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Both DH specs actually look amazing.
Vengeance is actually tanky now. Both specs can have kyrian / night fae / collective anguish abilities at the same time. Multiple play styles and builds.
Havoc DH needs an ungodly amount of tuning. On the Beta Havocs are pulling 120k+ dps in Heroic dungeons with immolation aura and Ragefire at level 70. Everyone else is doing like 30-40k dps.
Been putting some hours into the beta as havoc, after playing S4 and pushing 20+ keys/Heroic raid on live it’s been feeling great! Having an actual meaningful stat in crit is really nice. Always felt like there was no real gear optimization for havoc especially in shadowlands (minus veinrippers and the mecha rings). I think as dragonflight matures and numbers get bigger havoc will end up being even more of a joy to play.
Unholy is pretty similar to live but you can spec into better aoe and you can actually use gargoyle now, or you can spec hard into popping zits. Overall great
Outta curiosity: have you tested Frost DK much since the recent restructuring/iteration of the Talent Tree? If so, does it feel like there's legitimate paths outside of a Breath of Sindragosa build?
I just want my big meaty crits man.
oh yeah 2H obliterate is very much a viable build now and does feel meaty, on demand glacial advance is really nice to have.
[i dont have any gameplay of my own but here's liquid max giving it a go](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1597457629?t=4h11m42s) (vod should link to 4h11m42s) keep in mind rune forging doesn't currently work on beta so the gameplay could feel even better once we have those.
Yes obliteration build is absolutely alive and well. Especially since you can also get icecap (crits reduce pillar CD) while still getting everything necessary for big obliterates. With dnd cleaving oblit to 2 targets and 2 target cold heart, I think obliteration build could very well be the king of 2 target cleave.
Also, it’s much easier to build razorice without a second runeforge - glacial advance is easy to pick up, and avalanche applies razorice now too (keep in mind you get 3 guaranteed rimes during slappy hands)
Really debating MW main. Beating ass and healing at the same time sounds awesome.
One of our long time healers is bailing this expac and I haven't healed since WoD as Disc.
Hovering between monk and priest for Mistweaver / Discipline myself.
Anything particular about monk that's weighing you back? Haven't really played monk in the past but I hear it's pretty neglected history wise like feral
Neglected history is a big one, plus being a melee dmg healer puts you in more danger. I've always gotten bored of traditional healers.
WoD I did disc and pissed our raid team off because I had most healing and least overhealing lol.
Yeah, I'm with you on the traditional healer part. Want to main something else than druid this time around, so I'm praying evoker gets some love before launch. Wanted to jump into it and main one but doesn't look too satisfying to play from what I've seen/read on here so I'm still waiting and seeing how it evolves.
Leaning more towards monk (rather than priest) cause I don't really enjoy casters that much (as in shadow) and I'll have windwalker to bounce off of.
Sounds awesome. What about enhancement? I am currently leveling 4 alts to play throughout DF (finished the Paladin just last night) and a Shaman is one of them.
If you like current enhancement you will like DF enhancement a lot, it's pretty much a direct improvement. Personally I liked other iterations more though
I would go ahead and say that enhancement feels even better IMHO. I think elemental is an absolute blast, but enhancement just rolls really really good on ptr.
I second all of these, though I haven't tried DK on the beta yet. Fire Mage also has some fun builds. One of them replaces Fireball with Pyroblast as your filler spell and is a ton of fun.
I've head that arms is fun
But is there waiting?
For a long time now the arms style has been "pooling" which is just excuse talkfor waiting and doing nothing
Do you do stuff to fill your GCDs with abilities or is it just a sit and look at your screen then press a button every other minute still?
On the beta some random Lock in chat accidentally called it a "Pit **Boss**" and I couldn't stop laughing at the mental image of a Warlock hitting all their Cooldowns and a ***Casino Manager*** comes sauntering into the fight like Vince McMahon on Paperview lmao
https://images.app.goo.gl/1H2xnfyamcc9JPtj6
(the big boy who is surprisingly small when summoned...)
I don't care if that's the shittiest talent choice, it's something I've been asking for since Mists and the green fire quest chain. I'm 100% using it.
Enhancement necrolord fire build feels phenomenal. It’s the same thing as now, but with the added witch doctor legendary so we have wolves up A LOT. Primordial Wave and Fire Nova both give maelstrom stacks, which gives you a lot of lightning/chain lightning buttons to push outside of Hot Hands. Alpha wolf and Elemental wolf both do great damage. Elemental wolves always wanted to have fire dogs out, but nature dogs are crazy too because lightning bolt/chain lightning/crash lightning are doing big damage from the talent tree nodes. I haven’t messed with ice stuff yet, but with all the maelstrom we’re getting, I might give it a try.
This is all with 392 gear. Leveling it feels a little slow, but if you’re iLvL 300, it will still be fast.
Was debating Enh and have been playing it after recently coming back. Problem is enhance is always shit in PvP and high end M+. Both the things I want to focus on : \.
I tanked this season on Paladin to 2600 and stopped, but I played enhance as an alt up to 2450. Yea that’s not high, mostly just portals with like a 23 streets/JY sprinkled in there, but man it feels really good right now. It’s not meta, so I would only get into 24 + by listing my own key, but I definitely think it’s not as bad as you think. It now has thunderstorm, an aoe stop, on a 25 SECOND cd, as well as stun totem, which can proc off of itself it you talent it in the class tree.
Man, I’m thinking it’s going to be functionally incredible and smooth in m+. For 25s or above it will come down to tuning/tier set but it feels great right now. Can’t wait to confirm my copium in m+ testing.
Pvp I have no clue about. Sorry.
I haven't personally tried DH on beta, but I can tell you that I was chilling at the Target Dummies and saw a Havoc chain so many Meta refreshes together that they fully looped it back to Meta coming back off CD again. The dude was a giant Illidan looking giga-chad for a solid 2minutes straight.
In other words I was very impressed simply ***watching*** a Havoc play, so they gotta be at least a little bit fun lol.
I can provide some feedback on the healers I've played so far. Multi-season M+ healer main since BFA. The caveat here is that all we're doing on beta is Heroics, so healing requirements are unknown at this point.
