I was leveling a hunter just for Orc heritage armor and I kept looking at talents and tooltips trying to figure out why it was put on my bars.
Glad I'm not crazy.
I think one major way to improve surv would be to add official bow support just to give it some uniqueness with weapon swapping and I personally think that melee should still be better damage because if you do better while out of harms way there is no reason to play melee.
I don't understand why Arms, Fury, and Ret have access to Shield Slam/Bash or Shield Block. Just remove them from the spellbook on those specs, it's just needlessly confusing for new players.
Either that, or come up with a way to allow 1h+Shield instead of a 2h without a dps loss, just for the sake of looking cool. That would be even better.
EDIT: Just solve it with transmog, I don't know why I didn't just write that in the first place, I'm dumb.
EDIT 2: I've been told it has niche applications in PvP, which I fairly little of, so thanks for educating me folks!
I see we're in the swing again of "Why do we have all of these abilities we never use in actual gameplay" vs "Why do I only have abilities for my one spec? I used to be able to tank the boss if we needed by just putting on a shield"
The amount of times I got passed over on off-hands and staves as a shaman because “you should really be using a main/shield in that slot” and then I wouldn’t see a shield for months
I’ve accepted that bs as par for the course on my shaman but I really hope they don’t start making other classes put up with it too
As a very long time Shaman player, this has never once happened to me, so I doubt it's a consistent issue unless you did something stupid like experience it once and then join those idiots' guild so you can have it happen every raid and then go 'curse you blizz!'
Technically Ret can already do this as they can wield off-hand items like foci, the problem is that they don't provide any stats that the paladin actually wants.
If I remember correct, the damage of the Smite skill for Diablo II Paladins were straight up based on the Block value, so there's at least some precedence to that.
... and, honestly, the fantasy of just continuously beating up shit with your shield is just lacking in WoW, sadly.
That at least has one very niche use. It is so they can slap on a shield, taunt, and somewhat hold aggro in the event that a tank dies. This is also why you can change weapons in combat.
This allows recovery from a tanks death while keeping the boss positioned in a way that doesn't shit the entire raid or breath fire on the guy battle rezzing the tank.
It's infrequent, and a niche scenario but I've had to do it over the years. If communicated effectively you can recover from a would be wipe.
I actually like having shield block as arms player, I have a macro set that lets me equip a 1h+shield, then casts defensive stance, spell reflect, shield block & ignore pain. I call it my “oh shit” macro, very useful in keys if our tank dies and ai have to become the off tank. Also can be useful in PvP.
I then have another macro that re-equips my 2H wep and battle stance so I can go right back into my dps
It's for pvp. You can switch to shield and 1h in combat if they bum rush you. It's not completely useless like primal strike is because at least it gives you defense and/or healing and has at least 1 use case. Having primal strike passed level 10 for EVERY spec is literally a wasted ability
Primal strike would be best as a 'evolves into another skill for the spec' type. like when you choose your spec it transforms into the spec relevant skill. There are already several skills that do this via talents so it'd fit into existing skill change logic
Yeah it was only for enh sham starters who go all the heirlooms, it gets replaced by storstrike I believe but it's completely useless for both other specs
I did a leveling raid in Remix yesterday where we had a Fury warrior using a sword and shield...dude was doing some of the lowest DPS I've ever seen in an instance, at a level where scaling alone should be putting him towards the top of the charts. He was pretty much exclusively spamming Whirlwind too.
> Either that, or come up with a way to allow 1h+Shield instead of a 2h without a dps loss, just for the sake of looking cool. That would be even better.
We had that. It was Gladiator Warrior, in Warlords of Draenor, and it was *glorious*. Unfortunately it was *too* glorious, and in Blizzard fashion, instead of balancing it, they nerfed it into the ground and then removed it.
I remember, I played it.
If nothing else, this thread has reminded me that I want the ability to at least transmog 1h+Shield over a 2h weapon, just because it looks cool.
Shield of the Righteous is fantastic physical DR for some mechanics and you can tank failing pulls till tank gets a BR surprising well. I'd suggest every ret have a shield swap macro and this.
I mean it’s a marksman ability so it’s obviously useless for you
People whined about useless spells being removed from the spell book bc muh rp world
So they added a bunch of pointless spells as flavor to everyone’s spell books
I like that they removed some spec specific abilities but what does a Fury or arms warrior do with an ability that requires a shield, i don’t know what they were thinking, just bring back stance dancing
that's how we tanked those troll raid bosses in classic - I was the fury warrior and our game plan was "guys when the first tank dies slow down with dps so that second tank can take agro".
in our defense we were a pvp guild and only one of our 3 warriors owned a shield.
I don't remember exactly but isn't Corruption available for all lock specs?
I remember there is a dot that is only useful for Aff and pretty much a dps loss for all others.
They almost did this for rogue in DF. Added Garrote back to base tree (usually an assassination only baseline abiliry), as well as I believe rupture briefly making an appearance for Outlaw (usually only sub and assassin).
They eventually reworked it prior to launch because it was a button that other specs just wouldn't press ever.
Okay, I can explain this one. This effect used to be tied to Detect Traps prior to patch 1.11, which was then just made into a baseline passive for Rogues. But people had fallen in love with Swirly Ball, so it was brought back in the form of a glyph in Cata called Glyph of Revealing Strike.
