill one in Normal, you don't get them from killing that boss in LFR, Hc or Mythic) and weekly PVP quest asking for 10 2v or 3v arena wins or 3 rated battleground wins (also 15?)

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Blizzard went out a week ago (or something among those lines) explicitly denouncing the belief that the Illidan questline was needed, questioning where the rumor even started...

Its been mentioned several times that its repeatable for each of your 910 Legendaries.

the Essence of Aman'zhul drops from Emisarry Caches (2-5?), M+ weekly challenge chest (15), NH bosses (2-4 i believe I've heard, and it should be per boss in that if you kill one in Normal, you don't get them from killing that boss in LFR, Hc or Mythic) and weekly PVP quest asking for 10 2v or 3v arena wins or 3 rated battleground wins (also 15?)

I suppose I have to take responsibility somewhat, though in my defence I originally heard it from Bellular, most recently repeating the rumor on a video dated 6th of January, then making a more accurate statement on the 13th. Cripes, that was almost a week ago...

Anyhow, thanks for the info. Guess I should vet news regarding upcoming content from now on.

Ooh. 2-5 per day is pretty decent for someone not planning to raid, and doesn't have many Legendaries anyway.

[Icewraith]

On the negative side, the 10 whatevers per week limit is still there on the Illidan questline.

Also, finally got a Legendary for my main spec.... and it's the generic Sephuz ring. Which actually isn't too bad for Protection, at least on trash and boss fights with adds. Stun or root or interrupt something and swim in rage and SS procs for a bit. Hopefully another Legendary shows up so I can ditch this Arms belt... got an 885 belt to drop so I won't lose too much replacing it.

Also, three bosses down in NH first night, not too shabby. We'll see what we can do with our next 2 hour block tonight.

[The_Jackal]

On the negative side, the 10 whatevers per week limit is still there on the Illidan questline.

Also, finally got a Legendary for my main spec.... and it's the generic Sephuz ring. Which actually isn't too bad for Protection, at least on trash and boss fights with adds. Stun or root or interrupt something and swim in rage and SS procs for a bit. Hopefully another Legendary shows up so I can ditch this Arms belt... got an 885 belt to drop so I won't lose too much replacing it.

Also, three bosses down in NH first night, not too shabby. We'll see what we can do with our next 2 hour block tonight.

Does the rate limit on the Illidan questline really matter? All that's hiding behind it is a pair of shoes or bracers. Personally, I don't run enough dungeons in a week to get close to the limit anyway, but even if I did, I'm not hinging my itemization strategy off quest drops.

[Icewraith]

Does the rate limit on the Illidan questline really matter? All that's hiding behind it is a pair of shoes or bracers. Personally, I don't run enough dungeons in a week to get close to the limit anyway, but even if I did, I'm not hinging my itemization strategy off quest drops.

It depends on what else is hiding beyond the quest. The rate limit matters to me because I tend to run dungeons in spurts, so even though I haven't made a whole lot of progress towards 80, the limit has actually already cost me progress.

[Videkus]

By the time you manage to collect the 80 (if you're running Mythic+), you'll most likely have progressed to the point that the items are only going to get sharded anyway. That's what happened to me anyway. I saw the gear and was all keen. then noticed i was at ~60/80 and had gotten better already.

[Sian]

So, what's everyones opinion on Nighthold Raid?

My guild is already 5/10, two-shotting the first three bosses (... leaving us somewhat confused by people having so many problems with the first one) yesterday and got down Spellblade Aluriel and Krosos this night ... Krosos is quite the DPS race, but not really all that difficult if you got the dps for it, and feeling fairly similar to Guarm IMO, with less focus on tanking survivability ... but props to Blizzard to make the fights so different

[Icewraith]

So, what's everyones opinion on Nighthold Raid?

