WoW Classic Announcement

I have to admit that I wasn't expecting Blizzard to actually make WoW Classic. It's basically a second game at this point, and I didn't think they'd be willing to go that far. But Blizzard is going to try, so we'll see how it works out.

I would like WoW Classic to be a success. If it is successful, maybe Blizzard will start nudging normal WoW back towards Classic, adding back some of the small decisions, inconveniences, and restrictions that have been smoothed away. Perhaps they will also dial back the focus on transient gameplay, bringing back an unapologetic focus on "extended" content.

Those are all changes which I think have weakened modern WoW, and I would be happy to see the pendulum swing back in the other direction. Of course, the opposite might happen. Blizzard might leave WoW Classic for people who like the rough edges, and make normal WoW even more smooth, in order to differentiate the two.

That being said, I think that a lot of people will try WoW Classic, run up against those changes, and start complaining. Are people really going to enjoy reagents, ammo, shards, dead zones, requiring exactly 40 people in a raid, top guilds poaching players from lower guilds, the hybrid tax, hybrids forced to heal, few viable specializations, very little loot, and all other sundry rough edges which have been smoothed away?

My prediction is that a massive number of players will sign up for WoW Classic, but they will all dwindle away in a year or two. The players remaining will be complaining that their guilds cannot maintain raids, and calling on Blizzard to smooth away the restrictions to attract more players.

I also think the mod community will make a determined effort to eliminate many inconveniences via mods. For example, I bet we see a Party Finder mod (with Gearscore!) quite quickly after WoW Classic is released.

Finally, I think the community will be surprised at how easy WoW Classic will be. I don't think WoW Classic will prove difficult for raiders used to modern mechanics and theorycrafting. Especially as everyone knows the strategies for all the old content.

Blizzcon Predictions

Blizzcon starts tomorrow. What do you think will be announced?

I predict:

• The next WoW expac is announced. It focuses on Kul Tiras and the nagas. The void will be in the background (perhaps for the expansion afterwards).

• No new classes, but playable Vrykul and Nightfallen.

• A completely new gear slot which uses the artifact mechanics. We go back to normal weapons.

• Overwatch announces a new support character. A male healer that heals like Ana or Mercy.

• Diablo announces a new Druid class for 2018, released much like the Necromancer.

Those are my wild guesses. Of course, by the time you read this, Blizzcon will probably be in full swing. What do you predict will be announced?

Ahead of the Curve: Kil'jaeden

My guild defeated Heroic Kil'jaeden last night. Our first attempt of the night was a 9% wipe, and then we were all over the map for a bit. But we did have another 4% wipe a few attempts before we got the kill.

We did end up wiping more on Fallen Avatar, but I think that fight just hits all our weaknesses more.

For Kil'jaeden, the fight overall is pretty good. It has a lot of mechanics, though, and you have to wonder if all those mechanics were really necessary. Perhaps it would have been a better fight if the dark phase had been skipped, but the last phase lasted longer. We never really had trouble with the dark phase. We either died in the phase before or after.

Not much more to say about the fight. Healing it is pretty normal. Deaths come from doing mechanics improperly, and failing mechanics usually ends in a total wipe. We did have several attempts with tank deaths to Felclaws. But I think those were more due to the tanks letting active mitigation drop at the wrong time.

Oh well, our goal of beating the raid before the next one comes out has been met. I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks of regular farming. (Well, let's hope the second kill goes smoothly!)

Fallen Avatar of Sargeras Down!

Last night, my guild killed Fallen Avatar (Heroic), making us 8/9 for Tomb of Sargeras. Now we only have Kil'jaeden left. That's decent timing, and we should get him down before the next raid opens.

We actually had several close wipes on Fallen Avatar. 3% last week, and a 1% and 0% wipe this week. Sometimes my guild makes strategy over-complex. For example, here we were "sacrificing" people in the last phase to the Dark Marks, but that killed our DPS and we didn't have enough to push it over. For the kill attempt, we didn't try to sacrifice anyone, and just healed as much as possible.