That was then changed to Glyph of Detection which kept the same visual, but marginally allowed you to see *some* invisible players like Mage's invisibility but not Rogue or Druid stealth. When Glyphs were removed in Legion, Detection was added as a tome taught spell on a vendor in the Dalaran sewer so Rogue players could keep Swirly Ball and not have to balance an ability around it anymore.
This - as a rogue since 2004, I refuse to EVER give up swirly ball if I can help it.
See first they took away my need to farm herbs to make poisons and I was happy because that let me go mining/eng for the bombs. Then they took away my blinding powder and I didn't mind in the slightest. But then they they removed lock picking as a skill so being max lock picking wasn't useful/unique and I lost a niche way to make tiny amounts of gold from tips and I was kinda miffed as one of the few people in the world who enjoyed levelling my lock picking skill. They they made CC irrelevant so no more being asked to stealth around and sap things and feel all cool in UBRS and I was genuinely sad because that felt really cool to do and I liked being good at using distract to disrupt patrols or split groups etc!
Then they took away my shiny ball and the rage that filled me was indescribable - it was just tooo far!
(Note: I think this is technically out of order but that's not the point!)
Fun fact, the 2nd boss in vault of the wardens (the lich one) casts a curse on you that causes your next ability to be 10+ seconds on cd. Detection can be used as a way to deal with that ability.
That's the only use I've found for it so far, but other mechanics like that in the future could make detection useful for cheesing it (unless it gets patched ofc.)
> That's the only use I've found for it so far
you can get a toy called bag of coins i think, if you detect a ghost in the cellar of the ravenholdt manor
This ability has literally zero use in all forms of content. You never, under any circumstance, press this button. You don't bind it. Why's it in the game? Probably just confusing for new players.
I think it exists to have some form of melee ability during Exile's Reach's combat tutorial. You only get the other melee abilities as enhancement, but you can't pick a specialization there, so they needed a placeholder.
I agree that Primal Strike becomes useless as soon as you gain a few levels after finishing Exile's Reach, though.
I think it's also that early game gives you a few abilities (before you pick specs) and then those abilities are never removed.
Same for every class with a random ability that makes no sense, I assume.
this actually kinda happens in classic wow too albeit a much slower pace. Paladin for example gets just a straight up better bubble at like 20 or something like that and it shares a debuff and maybe even a CD with the first bubble you get. Its meant to just replace the first ability as a better version but theres really nothing actually telling the player that.
confused me for a while
I'll never understand people who are bitter that they brought back spells. It's not nostalgia to want curses and totems back. They bring utility that was just gone in legion and bfa. Legion shaman straight up had no utility totem except the stun one. Right now you can remove poisons, remove fears, negate knockbacks, give dmg reduction, give movespeed, heal, and root. Oh the horror
This is the issue. In an attempt to bring all the “old” stuff back they ruined them by not making them baseline spell book abilities. So many abilities are talent tree locked because blizzard wanted to make talent trees so massive but didn’t have anything interesting to put in them. Whats wrong with a talent that just increases haste after a certain ability and stacks if you put more points in or something.
this ability is for leveling to 10 lvl
Then, if you become Enhance, this ability will turn into Stormstrike
And you become Ele or Resto it will just here
This is not "specifically added useles ability for ele/resto"
I mean yes that is why it's there. But in that regard why use something that ultimately disappears to open someone to the class. Why show someone and teach someone an ability that will be forever gone and forgotten 30 mins later. You could just level to 10 with lightning bolt and flame shock, spells relevant to all 3 specs.
There's zero reason for it to exist.
Demon Hunter has a TALENT that reads "all sigils are now placed at your target's location"
That talent removes your ability to place sigils where you want them. Even worse is you can just completely replicate it with a basic at target macro (edit: it has come to my attention these are gone, @cursor still is better though). Perhaps the worst part of it is that talent is for some reason on the same row as demonic, the talent that puts us in demon form for 5 seconds after casting eye beam, as if they are somehow at all comparable.
Weird that they took those out, i guess that at least makes it slightly better. In any case it still shouldn't take a talent point, especially not as far down as it is, since a cursor macro is still astronomically better. Maybe putting it on one of the trainers to toggle like the soulshape/blink direction thing would be the best of both worlds for the people that *really* need it placed at their target 100% of the time.
'@target works if the spell doesn't use a targeting reticule. Blizzard, Shadow Crash, DnD, sigils, warlock RoF I assume, etc can't use it. They have to be '@cursor or '@player.
Some of those spells *need* to work at target, which is why spriest is getting void crash. I'm also a very lazy DH, so sigils cast '@player (or using the talent) works fine.
As a fury warrior am I doing something wrong in that I never have to use Slam? My other nobilities proc faster than I can get them off and the CDs are pretty short especially when I get my fury maxed.
Slam? Anyone using Slam? i’d love to get better lmao
If you have Armageddon talented, Slam becomes your lowest-priority rage generator. Odds are, you won't use it much though.
If you aren't using Armageddon, Slam is a worse Rampage and as such should never be used.