My guild is already 5/10, two-shotting the first three bosses (... leaving us somewhat confused by people having so many problems with the first one) yesterday and got down Spellblade Aluriel and Krosos this night ... Krosos is quite the DPS race, but not really all that difficult if you got the dps for it, and feeling fairly similar to Guarm IMO, with less focus on tanking survivability ... but props to Blizzard to make the fights so different

Our experience was similar. Unless there's a big difficulty jump, we'll be in Heroic in a couple weeks.

[danzibr]

How's soloing old content at 110?

I had a great time at 100 going back through old raids on my Rogue. Just did farming for transmog and pets and whatever, nothing too fancy, think I did up to WotLK. I'd be interested in doing more though, see stuff I never saw.

[Sian]

up to MoP its mind-numblingly easy (although MoP bosses are beefy enough to take a regular length fight), but WoD raids might be slightly difficult unless you play a self-heal heavy, tanky character

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

So, what's everyones opinion on Nighthold Raid?

My guild is already 5/10, two-shotting the first three bosses (... leaving us somewhat confused by people having so many problems with the first one) yesterday and got down Spellblade Aluriel and Krosos this night ... Krosos is quite the DPS race, but not really all that difficult if you got the dps for it, and feeling fairly similar to Guarm IMO, with less focus on tanking survivability ... but props to Blizzard to make the fights so different

Good news -- the difficulty does spike. Star Auger can be a bit of a pain, Tich is pretty easy, Botanist can be mechanically rough at times but isn't hard when you get it, and Eliasandre -- well, our group 1-shot Krosos, two-shot Tichondrius, three-shot Botanist, and then wiped four times to Eliasandre's first stage.

Heroic though? I'm 3/10 on Heroic bosses, and those things are ROUGH.

[danzibr]

up to MoP its mind-numblingly easy (although MoP bosses are beefy enough to take a regular length fight), but WoD raids might be slightly difficult unless you play a self-heal heavy, tanky character

Oooh, that's good to know. I never did see Cataclysm end-game content.

My wife and I would probably run stuff together. Me on a Sub Rogue, her on a Prot Pally. Probably can handle WoD raids. Maybe.

[Morphic tide]

So, I've been thinking about possibilities of how WoW could have developed to have less reliance on swapping character builds and become more accessible in high-end play without dumbing down the game massively.

One of them is the possibility of Blizzard reducing the tedium of the most common roles of each class. For example, giving Paladins an aura or low-investment talent to have their Blessings hit everyone in their group/raid at the same time on one casting, thereby making Paladins have much more time to be actually doing things other than just buffing(like spot-healing minor damage, dealing damage, applying debuffs and such). This would make actually playing the game more fun and accessible, as players can feel like they are doing more, even if they are doing just as much, but more varied.

Another is having the talent trees effect things outside the tree. For example, Paladin Retribution talents improving the casting time and power of all your spells within specific categories (DoT, casting time, instant cast, etc.) and giving damaging effects to what other specs use. This would encourage duel spec builds that have significant compitence in two things as a side effect of grabbing synergies.

A third thing I thought about is having stuff used by all specs of each class that gets improved differently by each spec. For example, each Paladin spec having upgrades to Blessings and Judgements based on the spec, like Holy giving added Spirit bonuses as an effect of all Blessings, and added health on hit for all Judgements. This would add options, of the sort where you can either double down on your central compitence or do a limited amount in something else while doing less in your main thing.

A fourth, and final, thing in this post is giving every spec a PvP and PvE role that is very hard and extremely sub optimal to exclude one side of due to intra-spec synergies. Once more using a Paladin example, Protection could be a PvE tanking spec and PvP healing spec, by taking Prot Priest's shields and using them for consistent self-damage mitigation, or burst damage mitigation on others, while Prot Priest would swap it to consistent mitigation on others and burst mitigation on self(which would double as a way for Prot Priests to be an emergency tank to buy time for the real tank to be rezed).

