Actually I'm finding cata to be this neat middle ground between retail and classic. The leveling isn't quite as brain dead, combat feels punchy, auto attacks are still a thing, and the talent trees feel pretty good. It doesn't feel like retail much at all except for the obvious world revamp and LFD.
Exactly. It’s a middle ground. It’s like Classic with all the QOL features everyone here has been asking for.
Edit: I’ll be honest tho, flying in Azeroth makes it feel like retail. Not a fan, but I understand why it’s necessary for the new zones
I just wish there was *some* open world/leveling difficulty. Literally the only challenge would be to do it naked, weapon slots only and even then I feel like it would still just be a steam roll.
I don't mind killing mobs in 2-4 globals but at least balance that with more dangerous enemies. As it stands, they hit for basically no damage. Dungeons are a joke.
I honestly don't mind any other aspect of the retailfication of the game but the difficulty is one that just makes it feel so meaningless... Gear upgrades don't mean shit, new abilities don't mean shit, nothing means shit if I can click one button and everything dies in seconds with absolutely zero dangerous encounters.
It's too easy...
Yea, I'm really just looking forward to the end game challenge at this point cause I'm just blasting through the levels playing with my feet and one eye closed.
It definitely got easier in wrath but I don't remember pulling an entire camp of mobs on a warrior, same level enemies, face tanking all of them and pressing whirlwind as they all die simultaneously.
Enemies still had some danger to them in wrath. If they got their hit off, it meant something. Cata is a joke, you can just stand there getting wholloped on and they barely scratch.
I agree with this totally. Growing up (I’m 33) I played vanilla-wotlk, then went off to college, and next time I touched wow was in the end of-WoD/start of legion era,and everything was different but I never got to experience WHERE it became different. Now that I’m playing Cata for the first time I am enjoying the class changes. It seems as I got older, the more “catering to the casual” type of QoL changes appeal to me.
I for one enjoy the Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder(which isn’t in prepatch, not even sure if it’s in Cata). What I didn’t enjoy in retail was all the different types of levels of gear for the same item which turned me away from raiding.
Same. Retail wow doesn’t have that wow feel. Too much is changed, the leveling system is a mess.
For me wow is pretty much vanilla - mop. Wod is horrible and legion is the most overrated expansion ever.
No, they're there but they're a non factor in your gameplay. Retail has you always pushing buttons (yellow damage) with some auto attack (white damage) sprinkled in with the animations getting overwritten by whatever skill you're using. The gameplay feels slower in classic where you actually see your auto attacks and their damage is more significant. Basically it doesn't feel like you're playing street fighter and button mashing.
Logs only measure pushes that result in an ability.
As a Prot warrior you have shield block that you use every 6s and heroic strike/cleave that are off GCD and you use a fast 1h to get more HS/Cleaves in, so if you're keeping HS up on every auto and using shield block every 6s which you have to maintain to be uncrushable, then you easily average 2 bp/s for abilities.
You also have blood and berserker rage that are off GCD and taunt, though those aren't used as often.
So, yeah, there were classes/specs with a high throughput of abilities all the way back to vanilla.
Okay? I never said there wasn't, and I never even mentioned logs lol.
Wouldn't you just keybind HS to everything tho...?
If you're using it literally every GCD (or 1,5 swing timer) there is no reason not to right? Unless you WANT to press it constantly.
It's just hilarious to discuss APM in WoW.
The difference between vanilla and cata is so so so much smaller than the difference between cata and retail. All cata does it put in a load of quality of life changes and generally improves on all aspects of the game to me. Retail is an entirely different beast with an overwhelming amount of content that is pretty intimidating to get into for someone who's not played WoW for more than a 6 month period in the past.
what systems even changed from wrath to cata? pretty much just LFR on the last patch no? cata didn't really do much as a step towards retail besides the improved quest design (ignoring shit dying fast relative to classic)
Wrath was a huge transitionary expansion, Cata builds on concepts introduced in Wrath but didn't exist in classic. LFD, multiple difficulty raids and intense catch up systems are probably the most significant. You can tell how significantly the vision for the entire game changed with TotC which I'd claim is the single most impactful patch we've ever had, despite how undercooked it was.
i pretty much agree with you, i just think retail is still much further away from cata and wrath than they are to vanilla
if retail was still MoP or wod, then i'd agree but legion+ was an insane shift of a ton of fundamentals from there imo
I can agree with your point, but I feel like (most) of those changes were major improvements over vanilla/classic design.
Retail has over a decade of further changes, many (not all) of which were detrimental to the game in the long run. 4 different raid difficulties that all invalidate the previous tier being a major offender, followed closely by legendaries for everyone (AKA mandatory).They spent way too long catering to the top 1% of their player base at the expense of making the game fun to play for the other 99%.
Cata has flying and is therefore closer related to any expansion than it is too classic. Tbc is already more retail than classic to me, since it destroyed the world ... of warcraft.
Yeah I see the odd person share that opinion and it baffles me. Fair enough if you liked things simpler but the sheer amount of changes in the world between Cata and whatever current retail is, is so much more than what happened between vanilla and cataclysm.
I'm not seeing the similarities between Cata and Retail. The only thing they have in common is what, the post shattering world? The game and class design is not comparable in the slightest. If anything, it's just a better version of Wrath and all classes are incredibly fun to play. The gameplay is an amazing middle ground between DF and Vanilla. It's just a really good version of the game. Only MoP and maybe Legion will maybe top it in terms of gameplay.
I'm referring to the difference in gameplay. Vanilla is awful clunky, unbalanced and unfun with unneeded downtimes and tediums. DF is very flashy, your attacks feel like you're using a foam sword, your dmg is weak outside of dps cds and the rotations are unbelievably punishing if messed up for a lot of classes. Cata feels punchy, rotations aren't braindead 1 button nonsense from Vanilla or incredibly punishing like DF with tons of random modifiers. It's just a nice gameplay middle ground that feels satisfying to play.
