More and more “retail” is seeping into World of Warcraft: Classic. With Wrath of the Lich King, some raid mechanics are also coming to the “old” game.
“Wrath of the Lich King Classic” will celebrate its release soon, but not all the mechanics from back then will come unchanged into the game. One of the biggest changes concerns the dungeon finder, which will not exist in its original form. But Blizzard is also changing some important things about raids, inspired mainly by modern “retail” WoW, as these have proven effective.
What exactly will be changed? Mainly three major changes will be introduced in WotLK Classic that did not exist back then.
- Ensuring buff fairness: In the original Wrath of the Lich King, it was possible to stack buffs and strengthening effects in one specialization, then switch specialization thanks to “Dual Spec” and maintain some of the strong effects from the other specialization. This was considered a bug back then and will now be removed. When you switch specialization, strengthening effects will disappear (or be massively diminished) that logically could not be in the group.
- Reset of long cooldowns: In modern World of Warcraft, after a boss fight – for example, after a wipe – the particularly long cooldowns are reset, so you can start the next attempt with full strength. This will be adopted in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. If you die, then the cooldowns of almost all abilities with more than 2 minutes cooldown will be reset. Some exceptions to this are, for example, reincarnation, ritual of doom, astral recall, or lay on hands.
- Exhaustion after Berserk: If a character was affected by Berserk or Heroism, they will then have a debuff, preventing them from benefiting from the effect again for a while. This aims to prevent characters from simply being revived multiple times in battle to benefit from several Berserk effects consecutively.
Why is Blizzard doing this? The main reason for the changes to the cooldowns stems from negative experiences in the past. Some bosses require that as many cooldowns as possible are ready to make a meaningful attempt. Back then, it led to frustration and fatigue if you had to take a forced break of several minutes after an attempt before the next try. Since this can happen dozens of times in one raid night, Blizzard wanted to change it.
The removal of buffs from specializations that are currently inactive was already established as a bug back then and could not just be easily fixed. It seems also reasonable to eliminate this mistake promptly this time.
What do you think of these adjustments? Good and sensible? Or annoying retail stuff that is absolutely unnecessary?