Overall, more fun, but also a probably larger nightmare to balance. Which is where hiring/bribing when needed the number obsessed players as balance checkers comes in. They already check every possible build for the best build, up to and sometimes including exact 25-40 man raid group layouts, as a hobby, just pay them to add pointing out how to bring a lower power play style up to par with the others and lower overpowered ones to fit the rest to their "things to number crunch for" list.

[danzibr]

Personally, I'd like to see Rogues get a healing spec. Bandaging. Replace Assassination.

And maybe evasion tanking too. Replace Outlaw.

Oh, speaking of rogues, I found my old rogue. Here's the link. Can someone explain to me how he has 135 energy???

[Spore]

Can someone explain to me how he has 135 energy???

Talent and/or spec passive.

[danzibr]

Talent and/or spec passive.

But you can see I'm specced Sub with Master of Subtlety, Nightstalker, Deeper Strategem, and Master of Shadows. None of this gives extra max energy. Bnet error?

[Spore]

Hm, that's weird.

[Morphic tide]

Personally, I'd like to see Rogues get a healing spec. Bandaging. Replace Assassination.

And maybe evasion tanking too. Replace Outlaw.

For Rogues, I'd love for the Subtlety spec to do PvP "tanking" and PvE debuffing.

The "tanking" would be inflicted miss chance, bursts of Dodge and Parry, sudden mid-fight Stealth and slowing the enemy, generally doing all the things to avoid getting hit. Never being at "cannot be hit at all" for more than half the time, to keep it firmly in PvP "tanking" territory. Of course, AoE would kill them quick, but that's what Disc Priests are for... Which also makes them able to emergency tank when the main tank dies, to give time for rezes.

The PvE debuffing would be the "taunt" of the PvP setup, crippling enough to players to have them try to kill the Rogue screwing them over, and lowering the... well, everything, of mobs and bosses for raids, where the Rogue can focus debuffs on smaller, more tightly grouped, enemies. Lower speed, lower hit chance, lower damage, lower armor... Basically, the boss becomes much less boss like with a Subtlety Rogue.

Where's the damage on Subtlety? Nowhere to be found, the point of this version of Subtlety is to screw over enemies as much as possible without any meaningful damage on either side.

The synergies here would be debuff duration and attaching dodge, parry and miss chance bonuses to various abilities, along with the advantages of snapping into stealth for your stealth-only abilities.

Assassination would be its namesake, king of the burst damage, using debuffs as part of the burst for others to get in on the burst in PvE.

In PvP, it'd be about sneaking around to get to a place where you can go full burst, with a Sneak-only ability with significant cooldown being part of it, hopefully killing a few people while you're at it. If you die, they're stuck with debuffs for a few seconds after that can easily turn the fight, at least in combination with the damage you dealt.

In PvE, you'd apply some of the same debuffs (the damage increasing ones, like lowered miss/dodge chance and armor reduction) as the Subtlety spec, but with shorter duration and actually helpful damage on the abilities applying the debuffs. You'd use the abilities a lot more often, cycling your bursts constantly, with other damage abilities filling in the rotation.

Assassination synergies would be attaching useful damage to abilities that would normally lack them, lowering cooldown times and possibly raised crit chances.

Then there'd be an Arms spec, focused on using effects based on the weapon you are using, with effect strength based on weapon damage. Effect strength would be heavily rooted in how far into the spec you go.

For this form of Arms, your role in PvP is ranged DoTs or debuffs. Thrown and bows would give bleed, while guns and crossbows would give armor reduction. AoE and multi-target effects would have their area and number of targets determined by the weapon type, with conical AoEs that have width and length determined by the weapon type and circular ones having simple radius based on the weapon.

For PvE, you go melee, where you get stronger effects or mixed effects. You do have two hands, after all. Daggers and swords have bleed, with swords getting the better AoE and daggers getting the better speed, while axes and maces get armor reduction, axes having better AoE and maces having better effect strength.

Synergies? All those weapon-based effects are applying to everything the weapon is used for. The deeper you go into Arms, the better the ratio of weapon stats to effect strength and the more abilities you have to apply them.