The poster is correct, Cata is sort of the beginning of a middle era of wow. It is still not remotely like retail though. There are 14 years of changes since, that is over twice as many years as between Vanilla and Cata original release.
Cata largely feels like wotlk+
Go spend a few days on dragonflight and a few on prepatch and see if you can honestly say they are the same.
One of the biggest difference for me is that everything in retail is based on cooldowns and outside of CD windows your spells are wet noodles.
The games pacing in cata is designed closer to classic than retail.
Despite it being changed, I’m still playing on the old continents with a traditional lore base. (Big one for me)
also to note, some of the classes in cata were extremely fun and in mop/wod they lost some abilities that completelt changed the class.
for example warlocks soul swap was insanrly fun in BGs with the glyph.
its in DF but feels worse
Yes agreed Cata plays almost identically to Wrath. Since waiting for full cata launch I decided to give Dragonflight a go recently. Levelled the exact same spec, Assasination rogue. They don't feel even remotely the same to play. I'm actually surprised how much fun it has been to play actually. Yeh there are bits that are annoying about modern wow but I cannot deny it is super fun to play. Classic is great ofc too and lots of nostalgia but Cataclysm really is just more wrath of the lich King. Remember there has been 14 years since Cata released, it is definitely closer to whatever definition of classic people want to provide.
Yeah. Cata slots in much closer to classic (and right next to the trilogy) gameplay-wise than retail. It’s why I’m looking forward to it because I enjoy the area of lore and the zones a lot, the raids are great, and the classes (that I play) feel nice.
As for retail, I feel like if I could wipe all memory of WoW away and classic to not exist I’d probably play the crap outta it. It’s fun for the little bit I put in each xpac/major patch. But it just dies off for me very fast knowing that classic exists with (to me) better fee and lore.
Question for you: do you play retail?
The difference between era and cata is way WAY smaller than the difference between cata and retail.
It's so silly to compare the two, you might as well be asking why people play era and not cata.
Spend a couple days on cata and a couple on retail, no honest person will say they're closer to one another than cata is to classic.
Cata still has some of those rpg elements, has stuff like hit/expertise, reforging, and most importantly for me, I get to relive experiences I had in cata back in the day.
Specs played different then compared to now.
For me it's the perfect mix of Classic type game design with retail like QoL changes, such as 15m hearth, instant mail to alts, better fp pathing...
I don't think there's a single caster player out there that loves sitting to drink after every pull, cata does it better where you're not running on E every fight, but it becomes an actual mechanic for healers and select dps specs (arcane mage).
I enjoy Cata class design more than retail
Rotations are medium complexity, enough to be interesting without being laden with tons of one-off damage buttons lacking in resource interactivity
Classes also have tons of situational, niche, and utility buttons beyond the core rotation, which I find rewarding
For me, these classes are the sweet spot for both raiding and PvP
Kind of a weird question - Cata is not that similar to retail. They're 12 years apart, a lot has changed between then. It doesn't come off as a hate post, but trying to compare the two kind of shows you don't know either of the games very well.
Playing both. Wouldn't be playing both if they were the same.
M+, classes (litteral classes : DH, evoker, monk) is mostly what I look for in retail.
Dungeons, professions, economy is mostly what I look for in classic.
Mythic Dungeons. Mythic raids.
Titanforging. Only 5 stats. Your gear is the best stats. And don't need to be leveled 8 times.
There are many system in retail that don't personally find fun. But are near mandatory. That don't exist in cata.
Fortunately they got rid of titanforging ages ago.
Some of these I empathise with, others I don't understand. What's the issue with mythic raids for example? Those are in Cataclysm as well, but with a different name.
They ask what system there are in retail there was not cataclysm. I have nothing against mythic raids. I don't like doing keystone personally. I like there being more stats then primarily stat. Versatility haste crit haste and mastery. And all item being 2 of those stats one high one low. And you target the caps and such. A pure preference thing.
Normal and heroic. Are also in retail.
Normal is the difference between Cataclysm and Retail, not Mythic.
The concept of an accessible, casual friendly raid difficulty that is still a step up from LFR came with WoD. Heroic was just rebranded into Mythic.
No, I think normal is the innovation that separates retail raids from Cataclysm raids in terms of difficulty. LFR remains as LFR in retail, Cataclysm normal was rebranded as HC in retail and Cataclysm heroic was rebranded as Mythic in retail.
Cataclysm heroic is nowhere as difficult as mythic retail raiding. The sheer procentage that could clear Cataclysm heroic raids. Vs people who getting edge on retail is massive.
Yeah no, heroic raids in wrath/cata were nowhere near the difficulty of mythic raids and were never supposed to be.
Anyone who has done both would tell you that in an instant.
I *have* done both.
Rewatch the WoD announcement. That's literally the stated purpose of Mythic. And no, there was not a significant change in difficulty going from Siege of Orgrimmar HC to Blackrock Foundry Mythic.
Yes, the Mythic Raids today in retail are much more difficult than HC were in Cata. But that isn't due to the rebranding to Mythic, it's due to the add on arms race and the popularity of the Race to World First.
And the stated purpose of Torghast was to be a solo experience you could do for fun, ideas and implementation are very different.
Maybe I should've said it never FELT like mythic was a rebranding as you say.
I mean, I know a lot of people who would disagree with that. To be fair it is also in general a bit yikes to compare a final raid to the first raid of an expansion, but hell.
They were very explicit in the announcement that it was a rebranding not a step up in difficulty. And it certainly never felt like a step up in difficulty either.