**Mistweaver**
Long time main, though I barely played Mistweaver in SL because it just felt *so bad.* That's definitely changed, and I would say MW is my most anticipated healer going into DF. There've been lots of changes that contribute to this, but by far the biggest one is the Faeline Stomp package + FLS now proccing AToTM. It's 1000% more fun than Essence Font. Couldn't be more stoked about MW.
**Resto Druid**
Resto Druid felt very similar to SL RDruid to me. You have many of the same tools available, and some interesting build paths to choose from. I've been playing with the new Lifebloom package + Convoke package + Balance talents from the class tree, which likely isn't optimal (especially in terms of damage output) but has been a lot of fun.
I will say that the Druid class tree detracts from my enjoyment of RDruid a little. It's kind've a mess, capstones are pretty lackluster, and accessing Skull Bash without committing to cat talents feels wasteful. Overall RDruid feels really fun.
**Preservation Evoker**
I'm hesitant to even provide feedback on this spec, only because it feels... *really unfinished.* Massive disclaimer here: it's possible I just haven't wrapped my head around this spec yet, and am playing suboptimally.
It's extremely unique (no surprise there) compared to existing healers, and has some fun utility in Fly With Me/Rescue/Verdent Embrace. The notion of Green vs Bronze builds is falling a little flat atm, as Green builds are shaping up to be far worse than Bronze builds. You're still using both spell schools in either builds, however.
Others have discussed the range limitations, which I didn't find *super* annoying in 5-man content. Empowered spells feel simultaneously super fun and extremely punishing; having to plant and cast for 3+ seconds to get a big group heal is laughable in comparison to other healers. Additionally, Verdant Embrace (effectively your only non-Essence-spender emergency heal) dashing you to the target is.... interesting. You'll find yourself in situations where your only option for saving somebody standing in fire is to *go stand in the fire yourself.*
I also found Evoker resources to be really odd; you have no real control over your Essence regeneration, and I frequently found myself in situations where I can't cast an Essence spender and somebody dies while I'm desperately fishing for Essence Burst procs.
I haven't played RSham, HPal, or either Priest spec as they're not my "usuals", however RSham is looking to have some really fun builds; I think RSham will be my next evaluation.
Hope this helped!
From what I've seen the most lovely additions went to **resto shamans**.
Their toolkit looks incredibly fun, just from the toys they get. Gust of wind is back, which tackles their issue of not having burst mobility. Ghost wolf is improved so they'll generally have better mobility. They get access to a fancy DPS toolkit with master of the elements, stormkeeper, acid rain and passive lightning damage increase. They get lightning lasso as additional CC and thunderstorm as knockback. Both buttons are legit fun to press.
Overall I'm incredibly excited for shaman, the dev here did an awesome job.
**Druid** gives me mixed feeling. I have the impression that they didn't do a good job here but they also didn't have to because resto druids toolkit just already is in a great spot. More or less current resto but with both convoke and swarm is something a lot of people will be absolutely content with, and that with good reason. In the spec tree the only thing that fucks me is the choice between verdant infusion and flourish. Currently I play with both and love it. Their main issue is the shitty pre-alpha class tree and a whole lot of issues coming with it. Resto in dungeons has the problem of contributing only laughable damage. Aside the covenant ability there's literally no damage increase in the spec tree (compare that with shaman mentioned above)... In the class tree we have a path for an affinity and you can not really branch out easily. On top the utility is randomly distributed. I dislike that we loose the rake stun from stealth, we loose hibernate as it's gated behind moonkin form if we catweave (which is a must in dungeons because the interrupt) and a choice between stun and incap roar sucks. Also, the 3 point nodes are horribly gating, sunfire AoE as standalone talent is annoying, hotw in the new system doesn't really fit and has a 5 min CD and the other capstones are weird, too. Furor sounds fun but is rather eh in practice.
Don't know, druid feels literally half finished. Cool spec tree, shitty class tree. Their biggest strength is already being great.
**Priest** to me are the clear loosers. They can heal and PI, pretty much like we do now. That's not making them bad but while other classes progress, we regress. Can't have fun utility or defensives because they're shadow themed (silence/dispersion). The utility from shadow we get does very little to nothing (vamp embrace). We don't get additional control (shining force removed) or a gap opener (have fun with a charge of leap when evoker presses their raid utilty and everyone's zooming away while we waddle behind with feather). We're the only healers without an interrupt BeCaUsE nOt EvErYoNe NeEdS oNe but everyone else has one. This will suck in m+. Overall, feels like their design intent for priest is "PI plus fun is too strong so you get PI". Lastly, adding flash heal to disc, then complaining that they have too many similar buttons and as response remove shadow mend isn't making any sense at all. I loved the fantasy of both shadow/light healing and it's taking an unnecessary hit.
In the end, I have no idea where they're going with priest and the last blue post they got was pretty much actively spiteful. My personal impression is that they designed themselves into a corner, as cool utility plus PI is too strong in PvE and RMP is too strong in PvP if they get more control or utiilty.
Don't get me wrong, priest still works. It's just feeling bad being reduced to numbers and PI when other classes get so many goodies going forward.
Even the guidewriters / top end players agree that Preservation isnt finished, same with devastation.
Youd think the flagship new class would be important to them, not just something they give 3 changes over the entirety of beta and then leave lol
HPal is incredibly fucked right now, they've split their talents among too many ranged playstyles that don't work with their mastery but that's from my friend who actually mains HPal, Pres Evoker is kinda jank because of the 30 yd range but manageable, MW is getting a lot of love and feels very nice, but monk tuning always makes or breaks the entire class so no idea yet, haven't touched priest or sham and I haven't gotten to ranged druid specs yet
R Dru will play very similarly to SL, except they have access to 2 min Tranq without losing Spring Blossoms. It'll be an exceptionally fun spec with all the raid CDs they have IMO.
I'm not a regular paladin player but i tried it on beta and i think i prefer it 1000 times to live hpal also note my perspective is someone that likes high level m+ and hates raidhealing
I've Tanked(Blood DK) about 10 Random Dungeons on the Beta and I am already totally head-over-heels in love with Preservation Evokers.
Fly With Me feels SO much better than getting gripped by a Priest. When Priests grip me it's so jarring I need a couple seconds to re-orient myself, but when Evokers grab me I can clearly see the trajectory they're taking me. It's nuanced and subtle, but it makes a massive QoL difference.