It's there for the very early levels prior to picking a specialization to also help sell to new players that shamans are a hybrid class that specializes in melee or ranged combat in their damage dealer spec choice
If you pick melee (Enhancement) it upgrades and becomes part of your core kit, if you pick ranged (Elemental or Resto) it sticks around as a "replace me when you can" ability and a reminder that you can specialize down another route
Similar abilities exist in classes with tank specs even if tank specs aren't selected to accommodate weapon variety during that crucial experimentation phase for new players prior to level 10 and help them pick a play style, or how certain damage specs on healer hybrid classes get to keep their weak starting heal spell
Sometimes "bad" elements exist in games as intuitive learning tools as opposed to tutorial prompts or notification bubbles and I personally prefer it that way
Like Magma Rager in Hearthstone (a 3 cost 5/1 card that does nothing when played) existing to teach new players that a lot of attack power is useless if you can't stay alive long enough to use it
That’s what it has changed into, just a filler ability while you’re still deciding on a spec, like you said.
When it was introduced it was actually used to help smooth out the leveling experience for Enh. Everyone leveled as Ele because it was just so much better. And SS wasn’t learned until like Lv.30. Primal Strike was great for leveling as Enh.
If you use lichborne, yes, but even then it is worse cause you used 2 globals to heal yourself 1/10 of what death strike would have healled for less RP and 0 damage.
Not to the same level as useless as Primal Strike, but Backstab for Sub Rogues. Why is my max PvP geared rogue hitting for 10k backstabs when people have 1.5-1.7m HP. Lol
Kael’thas’ Mind Control in Tempest Keep can be dispelled with the Infinity Blade from the same fight but it requires a melee ability - Primal Strike give Resto and Ele Shamans that capability. Extremely niche, but, it’s there.
Other people have listed truly awful, basically unusable abilities like Shield Block for Arms/Fury, but I also want to give a quick shout-out to [Titanic Throw](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=384090/titanic-throw) for Arms/Fury. It's not *as* useless as those, but it's completely bankrupt from a conceptual point of view.
It's a ranged ability that deals extremely low damage, replacing our existing ranged ability. It has a higher CD, but hits more targets. That's already questionable, but it *also* generates increased threat for some bizarre reason.
It's the kind of ability that sort of makes sense for tanks (Prot doesn't take it, but on a conceptual level it's not *that* bad) but has absolutely no business being on the class tree instead of the spec tree.
Luckily, they're removing it in TWW.
fireball on a frost mage? frostbolt on a firemage?
if you want to use abilities not designed for your spec, but who are present in your class general tree... the list is pretty long.
Druids general tree would also like to have a word with you... having to talent into starsurge just to get typhoon as a guardian bear...
I was just on pali in remix and was looking at spell book at it was reminding me i don't have shield of righteous on my action bar, of course not, I am retribution pali cannot use it. even if you use shield you loose other spells.
If I recall correctly that was a skill given to shamans so that they could start down the Enhance path of things before they could actually pick a spec.
This post is really funny to me, I decided to start leveling a Shaman, And during the introduction quest, it kept wanting me to use this, when an enemy got close, Lightning bolt hit for 100\~ damage, Primal strike was hitting for 8 damage. Such a waste of time.
The only point of Primal Stike is to teach new Shaman players that there is a spec that goes in melee. Sadly, that's not well shown and they just tell you to use it if an enemy is close, which is dumb
Primal Strike isn't useless. Just take the Maelstrom Weapons talent and your melee attacks have a chance to decrease casting speed by 20%! Get in there and be the melee resto shaman you were born to be!
It wouldn't be entirely useless if we still had cast time penalties when getting hit in melee range!
I don't know if Ele or Resto can enhance their weapons with Frostbite but that's also not too bad to have as an option.
Wouldn't be usuless if blizzard stopped being cowards and just gave us 2 hander shaman again. Flurry is back and with proper damage it could actually be viable for a melee maelstrom based resto shaman. Oh and ofc 2 hand enchantment
As a Windwalker or Brewmaster, you currently need to take Soothing Mist to get an extra charge of roll. Soothing Mist will make Vivify instant cast, but Soothing Mist and Vivify both cost energy. So you will run out of energy after the first Vivify cast, therefore healing for less (and taking the same amount of time) if you just cast Vivify twice.
It's an ability that if you actually use it for its *only* purpose, you'll get *worse* results than if you didn't use it at all.
Contemplation, Yea you probably have never heard of it but it is a spell in the spellbook for paladins who have learned it via the tome, and it does pretty much nothing.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=121183/contemplation
Yeah spells taught by tome shouldn't count as most of them are cosmetic/class fantasy based. Mage's various critter polymorphs, hunters various beast taming tomes, zen flight for monks, corpse exploder for DKs.
Most classes have useless abilities that come from tomes, corpse exploder for DKs, Charm Woodland Critter and Treant form (purely cosmetic on retail) for Druids, Fireworks for Hunters, Illusion for mages, and Detection (aka swirly hands) for Rogues. All of which are cosmetic, arcane linguist is also extremely niche in that *at least* it lets you understand certain from the opposite faction *if* they use their racial language that one of your factions races can also use, like void elves and blood elves sharing a language.
Its useless for Enhancement too after like... what 5 levels? A lot of other abilities mentioned in this thread but very few are useless for any and all situations other than the first couple of levels.