To me its the pvp balance and design that is definitely more fun than retail
+ I cant stand dhs, everything without dhs is already an improvement from retail pvp
As a softcore Player, Retail is WAY too complicated to get into. Feels like I need to have a very large understanding of all the patches and expansions to level up the right way and have fun. Too many choices, too many everything. Classic is very simple, log in, dungeons, thats it you cant go wrong.
Starting in Classic Vanilla and just still keep going with the guild since then.
I gotta say, experiencing WoW through all it's history from literally 0 is a great feeling. Finally I get how the OG Vanilla veterans that still play Retail feel. It's so much more natural to progress from Vanilla to the end vs. joining in some Xpac, skipping all the content from the old xpacs and then being "caught up".
If I log into Retail today I essentially have a whole galaxy of content I missed and that just kinda sucks.
This is pretty much how I feel. My guild did die in wrath but there might be 10 of us willing to do the raids in a 10 man group. We don't plan on getting super sweaty this time around though lol. If that doesn't look like it will happen I'll find another guild to raid with.
Either way, I agree, it's nice to enjoy each xpac from the beginning starting in vanilla and going through each. It makes it easier for me to understand how the game works and what is going on then to just join during a new xpac and I'm completely lost since there is so much content to get through.
Pvper- Dragonflight arena left a lot to be desired, especially after the first season. Cata looks to be a good balance in terms of classes, abilities are interesting, rbgs. And MoP pvp to look forward to. War within who knows?
Shaman totem usage, I've been playing Cata Pre-Patch and really enjoying shaman feeling like a shaman. My retail shaman uses totems but more or less as a cooldown.
Pre-Patch I'm by buffing my party and being a support healer.
I mean a lot of things. Cata is certainly not my favorite expansion but it's also not terrible like SoD and SL.
Specific things I don't like in retail that won't be in Cata? The powered power systems are hugely annoying. Having to grind every day for the entire expansion or get left behind sucks. I don't like complete RNG gear. I absolutely hate M+ dungeons as an excuse to not make new dungeons over the course of an expansion.
Gear resets are fun. I play everything wow releases when people all start out with the same gear level. I always fall behind in retail after expac release so I only survive the 1st tier.
For me it comes down to playing older version of classes. This version of combustion only really happens in cata(MOP to a lesser extent). Also the fact I want to complete some raids I didn't get to do and get the legendary staff.
>What makes you choose Cataclysm instead of playing retail?
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But seriously cata class design is still relatively classicish vs the more modern action rpg style of retail
I play both so it's whatever strikes me at a given moment
I find a majority of the specs flow quite well in gameplay and you get quickly an idea of what makes sense to use when. For me cata is only a quick, casual enjoyment trying out the raids, farm the reputations and collect some stuff, until I move on to other games.
Cata in what it offers is simple fun. Retail might be built/designed "better" in some regards. But what others define as better doesn't necessarily provide more fun to me.
It’s entirely based on people I play with. We’re all playing SOD now and going to pivot to Cata while we wait on phase 4. If TWW was launching on May 20, we’d be playing that instead of Cata.
That noted, Cata was also my favorite expansion.
I mean, I will be playing retail also. But I do prefer Cata.
To me, Cata is a bit simpler as far as progression and content and systems goes compared to Retail.
Also, I prefer the class design of Cata over the class design of retail.
It doesn’t feel as bloated. Retail can feel overwhelming at times with how much it has.
I play retail and cata classic. Playing the same class too. I enjoy doing the older raids again and being able to progress them again. Raids are my favorite part of WoW.
I never played before mop so I want to experience the raids. From farming them in retail for mounts they seem cool so that will keep me raiding even though all my group/guild isn't.
The 2 main reasons for me are the community and the difficulty of onboarding/returning. The people I want to play with are all on Cata (or SoD). All but one of my friends has stopped playing retail, and I don't want to have to try and find a new community while trying to relearn the game.
Retail has so many layers of systems that it feels all but impossible to onboard into after the first 45 days of a new expansion. It is so hard to understand what to do or what is important, even though I've been playing some version of the game for almost 20 years (started end of Jan 2005). The game itself does a poor job explaining systems to new/returning players, outside of the specific gimmicks of the current expansion. If you have been out of the retail version of the game for any significant amount of time, then you NEED to either have friends to explain things or engage with copius amounts of educational para-text to learn what to do or what's going on.
Cata still feels like the wow I played and loved growing up. Retail has a much different feel now it’s hard to describe exactly what it is.
But somewhere along the line it just changed. For me it felt like after legion is where it happened, despite me not realizing at the time and playing bfa and into shadowlands before quitting after nathria.
Retail just feels way to big and convoluted to me now where cata feels like home
If you really need people to explain to you why cataclysm is nothing like retail you should play cataclysm, and then retail.
And this is not a hate comment, this is genuine advice.
Imo the #1 thing that retail needs is to wipe the slate clean. I quit wow after wotlk and didn't play again til legion, and it was staggering how behind I was.
Classic was a fresh start for me and for everyone else, and that's my favorite part of it. Also rotations are too complicated for me to enjoy in retail. Also fuck m+, I hate timers.
It's very simple actually. It's M+. M+ has completely killed any motivation I had for taking retail seriously.
An infinite grindable source of gear was a horrible idea in my opinion, unfortunately the system has been incredibly well received and as such I don't see myself getting back to retail anytime soon outside of a brief visit around expansion releases.
I adore CMs. Completed all of them.
And it is because they're completely optional I love them so much. I'd probably love M+ as well if those were optional.
My main issue with M+ is how it interacts with the other content, at least in SL you were forced to do M+ even if you didn’t liked it because of the trinkets they dropped there and either it was no where rewarding for the time spent or you couldn’t even get to impre due people leaving or an affix being shit
Absolutely. The separation of content should've happened years ago. I don't begrudge M+ players enjoying their dungeons, I just don't want to do them myself. And I know M+players feel the same about raids.
How come m+ is worse than heroic dungeons for gear for example?