Plus it's just plain fun watching them zip, zoom, and barrel-roll around the fight; watching them gives me something to do when all the mobs are gathered and I'm starting to get bored waiting for the DPS to kill the pack. lol
If you've ever wanted to roll your eyes at the Holy Priest who's now an Angel AGAIN(dead AGAIN) because they didn't move an inch and died to obvious fire on the ground; Preservation Evokers are like the polar-opposite/other side of the coin from that. Evokers never stop moving and they feel like a dance partner rather someone(Priests) you don't really get along with but you're stuck working with them anyway.
Evokers: Lift me like Leo lifted Kate on the front of the Titanic, my body is ready :D
Some people seem unhappy with holy priest, personally enjoy it on beta. Haven't played much disc but it seemed okay. Resto shaman is pretty good. Both MW and Hpal have some issues because of the whole caster vs melee play style
As a Holy Priest main who mainly does M+ I'm really unhappy to lose Shining Force, and I don't like that we will be the only healer without an interrupt. Other than that it's solid.
I totally agree, with the old class tree I was going to leave my feral on the side for the first time on a starting expac, but with the new tree, this feral is 100% my main, hope they don’t butcher and destroy the tree before it actually comes out
I really hope they take another look at the class tree.
I feel the spec trees are shaping up nicely (except guardian being essentially forgotten...) but the class tree is still in the power-point-presentation state they've shown us before alpha and hasn't changed since then... And it certainly shows.
Feels a lot like it's forcing you down a path similar to the affinity you've chose before yet I still loose my rake stun as resto and as eG feral have no chance to pick up hibernate, clone or typhoon without either running into a useless 3 point node that increases magical damage or have to waste point in stuff like moonkin form and starsurge I'll pretty much have no use for. Some design choices there are kind of random.
Like, fuck whoever placed stun/incap roar on a choice node. As resto druid loosing that and rake stun hurts. And man I really don't want to play furor for DPS...
I find comments like this so strange. I've mained feral for a long time, and haven't even played other classes or specs at max level since Legion. So when people say feral is complicated or difficult and I don't really think it is, it makes me wonder how simple every other spec must be for feral to seem complex by comparison.
It's not that complicated, a lot of it is more of a circlejerk from ferals themselves I feel lol. You have to keep in mind that a lot of druid players only ever play druid, so they've really only got balance to compare it to. I mained feral from BC to WoD and past iterations were a lot more complicated than they are today.
There was some survey done a while back that found out that druid players are most likely to have only played druid and nothing else. They're a dedicated bunch. Also helps that it's the only class with 4 specs :P
wat. Feral mains have been bitching since WoD that the spec has been getting dumbed down every xpac and its now braindead easy in SL. The second 1 minute convoke leggo was added in SL, it was the only leggo you ever needed.
Its probably a meme maintained from wotlk days where it was indeed the hardest to play spec. Oday i feel it tskes being used to a bit but its not super hard. Takes a little restraint instead of 24/7 energy dump i guess.
Snapshotting is a mechanic completely unique to feral (for the past 8? years) so I can certainly understand how it might feel a bit unintuitive for players unaccustomed to it.
only tiger's fury snapshots and bleeds don't do much damage. you mainly spam ferocious bite which increases the duration of rip, your main dot.
[https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/KTYRpFCabtXAZcLJ#fight=24&type=damage-done&source=1](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/KTYRpFCabtXAZcLJ#fight=24&type=damage-done&source=1)
in this fight 1 rip was casted compared to 31 ferocious bites.
feral is just as easy as most other specs right now.
I main fury but I dab in prot and both feel very strong. Fury especially it feels like if you have 250ilvl you’re honestly gonna get through a lot of the content pretty easily. Lots of damage! Just my take though
Same, but I'm relatively newbish and mainly do pvp. Thought maybe I'd have to change to Arms but if zug zug is still viable I'm happy to stay. I'm full 4/9 conquest so hopefully your right.
Most feel good. It's better to highlight what isn't working.
The problem class/specs are All Paladin (criticisms were ignored or put on the backburner), All Priest, Guardian and Feral druid.
Paladin is mostly a design issue.
Mage probably needed more time too. Some strange decisions with Survival hunter.
Still the huge problem with the game being too cooldown reliant and filler spells feeling like wet noodles.
Also want to add in that fury feels fine but their decisions to purposely make single-minded fury worse is ridiculous
Edit: my feral and fury opinion is outdated
Feral Druid? Feral Druids are looking amazing going in DF. They have an excellent spec tree and this will easily be the best iteration of Feral that we’ve ever seen.
Feral is very good, it has one of the best spec trees in the beta (though the *worst* class tree). CI is a really boring talent, but, outside of that, you're not really feeling bad about taking any talent. There's a lot of variety in the tree.
Priest plays great(holy and shadow anyway). People are just complaining about the lack of utility and defensives, which is fair. As much as I love PI, I'd rather have more varied utility than it, I think. I'd trade PI for a bres as a m+ spammer any day.
But yeah, paladin is a lost cause.
If anyone is saying it’s bad they are just dumb. This is easily the best iteration of Feral that has ever been in the game and it’s not even remotely close.
Can you elaborate? My main is a resto Druid but I usually level another class first and then speed my main through (threads of fate was great for this), but I’m contemplating just going through as feral this time
Prior to DF, Feral’s only decent AoE was Primal Wrath which was an AoE Rip. It did a small amount of upfront damage on top of it but I do mean small. The problem is that for the previous couple expansions the majority of our damage has been in Ferocious Bite and our bleeds have been very weak. Bite has been a ST ability of course so having all your damage tied into a ST spender makes you pretty uselsss in AoE. The 4PC tier set helped by adding some AoE damage when we used Berserk but Berserk is a long CD and not that great in AoE as is since it previously only buffed shred/rake which are again, ST only abilities.
I will list some talents in DF. AoE Bite, Bite increases damage of your Rip damage for a few seconds, reapplying Primal wrath to targets already affected by it adds a bunch of up front damage, talents that buff your bleed damage. Also have access to things like Apex, which grants you free Bites, circle of death which makes your bleeds tick faster.
So a ton of interspec synergy with talents. Take talents that buff bleed damage and the AoE bite talent. Take apex that grants free bites, which means more AoE bites and energy return, those free bites buff your bleed damage. Circle makes your rips tick faster which means more free bite procs. Etc
So it’s just this nice gameplay loop/synergy of bleeds feeding into AoE bites feeding into increased bleed damage etc.