Of course, all this being balanced hinges on a desired change to how bleed and armor reduction would work. Namely, there would be only one debuff for bleed and non-magical armor reduction would have two debuffs. These debuffs would stack with diminishing returns, increasing less per "point" as they get higher. The two armor reduction debuffs would be a decaying one for distraction-based abilities and a non-decaying, but capped and still subject to DR, debuff for armor damage.

Remember, this is a pointless brainstorming of how WoW could have developed.

[Morphic tide]

Another of my "WoW what if?" posts. This time going over Hero classes.

Diverting from my general rule of talents forcing you to be competent at two things, this "What if?" scenerio's Hero classes don't have one play style for PvP and one for PvE per spec, instead that have two good play styles per spec that work in both of them, as well as being above curve for leveling to feel like a hero class. Granted, said play styles would have different amounts of skill and build specificity involved in them, leading to a "noob" build and a "pro" build, which will only be specified by the Frost spec.

Essentially, the Hero classes here would be built around each spec having their core rotations include the effects for both PvE and PvP in one play style, letting you get one set of gear and learn one rotation for all your gameplay. However, the play style enabling talents would be about halfway into the tree, with the ones that make the play styles viable taking even more investment. You're a Hero class, you have the talent points needed to go halfway into the spec for a talent.

Let's use the Death Knight as an example, because I havn't played WoW since Wrath:

Blood's first play style would be PvE tanking and PvP damage. The abilities would be focused on Bleed and life drain, which would have a special form of Stamina drain. Said stamina drain would be constantly decaying and be subject to diminishing returns on increasing the lost stamina, while having a cap on gained stamina, which decays and has a cap based on your non-buff stamina, while only growing when you drain stamina. Actual self healing would be tied to Bleed damage inflicted, possibly with an ability to heal yourself a bunch by discharging a bunch of Bleed damage. The PvE tanking relies on the colossal health pools of raid enemies to get good Bleed damage on, but in PvP things loose too much health from Stamina loss for the self heal to work out well.

The second play style would be PvE healing and PvP tanking. Rather similar to the above, same stamina drain mechanic, same relience on Bleed damage, but having a couple extra abilities: Debuffs that heal people on attack by discharging bleed damage and abilities that sacrifice health to either inflict a pile of Bleed damage or heal an ally. You'd basically be healing people off of one of the major DoT categories, in a way that reduces damage dealt by it. Of course, it works wonders for micro management because you focus on keeping up the Bleed damage on the boss so that said bleed damage can be turned into healing. In PvP, the same mechanics work for monstrous burst damage at the cost of huge amounts of your health. If you didn't have much more Bleed damage inflicting and more ways to turn it into health instead of damage, that is. Thanks to those, your health is staying largely intact. Helps to not be tearing off half the enemy"s max health without actual damage, due to being more Bleed than stamina drain.

Synergies with the others would be inflicting Bleed damage whenever your weapon is involved in the attack, lowering the max health of enemies while increasing your own max health and cooldown reduction. Yes, these core spec effects are all low end effects, but scale with how far you go into the spec, like they really should for more things.

Unholy's first play style would be PvE damage and PvP tanking. You'd have the ability to drain Spirit, with the same mechanics as the way Blood drains Stamina. In addition, you'd be able to spend drained Spirit to inflict damage of considerable magnitude, Shadow damage being the damage type of choice. But you have to drain Spirit first to do it, which is harder to do in PvE thanks to enemies simply having less of it, making you wait for more drained Spirit to come in by letting the enemies Spirit to replenish. In the mean time, you have your Ghoul to deal damage and inflict debuffs. Oh, you can also spend Spirit to make the Ghoul do stuff. PvP tanking comes from a single passive Talent that gives you constant healing based on your Spirit, making it take much denser bursts to kill you once you have a full pool of stolen Spirit. Lack of PvE tanking comes from lacking a taunt, or anything else that can get good threat going.