We can crank up the difficulty for it to be challenging instead of it being a snoozefest.
The amount of gear that drops in Heroic is significantly higher and the quality is a step below raids causing it to be obsolete quickly. If I was supposed to be grinding Heroics on repeat weeks into a tier, I'd also hate those.
What I liked about Heroic dungeons is that they were pretty close to the line of easy/engaging to complete and they were almost always useful. There were a ton of reasons you'd want to run them, from wanting Chaos Orbs or Justice Points for gear or heirlooms, even if nothing in the actual dungeons dropped something you were after.
M+ feels almost purposely designed to separate you and your friends based on an infinitely granular difficulty scale that means at some point, one of you will pull ahead and won't have any reason to play the lower-difficulty content. After three seasons of playing with my friends for two weeks before they blast into +20s I can't perform in, I'm kinda done with that entire system.
Cata is the last expansion where my buttons felt like they did something
Retail, nothing matters untill I am able to stack 1000 different damage modifiers that come from 1000 different sources that I don't even understand
Every now and then on retail, my SS will do more dmg, I dno why, probably cause of a buff - a dmg modifier - that I am not engaging with or even aware of. But it happens.
I don't claim to be good either, I just like to push 1800 on retail for the mog.
Retail became too much for me with Dragonflight. I don't enjoy dynamic flying, the new crafting system, and never was a fan of farming Mythic Keys. Also, the Dracthyr were a big disappointment for me, I wanted to be a huge black dragon. Also the new talent tree are too complex for my taste. It felt like a big revamp and I didn't wanted to play that.
I prefer playing pretty much all classes in Cata/Wotlk, choosing 2-3 classes I really focus on and sometimes rotate them.
To each their own
I just love rotations and gameplay in Cata. Raids were also just great. In my eyes one of the best PVE expansions.
The other thing is - I just need a subscription and don't have to buy it.
I’ll be playing both, but I’ll be prioritizing TWW. I want to experience the heroic raids and class design as they were (more or less). And that’s pretty much the sole reason I’m interested in cata.
Like many others have said, I don’t agree with the premise or implication in your question. They are very, very different games. Some things introduced in Cata still exist today, but that’s true for Vanilla, TBC and Wrath too. It’s just a constantly evolving game.
Retail has defensive ability bloat and feels fucking terrible as a pug healer. Class design is still fun overall but not as good as cata/mop imo. I also think gearing is much simpler with just heroics, raids, justice, valor, honor, conquest points. I don't like m+ at all, I don't like lfr or that there's 4 raid difficulties and four expansions worth of inflation. I feel overwhelmed when I log into retail. Gearing doesn't feel satisfying to me. It's not unfun to play, so I understand if it's for you, especially if you like difficult raiding, but for retail, in contrast to the first 5 xpacs of wow, the ratio of anger at other people to personal satisfaction is way too high.
>What makes you choose Cataclysm instead of playing retail?
retail is trash, it's bloated, classes have too many random sources of damage that reduces the impact of abilities, the combat text is unsatisfying, the animations feel weak.
leveling is completely detached from what it used to be, i can't relate to anything anymore after all the number and level squishes.
I don't like m+, i don't like PvP being constant GCD spam, i don't like micro CC.
The emerald dream is the most unfun farming simulator catchup zone blizzard has ever added, literally plant seeds do superbloom, that's all there is.
I choose cataclysm because
1. It's better than retail
2 It's better than WotLK
And for those who say "cata is retail" sorry but you're morons, if that was true i'd be playing retail right now, but i don't because it's garbage.
Reliving a past experience when my first real char i played on max was a goblin shaman. On top of that being able to play other classes like my shadow priest in a different state of the game.
And the real reason is, my laptop cant handle retail endgame. So cata is more casual friendly too.
I said this once it’s worth repeating.
A lot of the things people attribute to cataclysm are actually changes that were made in MoP and WoD Etc. You’d be surprised how few people really have a concrete timeline on the games development. Cataclysm didn’t even implement LFR until the final patch and the only reason it’s remembered so horribly is because that patch lasted almost two years. Cata has some of the best PvP wow ever saw. It also had some of the best raid tiers ever made. DS is trash and should be revamped this go-around but I doubt blizzard has the resources to make that happen. It’s the first real implementation of PvP leveling as well with better xp earned through games. Original cataclysm only added the helmet and cape heirlooms. The legs actually came with the MoP prepatch and subsequent release. Overall the game feels good. The new low level zones speed up and streamline the 1-60 grind and the rest of the game remains largely the same with lesser xp required to level.
Actually I'm finding cata to be this neat middle ground between retail and classic. The leveling isn't quite as brain dead, combat feels punchy, auto attacks are still a thing, and the talent trees feel pretty good. It doesn't feel like retail much at all except for the obvious world revamp and LFD.
Exactly. It’s a middle ground. It’s like Classic with all the QOL features everyone here has been asking for. Edit: I’ll be honest tho, flying in Azeroth makes it feel like retail. Not a fan, but I understand why it’s necessary for the new zones
This is one of the main reasons I don’t understand the cata hate here.
I just wish there was *some* open world/leveling difficulty. Literally the only challenge would be to do it naked, weapon slots only and even then I feel like it would still just be a steam roll. I don't mind killing mobs in 2-4 globals but at least balance that with more dangerous enemies. As it stands, they hit for basically no damage. Dungeons are a joke. I honestly don't mind any other aspect of the retailfication of the game but the difficulty is one that just makes it feel so meaningless... Gear upgrades don't mean shit, new abilities don't mean shit, nothing means shit if I can click one button and everything dies in seconds with absolutely zero dangerous encounters. It's too easy...
I agree. The raids are harder tho and require more then sod brain, which i like
Yea, I'm really just looking forward to the end game challenge at this point cause I'm just blasting through the levels playing with my feet and one eye closed.