Too many people in this thread are posting about FLAVOUR abilities that are there for fun or RP purposes. That's different to actual combat/utility abilities that are plain useless.
I actually wish we had more abilities like this. Having every ability look really powerful kills the fantasy for me. I want attacks like these to exist in tandem with hefty procs and abilities. Like, when i fists of fury as a monk I want that to not just feel like a button on my rotation. I agree that these aren't that useful. But, I wish they were.
Isn't that the only ranged attack for monks? Ranged attacks can be helpful for pulling flying things or when mechanics force you to step back. I've not played monk in a LONG time, so I may be mistaken.
Arcane shot on BM hunter. Never use it when you have cobra shot.
I was leveling a hunter just for Orc heritage armor and I kept looking at talents and tooltips trying to figure out why it was put on my bars. Glad I'm not crazy.
This way you at least have 5 buttons overall not 4
You don't HAVE to press it, but it's there for you, if you want.
Only situation where it's just a tiny bit useful is in PvP and a Paladin cast Blessing of Protection on your target.
Can't you dispel bop though? Just Tranq shot em and carry on
Tranq doesn't guarantee dispel the bop
How about arcane shit for survival. You can't even use it if you want
>arcane shit What mages cast on the toilet
or arcane explosion, depending on what food they conjured
Flamestrike in case of mexican food.
Living bomb that erupts after a few hours.
SV does bow better than melee at 10 for twinks, but that's about it.
I think one major way to improve surv would be to add official bow support just to give it some uniqueness with weapon swapping and I personally think that melee should still be better damage because if you do better while out of harms way there is no reason to play melee.
TECHNICALLY you can use it... Its just in the form of a proc.
I have Arcane Shot??
Shield bash for ret is up there too
Shield of the Righteous is literally not usable as Ret because if you try to equip sword and shield you can't use Templar Verdict
You can swap weapons in combat and switch between and use both, but there’s no reason to.
You can use justicars vengance with a shield though. There was once a silly sword and board ret pvp build in s1 that used it.
I don't understand why Arms, Fury, and Ret have access to Shield Slam/Bash or Shield Block. Just remove them from the spellbook on those specs, it's just needlessly confusing for new players. Either that, or come up with a way to allow 1h+Shield instead of a 2h without a dps loss, just for the sake of looking cool. That would be even better. EDIT: Just solve it with transmog, I don't know why I didn't just write that in the first place, I'm dumb. EDIT 2: I've been told it has niche applications in PvP, which I fairly little of, so thanks for educating me folks!
I see we're in the swing again of "Why do we have all of these abilities we never use in actual gameplay" vs "Why do I only have abilities for my one spec? I used to be able to tank the boss if we needed by just putting on a shield"
Shield without a DPS loss would become BiS immediately because of the defensive stats it gives.
Gladiator spec back in the day was nuts!
The amount of times I got passed over on off-hands and staves as a shaman because “you should really be using a main/shield in that slot” and then I wouldn’t see a shield for months I’ve accepted that bs as par for the course on my shaman but I really hope they don’t start making other classes put up with it too
As a very long time Shaman player, this has never once happened to me, so I doubt it's a consistent issue unless you did something stupid like experience it once and then join those idiots' guild so you can have it happen every raid and then go 'curse you blizz!'
I mean, you can come up with alternate off-hand weapons that increase dps without def bonuses.
Technically Ret can already do this as they can wield off-hand items like foci, the problem is that they don't provide any stats that the paladin actually wants.
Could have something in the kit that turns shield armor into attack power?
If I remember correct, the damage of the Smite skill for Diablo II Paladins were straight up based on the Block value, so there's at least some precedence to that. ... and, honestly, the fantasy of just continuously beating up shit with your shield is just lacking in WoW, sadly.
It's exactly why I play prot pally, shield as wep is one of my favorite fantasy "combat" things
Indeed! ... and if only we were able to use Avenger's Shield as the AOE-spell for a Ranged DPS spec, it would be **glorious**.
Yeah, I don't know why I didn't suggest this at the time, but just solve it with transmog. 2h weapon equipped, 1h+Shield visually, done.
That at least has one very niche use. It is so they can slap on a shield, taunt, and somewhat hold aggro in the event that a tank dies. This is also why you can change weapons in combat. This allows recovery from a tanks death while keeping the boss positioned in a way that doesn't shit the entire raid or breath fire on the guy battle rezzing the tank. It's infrequent, and a niche scenario but I've had to do it over the years. If communicated effectively you can recover from a would be wipe.