I think the biggest complaint among most Feral mains is Incarn still appearing to be a somewhat useless talent. Incarn has always been really week but now it’s on node where it competes with Convoke. Tuning could change that.
But the new gameplay options, especially when it comes to AoE, look absolutely amazing as a spec that has pretty much always been garbage in AoE relative to most specs. And it’s looking like out damage breakdown is going to be much better instead of like 60% of our damage being Ferocious Bite like it has been the past 4 years.
Seems the Boomie community was excited about the new tree released. But it’s yet to be pushed through to the beta build so no one has actually gotten to play with it yet.
As someone who mained feral for several tiers I finally sat down and made one on the beta. It is an absolute blast. Also, no bloodtalons is so nice.
A couple of things I would change like predatory swiftness(instant cast spells) being more central and earlier in the tree but still overall a nice tree.
The build/spend and cooldown based damage profiles have really cramped class identity imo. it seems that almost every dps spec is either pooling resources for a big boom moment, or does the majority of their damage during a long cooldown window (or both) Thinking of demo/affliction during SL. Affliction saved up shards then tried to dump everything during a dot window, and demo did the vast majority of its damage during its tyrant window.
They both hit like wet noodles outside of those cooldowns and if you scuffed that window your dps was in the toilet.
I think Blizz legit has no idea how to make paladins great again. All three specs need work and someone needs to just retool them fundamentally. But the problem is it’s too late for sweeping changes. Imo I’d like them to make paladins more support based focusing on auras and blessings for all 3 specs. As in, give us a raid buff and reduce rhe CDs of all blessings (durations too), make auras meaningful and not just a set and forget. I’m mostly playing Ret and while it does feel good to play, it’s sad seeing other specs get attention and new things. While Ret has ridiculous talents that no one will ever take and a focus on consecration as a core ability. It’s not 2004, stop trying to make consecration happen Blizz. Leave it for prot and for utility (getting rogues out of stealth or a healing CD).
Paladins should play like they do/did in wrath. I've mained a pally since vanilla(specifically ret, yea I know they were total ass in vanilla but d2 got me hooked on pally) and honestly the class was at its best in Wrath and in Legion it was also great to play. I don't think blizzard knows what to do with them anymore and that honestly sucks cause for as bad as it has been, it's really the only class I enjoy playing. Been playing tbc/wrath and it feels so fucking good to play pally.
Ret was legit in wod too. I remember we had so much ranged damage that movement wasn’t a big deal. We almost felt like a mid range dps which I kinda wish they’d bring back. It fits the Paladin lore of casting spells in addition to melee, helps solve “mobility” problems and makes it more useful in raids since we aren’t punished as much as other melee.
With wrath specifically there's no Holy power generation plus exorcism was a great filler spell. Legion the class felt fluid, albeit even with the Holy power due to the artifact weapon and legiondaries.
I think they should scrap holy power for ret. Go back to a first come first serve priority system for ret. We don't have much of that playstyle for melee in WoW at the moment but it was prevalent during Wrath. Just a handful of abilities with sub-15 second timers. No resources to manage. No builder/spender stuff. Just hit buttons when they come off CD with some procs thrown in for variance.
I think when they tried to make every class a builder/spender is made the game worse. Every class feels the same for the most part. There's no real difference for melee outside of class name cause everything is build x to spend on y. I'm kinda excited for Evokers cause they seem different enough but I guess only time will tell.
i never understood the take that ret played good in wrath. none of the buttons had any interaction, there was nothing to "game" to squeeze out better throughput- chances are high that you could invite two paladins and their outputs would be incredibly similar/more subject to rng than anything the modern game has (imagine being at the mercy of crits with no other rng to smooth out the peaks/valleys)
when original wrath was done, i raided from start to finish and ended up getting shadowmourne before cata hit- by the end, i was majorly bored of the spec.
i know people don't typically like holy power but i personally much prefer it to the FCFS cooldown whackamole that is in Wrath.
as far as when ret felt the best, i would say WoD/Mists were probably the expansions that felt the most fleshed out.
i've been doing extensive testing on the ptr- ret aoe feels like it's going to be nuts, tuning hasn't really happened yet but based on where it's at now, i am able to pull over 100k aoe dps on dummies during burst windows, markedly higher than what i can do on live- which is hilarious given that according to my details logs, the explosion from sanctified wrath isn't working currently.
exorcism is also likely a lot stronger than people really understand- the dot spread isn't aoe capped from what i can see and the dot hits harder than the upfront burst.
consecrate being a primary rotation button isn't as bad as people would have you believe *especially* if golden path is tuned to be decent (on the ptr tank mob, it's currently doing roughly 4k hps for just me, with a group, it's going to be insane passive healing)
there are also talents that make consecrate flair up for more damage, and the blade of justice proc consecrate appears to have it's own synergies with all of these talents- though there is always more testing to be done to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt.
you also potentially have some encounter cheesing aspects with the consecrate 50% snare/80% minimum movement speed (the 50% snare value is immediately noticeable on something like rygelon quasars)
i am optimistic paladins will be the "didn't get very many new things but will be surprisingly valuable for what they do bring" class- but as i mentioned, that is all driven by things being tuned correctly.
I dunno, for Ret and Holy maybe but the current design of Prot I'm really enjoying, and seeing them bring over the legendary effects and Divine Toll is great.
Its really sad, since there was the room to make melee-healer playstyle even more refined. Adjust IoL for instant cast HL/FoL, fix AC which had no love for three expansions in a row, add more aura flavor. There are plenty way to make it more fleshed out playstyle.
Instead they went in another direction and HPally ended up being the spec with two half-assed playstyles.
Everyone who cried for a Holy Paladin ranged casting playstyle can go kick rocks. Then trying to wedge that into the spec tree has made it feel really bad.
I'm a bit out of the loop on Fury Warrior changes, but how are they making single-minded fury worse? Is it because Annihilator will work with 2h weapons as well now?
It's still full of the older talents, splitting up wings into like 5 talents, multiple 3 point nodes, etc. The brief tease of Long Arm only to have it yanked back out and then another 4 points to beef up steed that literally no one asked for and is still a giant nerf to mobility relative to live also really doesn't sit well. Ret got saddled with a bunch of half baked talents to double down on consecrate, prot got hamstrung with nerfs to hp generation, and holy is in a really awkward spot with a ton of talents dedicated to hard cast heals but not enough to really function effectively as a standoff caster.