But all of this was already the case in Wrath, thats not exclusive to Cata
It definitely got easier in wrath but I don't remember pulling an entire camp of mobs on a warrior, same level enemies, face tanking all of them and pressing whirlwind as they all die simultaneously. Enemies still had some danger to them in wrath. If they got their hit off, it meant something. Cata is a joke, you can just stand there getting wholloped on and they barely scratch.
This. Plus, a little nostalgia when thinking about the added heroics of Cata that we no longer get to experience in retail (ZG/WoE/etc)
I agree with this totally. Growing up (I’m 33) I played vanilla-wotlk, then went off to college, and next time I touched wow was in the end of-WoD/start of legion era,and everything was different but I never got to experience WHERE it became different. Now that I’m playing Cata for the first time I am enjoying the class changes. It seems as I got older, the more “catering to the casual” type of QoL changes appeal to me. I for one enjoy the Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder(which isn’t in prepatch, not even sure if it’s in Cata). What I didn’t enjoy in retail was all the different types of levels of gear for the same item which turned me away from raiding.
Same. Retail wow doesn’t have that wow feel. Too much is changed, the leveling system is a mess. For me wow is pretty much vanilla - mop. Wod is horrible and legion is the most overrated expansion ever.
Retail got rid of auto attacks? When did that happen?
No, they're there but they're a non factor in your gameplay. Retail has you always pushing buttons (yellow damage) with some auto attack (white damage) sprinkled in with the animations getting overwritten by whatever skill you're using. The gameplay feels slower in classic where you actually see your auto attacks and their damage is more significant. Basically it doesn't feel like you're playing street fighter and button mashing.
You clearly never tanked on a warrior in BC. It's like playing piano. I would average 120 button pushes per minute.
and then you looked at your damage meter and say that near 40% of your DPS came from auto attack? right
I was responding to the part about button mashing like playing street fighter.
I mean neat, but since GCD is 1,5 seconds you're just mashing 3 times per actual ability used lol
HS wasn't on the GCD, so with a fast weapon that's an extra key press per GCD
Damn dude, so that's 80 APM! Unless you just macro'ed HS to every ability since you're spamming it every auto hit anyway.
Logs only measure pushes that result in an ability. As a Prot warrior you have shield block that you use every 6s and heroic strike/cleave that are off GCD and you use a fast 1h to get more HS/Cleaves in, so if you're keeping HS up on every auto and using shield block every 6s which you have to maintain to be uncrushable, then you easily average 2 bp/s for abilities. You also have blood and berserker rage that are off GCD and taunt, though those aren't used as often. So, yeah, there were classes/specs with a high throughput of abilities all the way back to vanilla.
Okay? I never said there wasn't, and I never even mentioned logs lol. Wouldn't you just keybind HS to everything tho...? If you're using it literally every GCD (or 1,5 swing timer) there is no reason not to right? Unless you WANT to press it constantly. It's just hilarious to discuss APM in WoW.
No, because you don't want to HS when you're low rage, so when i intimating combat or if you're rage starved for any reason.
The difference between vanilla and cata is so so so much smaller than the difference between cata and retail. All cata does it put in a load of quality of life changes and generally improves on all aspects of the game to me. Retail is an entirely different beast with an overwhelming amount of content that is pretty intimidating to get into for someone who's not played WoW for more than a 6 month period in the past.
This take is completely unhinged to me.
it's nothing but truth, it's the first azeroth expansion amen
I mean, the systems in place in Cataclysm mostly exist in retail today as well. Not so with classic to Cataclysm.
what systems even changed from wrath to cata? pretty much just LFR on the last patch no? cata didn't really do much as a step towards retail besides the improved quest design (ignoring shit dying fast relative to classic)
Wrath was a huge transitionary expansion, Cata builds on concepts introduced in Wrath but didn't exist in classic. LFD, multiple difficulty raids and intense catch up systems are probably the most significant. You can tell how significantly the vision for the entire game changed with TotC which I'd claim is the single most impactful patch we've ever had, despite how undercooked it was.
i pretty much agree with you, i just think retail is still much further away from cata and wrath than they are to vanilla if retail was still MoP or wod, then i'd agree but legion+ was an insane shift of a ton of fundamentals from there imo
I can agree with your point, but I feel like (most) of those changes were major improvements over vanilla/classic design. Retail has over a decade of further changes, many (not all) of which were detrimental to the game in the long run. 4 different raid difficulties that all invalidate the previous tier being a major offender, followed closely by legendaries for everyone (AKA mandatory).They spent way too long catering to the top 1% of their player base at the expense of making the game fun to play for the other 99%.
Cata has flying and is therefore closer related to any expansion than it is too classic. Tbc is already more retail than classic to me, since it destroyed the world ... of warcraft.
Yeah I see the odd person share that opinion and it baffles me. Fair enough if you liked things simpler but the sheer amount of changes in the world between Cata and whatever current retail is, is so much more than what happened between vanilla and cataclysm.
I'm not seeing the similarities between Cata and Retail. The only thing they have in common is what, the post shattering world? The game and class design is not comparable in the slightest. If anything, it's just a better version of Wrath and all classes are incredibly fun to play. The gameplay is an amazing middle ground between DF and Vanilla. It's just a really good version of the game. Only MoP and maybe Legion will maybe top it in terms of gameplay.
How can you not see the similarities but call cata “an amazing middle ground between DF and Vanilla”
I'm referring to the difference in gameplay. Vanilla is awful clunky, unbalanced and unfun with unneeded downtimes and tediums. DF is very flashy, your attacks feel like you're using a foam sword, your dmg is weak outside of dps cds and the rotations are unbelievably punishing if messed up for a lot of classes. Cata feels punchy, rotations aren't braindead 1 button nonsense from Vanilla or incredibly punishing like DF with tons of random modifiers. It's just a nice gameplay middle ground that feels satisfying to play.