I actually like having shield block as arms player, I have a macro set that lets me equip a 1h+shield, then casts defensive stance, spell reflect, shield block & ignore pain. I call it my “oh shit” macro, very useful in keys if our tank dies and ai have to become the off tank. Also can be useful in PvP. I then have another macro that re-equips my 2H wep and battle stance so I can go right back into my dps
It's for pvp. You can switch to shield and 1h in combat if they bum rush you. It's not completely useless like primal strike is because at least it gives you defense and/or healing and has at least 1 use case. Having primal strike passed level 10 for EVERY spec is literally a wasted ability
Primal strike would be best as a 'evolves into another skill for the spec' type. like when you choose your spec it transforms into the spec relevant skill. There are already several skills that do this via talents so it'd fit into existing skill change logic
Yeah it was only for enh sham starters who go all the heirlooms, it gets replaced by storstrike I believe but it's completely useless for both other specs
I did a leveling raid in Remix yesterday where we had a Fury warrior using a sword and shield...dude was doing some of the lowest DPS I've ever seen in an instance, at a level where scaling alone should be putting him towards the top of the charts. He was pretty much exclusively spamming Whirlwind too.
spin to win Fury Warrior lmao
> Either that, or come up with a way to allow 1h+Shield instead of a 2h without a dps loss, just for the sake of looking cool. That would be even better. We had that. It was Gladiator Warrior, in Warlords of Draenor, and it was *glorious*. Unfortunately it was *too* glorious, and in Blizzard fashion, instead of balancing it, they nerfed it into the ground and then removed it.
RIP Gladiator Stance and Claws of Shirvallah
I remember, I played it. If nothing else, this thread has reminded me that I want the ability to at least transmog 1h+Shield over a 2h weapon, just because it looks cool.
Defensive stance did that, gave you a generic shield with your 2h. Wish it would do that again, but use a shield from your bag.
Would love a Fury build that allows a 2h+shield so you can have the shield ability utility without too crazy of a stat/dps loss.
THIS. All I want is a non-tank sword and board class, it would be SO cool
Wait til WoD classic
That existed in WoD and it was easily one of, if not the, best dps spec in the game at the time.
Shield of the Righteous is fantastic physical DR for some mechanics and you can tank failing pulls till tank gets a BR surprising well. I'd suggest every ret have a shield swap macro and this.
I honestly always forget you can swap weapons mid combat.
.......well.....that would have been nice to know beforehand...I'm dumb.
Arcane shot for beast mastery. I’ve never used it and I am now wondering if I should? 🤷🏻♀️
For that matter, Arcane Shot for Survival...
Cobra shot is 5 less focus and more damage. So no.
No
It's magic (arcane) damage. and cobra shot is physical. That's the only thing I can think of. But in 99.9% of scenarios, nah
Isn't Cobra Shot nature damage? When did it become physical?
not sure when they changed it, but ye it's physical now
This, using it for going through BoP, Spell Reflect or other physical immunities.
I mean it’s a marksman ability so it’s obviously useless for you People whined about useless spells being removed from the spell book bc muh rp world So they added a bunch of pointless spells as flavor to everyone’s spell books
Shield Slam/Bash or whatever it's called on Fury Warrior
I like that they removed some spec specific abilities but what does a Fury or arms warrior do with an ability that requires a shield, i don’t know what they were thinking, just bring back stance dancing
Eh? Isn't the reason for this if the tank dies a Fury Warrior can take over? Sure, it probably rarely happens, but its existence has value.
that's how we tanked those troll raid bosses in classic - I was the fury warrior and our game plan was "guys when the first tank dies slow down with dps so that second tank can take agro". in our defense we were a pvp guild and only one of our 3 warriors owned a shield.
When you're in a useless ability competition and your opponent is a Shaman.
I don't remember exactly but isn't Corruption available for all lock specs? I remember there is a dot that is only useful for Aff and pretty much a dps loss for all others.
Not only do specs like Demo have access to Corruption, it's also not instant cast and statistically a dps loss to cast it.
Ahhh the Red Herring school of Spells
Yup. I have it in my spellbook as demonology but it's not used rotationally.
They almost did this for rogue in DF. Added Garrote back to base tree (usually an assassination only baseline abiliry), as well as I believe rupture briefly making an appearance for Outlaw (usually only sub and assassin). They eventually reworked it prior to launch because it was a button that other specs just wouldn't press ever.
They would have pressed it in PvP
Rogues get an ability called "Detection". It's only purpose is to send a swirly ball up around you. It does literally nothing else.
Okay, I can explain this one. This effect used to be tied to Detect Traps prior to patch 1.11, which was then just made into a baseline passive for Rogues. But people had fallen in love with Swirly Ball, so it was brought back in the form of a glyph in Cata called Glyph of Revealing Strike. That was then changed to Glyph of Detection which kept the same visual, but marginally allowed you to see *some* invisible players like Mage's invisibility but not Rogue or Druid stealth. When Glyphs were removed in Legion, Detection was added as a tome taught spell on a vendor in the Dalaran sewer so Rogue players could keep Swirly Ball and not have to balance an ability around it anymore.
This - as a rogue since 2004, I refuse to EVER give up swirly ball if I can help it. See first they took away my need to farm herbs to make poisons and I was happy because that let me go mining/eng for the bombs. Then they took away my blinding powder and I didn't mind in the slightest. But then they they removed lock picking as a skill so being max lock picking wasn't useful/unique and I lost a niche way to make tiny amounts of gold from tips and I was kinda miffed as one of the few people in the world who enjoyed levelling my lock picking skill. They they made CC irrelevant so no more being asked to stealth around and sap things and feel all cool in UBRS and I was genuinely sad because that felt really cool to do and I liked being good at using distract to disrupt patrols or split groups etc! Then they took away my shiny ball and the rage that filled me was indescribable - it was just tooo far! (Note: I think this is technically out of order but that's not the point!)
