I personally wish it were, especially from the perspective of a DPS class. Originally, I raided as a Hunter. After seeing patch 1.7 offering no real depth to the class I rerolled to Warlock to pick something up a little more complicated. Then in 2.0 UA came along and added another dynamic to the playstyle. DoT rotations got a little more complicated having a new spell to work with. Nowadays it seems that Rogues and Affliction Warlocks are probably the most complicated as far as keeping track of things, cycling your abilities, etc. goes but I still find myself craving something a little more in depth.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Roll a healer and be a raid leader at the same time.

Incidentally, in times of micromanagement of shot cycles I thought hunters were hardest to play?

I myself am a shadowpriest so the DoT rotations is the only tedious job of mine, along with almost every raiding dps class these days to maximize dps. Twin Emps and Ogre King fights try to make things more interesting by switching up roles, having different classes tank and such.

But when it comes down to PvE in general, every fight is very similar, and gets very repetitive

Yes. After years of Everquest its essentially turning your brain off. Its kind of a blessing though, as it makes sure WoW will never be more than a novelty and won't consume my life.

Complicated for the sake of being complicated? No thanks.

I sometimes wish WoW was more *complex* in many ways, but I gave up those dreams when I grew jaded and quit the first time. Now I'm playing it again I don't expect too much and just enjoy it for what it is.

But complicated by itself does not a good game make. Having to watch DoTimer constantly doesn't make playing a warlock more fun in any way; it's really rather tadious.

Lifetap adds a level of complexity to the warlock class that is quite unique. Maximizing DPS while killing yourself can get interesting.

The complex part of WoW is not in the classes, but how to play well together with other people and achieve things like killing raid bosses.

I actually like it, complicate playing your class for what? I see enough of a skill level difference in people already, widening that gap would just give me an even bigger head ache when those people also have to run around and do things in a 25 man raid to avoid wiping the raid.

But yeah, some classes do seem overly simplified at times. A few classes could use a bit more micro management really, mostly dps classes though.

Play a healer. You may be only pressing a few buttons, but who you press those buttons on and in what order can be very complicated to do well.

I'm not saying playing a lock is rocket science, just that it's a little more in depth and forethought than most classes due to DoT cycles, fitting dark pact/lifetap in, etc. It doesn't take a genius or anything, its just more engaging and enjoyable for me.

Complexity and depth are not necessarily the same thing. WoW has complexity, and its raids are getting more complicated by the day. But depth is something different, and has more to do with the involvement of *thinking*, which WoW raiding largely does not involve. Part of this has to do with the relationship WoW raiding enforces between the developer and the player - the developer, in having to "tune" the content so that the player can defeat it, does the actual thinking, since they must come up with both content and the strategy used to defeat it. Thinking, on the part of players, then simply involves trying to guess at what the developers "intended" in terms of strategy (which is very different from coming up with a solution to an arbitrary problem, since your search space for solutions is much smaller and usually just involves retracing the thought process of the developers), and for all but the frontrunners, it's actually even less than that (just following bosskillers.com will do). Thus, the amount of thinking required to play the game is a subset of the amount required to make it, and since it's unlikely that the developers are far superior in intelligence compared to the players, it's unlikely that raiding requires a tremendous amount of thought.

PvP is a different matter, and competition at the highest levels of PvP (beyond the trappings of loot) can be very, very involving in terms of strategy. Still, WoW, like the Warcraft series, has always been more about execution than strategy - a result of core game mechanics being tuned to exactly match what the developers "intended."

Having played a holy paladin and a fire mage in heroics I would have to say that I disagree. Especially when solo healing you have choices to make when multiple people take damage, by contrast dpsers just dps what the tank tells them to and dont pull aggro.

Apples and oranges really, I dont see the point in this thread.