The poster is correct, Cata is sort of the beginning of a middle era of wow. It is still not remotely like retail though. There are 14 years of changes since, that is over twice as many years as between Vanilla and Cata original release.
Cata largely feels like wotlk+ Go spend a few days on dragonflight and a few on prepatch and see if you can honestly say they are the same. One of the biggest difference for me is that everything in retail is based on cooldowns and outside of CD windows your spells are wet noodles. The games pacing in cata is designed closer to classic than retail. Despite it being changed, I’m still playing on the old continents with a traditional lore base. (Big one for me)
also to note, some of the classes in cata were extremely fun and in mop/wod they lost some abilities that completelt changed the class. for example warlocks soul swap was insanrly fun in BGs with the glyph. its in DF but feels worse
Yes agreed Cata plays almost identically to Wrath. Since waiting for full cata launch I decided to give Dragonflight a go recently. Levelled the exact same spec, Assasination rogue. They don't feel even remotely the same to play. I'm actually surprised how much fun it has been to play actually. Yeh there are bits that are annoying about modern wow but I cannot deny it is super fun to play. Classic is great ofc too and lots of nostalgia but Cataclysm really is just more wrath of the lich King. Remember there has been 14 years since Cata released, it is definitely closer to whatever definition of classic people want to provide.
Yeah. Cata slots in much closer to classic (and right next to the trilogy) gameplay-wise than retail. It’s why I’m looking forward to it because I enjoy the area of lore and the zones a lot, the raids are great, and the classes (that I play) feel nice. As for retail, I feel like if I could wipe all memory of WoW away and classic to not exist I’d probably play the crap outta it. It’s fun for the little bit I put in each xpac/major patch. But it just dies off for me very fast knowing that classic exists with (to me) better fee and lore.
Question for you: do you play retail? The difference between era and cata is way WAY smaller than the difference between cata and retail. It's so silly to compare the two, you might as well be asking why people play era and not cata. Spend a couple days on cata and a couple on retail, no honest person will say they're closer to one another than cata is to classic. Cata still has some of those rpg elements, has stuff like hit/expertise, reforging, and most importantly for me, I get to relive experiences I had in cata back in the day. Specs played different then compared to now. For me it's the perfect mix of Classic type game design with retail like QoL changes, such as 15m hearth, instant mail to alts, better fp pathing... I don't think there's a single caster player out there that loves sitting to drink after every pull, cata does it better where you're not running on E every fight, but it becomes an actual mechanic for healers and select dps specs (arcane mage).
I enjoy Cata class design more than retail Rotations are medium complexity, enough to be interesting without being laden with tons of one-off damage buttons lacking in resource interactivity Classes also have tons of situational, niche, and utility buttons beyond the core rotation, which I find rewarding For me, these classes are the sweet spot for both raiding and PvP
Retail pvp is too complicated to get into for me. I quit back in mop and have no idea whats going on anymore.
Kind of a weird question - Cata is not that similar to retail. They're 12 years apart, a lot has changed between then. It doesn't come off as a hate post, but trying to compare the two kind of shows you don't know either of the games very well.
Retail is overdeveloped
Playing both. Wouldn't be playing both if they were the same. M+, classes (litteral classes : DH, evoker, monk) is mostly what I look for in retail. Dungeons, professions, economy is mostly what I look for in classic.
Mythic Dungeons. Mythic raids. Titanforging. Only 5 stats. Your gear is the best stats. And don't need to be leveled 8 times. There are many system in retail that don't personally find fun. But are near mandatory. That don't exist in cata.
Fortunately they got rid of titanforging ages ago. Some of these I empathise with, others I don't understand. What's the issue with mythic raids for example? Those are in Cataclysm as well, but with a different name.
They ask what system there are in retail there was not cataclysm. I have nothing against mythic raids. I don't like doing keystone personally. I like there being more stats then primarily stat. Versatility haste crit haste and mastery. And all item being 2 of those stats one high one low. And you target the caps and such. A pure preference thing. Normal and heroic. Are also in retail.
Normal is the difference between Cataclysm and Retail, not Mythic. The concept of an accessible, casual friendly raid difficulty that is still a step up from LFR came with WoD. Heroic was just rebranded into Mythic.
So you think normal raid is the same difficulty as lfr?
No, I think normal is the innovation that separates retail raids from Cataclysm raids in terms of difficulty. LFR remains as LFR in retail, Cataclysm normal was rebranded as HC in retail and Cataclysm heroic was rebranded as Mythic in retail.
Cataclysm heroic is nowhere as difficult as mythic retail raiding. The sheer procentage that could clear Cataclysm heroic raids. Vs people who getting edge on retail is massive.
Yeah no, heroic raids in wrath/cata were nowhere near the difficulty of mythic raids and were never supposed to be. Anyone who has done both would tell you that in an instant.
I *have* done both. Rewatch the WoD announcement. That's literally the stated purpose of Mythic. And no, there was not a significant change in difficulty going from Siege of Orgrimmar HC to Blackrock Foundry Mythic. Yes, the Mythic Raids today in retail are much more difficult than HC were in Cata. But that isn't due to the rebranding to Mythic, it's due to the add on arms race and the popularity of the Race to World First.
And the stated purpose of Torghast was to be a solo experience you could do for fun, ideas and implementation are very different. Maybe I should've said it never FELT like mythic was a rebranding as you say. I mean, I know a lot of people who would disagree with that. To be fair it is also in general a bit yikes to compare a final raid to the first raid of an expansion, but hell.
They were very explicit in the announcement that it was a rebranding not a step up in difficulty. And it certainly never felt like a step up in difficulty either.
What if I play both?