Does it detect hunter traps?
No, that's a baseline passive for Rogues. The spell is cosmetic only, since it's on a vendor with a long respawn
Spamming this all day!
Fun fact, the 2nd boss in vault of the wardens (the lich one) casts a curse on you that causes your next ability to be 10+ seconds on cd. Detection can be used as a way to deal with that ability. That's the only use I've found for it so far, but other mechanics like that in the future could make detection useful for cheesing it (unless it gets patched ofc.)
> That's the only use I've found for it so far you can get a toy called bag of coins i think, if you detect a ghost in the cellar of the ravenholdt manor
What do you mean it does nothing else? You need it to get a rogue specific item/toy AFAIK.
Yeah the Mistborn reference
Well it never said who Detection is supposed to aid…
You can't call swirly ball useless >:(
it should be noted that you have to specifically seek out the spell tome. it's not something that's baseline to the spec
You use it for like an hour while leveling a shaman until you get Stormstrike or other spells that round out your rotation generally.
Dont lie, you just spam lightning bolt 1-10 then you spec XD
For enhancement yes indeed but for restoration and elemental it’s pretty useless
Don't you choose a spec at 10? What does playing resto entail when your solo questing during Exile's reach?
You still use it for a few levels pre-10.
This ability has literally zero use in all forms of content. You never, under any circumstance, press this button. You don't bind it. Why's it in the game? Probably just confusing for new players.
I think it exists to have some form of melee ability during Exile's Reach's combat tutorial. You only get the other melee abilities as enhancement, but you can't pick a specialization there, so they needed a placeholder. I agree that Primal Strike becomes useless as soon as you gain a few levels after finishing Exile's Reach, though.
I think it's also that early game gives you a few abilities (before you pick specs) and then those abilities are never removed. Same for every class with a random ability that makes no sense, I assume.
this actually kinda happens in classic wow too albeit a much slower pace. Paladin for example gets just a straight up better bubble at like 20 or something like that and it shares a debuff and maybe even a CD with the first bubble you get. Its meant to just replace the first ability as a better version but theres really nothing actually telling the player that. confused me for a while
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I'll never understand people who are bitter that they brought back spells. It's not nostalgia to want curses and totems back. They bring utility that was just gone in legion and bfa. Legion shaman straight up had no utility totem except the stun one. Right now you can remove poisons, remove fears, negate knockbacks, give dmg reduction, give movespeed, heal, and root. Oh the horror
Yeah but all those thing were baseline back then , not some dumb talent in a half baked talent tree(speaking for shaman)
This is the issue. In an attempt to bring all the “old” stuff back they ruined them by not making them baseline spell book abilities. So many abilities are talent tree locked because blizzard wanted to make talent trees so massive but didn’t have anything interesting to put in them. Whats wrong with a talent that just increases haste after a certain ability and stacks if you put more points in or something.
It's silly that they had that mindset, since Legion was all about spec identity thanks to the spec-specific artifact weapons.
this ability is for leveling to 10 lvl Then, if you become Enhance, this ability will turn into Stormstrike And you become Ele or Resto it will just here This is not "specifically added useles ability for ele/resto"
I mean yes that is why it's there. But in that regard why use something that ultimately disappears to open someone to the class. Why show someone and teach someone an ability that will be forever gone and forgotten 30 mins later. You could just level to 10 with lightning bolt and flame shock, spells relevant to all 3 specs. There's zero reason for it to exist.
Isn’t it for ele and enhance before they get their real abilities and is replaced by Storm Strike?
Any kind of cc according to every player in every m+ group i join.
Slam is the last cookie forgotten for ages in the kitchen for warriors.
It was in the rotation for all of S3 though
It's "fuck I guess I gotta" for Arms, and isn't Annhil getting the boot?
Not on my warriors, haha. It’s staying off my toolbar. What an utterly underwhelming, shite ability it is. Fuck slam.
Yeah but it's not nearly as useless as Primal Strike is for Resto/Ele when Fury literally has a build that uses it as a generator
Still going to be important in tww. Just give it a decent sound, a good animation, make it fun to press, give it some synergy with other abilities.
Yeah, just change the whole ability. Or make a new one and let me never see that stupid spiky morning star thing again.
maybe for fury and prot, its an integral part of the arms rotation before execute phase
Shaman rework incoming in 2 days, I am 99% sure this is going away
Knowing blizzard they'd add primaly strikey
Primordial Strike
Prima Strikaga
Warlock's unending breath on a Forsaken.
It makes you swim slightly faster! That’s all I’ve ever used it for on my Forsaken. Though I have aquatic mounts…
You can also cast it on others and swim speed is increased by 20%.
Demon Hunter has a TALENT that reads "all sigils are now placed at your target's location" That talent removes your ability to place sigils where you want them. Even worse is you can just completely replicate it with a basic at target macro (edit: it has come to my attention these are gone, @cursor still is better though). Perhaps the worst part of it is that talent is for some reason on the same row as demonic, the talent that puts us in demon form for 5 seconds after casting eye beam, as if they are somehow at all comparable.
I think @target macros were removed a while ago. The ones I have from years ago don’t work in retail any more.