The other problem, I think, is that we aren't very predictable in positioning. Like for Fallen Avatar Phase 1, I would imagine that people should try and stand in a given spot, and move in similar ways to the last attempt. But it seems like every attempt the movement of players is different from the last attempt, forcing everyone to adjust on the fly.

But then again, I've always liked assigned positioning and choreographed movement. The problem, of course, is that if you have to deviate a lot from the choreography, than you might as well not bother.

Still, I think that predictable player movement is an underrated element for normal/heroic raid groups. Mythic groups often move predictably naturally, and so rarely call it out as something to work on.

Still, a dead boss is a dead boss. On to Kil'jaeden!

Play Diary #8

World of Warcraft

Heroic Desolate Host and Heroic Mistress fell to us this week. It was kind of funny, because the raid leads were so sure that Heroic Mistress would be a pushover, but we kept wiping on her. It's just one of those fights that you can screw up in many small ways. But once you learn it and get used to it, it should be fairly straightforward.

I also finished my Demon Hunter's class mount. It was a pretty good quest line.

It's somewhat interesting that WoW made the same mistake that SWTOR did. By splitting up the content by class, there's lots to do for an alt, but for a single character the content looks sparse. If you compare 7.1 to 7.2, the 7.1 content (Suramar City insurrection) feels so much meatier, even though there's probably the same amount of content in Broken Isles, just spread among the different classes.

Final Fantasy XIV

I hit max level with my Red Mage. I've started doing roulettes and gearing up. So far the wait isn't too bad. All the groups have been wall-to-wall pulls. Red Mage AoE is a little boring, but whatever. Boss fights are still fun. It's kind of interesting to see all the mechanics I ignored when tanking.

I'm debating if I should start leveling another class, or just gear this one up fully. I doubt I'll do EX primals or Omega Savage, but I could go through Omega Normal. I've never actually finished the older 8-man raids, either.

High Skill Gameplay Versus Low Skill Gameplay

Another day, another forum/reddit post about the state of max level gameplay in FFXIV, this time focusing on healers. My current theory on why FFXIV is experiencing unhappiness is because the "high skill gameplay" does not match "low skill gameplay".

To see what I mean, let's look at WoW. In WoW a mythic healer plays much like a normal healer, only better. They both cast the same spells, but the mythic healer gets in more casts and triages better. The mythic healer probably makes better use of cooldowns. The normal healer's goal is to slowly refine her gameplay to match the mythic healer.

In contrast, in FFXIV, high skill gameplay and low skill gameplay is very different. If you're in a low skill group, you want to have the tank in tank stance and focus on threat moves. The healer heals more than she damages.

In contrast, high skill gameplay often has the tank in DPS stance, and using DPS stats. The healers are often dealing damage as well, with one estimate of a healer casting 3 damage spells for every healing spell.

I think a game has trouble when you're in the middle, when you're not sure if you should be using the low skill or high skill tactics.  You go low skill when the rest of the group is high skill, and they get upset for you wasting their time. You go high skill when the rest of the group is low skill, and you end up wiping.

In contrast, in WoW, how you should play is fairly straightforward. You tank, heal or dps to the best of your abilities. You don't need to significantly adjust how you play.

Another game which has issues with the low skill/high skill dichotomy is Overwatch. Certain heroes are much stronger and weaker at different levels of the game. Widowmaker and other snipers become a lot better when people can aim. Meanwhile, Torb and Bastion are much more potent against low skill players who have trouble dealing with them. But the "meta" is defined by the high skill players, and that can cause issues in low skill gameplay.

WoW Analyzer

I came across an excellent site for analyzing your performance: WoW Analyzer.

It's super easy to use and really slick.  You just link a Warcraft Logs parse, and it gives you a genuine breakdown of things you can improve upon.

For example, apparently I double Holy Shock a lot when Divine Purpose procs, causing me to waste Infusion of Light procs. I really should go Holy Shock - Flash of Light - Holy Shock. That was genuinely useful information, provided in an excellent format.

Suggestions for one of my Desolate Host wipes

Seriously, this site is an amazing example of web app design!

The only problem is that not all specs are supported. It's mainly healer specs right now. Hopefully it will be able to attract more contributors and support more specs.