To me its the pvp balance and design that is definitely more fun than retail + I cant stand dhs, everything without dhs is already an improvement from retail pvp
I enjoy the potato graphics
completely different games
As a softcore Player, Retail is WAY too complicated to get into. Feels like I need to have a very large understanding of all the patches and expansions to level up the right way and have fun. Too many choices, too many everything. Classic is very simple, log in, dungeons, thats it you cant go wrong.
Starting in Classic Vanilla and just still keep going with the guild since then. I gotta say, experiencing WoW through all it's history from literally 0 is a great feeling. Finally I get how the OG Vanilla veterans that still play Retail feel. It's so much more natural to progress from Vanilla to the end vs. joining in some Xpac, skipping all the content from the old xpacs and then being "caught up". If I log into Retail today I essentially have a whole galaxy of content I missed and that just kinda sucks.
This is pretty much how I feel. My guild did die in wrath but there might be 10 of us willing to do the raids in a 10 man group. We don't plan on getting super sweaty this time around though lol. If that doesn't look like it will happen I'll find another guild to raid with. Either way, I agree, it's nice to enjoy each xpac from the beginning starting in vanilla and going through each. It makes it easier for me to understand how the game works and what is going on then to just join during a new xpac and I'm completely lost since there is so much content to get through.
Pvper- Dragonflight arena left a lot to be desired, especially after the first season. Cata looks to be a good balance in terms of classes, abilities are interesting, rbgs. And MoP pvp to look forward to. War within who knows?
Cata and mop were by far the two best xpacs for pvp. I’m excited to play them again
Shaman totem usage, I've been playing Cata Pre-Patch and really enjoying shaman feeling like a shaman. My retail shaman uses totems but more or less as a cooldown. Pre-Patch I'm by buffing my party and being a support healer.
I mean a lot of things. Cata is certainly not my favorite expansion but it's also not terrible like SoD and SL. Specific things I don't like in retail that won't be in Cata? The powered power systems are hugely annoying. Having to grind every day for the entire expansion or get left behind sucks. I don't like complete RNG gear. I absolutely hate M+ dungeons as an excuse to not make new dungeons over the course of an expansion.
Gear resets are fun. I play everything wow releases when people all start out with the same gear level. I always fall behind in retail after expac release so I only survive the 1st tier.
For me it comes down to playing older version of classes. This version of combustion only really happens in cata(MOP to a lesser extent). Also the fact I want to complete some raids I didn't get to do and get the legendary staff.
>What makes you choose Cataclysm instead of playing retail? Whynotboth.png But seriously cata class design is still relatively classicish vs the more modern action rpg style of retail I play both so it's whatever strikes me at a given moment
I find a majority of the specs flow quite well in gameplay and you get quickly an idea of what makes sense to use when. For me cata is only a quick, casual enjoyment trying out the raids, farm the reputations and collect some stuff, until I move on to other games. Cata in what it offers is simple fun. Retail might be built/designed "better" in some regards. But what others define as better doesn't necessarily provide more fun to me.
It’s entirely based on people I play with. We’re all playing SOD now and going to pivot to Cata while we wait on phase 4. If TWW was launching on May 20, we’d be playing that instead of Cata. That noted, Cata was also my favorite expansion.
I mean, I will be playing retail also. But I do prefer Cata. To me, Cata is a bit simpler as far as progression and content and systems goes compared to Retail. Also, I prefer the class design of Cata over the class design of retail. It doesn’t feel as bloated. Retail can feel overwhelming at times with how much it has.
I play retail and cata classic. Playing the same class too. I enjoy doing the older raids again and being able to progress them again. Raids are my favorite part of WoW.
I stopped playing at the end of WotLK for various reasons, so I never saw much of Cata. This is my chance to see it how it (almost) was.
I never played before mop so I want to experience the raids. From farming them in retail for mounts they seem cool so that will keep me raiding even though all my group/guild isn't.
Retail is so overwhelming. More key binds, more systems, currency, etc. I legit had to watch a video on how to even spec my class.
I’ve never played retail. I’m just enjoying playing my classic characters like always.
The 2 main reasons for me are the community and the difficulty of onboarding/returning. The people I want to play with are all on Cata (or SoD). All but one of my friends has stopped playing retail, and I don't want to have to try and find a new community while trying to relearn the game. Retail has so many layers of systems that it feels all but impossible to onboard into after the first 45 days of a new expansion. It is so hard to understand what to do or what is important, even though I've been playing some version of the game for almost 20 years (started end of Jan 2005). The game itself does a poor job explaining systems to new/returning players, outside of the specific gimmicks of the current expansion. If you have been out of the retail version of the game for any significant amount of time, then you NEED to either have friends to explain things or engage with copius amounts of educational para-text to learn what to do or what's going on.
Cata still feels like the wow I played and loved growing up. Retail has a much different feel now it’s hard to describe exactly what it is. But somewhere along the line it just changed. For me it felt like after legion is where it happened, despite me not realizing at the time and playing bfa and into shadowlands before quitting after nathria. Retail just feels way to big and convoluted to me now where cata feels like home
If you really need people to explain to you why cataclysm is nothing like retail you should play cataclysm, and then retail. And this is not a hate comment, this is genuine advice.
Cata still doesn't have the insane amounts of cc and mobility that retail does so I find the pvp more enjoyable Though I like the pvp of both tbh
Imo the #1 thing that retail needs is to wipe the slate clean. I quit wow after wotlk and didn't play again til legion, and it was staggering how behind I was. Classic was a fresh start for me and for everyone else, and that's my favorite part of it. Also rotations are too complicated for me to enjoy in retail. Also fuck m+, I hate timers.
It's very simple actually. It's M+. M+ has completely killed any motivation I had for taking retail seriously. An infinite grindable source of gear was a horrible idea in my opinion, unfortunately the system has been incredibly well received and as such I don't see myself getting back to retail anytime soon outside of a brief visit around expansion releases.
