I’ve been doing a lot of harping on the current state of World of Warcraft‘s class design these days. I find most specs feel bloated, with too many filler abilities that don’t really offer interesting decisions or fun gameplay. More recently I’ve had the opportunity to compare and contrast to an earlier version of the game via the Pandaria Classic servers.

Mists of Pandaria featured my favourite incarnation of the Warlock class, with the Demonology specialization in particular being perhaps my favourite spec in the game’s history. Playing it again has been a very illuminating experience because on paper it would appear to be suffering from much the same issues I complain about in modern specs, but in practice the experience is very different.

First, let me briefly explain how Demonology worked in Mists of Pandaria. Massively revamped compared to its Cataclysm incarnation, MoP Demo was all about the unique demonic fury resource. Most of your offensive abilities generate fury, and you can at any time use your Metamorphosis ability to enter demon form, which significantly increases your damage while constantly draining fury.

Many of your abilities are also transformed into new ones when you enter demon form. Unlike the modern version of Metamorphosis used by Demon Hunters, these transformed abilities don’t just do more damage but also have different functionality. Shadow Bolt becomes Touch of Chaos, which is instant cast and extends the duration of your Corruption DoT. Fel Flame becomes Void Ray, which is a skill shot AoE (one of the few Blizzard ever added to the game) that also extends Corruption, and so forth.

In most cases, the demon form abilities are just better than their base forms, but there are some interesting nuances. Corruption becomes a longer DoT called Doom, and since you can have both up at the same time, you may want to weave out of demon form to apply Corruption if, say, a new add spawns.

Generally, these nuances are pretty intuitive. The one that may not be entirely obvious at first glance is the proper use of Hand of Gul’dan/Chaos Wave. Hand of Gul’dan is a targeted AoE that applies a stacking DoT. In demon form, it becomes Chaos Wave, which is also a targeted AoE that does more damage but without the DoT.

Chaos Wave does more damage, even factoring in Hand’s DoT, but because the DoT generates a lot of fury and both abilities share charges, your long-term DPS is better served by using Hand. That means you usually want to weave out of demon form to use Hand of Gul’dan, but it can still be worth using Chaos Wave instead if the fight is almost over or a particularly dangerous target needs to die right now.

This is a obviously a very complicated specialization with a lot to to juggle. That is exactly what I’ve been complaining about in regards to modern specs, but when it comes to MoP Demo, I love the complexity. Why? There’s a few reasons.

One is simple ergonomics. One of my biggest issues with how many abilities we have these days is the simple physical discomfort of moving my fingers between that many buttons, but MoP Demo neatly solves this by having its much of its abilities be in the form of transformations of existing skills. No extra keybinds required.

Another is because other options exist. The Warlock’s Destruction specialization in Pandaria era is a very simple specialization that uses only a handful of abilities in a straightforward builder/spender priority system. I don’t always have the energy for Demonology’s plate-spinning, and Destruction is there for me when I just want to blow stuff up without thinking. One of the biggest problems with modern class design is that there’s very few escapes from bloated specs; almost everyone is juggling a variety of maintenance buffs and filler cooldowns these days.

A third reason is that it’s a mostly resource-focused specialization. Hand of Gul’dan/Chaos Wave is the only cooldown I need to track during an average rotation, and the rest is about watching my demonic fury. This means I spend less time looking at my action bars and more at the field of battle. They even put graphical effects on your character that grow more intense as your fury builds, which aside from looking sick as hell also helps you track your resources without needing to look at a separate UI element.

Being resource-limited also makes it very forgiving. So much of modern spec design is cooldown limited, and I feel like I’m wasting damage every time I fail to hit my abilities every time they come up. It feels like I need to be watching my cooldowns like a hawk at all times, and it’s very psychologically draining.

MoP Demo, on the other hand, can bank a lot of fury, and since Metamorphosis has a very short (virtually non-existent) cooldown, I can weave into it to throw out a few Touch of Chaos casts any time I might cap out, or need an extra burst of damage. This gives me enormous flexibility on when and how to use my abilities.

And that, more than anything, is why I love this version of Demonology so much. It’s all about dynamically reacting to your circumstances rather than following the stringent rotations that usually define classes in tab target games. There is no specialization in modern WoW that offers anything close to this level of on the fly tactical decision-making.

Fundamentally, though, I think what truly makes the Pandaria version of Demo — and other Warlock specs — so good is the intentionality of it all. This was the immediate result of a ground-up reboot of the class, and as a result every ability has a clear role and purpose.

One of the biggest problems with modern spec design is how much of it is clearly the result of stapling together various talent revamps and borrowed power systems from multiple expansions. Giving Paladins Wake of Ashes made sense when it was part of the fantasy of wielding the Ashbringer in Legion, but four expansions later, do we still really need a fifth ability that generates holy power on a cooldown?

MoP Demo may have a lot of abilities, but none of them feels like the sort of filler you see in so many modern specs. They all have a distinct role. Corruption is your general purpose DoT, Doom is a DoT for bosses, Soulburn is an execute and an occasional proc outside of execute range, Shadow Bolt is your filler, Hand of Gul’dan/Chaos Wave gives you the choice of building or spending fury, Hellfire is your AoE…

Why did we get rid of Hellfire, by the way? That was the most “peak Warlock” spell ever. You literally set yourself on fire and leap on enemies to burn them with you. Nothing could express the class fantasy better.

There are other things about Mists of Pandaria‘s class design outside of Warlocks specifically that I appreciate. This was an era of the game where caster mobility was on the rise, almost reaching the point of being able to fully cast on the move like in Guild Wars 2.

Warlocks benefited from this more than most with the Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning talent that let them cast each spec’s main filler while moving without limitation, but other classes had their own mobility tools that were more robust than what we have today. It made combat as a caster feel a lot more fluid, and I think pivoting away from that design in Warlords of Draenor was one of the greatest unsung blunders of WoW‘s history.

I have also been reminded how much I prefer the Pandaria version of the talent system. Almost every talent tier gives you at least one active option and at least one passive option, so you have the power to choose if you want a piano build with a dozen different buttons or something simpler, and each tier being a self-contained choice is incredibly refreshing. It’s so frustrating that the modern talent tree forces me take abilities I don’t want to get ones that I need.

No, it’s not perfect. Yes, it does make leveling kind of boring. But having been reunited with it, I’m more convinced than ever that Mists of Pandaria‘s version of the talent system put the most genuine choice in the hands of players.

Pandaria‘s class design did have its stumbles, as well. Rogues of that era suffered terribly from clunky play and outdated mechanics like combo points being stuck to your target, made all the more painful by the addition of the mechanically similar but much more polished monk class.

But Pandaria‘s Warlock, at least, stands as a shining example of what World of Warcraft‘s class design can be at its best, and I can only hope that one day one of Blizzard’s endless class design reboots brings us back to something like this. That a specialization from thirteen years ago feels so much more polished, cohesive, and fluid than anything we have today is telling.

Everyone has opinions, and The Soapbox is how we indulge ours. Join the Massively OP writers as we take turns atop our very own soapbox to deliver unfettered editorials a bit outside our normal purviews (and not necessarily shared across the staff). Think we’re spot on — or out of our minds? Let us know in the comments!