Took my fire mage through a couple of LFRs. Big changes. The arcane circle talent is now for a 10-sec buff, combustion is now a personal spellpower boost rather than an excruciatingly difficult to use spell that requires an addon to use well, Hellfire shares a cast time (and zero-cast proc) with Pyroblast, forcing a choice between a single-target and aoe attack. It’s certainly a lot more . . . straightforward.
I’ve only played through a few classes and specs, but I’m not very happy about what I’m seeing. General abilities are more straightforward and intuitive, so that’s good. But it seems like they’ve taken all the “fun” out of it.
In an MMO, I love things that give me an “edge” over other players (in PvE) because it feels more fun. Specifically, speed. I always go for the specs and talents that let me do stuff faster. On my rogue that was subtlety spec with Burst of Speed talent, and, man I used that all the time. Going around town, farming, questing, you name it. BoS is gone, though stealth still gives a small 15% (?) movement buff…
With my DK, I loved the 1s GCD. It made the gameplay faster and feel more responsive. 1.5s GCD is back, and movement buffs are gone. You have to be in Unholy spec for the 15% movement buff, whereas before I could stay in Frost and switch stances (which was good enough for farming or getting around town).
On my hunter, I always quested with Aspect of the Cheetah, and just tried to not get hit. Fast fast fast! Aspect is now an 18s buff with a 3m cooldown. Slooow.
Ultimately, it’s slower and therefore less fun, at least so far.
I spent some time looking at the artifacts. All the artifact “talents” are small damage buffs to existing abilities. Just like the old Vanilla / BC / Wrath talent trees that they ditched in Cata because small damage increases weren’t “interesting” enough. They’ve come full circle.
And it will be an interesting problem when the next expansion comes out. What do we do with these artifact weapons we’ve spent two years levelling up? Ditch them for a green? We’ll worry about that when we get to it, I guess.
Edit - Ret Paladins get a 20% movement talent with Seal of Light.
I think this is the expansion that will finally really break WoW. They’ve changed things so much, and made everything so simple…which is a really odd choice for such an old game. I admire Blizzards willingness to really change their games, but I think in this case it’s going to seriously backfire on them.
Now…PvP…which is all I ever really do in WoW…is a total disaster, both at 100 and 110. It’s the worst melee train in WoWs history, which is saying something. Ranged classes have had almost all of their gap creators removed, and most melee classes have multiple gap closers on short re-use timers. It’s soooooooooo bad. Go out and play something like a shadow priest, it’s just ridiculously bad. Not only do melee have almost 100% uptime, they also have insane burst because of cooldown and mastery stacking. 1 warrior can swifty macro a caster down in one stun duration.
I’ve played WoW pvp off and on since release, and I have to say, I think this is the worst it’s ever been. The combination of so much ability pruning, combined with the mongoloid melee trains, is pretty much melee quake at this point, except your stunned while your dying. Some of the most frustrating, and idiotic PvP gameplay I’ve ever experienced.
I really regret pre-ordering Legion.
That’s a little sad, because I think people have said the same about almost every expansion past Wrath about simplifying/dumbing-down/etc.
I’m usually not the person to complain about class changes, but just reading the list of changes to Brewmaster, and logging onto my character which I’d spent dozens of hours to learn and master, I am feeling quite down about the changes to that spec. I will give it a shot, but I enjoyed the high skillcap play of that class, how you had to rub your stomach and pat your head to achieve the same damage mitigation a Blood DK has right out the gate – but if you mastered the class you could do things that were very difficult for other tanks.
I’ve “mained” DK since WotLK, but I’m also not happy DKs have lost their main raid utility – Gorefiend’s Grasp. Not what a DK offers over any other DPS/melee at this point.
So yeah while I’m usually going into expansions quite psyched and poo-poo-ing all the naysayers, I’m finding myself on the other side of the fence this time around. For now I’m leveling a Druid, which appears to be the uber-class since they look to be so good in tanking and healing and will have two DPS specs.
But still can’t be dwarves, so not really that uber.
How can WoW… be made simpler? is now a phone game where you tap the screen for XP?
I remember making a Warlock. Not liking the pet. Making a walock in a different race and getting the same exact pet!!. They did not even made the small demon you summon different for different races.
Ok, I know high level can be supercomplex. Raids and probably PvP. But the surface, the starting levels,where so damn…empty of any interest.
I would say that I was just unable to cope with how different Hunter played when I logged in. I don’t really get it, but I haven’t put much time into figuring it out. But, I hopped on my Assassination rogue (Drop Bears) and I really do like the talents there. The rotation is actually much more complicated, focusing on timing up cooldowns, and hitting Exsanguinate at the right time. Insane burst damage. It took a few hours of LFR, but I figured things out, and started ending raids in the top half of the DPS crew (683 ilvl). I really dig the changes, and the increase in survivability through the potions,feint,cloak of shadows, make it a bit easier to be a rogue.
But, the Assassination spec is really dependent on keeping those cooldowns and abilities applied and lined up. If raid encounters cause you to switch targets a lot, your DPS can suffer. In non-LFR, I would be able to stack on the boss, and let the ranged DPS do the adds, but in LFR that doesn’t work. Because, if you are DPS in LFR, you need to kill adds, because likely 1/2 of your group doesn’t know that, so the people that do know that need to do it.
I had boosted a shammy to 90 for WoD, and left him untouched. I just started leveling him as Enhancement.