[удалено]
I adore CMs. Completed all of them. And it is because they're completely optional I love them so much. I'd probably love M+ as well if those were optional.
My main issue with M+ is how it interacts with the other content, at least in SL you were forced to do M+ even if you didn’t liked it because of the trinkets they dropped there and either it was no where rewarding for the time spent or you couldn’t even get to impre due people leaving or an affix being shit
Absolutely. The separation of content should've happened years ago. I don't begrudge M+ players enjoying their dungeons, I just don't want to do them myself. And I know M+players feel the same about raids.
How come m+ is worse than heroic dungeons for gear for example? We can crank up the difficulty for it to be challenging instead of it being a snoozefest.
The amount of gear that drops in Heroic is significantly higher and the quality is a step below raids causing it to be obsolete quickly. If I was supposed to be grinding Heroics on repeat weeks into a tier, I'd also hate those.
What I liked about Heroic dungeons is that they were pretty close to the line of easy/engaging to complete and they were almost always useful. There were a ton of reasons you'd want to run them, from wanting Chaos Orbs or Justice Points for gear or heirlooms, even if nothing in the actual dungeons dropped something you were after. M+ feels almost purposely designed to separate you and your friends based on an infinitely granular difficulty scale that means at some point, one of you will pull ahead and won't have any reason to play the lower-difficulty content. After three seasons of playing with my friends for two weeks before they blast into +20s I can't perform in, I'm kinda done with that entire system.
Cata is the last expansion where my buttons felt like they did something Retail, nothing matters untill I am able to stack 1000 different damage modifiers that come from 1000 different sources that I don't even understand Every now and then on retail, my SS will do more dmg, I dno why, probably cause of a buff - a dmg modifier - that I am not engaging with or even aware of. But it happens. I don't claim to be good either, I just like to push 1800 on retail for the mog.
Retail became too much for me with Dragonflight. I don't enjoy dynamic flying, the new crafting system, and never was a fan of farming Mythic Keys. Also, the Dracthyr were a big disappointment for me, I wanted to be a huge black dragon. Also the new talent tree are too complex for my taste. It felt like a big revamp and I didn't wanted to play that. I prefer playing pretty much all classes in Cata/Wotlk, choosing 2-3 classes I really focus on and sometimes rotate them. To each their own
I just love rotations and gameplay in Cata. Raids were also just great. In my eyes one of the best PVE expansions. The other thing is - I just need a subscription and don't have to buy it.
Cata had great zones. Good dungeons. Raids were decently hard. Firelands was very very good.
I’ll be playing both, but I’ll be prioritizing TWW. I want to experience the heroic raids and class design as they were (more or less). And that’s pretty much the sole reason I’m interested in cata. Like many others have said, I don’t agree with the premise or implication in your question. They are very, very different games. Some things introduced in Cata still exist today, but that’s true for Vanilla, TBC and Wrath too. It’s just a constantly evolving game.
Cata is just MoP's waiting room.
Retail's talent tree makes my brain melt and disc priests feel bad in retail
the art and sound style of retail is absolutely unbearable and something I think a lot of people overlook
The biggest change added to retail was M+, if you don’t like it (like me) you usually consider the expansions previous to that, except wod ofc
Not sure what it is I just have way more fun in classic
I prefer the easier rotations of cata, and the lack of needing to do m+, plus the pvp is better without all the insane mobility/cc creep.
This is before the bad writing and low effort lore. Also no vulpera or dracthyr
Retail has defensive ability bloat and feels fucking terrible as a pug healer. Class design is still fun overall but not as good as cata/mop imo. I also think gearing is much simpler with just heroics, raids, justice, valor, honor, conquest points. I don't like m+ at all, I don't like lfr or that there's 4 raid difficulties and four expansions worth of inflation. I feel overwhelmed when I log into retail. Gearing doesn't feel satisfying to me. It's not unfun to play, so I understand if it's for you, especially if you like difficult raiding, but for retail, in contrast to the first 5 xpacs of wow, the ratio of anger at other people to personal satisfaction is way too high.
retail is just way too confusing, i would have to learn too much and I dont want to learn kek
>What makes you choose Cataclysm instead of playing retail? retail is trash, it's bloated, classes have too many random sources of damage that reduces the impact of abilities, the combat text is unsatisfying, the animations feel weak. leveling is completely detached from what it used to be, i can't relate to anything anymore after all the number and level squishes. I don't like m+, i don't like PvP being constant GCD spam, i don't like micro CC. The emerald dream is the most unfun farming simulator catchup zone blizzard has ever added, literally plant seeds do superbloom, that's all there is. I choose cataclysm because 1. It's better than retail 2 It's better than WotLK And for those who say "cata is retail" sorry but you're morons, if that was true i'd be playing retail right now, but i don't because it's garbage.
Reliving a past experience when my first real char i played on max was a goblin shaman. On top of that being able to play other classes like my shadow priest in a different state of the game. And the real reason is, my laptop cant handle retail endgame. So cata is more casual friendly too.
I said this once it’s worth repeating. A lot of the things people attribute to cataclysm are actually changes that were made in MoP and WoD Etc. You’d be surprised how few people really have a concrete timeline on the games development. Cataclysm didn’t even implement LFR until the final patch and the only reason it’s remembered so horribly is because that patch lasted almost two years. Cata has some of the best PvP wow ever saw. It also had some of the best raid tiers ever made. DS is trash and should be revamped this go-around but I doubt blizzard has the resources to make that happen. It’s the first real implementation of PvP leveling as well with better xp earned through games. Original cataclysm only added the helmet and cape heirlooms. The legs actually came with the MoP prepatch and subsequent release. Overall the game feels good. The new low level zones speed up and streamline the 1-60 grind and the rest of the game remains largely the same with lesser xp required to level.
Retail is so fucking cartoonish and waaaay to much disco effects