Play Diary #7

Final Fantasy XIV

The latest seasonal event, Moonfire Faire, has started. It was short and sweet, and really just an excuse for everyone to congregate on a beach in swimwear.

I figured out how to hide my weapons so I could make a cosmetic gear set. I've been playing for years, and never realized the button next to Hide Hat hid your weapons! For some reason, I thought it was just sheath/unsheath weapons.

Otherwise, my Red Mage is up to level 67. The end is almost in sight. One interesting aspect of playing DPS is that commendations are treasured because they're rare. Especially if you manage to get multiple commendations in a single instance.

World of Warcraft

We got our second kill on H-Mistress, and then got our first kill on H-Sisters. Then we wiped a fair bit on H-Desolate Host. We don't have the transition to the last phase quite right yet.

Hopefully we will get it this week. However, I think the summer vacation bug will hit in August, and we'll be treading water until September. That's normal though, and hopefully we won't regress.

Pyre

Still chugging along. The difficulty is beginning to ramp up. I've won all my matches up to this point, but I think my first loss will come soon. Apparently the game continues on even if you lose a match, just like a regular sports game. It will be interesting to see how that is handled.

Dungeon Meta in WoW versus FFXIV

In the comments to the previous post on FFXIV's dungeon meta, Shintar asks:

Sounds a lot like the way it's been in WoW for years (or at least it was still that way last time I played). Or do you think this is different?

First, I really don't remember exactly what WoW meta was when anymore, so I'm just going to compare FFXIV to the current meta.

In WoW, speed runs usually aim to skip trash, rather than engage. When you're skipping packs, you generally don't drag mobs along, because you don't want to accidentally engage. In FFXIV, trash is unskippable, for the most part.

WoW also has more trash than FFXIV. But the WoW trash generally has less health but hits harder. Also a WoW group has 3 dps instead of 2. Basically instead of a few large pulls, WoW tends toward many smaller pulls.

As well, packs in FFXIV have a lot of space between them, which I think makes the stop-and-start nature of gameplay more obvious. I think this lends itself to a good WoW group going through the dungeon at a steady pace. Not quite pulling multiple packs, but chaining from pack to pack quicker.

Another possibility is that WoW seems to be segregating the player base by ability this expansion. More geared and advanced players are funneled into more difficult content like Mythic+, while people generally only run the lower dungeons when they're undergeared, or just want an easy run.

FFXIV takes opposite tack, and often encourages better players to go back and play with newer players. A lot of the time this is good, but it does mean that "edge" tactics come to dominate, and start being applied in places they shouldn't be.

Now, that I think about it, this last possibility is probably the same as as older WoW expansions, when experienced players ran heroics for badges. That was a "go go go" meta as well. So ultimately, maybe encouraging veterans to play with new players is a bad idea.

Repeatable Stateful Solo Content

One of the more interesting experiments Blizzard is conducting in Legion are pieces of repeatable stateful solo content. Repeatable stateful content is interesting because previous runs impact future runs. The best examples are boardgames like Risk Legacy.

So far, Blizzard has included two such pieces of content: the Withered Training scenario in Suramar, and the Deaths of Chromie scenario.

In the Withered Training scenario, you start off with some Withered elves and explore a dungeon. You come across chests, and have to "spend" some of your Withered to retrieve them. However, these chests unlock new types of Withered in your next run. Chests can only be retrieved once, and then don't appear in future runs. So fully completing the Withered Training requires several plays. Each run you may go to a different area and collect the chests there.

In Deaths of Chromie, the limiting factor is time. But after you complete areas, you unlock shortcuts that allow you to make your next run faster. There's also reputation, making the scenario as you do more and more of it.

I think these are really interesting pieces of content. Repeatable content is always good, but the stateful part makes it more interesting. The hard part, I think, would be coming up with a reason the content is repeatable and stateful. The Withered scenario is an artificial training scenario, and Chromie involves time travel. Time loops like Groundhog Day are classic repeatable content.

Perhaps a large dungeon with many floors might work. You could do things like unlock shortcuts, or perhaps killing a boss gnoll causes all the gnolls to flee and be replaced by spiders.