Boy is that spec a lot of fun! I love the rotation, I like the bursty-ness of damage, and the survivability is excellent. I am looking forward to leveling him to 100 as quickly as I can.
Arcane mage is definitely broke. My wife’s druid in healy spec was out dpsing me as I’d run out of mana. The Legion artifact adds an arcane bomb, but who knows if that’s enough.
I was doing OK on the meters with frost. But I was able to claim the top spot for the first time last night in LFR as fire. And that’s with mastery / haste gear (fire wants crit).
Ret paladin is fun, just got to 100. Really don’t want to blow 5k on my tier 3 garrison, though. Not sure if I can do Tanaan without the tier 3 garrison.
Rogues have a flat 15% movement buff and a talent that adds another 20 in stealth. It’s not bad, pretty peppy getting around. Really miss burst of speed, though.
Faced that choice myself. Punted, given that 30 days of WoW time is ~40k gold. I’ve bought a lot of tokens in the past year, but the downside is that I convert the gold cost to Real Dollars in my head before buying anything. 5k is 12.5% of 40k, which is almost $2 for a month’s worth of stuff, screw it. It’s a bit sick.
Don’t forget that cloak enchant that boosts movement speed as well.
Got my Frost DK from 95 to 100 in a couple of days (maybe 10 - 12 hours total) doing nothing but quests. That’s with only a couple of pieces of heirloom gear (I really should’ve upgraded my stuff to level 100 when it was cheaper).
Frost DK feels OK to play - not a wildly different experience, compared to something like Hunter or Shadow Priest.
Speaking of Shadow Priest; it really sucks not having more things that I can cast on the move. SPs always had a bit of a problem with having to stay stationary to max DPS, but we at least got a movement speed buff in our damage rotation (via mind flay) to let us get out of an area and establish ourselves in the new spot to resume DPSing. Now I feel like I’m plodding along while the hunters and melee are continuing to do their damage on the move.
Tonight, me and my wife are going to start leveling out shamans. We’re both 91, so I’m expecting to take until some time next week to hit 100. Ironically, level is so much slower when it’s the two of us, compared to when I’m soloing. I may re-spec to healing and see about getting us in to instances instead of purely questing.
Oh, and did they change anything with healing at all? Healing seems to be about 95% the same across all classes. I get the feeling that Blizzard just has no idea what to do with healing, so while they change DPS and tanking every expansion, healing is just the same boring grind. The tried to implement things like hybrid DPS/healing with monks and disc priests, but that seems to have been abandoned for the most part. Healing really needs an across-the-board reimagining.
debating firing this up again. Been primarily a bleed/stealth based sub rogue for many years. Not sure who or what to try playing. Tempted by Monk, Rogue and the new class (eventually).
Well, the last time they changed healing significantly, it was in Cat and they lost a bunch of healers who hated the new healing model (quick OOM, yay) especially when they went up against the 5-mans with raid-level mechanics. Haven’t seen the pub groups starved for people to fill the healing slots lately, so I guess they want to heave it alone to preserve the healing base for the game.
Tanks, on the other hand, are still the choke point of the LFG/LFR system. Running through a few of these reminded me of how much damage a weak tank can do. I hadn’t pulled aggro this whole expansion, but today I did.
Well, assassination is all about the bleed DoTs now.
Demon Hunters available to folks who pre-ordered August 9.
RE: Trying to get Draenor flying prior to the expansion.
Fuck Order of the Awakened rep. That daily, which is the only way outside of paying for it, is a fucking grind. Kill 10 rare mobs in the entire zone, every day.
Woof. I need almost the full 12k.
I am thinking, that if I get the “savage friends” achievement for getting a rep to exalted, I am only like 6k away from exalted with the main alliance faction. After I get that rep up, I can upgrade my trading post to 3, and get the rep boost, and then, I could buy a wow token for 20 bucks, and cash in the 40k gold, and buy 10 Medallions of the Legion.
1 medallion = 1000 xp, plus 20% boost = 1200 xp, x 10 = 12k to exalted.
Going rate on the AH is anywhere from 2-4k per medallion.
I think I would almost rather spend 20 bucks than doing that rep grind. All 2 of the other reps are at revered, I just need order of awakened rep.
Who in the hell thought that the order of the awakened rep grind was a good idea?!? The only way to get that rep is from 1 daily quest, that is it. Nothing else. Fucking bananas.
Up in the part of Tannan jungle where the elite arrakoa are, there are little nodes that can spawn and each one drops at least one of the crystals you need. So I found that starting out hitting up the iron front, then moving up to look for nodes then dropping down to the docks usually got me what I needed for the daily in 20 mins or so. Also don’t forget that you can get medallions through a rare garrison mission and that the Tannan zone bosses (the ones that get announced with an emote in zone chat) can all drop them also.
The whole rep part of getting flying is shitty and by far the worst delay on the process. But yes, the Order is the most annoyingly designed. (The Saberstalkers appear to require killing a whole pile of elites but at least groups for it appear to be readily available.)
Oh yeah, I think I might end up trying that route business.
But, I don’t have followers high enough level for that mission (675)
It still completely sucks, and blows my mind that they lock something behind a rep grind that, outside of the initial starting quest, is one daily repeatable.
One quest.
ONE!
That is not how you do your rep grind.
I thought the saberstalkers rep would be awful, but after 2 seperate 1 hour or so sessions of a group of 5 (use the group finder!) I got revered without too much trouble.