The second play style of Unholy would use all the same mechanics for a PvE tank and PvP damage. You'd have a lower cap on stolen Spirit, but you'd have much better ability to gain it, letting you spam your abilities better. How does this let you tank? Your Ghoul. Or rather, your Geist. This play style requires you to go a bit further up the tree to grab one of a mutually exclusive pair of talents that change what your minion is. The other play style would get a Ghost later on at the level 70 tier, with a bunch of stuff for dealing damage and generating Spirit for the owner. Your Geist lets you spend your rapidly refilling Spirit pool to heal it and make it use several abilities, including ones that let of get it's own pool of stolen Spirit to heal faster off of. In PvP, the Geist can help you burst down the enemy quite fast, while you can stay alive through light damage thanks to your constant regen.

The synergies are, as with Blood, most of the core effects. Spirit drain, constant health regen based on your Spirit stat and a basic Ghoul without much to use with it. Also, ability power increases.

Frost DKs would have their first, more obvious, play style be PvE damage and PvP debuffing. They'd have an Agility debuff working in the same way as the drain effects, only they would get nothing from it. Agility loss is enough, really, given that it lowers damage dealt and increases damage taken. At any rate, in PvE they'd be able to build the agility debuff to massive heights, allowing them maximum effect on their abilities that reduce the debuff for effects based on how much debuff was there. In PvP, well, they have slows, roots and significant damage. They go off like Frost mages, but you can't kill them as easily because they are in plate and they reduce your agility by an assload. PvE raid mob numbers are overkill in PvP, which is what makes this work properly.

The second, harder, Frost DK build would be a tank for both PvP and PvE. It would be locked behind a non-obvious, rather specific, set of talents on different branches that give all of two new effects: Increased armor based on Frost damage dealt that degrades with damage taken and barrier health like Disc Priest bubbles when you use abilities that remove debuff stacks. But there'd be synergies on the talents along the way that add up to boost these effects to be viable. You'd have to follow an almost exact build to get it to viable state before level 60, when you should leave the DK starting zone, but you are rewarded with the ability to counter armor damage viably without dying and survive large damage amounts while dealing significant damage.

Synergies, as always here, involve giving you the ability to inflict Agility loss and deal damage based on that debuff. Also ability cost reduction.

[Icewraith]

Another of my "WoW what if?" posts. This time going over Hero classes.



Let's use the Death Knight as an example, because I havn't played WoW since Wrath:

You're so out of date that the vast majority of stuff you talk about either doesn't make any sense (and hasn't for several expansions), or has already been implemented (such as hiring player theorycrafters to be developers).

[Morphic tide]

You're so out of date half the stuff you talk about either doesn't make any sense, or has already been implemented.

TBF, it's an idea that, given what I know from what I know about what has been implemented in WoW since Wrath, as well as some of the things that Blizzard has pulled in patches before (*points at Diablo 2 introducing an entire new subsystem in a patch*), and what I know is possible in the game engine. It's a "what if?" situation of development going differently immediately after Vanilla, from the start of BC to now. I only mention DKs because I've heard in several places that there were plans for them from vanilla. Or was that Demon Hunters? One of the two were planned from vanilla WoW.

And can you point out which things have already been implemented? Because I'm fairly sure that Blizzard has never, and will never, implement the idea of having one, unchanging, build be viable for both PvP and PvE. I understand that the Rogue suggestions for Assassination and Subtlety are fairly close to what they have been before, but I'd have heard about something like the DK setups and the Paladin examples.

Edit: Also, what do you think of the basic ideas? Ignoring how much sense they make, because they are thought of as working off of the mechanics present during vanilla and BC. As well as stuff that would not be impossible to do in the game engine from my understanding

[danzibr]

Oh yeah. I remember back when you could pick your own runes and Frost was tanking and the other 2 were dps. For that matter, when we had actual talent trees.

I leveled my DK in WoD. Started as Unholy, loved it but not enough self-heals. Switched to Blood, ermagersh that was way easier. Don't care for Frost though. Just not cool enough.

