Liguar wrote: »

_Yulan_ wrote: »

Lol. Players with perfect rotation don't even care or talk about oakensoul. This is pointeless for them cuz they know.... Oakensoul will not be better then 2 bars. Never! They dont even argument about this.

In the middle people should be able to play whatever they find fun, that is sufficient for the content they are participating in.

I'm pretty sure in the middle the issue is that a lot of old well performing builds using less proc sets or flat/percentage bonuses instead are getting stomped by average ha builds no matter your personal performance, like some are having hard cap way less than ha builds can achieve and that's one I'd even agree personally as it's just bad balancing/design. But not exactly a problem with ha/oaken rather with zenimax not doing good enough job and not thinking out their decisions on a larger scale when trying to balance. State of proc sets plus hybridisation enabling all of this so until all their processes are finished we're in a strange place overall and no one would be satisfied fully.

So people are getting frustrated why their perfect rotation on a more complicated build now offers less than another new flavour of a month. It's not new particularly but it's working more as a discouragement now for them rather than something they have to work towards, kinda working backwards in a sense.

I only have one useable arm. I play using ONLY a mouse (razer naga 12 button) Oak ring has made my life easier cos I rarely weapon swapped before it was released.

In PVP it helps a lot cos bar swap never works when you need it (just like ults )

I killed a lot of meta folks on GH NA PC today, even made it onto the top 10 leaderboard. Thanks Oakie

I appreciate your answer.

I can see that it is easier to ask for one thing to be brought in line with the others rather than improving the baseline, but at the same time i think it's a shame that something that has been a great QoL improvement for many players is being questioned by players who don't share the need/desire for it.

Luth7 wrote: »

I use Oakensoul too.
I think at least from a small scale PvP/battlegrounds perspective, ultimately it is bad for the game. After OS was introduced, many class defining group buffs became potentially redundant in random BGs. You can't be sure anymore if your group buffs will help other players and whether you will get group buffs from other players at all, as they might use OS too.
This maybe led to even more selfish thinking when creating PvP builds and shifted the experience to be more FPS-like, which feels very bland to me.

The problem rather is that PvP and PVE are not more separated. Ideally they should have complete different tuning, to avoid such issues,

iw

Liguar wrote: »

_Yulan_ wrote: »

Lol. Players with perfect rotation don't even care or talk about oakensoul. This is pointeless for them cuz they know.... Oakensoul will not be better then 2 bars. Never! They dont even argument about this.

I wasn't disagreeing with you Yulan

But I might say that "competitive" is not limited to the top, it's also about how you feel with respect to your peers. Clearly some people like @Runefang say that it is OP because the effort to reward ratio is not the same as a 2 bar LA weaving build.

My question to Runefang is then why it has to be? If it is not being used at the top, why is effort-reward even a valid metric? In the middle people should be able to play whatever they find fun, that is sufficient for the content they are participating in.

I said nothing about the effort to reward ratio. I said it’s all upside and no downside, you are super tanky and have high damage.

Try making a 2 bar build that gets minor aegis, minor protection and major resolve and pulls 100k dps on the dummy without needing any pots.

Katlefiya wrote: »

Liguar wrote: »

I also think it's relevant to say this is not a new thing.

I started pretty late in WoW, just 15 years ago lol, but it was the same thing there. You could play how you like through the game but when it came to raiding there were higher standards to be met. Which is fair.

However, even though most classes/specs could effectively raid, and different raids/encounters might favour one spec over another for mechanical reasons, there was still a lot of pointless condescension towards specs that were considered easier. Pet specs, arcane mages and whatnot.

This was so entrenched in certain players that they would refuse to play specs that they considered less good, whether they could pull off the better spec or not. This was never a problem in the top guilds doing world/server first progression, they played what was best for each encounter regardless. But average guilds that were progressing at a reasonable pace were gatekeeping themselves.

And here, since the easier builds are not even competitive at the very top, the bias against players using them seems even more petty.

Tell me about it. I mained a Moonkin spec back in the days.

This is why my family, friends, and I had a guild just for ourselves in WoW. I tanked (with a hunter+pet) until my nephew graduated - at which point he had time to play more so took over the tank slot (I was overjoyed to give it up....) We had a pretty unholy setup for raiding, but we did just fine. None of us had been able to get into "real raids" prior to getting together. Once we started, we raided at least three evenings a week.

I can't do that sort of play any more (high ping and aging reflexes, plus I just don't find that sort of play any fun - burnt out from WoW) - but Oakensoul helps me manage combat much better - I'm not fond of combat in this game, I've never had those "twitchy" reflexes really, so anything that makes all that easier for me is very much appreciated.

Overall, this game's a lot of fun, and moreso now that combat isn't the intense struggle it was for me for the first nearly 5 years played.

I think HA builds are awesome

I mean, I like having a fit on the keyboard as I dance around and swap and stab with my stamblade (middling dps, but that's an equipment issue, my weaving is good), but it is really nice to be able to one-shot mobs in the dungeons I solo with my HA sorc.

The way I look at it is this...

There are 2 barriers to completing difficult content:

1. DPS

Oakensoul removes this barrier for a lot of players, and to be frank, if you do more DPS with Oakensoul than without it (or people with Oakensoul are outparsing you) then you were not that good at DPS to begin with and you might as well switch to Oakensoul, or practice more until you can if using Oakensoul makes you gag a little.

2. Mechanics

Oakensoul does give some resistances that you might not normally get which helps with mechanics (You could make an argument that this should be removed or lowered and I wouldn't completely disagree), but otherwise you still have to perform mechanics for a lot of fights. For this I look at Oakensoul kind of like training wheels. Sure it allows you to ride a bike without falling over, but bikes are much more fun when you take them off, but if you are in a situation where you just can't use a bike with 2 wheels then you can still ride with your friends. In other words, you can do mechanics while keeping up a much easier rotation and getting through various content, but for maximum fun and skill use a 2 bar light attack build.

Conclusion:

There are some people that for whatever reason may never do better DPS than what they do with Oakensoul, and that's ok and I am glad they have it. It makes queuing for vet dungeons on my tank a bit less annoying since the DPS floor has been raised. I hope the developers leave it as is for at least another patch before deciding if it needs to be tuned.

It's great for the game. I completely disagree with the naysayers.

In the next batch of mythics I want one that increases our slots to 10 so we don't have to bother with swapping. I'm on PC, I have a ton of keys to use and I'm limited to 5 + ultimate at a time and it irks me.