I wonder if you could do something with repeatable stateful group content. The problem here is reconciling state. If someone who's done the scenario 100 times groups with someone who's done it 5 times, who's history is used? You could do like raids, I suppose, and simply default to the group leader.

In any case, these scenarios have been a neat part of Legion, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Blizzard expands on them in the next expansion.

Updates

Posting has been almost non-existent over the last couple of months. I'm not 100% sure why. I've been playing several games, I've have several ideas for posts. But I can't seem to bring myself to write anything. Oh well, maybe next month will go better.

I'm currently playing WoW, Diablo, and FFXIV. On deck are Pyre and Foxhole.

World of Warcraft

Just chugging along in Tomb of Sargeras. We're on Heroic Mistress Sassz'ine, and are having lots of trouble with her. We've beaten her once, but the fight just isn't clicking for us. I think we aren't doing Hydra Shot well, so when it's Hydra Shot + other mechanic, we fall to pieces and lose people. I really should look up some videos.

Diablo 3

I made a Necromancer for Season 11, who is currently level 68. For most of levelling I went with a Bone Armor + Death Nova build which waded into melee. For the last few levels, I've been trying a more caster-style build with Skeletal Mages + Blood Siphon.

Final Fantasy XIV

I got the expansion and finished the main story quest. It was quite good, and hopefully I will make a full post about it soon. I've grown disenchanted with tanking in FFXIV, though. I really don't like mass pulls, but if I don't do mass pulls, the DPS pulls for me and the run becomes a mess. So I've decided to level up a Red Mage, which is quite fun. Of course, as DPS, there are queues, so I'm leveling Miner alongside it.

Pyre

Pyre is the latest from Supergiant Games, who made Bastion and Transistor. I pretty much bought it sight unseen, on the strength of the previous two games. I have no real idea of what it is actually about.

Foxhole

Foxhole is an interesting game. It's in Early Access, but is fairly polished. It's kind of like a WWII Real-Time Strategy game, only you control a single soldier.

As well, there's a full economic chain to do anything. For example, scrap has to be mined, taken to refinery and converted into building materials, then taken to a factory to make bullets, and then the bullets have to be taken to the front line. When a soldier dies, they respawn with nothing, so everyone is reliant on logistics to get anywhere. You can build buildings and vehicles including tanks.

Games are quite long (multiple days), but it isn't totally persistent as there is an eventual winner. Then a new game starts.

In some ways it reminds of Eve Online, only there are defined teams. There also is no money involved, so the logistics chain is a bit different.

I haven't played very much, but I strongly recommend trying Foxhole if you're looking for something new and different.

Chromie's Companion Tank Mechanic

In the new Chromie scenario, you have the option to make your companion Chromie a tank or a healer. The tank mechanic is particularly neat, and should be stolen by every game which uses a companion.

As a tank, Chromie loses 2% of her health every second, until she hits 50% health. But when her health is above 50%, she gains a significant scaling damage bonus. At 100% health, she dishes out crazy damage.

As a healer, this mechanic is quite fun.  Normally in games with companions, you spend most of your time acting as a poor man's dps, occasionally throwing a heal on your companion. And it generally has to be this way. If normal mobs hit the companion hard enough to require significant healing, dps characters would not be able to cope.

But with Chromie, a healer can spend most of her time healing, and this is optimal gameplay for her, as the loss of the player's dps is more than made up for by the boosted companion dps.

If you're dps, you get a tank, but one which starts with half health, pushing you to kill things faster. Though I imagine dps players would still prefer to use a healing companion or another dps companion.

I think this mechanic would be an excellent match for a game like The Old Republic in particular, where companions are an essential part of solo gameplay.

An Alternate Legendary Scheme

I'm generally happy with Legendaries this expansion. I only have 3, but they're good enough. I also don't play at a level where they really matter, so having or not having the Best-in-Slot ones isn't super important to me.

However, I think for a lot of people who are more hardcore, the Legendary system didn't really work. In particular, I don't think the concept of tailoring your build to match your Legendaries really took off.

Perhaps the problem was that the Legendaries weren't strong enough. For example, if you look at Diablo 3, set bonuses are pretty insane. If you're wearing a set which buffs an ability, that buff is on the order of a 1000% or more. I don't think such a system--where getting a Legendary forced you to build your character around it--would really fly in WoW.

