Job Complexity and Difficulty

[Shurrikhan]

You don't have to take my word for it. Anyone can easily see for themselves.

This isn't a matter of ignorance; I use them already, across most of WoW's classes/specs. I just disagree that they're, on the whole, unimpactful.

Let's look at your warrants one by one, though.

I. "Just flat stat bonuses":

Out of ~40 talents each...

• Arms -- 4 stat-sticks
• Fury -- 3 stat-sticks
• Protection -- 3-5 stat-stick talents (5 if you call things that slightly change defensive focus still stat-sticks just because they have a stat in the description, which is fair enough I guess, but then it'd also be just 3 if they have to have a stat in the description instead of just being passive, so... )
• Affliction -- 0 stat-sticks
• Demonology -- ~1 stat-sticks (indirectly)
• Destruction -- 0 stat-sticks
• ...
• And no more than 12% of talents on each spec tree thereafter.

Granted, if secondary stat choice could ever be considered a customization factor here, so would these be.

II. "Just Cooldown/Cost Reductions"
The cooldown/cost reductions are more likely than not to alter your gameplay / priorities / available rotational strings in some way. So, I'm not sure why you'd think this is non-customizing...


III. "Just isolated abilities that don't interact with anything else"

Non-interaction is almost innately impossible given damage amps and competing priorities, since in the absence of rote "combos", those actually come into play. And most have explicit connection to the rest of your skills or class/spec resources anyways...

Heck, how is a stun non-gameplay in a game where you can easily live or die, even in PvE, off of a stun? CC is an actual thing there, unlike here.

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Again, I think the WoW system is granular to the point of feeling bloated, but... let's not pretend these things have no impact on complexity/gameplay. The vast majority are gameplay-affecting, even if subtly individually (as one would expect from there being 60 of them taken and some 90 choices), which probably comes from its first and foremost being an RPG system (to make level-ups feel more palpable), not just an endgame-customization system.

(Personally, I'd rather have about a 10-20% as many, for fewer but more individually compelling choices. I'm fine with not getting some new choice each level. But hey, at least it was an attempt to make each class more likely to hit a greater breadth of "strike zones" by which people might come to enjoy a given class.)

High Jump and Mirage Dive are not used like before, since they're just damage now and not gauge generators.

Version A: Use two of skill X per minute, unlocking skill Y to be used per minute. You therefore use two X and one Y per minute.
Version B: Use two X and one Y per minute.

I didn't say that it wasn't less punishing than before. I said you use them with virtually the same timings as before. To any outside viewer, your actions are pretty much identical unless the EW DRG died with Eyes ready. The change was virtually just the loss of half a 'charge' of your LotD-activation.

You cannot choose to do a double or early LotD if you need to due to the fight's timeline or the target dying soon.

You already are in the early LotD, but aye, without the, in essence, second 'charge' of LotD available, that was one loss of control.

The current iteration is actually less punishing since you can delay your damage oGCDs as much as you can as long as they're still inside your buffs, which you can also delay and be alright unless the kill time severely cuts the burst window, and your burst is always given; there's no preparation or gauge stacking required besides WWT. This also has the effect of making deaths way less punishing than before.

This is where we're probably just not seeing eye to eye. I don't consider punishment from fight outcomes (e.g., getting PKed or standing in dumb) as kit depth or complexity. (Needing to use Sonic Thrust while staying out of chariots or running from Flares? Sure. Kit-unrelated deaths? No.)

Nor do I feel like starting with a couple of what still amount to cooldowns (used at exact timings thereafter for raid buff alignment) uncharged is going to change gameplay for any minute any time after the opener so that we use at minutes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., instead of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. a significant change to the class.

Stormblood LotD gave us actual kit-based ways to fail our LotD usage that then interacted with the fight. As did Heavensward's BotD. EW's though... we lost double-LotD and now actually get to play with our most iconic tools in our opener. The difference just felt tiny compared to StB -> ShB (effectively removing BotD, as it ended up with a CD shorter than its duration, which could no longer be reduced by Gierskogul anyways) or HW -> StB before that.