[Kish]

There was never a time when Frost was tanking and the other two were dps.

There was a time when Frost Presence was the presence a death knight (of any spec) used for tanking, and lots of people translated that as "so a frost death knight is a tank," ignoring everything Blizzard said on the subject (that death knights were designed so that each tree could support either a tanking or damage build), as well as all the tanking talents in the Unholy and Blood trees and the damage talents in the Frost tree. I predicted then that Blizzard would make one of the three trees pure tank and the other two pure damage when the next expansion came out rather than continuing this experiment, and that the tank tree wouldn't be Frost, since Frost had all the dual-wielding talents, and death knight tanks all used two-handed weapons. Unfortunately, having gotten that far, I guessed wrong at the last gate, expecting the tanking tree to be Unholy.

[Spore]

Don't care for Frost though. Just not cool enough.

Spoiler

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I.....is this the negation of a cheap pun or not? Tell me!

[danzibr]

There was never a time when Frost was tanking and the other two were dps.

There was a time when Frost Presence was the presence a death knight (of any spec) used for tanking, and lots of people translated that as "so a frost death knight is a tank," ignoring everything Blizzard said on the subject (that death knights were designed so that each tree could support either a tanking or damage build), as well as all the tanking talents in the Unholy and Blood trees and the damage talents in the Frost tree. I predicted then that Blizzard would make one of the three trees pure tank and the other two pure damage when the next expansion came out rather than continuing this experiment, and that the tank tree wouldn't be Frost, since Frost had all the dual-wielding talents, and death knight tanks all used two-handed weapons. Unfortunately, having gotten that far, I guessed wrong at the last gate, expecting the tanking tree to be Unholy.

oic

Yup, I was one of the many ignorami. Didn't level a DK back then, didn't know how they worked. I feel enlightened :)

Spoiler

Show

I.....is this the negation of a cheap pun or not? Tell me!

Haha, yeah, there was some punnery going on :P

I actually like the whole Frost idea, just not quite as much as Blood, and I've always had a soft spot for Necromancy and the like.

[Icewraith]

TBF, it's an idea that, given what I know from what I know about what has been implemented in WoW since Wrath, as well as some of the things that Blizzard has pulled in patches before (*points at Diablo 2 introducing an entire new subsystem in a patch*), and what I know is possible in the game engine. It's a "what if?" situation of development going differently immediately after Vanilla, from the start of BC to now. I only mention DKs because I've heard in several places that there were plans for them from vanilla. Or was that Demon Hunters? One of the two were planned from vanilla WoW.

And can you point out which things have already been implemented? Because I'm fairly sure that Blizzard has never, and will never, implement the idea of having one, unchanging, build be viable for both PvP and PvE. I understand that the Rogue suggestions for Assassination and Subtlety are fairly close to what they have been before, but I'd have heard about something like the DK setups and the Paladin examples.

Edit: Also, what do you think of the basic ideas? Ignoring how much sense they make, because they are thought of as working off of the mechanics present during vanilla and BC. As well as stuff that would not be impossible to do in the game engine from my understanding

Debuff tanking is a great idea in practice. In reality, it either sucks for the person playing the tank (anything actually threatening is immune to most of the debuffs or debuffs don't do much) or it sucks for everyone else (debuff becomes mandatory because a crippled boss is simply easier to kill and renders other tanks noncompetitive, pvp is slow and frustrating for everyone else).

Most talents (as close as this gets to the Wrath era concept of "builds") are currently intended to be "viable" in general, with one Talent in a particular tier excelling over the others in a specific situation. Most of what you'd consider a "build" based off Wrath-era talent trees is baked in the the class baseline. And the devs prefer that all the classes be viable in all appropriate situations (no Healing Warriors for instance), although sometimes they don't quite get the tuning right. Having one, unchanging "build" be OPTIMAL for both PVP and PVE would negate the point of having player decision trees.