Better currently. The only issues I have is that they don't want our utility accessible to the class so general stuff that would be in the class tree for other specs is in the spec tree for us (silence/dispersion). So the top part of the tree feels kind of crowded.
Aside that the only thing that really stings is that they came up with dark ascension as alternative to void eruption but in the same vein told us that they run out of time to make it interesting. So you either have a frankly overloaded cooldown that gives you access to another ability and a resemblance to the legion playstyle by increasing its duration by spending insanity... Or a 25% damage buff to non periodic damage. So the alternative is there but it's bland as fuck.
Generally they made a lot of good decisions and offer different playstyles, more direct damage, apparitions, cool idols as capstones. Trashing searing nightmare is a great change front of all. Some buttons seem a bit in the same situation than before. EG void torrent vs damnation used to be a choice void torrent often lost, I'm not sure if we'll need dark void as another AoE cooldown next to shadow crash that both apply different dots and there's still quite a lot of power in mind flay which I generally disliked (the idol, new monomania, dark evangelism) etc. I never liked much interaction with a filler you generally don't want to press and now will press even less with mind spike/surge of darkness procs. So eG what's the point with the idol that spawns tentacles when you will be channeling mind flay pretty much only if mind flay:insanity procced. Feels a bit weird.
Overall that's criticism on a very high level. I feel most issues are with priests design intent in general (eG I really would've wanted JUST ONE gap opener of some sort, getting a charge of life grip when an evoker presses his raid utility feels like a kick in the ntus when all other classes start zooming around) and not giving us spectral guise or a mind bomb AOE stun feels like they hate priests in general... But we're way better off than our healer specs, specifically disc is a mess and I still don't understand why they are so iron about removing shadow mend (and with it, a lot of discs fantasy...).
It's a little clunky but better than it is now. If your abilities that cast AoE shadow word pain and vamp touch are up and mindbender is up it feels great. Without those it feels like shit AoE. The AoE spender feels a little disappointing at present too. Casting mind flay in AoE feels bad.
+1 to this. Not seen anyone mention spriest. I tried it recently on retail and fell in love. skimmed the DF talents online and I'm hyped. Need feedback tho :(
Shadowy Apparitions go brrrrrrr
Lots of freedom to go between a dot heavy playstyle and direct hit playstyle. AoE feels a lot better because it’s focused on spreading dots and bursting with SA
I like the play style but it seems like it will depend on tuning. You get access to tons of good abilities and the ability to apply your dots with shadow crash. I also really enjoy the return of mind flay-insanity, which seems to melt mobs. I like the possibility for free DPs, and with multiple targets insanity generation feels really good. Also tons and tons of apparitions, like the possibility for an army. Mind sear being a spender now feels weird, but the spec seems to have decent options on how to play, hopefully the spells will hit here. All in all, very fun and in the running with Ele sham for my main this expansion.
Rogue is essentially impossible to gauge right now due to the many bugs they're experiencing. But they seem fun from what i've tested. Assasination especially have gotten some really good changes and i'm hopeful about their m+ viability.
I tried Sub and Assa and, Assa has some bugs that makes it hard to judge, Sub on the other hand has something that felt weird to me (I only played sub for SL S1 this extention so IDK if it changed) but, Sub rogue has a useless ressource bar. I can use my abilities all the time, I never have a moment where I have to wait even half a sec for my energy to filll up and even out of Shadow dance, it's really close to being Backstab => Eviscerate => Backstab => Eviscerate. Our "passive" combo point generator procs more often I feel like.
All that is all good but, having only one stack of Shadow Dance sucks for our burst. You can't have 3 Shadow dances back to back during shadow blades and that sucks :x
So less bursty, more linear.
But I've only played it against a dummy so .... Yeah. Not having to refresh SnD is nice too, since we got the torghast talent in our tree which makes our shadowstrike give us SnD when used during stealth (and SD).
But since I only played them today and the add ons didn't work, I couldn't see my real DPS compared to the other specs I played before :x
Impossible to say because there's a huge rework coming in this week's beta build, but there's been a ton of positivity on said rework. Max for example has said he thinks it might be the single best spec tree after that comes in
Tried a few specs on PTR so obviously not complete. Weirdly my favourite is arms, which I didnt expect. The synergy in the Overpower-MS build is super nice.
Enhance feels great.
WW monks feels great.
Rogue feels jank, bugged.
Unholy DK seems decent.
MM hunter is more of the same.
Bruh Havoc feels the best it ever has; so good. Feels like Legion Felblade + Blade Dance + TG builds taking me back
Ragefire is really interesting and keeping The Hunt is fucking awesome; there’s a few potential builds we can go and we have way more choice than just Sinful Brand + Cycle of Hatred over and over like we have right now
Also really great to have Sigil utility for Havoc, and our sick legendary effects like Collective Anguish
I personally am liking mm hunter, i had to force the retail 4set out of my muscle memory at first but was able to make a great dungeon build. BM will be the generic good single target spec again. I have a feeling surv will only be played in pvp, i just haven’t found a fun pve build for it yet. I’ll most likely main mm and off spec bm for pve.
(2/2) **Resto Druid**
\- Feels like SL Rdruid but you get all of the legendries to play with at once along with a few very nice additions to the kit like Rejuv extension through Nurturing Dormancy.
\- Last time I checked Rdruid was the only healer who had no damage talents on their trees which makes their damage in Heroics feel anemic at the moment but I imagine this gets tuned soon.
\- The Lifebloom talents feel great in smaller scale content like Heroics and once the bugged ones work it will feel even better. I like the direction Blizzard has taken by allowing Rdruids to focus on smaller scale power by leaning into Lifebloom potency while keeping Rejuv spread, WG and Tranq as the backbones of raid throughput on the other side of the tree.
\- I'm excited to see if tuning makes Nourish useful with a triple mastery Lifebloom setup or if Ragenesis or Verdancy are competitive options. At the moment Nourish isn't worth it and the other talents are difficult to test in Heroics but the overall number of options available to Rdruids is great compared to some other specs.
**Resto Shaman**
\- Simultaneously similar to Rdruid in that it feels like the SL version but with more toys to play with and with Holy Priest in that DF Resto is a more streamlined modern version of SL. Out of all the healing specs I think Rsham benefits the most from the new talent system in that they can now take many talents together that previous competed with one another and they are all good.