I think a system that fits WoW better would be something with a little bit of randomness, but also add in control and effort.

I would suggest a scheme where the Legendary drop rate was about one per week, but the item level started at 800 or so. The player could use Obliterum to upgrade the Legendary to the item level cap.

This scheme would get the dedicated player all Legendaries reasonably quickly, but they would have to devote time or money into upgrading the Legendaries they want to use. Using Obliterum as the upgrade material would also help out crafters, giving them incentive and a market for their wares.

WoW Videos: Holding Out for a Healer

I've always liked Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out for a Hero. This variant is quite well done. The video is by Kruithne. The main vocalist is Sharm, and the chorus is Letomi.

And the subject matter is certainly very appropriate. ;)

Success is the Hardest Thing to Argue Against

Lately, my guild has taken up a tactic which I find distasteful, but is leading to success. So far it's been used sparingly, but because it is successful, the leadership's aversion to the tactic is eroding. I fear we'll start resorting to it earlier and earlier in the next tier.

Basically, on a difficult boss, when we're fairly close to a first kill but are having trouble closing out that last 10%, the raid lead will start asking the lowest DPS people to step out. Because normal and heroic raids scale now, the average DPS of the raid increases while the mobs get weaker.  We got our first kills of Heroic Botanist and Heroic Gul'dan this way.

I don't approve of this tactic. To me, a raid team is a team, and you win or lose with that team as a whole. I'm perfectly fine with having minimum requirements to join the team, but once you're in, you're in.

If we didn't use this tactic, we would progress a little slower, true. Maybe we would have killed Botanist and Gul'dan a week later. But we have plenty of time.

I also think we're using this tactic as a shortcut instead of tightening up our strategy and positioning. We aren't a Mythic guild, and thus our basic handling of mechanics is not as good as it could be.

But it's really hard to argue with success. The raid leadership will point out that they only do this when it's "necessary", after we've already wiped for a couple days and no one objects in raid. But no one really want to be the person holding back the group, either. And it's hard to say that yes, we should spend one or two extra weeks wiping when we could be progressing and working on new bosses.

But because it's successful, we're reaching for it earlier and earlier. I think we wiped on Botanist twice as much as we wiped on Gul'dan. How much will our tolerance erode in Tomb of Sargeras? One night of wiping? As soon as we have a 20% wipe?

Issues with the Current World First Race

If you've been following the top guilds and the World First races in WoW, you'll notice that a lot of the top guilds have been calling it quits. I think the higher-than-normal burnout has two intertwined causes, and it's hard to propose solutions without understanding those causes.

First, I don't think the long hours during the race itself is an issue. The world-first guilds have always raided intensely during the first couple of weeks. Ciderhelm talked about it in his guide to Time Management way back in Vanilla/TBC. You raid intensely for two week, and then have a very relaxed schedule for the next four or five months.

The current issue facing edge guilds is that to be competitive, each raider needs multiple "finished" characters.

First, the multiple part. Edge raiders need multiple characters for split runs as well as to swap characters around to have an optimal setup. There's always been a degree of this in WoW, but the number of characters needed has steadily increased. I believe that edge raiders are now expected to have four or five characters they can switch to for progression.

Second, the "finished" part. A finished character is one which is fully geared and maximized from the previous tier. This is the major change in Legion. Before Legion, it was fairly easy to finish a character, especially if you were in a guild which regularly cleared Mythics.

But Legion increased the amount of work to finish a character significantly. Now you need Best-in-Slot legendaries, maximized Artifact Power, and Warforged/Titanforged gear to be truly finished.

Now, this is actually great for those of us who play one main character and aren't at the cutting edge. There's always the chance of upgrading. Maybe you'll get a titanforged piece, or a new Legendary. I've only got 40-something points in my Artifact Weapon, so more AP is always useful.

However, for the edge raider, this is murderous. Where Ciderhelm once touted a intense two weeks, then a relaxed schedule for 4 months, the modern edge raider spends all her time trying to finish her character, chain-running content for AP and the chance of titanforged gear.  And due to the first requirement of needing multiple characters, she has to do this on four or five characters. No wonder they are burning out.