They *had* to remove em, to justify the DH talent mentioned above. *It all makes sense now....*
Weird that they took those out, i guess that at least makes it slightly better. In any case it still shouldn't take a talent point, especially not as far down as it is, since a cursor macro is still astronomically better. Maybe putting it on one of the trainers to toggle like the soulshape/blink direction thing would be the best of both worlds for the people that *really* need it placed at their target 100% of the time.
'@target works if the spell doesn't use a targeting reticule. Blizzard, Shadow Crash, DnD, sigils, warlock RoF I assume, etc can't use it. They have to be '@cursor or '@player. Some of those spells *need* to work at target, which is why spriest is getting void crash. I'm also a very lazy DH, so sigils cast '@player (or using the talent) works fine.
Hunters Mark. I never use it unless it's a raid, having what should be a passive as an active ability is so boring.
As a fury warrior am I doing something wrong in that I never have to use Slam? My other nobilities proc faster than I can get them off and the CDs are pretty short especially when I get my fury maxed. Slam? Anyone using Slam? i’d love to get better lmao
If you have Armageddon talented, Slam becomes your lowest-priority rage generator. Odds are, you won't use it much though. If you aren't using Armageddon, Slam is a worse Rampage and as such should never be used.
It's there for the very early levels prior to picking a specialization to also help sell to new players that shamans are a hybrid class that specializes in melee or ranged combat in their damage dealer spec choice If you pick melee (Enhancement) it upgrades and becomes part of your core kit, if you pick ranged (Elemental or Resto) it sticks around as a "replace me when you can" ability and a reminder that you can specialize down another route Similar abilities exist in classes with tank specs even if tank specs aren't selected to accommodate weapon variety during that crucial experimentation phase for new players prior to level 10 and help them pick a play style, or how certain damage specs on healer hybrid classes get to keep their weak starting heal spell Sometimes "bad" elements exist in games as intuitive learning tools as opposed to tutorial prompts or notification bubbles and I personally prefer it that way Like Magma Rager in Hearthstone (a 3 cost 5/1 card that does nothing when played) existing to teach new players that a lot of attack power is useless if you can't stay alive long enough to use it
That’s what it has changed into, just a filler ability while you’re still deciding on a spec, like you said. When it was introduced it was actually used to help smooth out the leveling experience for Enh. Everyone leveled as Ele because it was just so much better. And SS wasn’t learned until like Lv.30. Primal Strike was great for leveling as Enh.
Death coil on blood dk
I had a blood DK heal the ghosts in mythic+.. whatever the friendly ones are that you can heal/dispel
Yeah.... You can heal any undead with death coil.. Using lichborne You become undead..
Aren’t you able to heal yourself with it at the very least? This shaman ability is never used at any point in the game
If you use lichborne, yes, but even then it is worse cause you used 2 globals to heal yourself 1/10 of what death strike would have healled for less RP and 0 damage.
Yeah but you can also use death strike which uses the same resource as death coil so it never makes sense to use death coil
What if there is no targetable enemy?
Used the shit out of it while progressing H Fyrakk. 2 or 3 death coils full heals the ghosts.
I used death coil to heal afflicted in some pugs, the shammy thing i never used.
Warlocks still have underwater breathing, even tho all lung capacity is 3 minutes
iirc it also gives a swimming speed buff. Not that useless imo
Ive yet found a reason to use Eye of Kirog or whatever
Do warriors use Heroic Strike? Seems pointless to me, if it's still in the game
Whirlwind for Prot warrior. Revenge is a better spell by every metric (lower cost, more damage)
Revenge doesn't make you spin tho
Not to the same level as useless as Primal Strike, but Backstab for Sub Rogues. Why is my max PvP geared rogue hitting for 10k backstabs when people have 1.5-1.7m HP. Lol
Kael’thas’ Mind Control in Tempest Keep can be dispelled with the Infinity Blade from the same fight but it requires a melee ability - Primal Strike give Resto and Ele Shamans that capability. Extremely niche, but, it’s there.
Other people have listed truly awful, basically unusable abilities like Shield Block for Arms/Fury, but I also want to give a quick shout-out to [Titanic Throw](https://www.wowhead.com/spell=384090/titanic-throw) for Arms/Fury. It's not *as* useless as those, but it's completely bankrupt from a conceptual point of view. It's a ranged ability that deals extremely low damage, replacing our existing ranged ability. It has a higher CD, but hits more targets. That's already questionable, but it *also* generates increased threat for some bizarre reason. It's the kind of ability that sort of makes sense for tanks (Prot doesn't take it, but on a conceptual level it's not *that* bad) but has absolutely no business being on the class tree instead of the spec tree. Luckily, they're removing it in TWW.
When Charge is on CD, I use Titanic Throw to pull enemies, basicaly like a damage dealing Taunt.
Slam for Fury Warriors. We even have talents that buff it, but it's still totally fucking useless.
fireball on a frost mage? frostbolt on a firemage? if you want to use abilities not designed for your spec, but who are present in your class general tree... the list is pretty long. Druids general tree would also like to have a word with you... having to talent into starsurge just to get typhoon as a guardian bear...
Hunter Eyes of the Beast.