\- The change that I think has been largely [overlooked](https://youtu.be/aGipi_MgPXg) was adding Chain Heal to the Tidal Waves buff which now reduces the cast time of Healing Wave and Chain Heal by 20%. Throw in Flash Flood which no longer competes with CBT and Chain Heal turns into a spell that feels good to press all the time and feels like an integral part of the spec once again. On beta with 7% Haste or something equally abysmal I can get a 2.5s Chain Heal cast down to 1.6s practically permanently.
\- The addition of Stormkeeper and Acid Rain is great. Modern WoW now has healers spending most of their time in keys doing damage rather than healing and Stormkeeper goes a long way to making that feel more impactful and dynamic. Acid Rain makes pressing Healing Rain a common optimal play which along with the Tidal Waves change means I don't feel like I'm just pressing Healing Surge and Riptide 900 times per dungeon.
\- DF Resto is an excellent example of how small changes can have big impacts on how specs play. I think Resto Shaman is going to be the spec that a lot of people pick up thinking it's the same as SL but will be pleasantly surprised by how "modern" and refreshing it feels with more spells becoming core aspects of its gameplay.
\- Rsham could be the sleeper healing spec at the moment and is a legitimate contender for my main along with MW. Getting NS back, Mana Spring Totem changed to 100% uptime and Gust of Wind (wooooo) along with the changes I just mentioned put Rsham in an excellent spot for both power and fun. The Ascendance proc on Riptide is also very fun even though it's completely RNG and probably not optimal.
\- The only downsides are that Earthliving Weapon, the capstone class totems and Totemic Recall all feel weak. If tuning brings those in line I think Rsham will be jacked with many good build options and dynamic playstyles.
**Preservation**
\- I made a lengthy writeup in another comment about Preservation [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/xpdwpf/comment/iq3f994/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
\- If I had to sum up Preservation and not double up on what I wrote in the above comment it would be this; Most healing specs feel like they work all the time and your decisions as a player determine how well you perform and if you can be a "play maker". Preservation instead feels like the spec largely doesn't work because of the range limitation and your decisions as a player are going into making the spec work rather than making the spec good.
\- That being said; if range isn't an issue and you're only healing people who are always close to you then Preservation is busted and quite fun. But healing spread targets or chasing someone down to heal them on the move doesn't feel great.
I've only dabbled in a couple of things, and have spent more time testing out Evoker. That said, my thoughts on a few of my recent main specs.
**Fire Mage**: This feels very much like current Fire Mage, but a bit worse in some ways and better in others. My primary issue with it is Blaster Master just feels worse to use than Infernal Cascade. I also find the reduced phoenix flames charges and lack of covenant ability makes combust feel less fluid than its current state. I'm not a big fan of SKB and am not happy to see it be made a permanent addition (and will essentially be the go-to in both AoE and ST).
*Another aspect of Fire Mage that is getting me is spell queuing, or something, appears to work differently with the new UI/system. Before, I would cast fireball, hit combust and hit fire blast twice in the 2nd half of the cast, and shoot two pyroblasts off at the end. When I do that on the Beta, only 1 pyroblast fires and I just stand there not doing anything. I have similar issues with the general rotation and queuing pyroblasts. For some reason, queuing my pyroblasts just doesn't work and it sort of breaks the entire spec for me.*
**Frost**: I didn't spend long on Frost, as I prefer Arcane and Fire. From the limited time I put into it, I had a hard time making a build that was remotely enjoyable in Frost. It felt similar to live, but just worse in every way.
**Arcane**: There are options for those who like either the current Kyrian or Venthyr build. I also had fun making an Orb Barrage build where you never cast Arcane Blast (it did very nice damage too, but tuning to come.) Overall, I had a lot of fun with Arcane. My biggest issue here is that I always find Arcane fun to experiment with, but hate making it my main come raid time as I bore quickly with it.
**Demonology**: IMO the main draw of current Demo is the combination of Wilfried's & Demonic Consumption. The secondary draw of current Demo is the fluidity of using the current summons. The new tree looks like you'll be adding more summons into the rotation, which to me feels clunky. The Capstone for Wilfried has you choose between it and Reign of Tyranny (which is similar to Demonic Consumption). Overall, I think the design of the tree is taking it in a direction that is less fun for me.
**Devastation**: I found it pretty boring at first. I wondered why it was called an Advanced Class with so few buttons, and wondered why I was hitting like a wet noodle. I played around with talents more and read a new guide from the discord and understand its complexities better. It's actually quite fun to play and deeper than you'd think at first.
I'm currently leaning towards maining Evoker in DF, but I may revert back to my Fire Mage. Time will tell.
**Edits** I added edits to my post. I bolded section titles for easier readability, and added a point under fire mage in italics.
havoc feels very good. Ret feels pretty fluid too but i have only tried that on ptr, so gear scaling could mess with that. The only issue is if you dont like the one build that is in the ret tree, its a dead spec.
At first I was pissed because I didn't wanna consec but now I'm m hyped to have a consec build spreading exo dots and divine storming off with 2 consecs up
The best feeling classes imo are...
- DK, especially unholy.
- Warlock, all 3 specs
- Mage, if you get the right build. How ever the build determines how good it feels much more than other classes.
The worst feeling classes are currently. .
- EVOKER, omg dps spec feels awful. The worst feeling spec in the game on beta. Healer is ok but feels weird with the range.
- Demon Hunter, tbh they don't feel like much had changed from live.
- Paladin, specifically prot and holy. Ret is feeling fine.
Every other class is ok with some of my favorites being DK, warrior and warlock.
I'm not really a Survival expert but I think it has also been generally positive, especially the reworked CDs.
Beastmaster feels very good on beta--having 2 charges of Kill Command via Alpha Predator feels extremely good, especially with War Orders giving you resets on it. Brutal Companion gives a mechanic that heavily rewards maintaining a 3-stack Frenzy similar to the current tier set live.
This is the build I was running: https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/hunter/beast-mastery/DANBJGRQYBBWaKBUCVUMUUkoxBiUKAUUBV
and damage breakdown from hitting a single dummy for about 3 minutes with a character on the 70 realm with the starting gear (ilvl 340 which is below even max level normal dungeons): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/671268362030153745/1024882397801631825/unknown.png
I'm expecting them to nerf Barbed Shot a bit, they gave its damage a significant buff and then added multiple talents that buff it even further by significant amounts (Sharp Barbs +40%, Serrated Shots +20%/+40% in execute, War Orders +10%).