The big problem, of course, is that the longer path to finishing a character is excellent and enjoyable for the vast majority of the population, even if it is burning out the edge raiders.

In the next post, we will look at potential solutions.

Updates

Well, last month was pretty much a bust as far as blogging goes. Hopefully, I will do better this month.

World of Warcraft

My guild slowly moving through Heroic Nighthold. I think we're 5/10 now. Our biggest enemy, really, is time. We're a 2-nights-a-week guild, but we spend the first night on Normal Nighthold. So we don't really get a lot of time in on the current boss. But so far it's been steady progress, killing a new boss each week.

I have my 4-piece set bonus, so I'm pretty set.

Otherwise, not a lot is going on in WoW. I leveled a Demon Hunter to max and finished that story line. It was perfectly fine, but there's just something about the demon hunter mechanics that I can't warm to. I'm not really sure what it is, but I just don't enjoy demon hunter combat. It may very well be that demon hunters are too mobile for me.

FFXIV

I haven't been playing FFXIV a lot. I've done the latest 24-mans, and they're fun. I still have one 8-man trial to go.

Otherwise, I've been kind of down on FFXIV. I play a tank in that game, but I don't like large pulls or speed runs. However, the community seems to expect speed runs in all content lately, and the dps have taken to pulling for me.

It's an interesting contrast to WoW. In WoW, the "go-go-go" crowd is segregated into Mythic+ dungeons. I haven't done a single Mythic+, and any regular mythics or heroics I do are nice and relaxing.

But in FFXIV, you're expected to do a wide variety of roulettes each day. On the one hand this is good because it keeps queues hopping, and sends veteran players back to help newbies. On the other hand, that means the veteran playstyles dominate all facets of the game. Tanks are expected to speed run and pull big. Healers are expected to switch to cleric stance and do damage.

There's really no room to play in a more relaxing fashion if you prefer.

Return to Karazhan: Nightbane

Last week, my guild group that has been running Karazhan semi-regularly unlocked and beat the "secret" boss, Nightbane.

The unlocking mechanism is basically a speed run. There are 6 or so crystals scattered around Karazhan, and you have about 6 minutes to reach each crystal in turn. It's mostly trash, as you only have to kill 3 bosses (Opera, Moroes, and Curator). We even use invisibility potions at one point to skip a couple packs of particularly nasty trash.

It was pretty fun, though I am not super-thrilled with Blizzard making speed runs the only challenge in lower content. I haven't done a single Mythic+ yet, for example. But I don't know. So far, speed runs have proven to be the only enduring challenge in low level content. And perhaps having speed runs filters the "go-go-go" crowd out of regular dungeons.

Nightbane itself is a pretty straightforward fight. It's very similar to the old Nightbane with a dragon, skeletons, and charred earth zones on the ground.

The one really interesting mechanic is Ignite Soul. Ignite Soul is a debuff which targets one player and lasts for 9 seconds. On expiry, damage equal to the target's current health is dealt to the other players in the group. So the player with Ignite Soul has to stand in the charred earth and get her health down to 25% or so when the buff expires. So the healer has to watch them, avoid healing them (but don't let them die), and heal everyone else up high enough to take the coming hit.

It's a neat mechanic. The fight overall is quite decent. It even has Nightbane fearing everyone, just like the old fight. Though this time, I don't think anyone can break it early consistently. Heh, that brings up memories. I think the fear was what I complained about in the original fight.

Nightbane also drops a mount. The loot mechanism is interesting. If no one in the group has already killed Nightbane this week, it's a 100% drop for one of the players who don't have the mount. Otherwise the chance of the mount dropping decreases by 20% for each person who has already done Kara. So it's really aimed at people who run Kara once a week in a steady group, but allows a group of 4 who already have the mount to guarantee the mount for the 5th person.

All in all, Nightbane was an good fight. It's a bit unfortunate that it's locked behind a speed run, but the run is pretty doable with a decent group. It's actually a decent challenge for a stable 5-man group that doesn't raid.