As a current player, mentally rewinding the state of the game back at least four expansions so that I can maybe understand what you're talking about is... difficult. The comment about Paladins and buffing for instance is... really confusing. Paladin Tanks have been viable since mid to late BC, Holy Paladins have been main raid healing since at least Wrath if not BC, Ret mostly deals damage and has for several expansions. Since you didn't play Cata+ you have no experience with the form DKs finally evolved into, since they were in flux for most of Wrath.

[Morphic tide]

Debuff tanking is a great idea in practice. In reality, it either sucks for the person playing the tank (anything actually threatening is immune to most of the debuffs or debuffs don't do much) or it sucks for everyone else (debuff becomes mandatory because a crippled boss is simply easier to kill and renders other tanks noncompetitive, pvp is slow and frustrating for everyone else).

The key to proper debuff classes is to make the debuffs the main contribution and do one's best to make it so that stacking debuff classes of the same type isn't viable, as well as having debuffs not matter in PvP or even be actively harmful to the debuffer. Or do the opposite, have the debuffs be minor and ultimately not important in emergencies, but be caused by stuff that's useful anyway, like Paladin Judgements being attached to a damaging ability.

Also, only the Frost could count as a debuff tank in raids, as it's the only one that gives a debuff that matters for raiding. The health pools on raid mobs are too huge for Blood's stamina drain to really matter and Spirit just doesn't matter in most fights outside PvP. It would be better to describe this idea of DKs as buff tanks, because much of their tanking capacity comes from increasing their survivability with the stats they gain.

Most talents (as close as this gets to the Wrath era concept of "builds") are currently intended to be "viable" in general, with one Talent in a particular tier excelling over the others in a specific situation. Most of what you'd consider a "build" based off Wrath-era talent trees is baked in the the class baseline. And the devs prefer that all the classes be viable in all appropriate situations (no Healing Warriors for instance), although sometimes they don't quite get the tuning right. Having one, unchanging "build" be OPTIMAL for both PVP and PVE would negate the point of having player decision trees.

I'm not suggesting locked builds, but rather intentionally viable play styles. The same set of foundation talents that constitute a play style would have would cover two different rotations, balanced for PvE and PvP. From your foundation, you then grab other things to specialize into one or the other, but you never become so sub-optimal that you simply cannot play the side of the game you didn't specialize in.

The way it works would basically be having the "must have" talents give you the core toolkit for both sides of the game, with the PvP talents giving you the PvE numbers and vice versa, in regards to the core toolkit. This ties into the Diablo 2 based skill synergies idea and the idea of having every talent give some new or condensed function while also giving raw numbers as a lesser effect.

As a current player, mentally rewinding the state of the game back at least four expansions so that I can maybe understand what you're talking about is... difficult. The comment about Paladins and buffing for instance is... really confusing. Paladin Tanks have been viable since mid to late BC, Holy Paladins have been main raid healing since at least Wrath if not BC, Ret mostly deals damage and has for several expansions. Since you didn't play Cata+ you have no experience with the form DKs finally evolved into, since they were in flux for most of Wrath.

I've watched Cata era DKs being played and payed attention to the Legion coverage, so I know that Blood is the tank spec and Unholy and Frost are damage. I vigorously hate this idea that a plate armored undead super soldier has two entire talent trees that are entirely unable to tank, no matter how you build them. I hate the idea that a spec can do exactly and only one thing, with no ability to build for two roles inside of one spec. The point of having the roles be a PvE/PvP split is that it doesn't screw with the largely-inevitable dungeon finder to do so.

Basically, I'd much like the specs to be the mechanics you use to do things, instead of the way you play. The idea of the Blood spec for DKs works perfectly as damage and tanking, and potentially healing if you look at the fluff sideways, but it's locked into tanking because Blizzard decided that spec should define role and play style. Protection Warriors only being able to tank makes sense, but you can have two very different types of tanking to do in the spec, with one tanking type working in PvP and the other working in PvE.