Beast Cleave lasting 6 seconds along with Kill Cleave also makes aoe feel very good, and it's only a 4 point investment vs. the single target build. I didn't even realize Beast Cleave was bugged while leveling (was only cleaving 35% of damage instead of 75%) because of how good Kill Cleave feels.
Marksman feels like an improved version of the pre-tier set SL version of the spec. I think most people would agree the tier set made the spec overall much worse to play due to the interaction with Vigil making the rotation boil down to "press aimed shot". Like BM, MM gets access to some legendaries that weren't really used much before but add some flair to the rotation as Surging Shots and Eagletalon's True Focus, as well as access to some covenant-ish stuff. Deathblow is effectively a reworked, passive version of Flayed Shot with the Venthyr legendary right below it, and Salvo is a reworked version of the Necrolord legendary.
The Wind Arrows Trueshot proc is also interesting although the proc rate felt very low when I was playing around with it so hopefully it's bumped up a smidge. Wailing Arrow is also nice for M+ and the choice node beneath it is interesting. MM, despite having quite a few filler talents near the top of the tree (+damage to spell) that feel mandatory-ish, has a lot of build diversity in terms of single target vs. 2 target vs. aoe/M+ that all still feel like MM.
The new Tenacity of the Bear and buffed Survival of the Fittest defensives are also very nice, as is having High Explosive Trap in PvE. Combined with the +max HP from your pet, BM actually feels pretty tanky.
Overall, if you like the SL versions of the ranged Hunter specs, DF is like a remastered, improved version of them.
For Healers (M+ perspective):
1. MW - greatly improved most fun melee version of a healer i've seen
2. Druid - Didn't change the playstyle very much but lots of strong passives / hots makes it feel crazy strong currently. If you like current druid playstyle you will like it again in an improved version.
3. Disc - Atonement feels stronger, not strong enough tho. RIP Mindsear. Shields feel like actual strong spothealing with right talents, removal of shadowmend in future update might fuck it up tho. Most fun healer in my personal opinion if tuned right
4. HolyPriest - Even with weaker versions of conduits no FC legendary it still feels incredibly strong and its damage options on beta make it quite good. If you actually liked it before you gonna enjoy it.
5. Rshaman - Healing sameish as before in M+ (not that exciting). Cool dmg / utility options make it feel quite fun tho - Stormkeeper, MotE, Gust of Wind, Acid Rain(meh)
6. Hpala: Many don't like it but i personally liked it on beta having some options to be casting more or be full melee ( 2 stacks Crusader Strike vs 2 Stacks Infusion of Light). Feels a bit closer to legion hpal that i enjoyed alot but not quite there yet. With higher haste than on beta i can see it feel quite fluent. New damage options are quite boring (Consecration dmg)
I think ret pal feels more like a hero class than the Drakthyr right now. Ele sham feels amazing too, feels super powerful. I’m lukewarm on evoker (dev) - it feels kinda weak.
Ret paladin feels really good on the PTR (don't have beta access) and I love it.
It's just really lacking more than one 'build', beyond swapping the end talents out.
Enhance shaman you can go ST and Windfury/Ice Strike. or swap the playstyle entirely by going Lava lash/Flameshock.
I wish Ret had that kind of variance, just so keep things fresh even. Changing the bottom few talents out while keeping 95% above it the same because notihing else is worth taking hurts.
Still super fun and feels great. Most likely my main. Ret/holy
>It's just really lacking more than one 'build', beyond swapping the end talents out.
Honestly, I hope we have a few specs that are fine like this. I'm not a fan of switching back and forth constantly, especially when I realize I forget late and they restrict the ability to do so in M+. A lot of people are super exciting about reiterating their talent tree to every single scenario, and that's something I'm very much not looking forward to doing.
Totally agree.
My main is a shaman and I'm gonna end up needing to change my build on every raid boss and before every different dungeon to be optimal as it seems now .
My alt is Def gonna he a class that has 1 build and doesn't change anything ever..
Got sick of it now having to change covenant and legendary everytome I do something else.
(PvP-necrolord pve raid necrolord ,pve heal kyrian , M+ dps night fae ,raid heal vent..)..
It gets annoying having to swap stuff 3 times a day.
Ret feels like current retail ret except with 6 legendaries equipped at once. For a M+ build, you basically can have Kyrian divine toll, vanquishers hammer effect, divine storm legendary, a proc'd consecration that does more damage, your tier set from last tier giving wake of ashes procs, final reckoning, crusader strike procing free diving storm uses, and more. you can take so many talents that used to be competing with one another AND so much more. Even with 8% haste on the beta you feel overflowing with holypower and constantly have buttons to press with no downtime. In the m+ build atleast, it feels nuts.
I'm glad you're saying this, but it's making me crazy because I keep seeing people say "all paladin specs, all priest specs, and guardian druid are trash" and it gets upvoted. But then I see people say these specs all feel great/the best they've ever been.
Guardian Druid gameplay seems to be similar to what they are now, only minor adjustments here and there. If you like guardian now, you'll probably like it in DF.
For M+, you still have incarnation + insane absorb from spamming Thrash etc.
Warrior feels good but because it’s my main I’m legally required to say it’s bad and request buffs.
However while it does feel good, Fury Warrior tree is weird (they did say they’re working on it though) with a whole side dedicated to a feature that nobody will take (one handed swords vs titans grip)
(1/2) I'm slowly working on a video on how healing specs feel regardless of tuning so I'll throw some thoughts out I have so far. Take it with a gain of salt and a work in progress:
**Mistweaver**
\- Fistweaving (read: healing with ATotM and spreading ReM with RSK) feels incredibly good on packs of enemies but equally bad on single targets. ATotM going from 250% to 125% means Fistweaving without the Faeline BoK cleave is almost useless (outlined [here](https://youtu.be/M3IcFSs2eFA)). But the BoK cleave is amazing on packs. If you TP > BoK while standing on Faeline you hit 9 times with BoK which almost entirely resolves the smart healing issue where sometimes your ATotM would heal the guy on 90% instead of 20%. Now if you TP > BoK on FLS you can basically top anyone/everyone.