Buff Spells and Abilities

A couple weeks ago, a Blizzard CM posted the following in response to a forum thread:

Why do you feel blessings and auras are fun? I can understand that it feels "nice" to help other players with buff spells, but, in general, they were just niche spells that actually didn't contribute much to meaningful game play (Seals are a different story, I guess). I never thought to myself on my Pally that turning on Retribution or Devotion Aura was going to result in an exciting change besides some passive armor or thorns-like-damage reflect.

Buff spells are fun, but articulating exactly why is a bit of a challenge. They're not difficult decisions, which leads to the claim of "not meaningful gameplay." But not everything needs to be a difficult decision. The mere presence of a buff spell means that before the group even starts playing, people in the group are better off. Buff spells enhance the idea that the characters are stronger together.

It's also part of the ritual before starting something. Food, flask, buff up and then pull. When all decisions and actions occur in combat, I think something is lost. These actions in preparing for combat are important too.

I think buff spells might be most important to healer players. They're a concrete manifestation of your support. You buff your allies, you buff random people. I liked joining a group with a druid and seeing Mark of the Wild go up. I liked having Blessings and Auras.

Now, buff spells do have a lot of problems. The presence of buff spells mean that you want specific classes, rather than letting people play what they want. If the class was balanced around the buff spell, then the best plan was to only take one person of that class, and not multiples.

(Though, it seems that without buff spells, play what you want basically becomes "take the top parsing specs", so I'm not sure that we've truly gained anything.)

Blizzard tried to get around that in previous expansions by handing buffs out to every class. But that kind of watered down the whole concept. So in Legion, they've pretty much removed buff spells, or made them "interesting". Of course, it turned out that the new Blessing of Might was too interesting for Retribution paladins to handle, and so it had to be removed.

A Design for Class Buffs

Here's what I would do to reintroduce buffs:

• Three buff types - 5% damage increase, 5% damage reduction, 5% healing taken/output (numbers are subject to tuning)
• One cast buffs the raid. 
• Buffs of the same type don't stack.
• Healing specs get the buffs
• Holy/Disc Priest - Prayer of Fortitude (healing)
• Resto Druid - Mark of the Wild (tanking)
• Mistweaver Monk - White Tiger statue (damage)
• Holy Paladin - Blessing of Might (damage), Wisdom (healing), Kings (tanking). Only one blessing at a time.
• Resto Shaman - Totems: Windfury (damage), Strength of Earth (tanking), Mana Tide (healing). Only one totem at a time.

Basically, your healer brings a buff to the group, an iconic spell for most of the classes (I'm not entirely sure what monks had). Paladins and shamans, being the traditional buff classes, have versatility. A full raid heal team with several classes will bring all 3 buffs. The specs and classes who I think most enjoy buffing get them back, without overloading everyone with complexity, or needing a spreadsheet to fill out a raid.

Updates

Since I don't seem to be doing well at actually writing posts, here's a round-up of what I've been doing gaming-wise.

World of Warcraft

My paladin has gotten the 35th point in The Silver Hand, and I'm at 34 in The Ashbringer. I've done all the Suramar quests, and am pretty much ready for 7.2.

I have a Horde warrior at 110, and have finished the class order campaign. However, I haven't done much else with it.  I also levelled a Demon Hunter to 110, but that character hasn't even finished the class order campaign.

FFXIV

This is pretty much dormant, waiting for the next patch. The interesting thing here is that I haven't done the second 24-man raid, or the 2nd and 3rd 8-man raid. I play a tank, and I seem to have concluded that those pieces of content are too complicated for me, for some reason.

Diablo 3

I started a Demon Hunter in Season 9. Really, I did this because my 70 Crusader has the same name as my current 70 Demon Hunter, and I want a Demon Hunter with a different name. I'm not sure if this character will make it to 70, though.

Pillars of Eternity

I made it to Act 3, and I just can't seem to push myself further. Maybe I'll spin this out into a full post.

The basic problem I'm having is that I don't like anyone in this world, so I have no real impulse to keep going. It's kind of like my attitude to Game of Thrones: if you kill all the characters I care about, I'm left with a book full of characters I don't care about, and that rapidly becomes a book I stop reading.