That one is at least really damn good in sod bc it lets you solo farm dungeons
I was just on pali in remix and was looking at spell book at it was reminding me i don't have shield of righteous on my action bar, of course not, I am retribution pali cannot use it. even if you use shield you loose other spells.
If I recall correctly that was a skill given to shamans so that they could start down the Enhance path of things before they could actually pick a spec.
This post is really funny to me, I decided to start leveling a Shaman, And during the introduction quest, it kept wanting me to use this, when an enemy got close, Lightning bolt hit for 100\~ damage, Primal strike was hitting for 8 damage. Such a waste of time.
The only point of Primal Stike is to teach new Shaman players that there is a spec that goes in melee. Sadly, that's not well shown and they just tell you to use it if an enemy is close, which is dumb
Arcane shot for survival. They quite literally don't ever use it and can't use it lmao.
yeah lemme just beat you with my staff like what
It wouldn't be entirely useless if we still had cast time penalties when getting hit in melee range! I don't know if Ele or Resto can enhance their weapons with Frostbite but that's also not too bad to have as an option.
Wouldn't be usuless if blizzard stopped being cowards and just gave us 2 hander shaman again. Flurry is back and with proper damage it could actually be viable for a melee maelstrom based resto shaman. Oh and ofc 2 hand enchantment
What makes it "Primal"????
As a Windwalker or Brewmaster, you currently need to take Soothing Mist to get an extra charge of roll. Soothing Mist will make Vivify instant cast, but Soothing Mist and Vivify both cost energy. So you will run out of energy after the first Vivify cast, therefore healing for less (and taking the same amount of time) if you just cast Vivify twice. It's an ability that if you actually use it for its *only* purpose, you'll get *worse* results than if you didn't use it at all.
I thought that was just a low level ability that eventually gets replaced by stormstrike or lavalash?
Pickpocket is pretty useless imo
Pff only if you're a nub. I make like 37 silver an hour with it
yeah it hasn't had a true purpose for a while. You can still pickpocket humanoids and take their appearances with the glyph, though. So there is that.
I used to use it to get roses to flirt with other players by trading it to them.
Especially in Remix, where you can’t use it on any mob at all. Getting a bronze or two from pickpocketing would’ve been cool
no, pickpocket is great cause you apply glyph of disguise to it
Nah. Macro it to garrote/amush/shadowstrike and steal useless bag only toys and junk mid combat.
Contemplation, Yea you probably have never heard of it but it is a spell in the spellbook for paladins who have learned it via the tome, and it does pretty much nothing. https://www.wowhead.com/spell=121183/contemplation
I mean it’s purely flavor but it’s pretty cool
Yeah spells taught by tome shouldn't count as most of them are cosmetic/class fantasy based. Mage's various critter polymorphs, hunters various beast taming tomes, zen flight for monks, corpse exploder for DKs.
detection for rogues
It is commonly used by afk paladins inside our Enclave. Don't know why but players like to do that.
Its value is that it looks cool. Primal strike doesn’t look cool.
Most classes have useless abilities that come from tomes, corpse exploder for DKs, Charm Woodland Critter and Treant form (purely cosmetic on retail) for Druids, Fireworks for Hunters, Illusion for mages, and Detection (aka swirly hands) for Rogues. All of which are cosmetic, arcane linguist is also extremely niche in that *at least* it lets you understand certain from the opposite faction *if* they use their racial language that one of your factions races can also use, like void elves and blood elves sharing a language.
Tebowing
It's just an appendix of an ability that's replaced by better things. Most classes have these types of abilities.
It’s not replaced by anything for resto or ele.
Most classes have a baseline ability that you use until level 10 and then take off your bars and never touch it again.
Its useless for Enhancement too after like... what 5 levels? A lot of other abilities mentioned in this thread but very few are useless for any and all situations other than the first couple of levels.
Rogue "detection" ability.
Too many people in this thread are posting about FLAVOUR abilities that are there for fun or RP purposes. That's different to actual combat/utility abilities that are plain useless.
**Hunter Dual Wield.** **(I'm still mad)**
“Contact customer support” Literally the most useless button in the game.
Eyes of the beast.
This is for enhancement shaman until they get stormstrike at level 26. That's its only purpose.
i love it. granted, it is only useful as a sub20 2h enhance button, but it is able to be 2handed.
I actually wish we had more abilities like this. Having every ability look really powerful kills the fantasy for me. I want attacks like these to exist in tandem with hefty procs and abilities. Like, when i fists of fury as a monk I want that to not just feel like a button on my rotation. I agree that these aren't that useful. But, I wish they were.
Interrupt or any defensive on any dps spec
If LFR is an example, also any ability that removes a negative effect.
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It’s good for pulling/tagging far away mobs
Isn't that the only ranged attack for monks? Ranged attacks can be helpful for pulling flying things or when mechanics force you to step back. I've not played monk in a LONG time, so I may be mistaken.
Get the rune that turns the lighting red. Now you can pretend to be a Sith. No longer useless.
Sith's lightning attack wasn't blueish? Or there's a colour difference between each sith lord?
Used in pvp as a solid knocback
Uhh what.. Have you ever been thirty yards away from a mob you wanted to pull?
Arcane Shot for SV/BM
DKs still have corpse exploder.