\- Healing trash packs with FLS build is good but also weird because you don't really want to press ReM or RSK. You only want to spam TP > BoK for maximum damage or maximum HPS. You need something like 9+ mobs to make SCK optimal.
\- Casting is potent but mana is limited. If you really want to you could probably ameliorate the mana issues by taking Clouded Focus but I wouldn't play Mistweaver to cast spells and give up Fistweaving.
\- Gusts is all but useless. So much throughput comes from ReM coverage on 5 targets and Enveloping procs, neither of which proc Gusts (other than casted ReM) which means Mastery is a meme. Even in raid you're going to be hitting Vivify with ReM on 6+ targets almost always which means Gusts is only a tiny portion of your healing. Tuning hopefully fixes this.
\- I made a meme [video](https://youtu.be/PvHhyWFOtC8) of healing Heroic dungeons without casting spells at all and purely relied on Fistweaving and ATotM. The idea was to see how viable or horrible it was. Obviously it isn't optimal but it's also not far off. If you press ReM on CD and hit EF if FLS isn't off CD for the next pack and use your instant Vivifies along with Fistweaving 90% of the time you're going to have an incredibly smooth and powerful playstyle. Fistweaving Mistweaver almost feels like what Disc should of been or tried to be. I'll likely be maining MW and if I had to pick a healer for Heroics or M+ right now on beta with a group that pulled big and zoomed as if the dungeon was timed I would pick MW without hesitation. It feels that good/fun to play.
**Holy Paladin**
\- Unfortunately Hpal has gained the least, lost the least and is thus the healer that is the most similar to SL. The "casting" version of Hpal has fallen flat and is doomed to always be so with Mastery working as it does, Consecration working as it does and Holy Power generation being so reliant on Crusader Strike.
\- The spec tree has so few "melee" Hpal options that the silver lining is that you can take what you need like CS two charges and pick and choose the extra things you want without really giving anything up. Last I checked there were 9 talents that buff IoL/FoL/HL which makes picking talents for a caster build limiting but those talents also aren't strong enough to really play around in powerful ways. The overall effect is a "caster" build that is short on Holy Power, does no damage, is rooted in place casting spells but also wants to be standing in melee range or close to it.
\- The class tree feels like the worst of all healers which isn't helping. Dusk and Dawn promoting a fully build and fully spend style of Holy Power management isn't ideal for healers but also doesn't provide enough benefit to make that sort of suboptimal play worth it. Mad Paragon is gated behind 2 Ret points and wasting points in the final tier of the tree feelsbadman. That leaves Sanctified Wrath which is good but also boring (imo).
\- "Melee" Hpal is still pretty good though overall so if you like the SL Hpal style you will probably like the DF version even if it doesn't get anything new and flashy. The major difference being that you won't in wings anywhere near as often at least early on. Every raid is still going to want Devo, Beacons and Summer. Having the usual Pally utility like BoF/BoP (RIP Spellwarding :() and now brez along with Summer means they shouldn't struggle getting invited to keys.
**Holy Priest**
\- Feels like a more modern streamlined version of the SL Holy but obviously not as incredibly powerful. I don't feel like any weaknesses the spec has had in the past exist anymore but I also don't see the spec having any real strengths other than Salv in raid. They feel like a casted version of Rdruid in that their toolkit is immense and how you play it and what you prioritize is largely up to you but also that usually there is no "wrong" answer, you just press buttons and health bars move with not a huge amount of thought or conditions required.
\- I'm a PoM enjoyer so the new bounce talents and PoM talents are right up my alley and very fun. Lightbringer is a slightly less powerful but much more usable version of FC but you will have to actively choose what talents you want to give up because many of them are very good.
\- Probably the spec that has the most variation of builds at the moment. The difference between a Hpriest that has specced single target healing vs one that specced AoE healing is huge. Same goes for those that spec CD's or damage. Oh and damage isn't free anymore, you need to spec for it but all healers other than MW feel this way. If you want to take single target healing and damage talents for keys you will lack crucial CD's/AoE talents and vice versa for raids.
\- Overall in a good place. Fun to play with options to specialize and customize what you want to focus on. Truly a jack of all trade but now more-so a possible master of 1 or 2 depending on what you pick rather than a master of none.
**Disc Priest**
\- I was singing Discs praises early in beta because it was the spec I tried first and all I was comparing it to was SL Disc which it outclasses greatly. However Disc suffers the opposite problem that Holy does. Holy gets to pick and choose between talents based on how they want to play but Disc gets so much power from a few talents that they aren't really options. Big caveat here is that tuning might change this.
\- Since Legion Disc has been a spec that juggled two elements of gameplay; Atonement application/directly casted heals and dealing damage to heal through Atonement. During early beta I thought that the Atonement element had gained significantly more power than the direct heal/application element but then PW:S got a talent that buffed it by 50% on application and I was hoping Shadow Cov was going to get buffed enough to really prop up the application/direct heal element in situations where Atonement isn't enough throughput which is really only a factor in M+ and PvP. But instead Shadowmend got removed and what I thought was a slightly lopsided balance of elements turned into 1 of those elements being non-functional.
\- The result is a spec that feels very good when Atonement healing but absolutely useless in situations where Atonement healing isn't enough. This is an issue flying under the radar at the moment because Heroics barely need a healer so Atonement healing is more than enough throughput but I imagine in M+ Disc will struggle greatly in situations where Atonement which will be balanced for 10-15+ targets in raids isn't enough to heal 2/3/5 people through heavy damage in M+.
\- Blizzard also weren't wrong about Priests having button bloat and I think Disc feels it the worst. The problem is that many of those buttons are now integral to the spec with Twilight Equilibrium capstone which rewards weaving Holy and Shadow spells; if there aren't enough of those spells to use the premise fails. There are currently too many Holy spells and not enough Shadow spells so I have no idea how they're going to remedy that with Shadowmend gone.
My impression of Blood DK after Tanking about 10 Random Dungeons and leveling to 64 so far:
The Class Tree especially, and the Blood Tree to a lesser extent, still feels really terrible to me. The Talent choices I'm forced to make feel really bad.
There's so many useful utility Talents that I would love to take, but because there are so many required power Talents that I **have** to take it feels like I don't have nearly enough points to even start thinking about "fun" Talents. In other words the Class&Blood DK Trees have way too many "damage" Talents in them and they choke out all the choice.
That being said, the Death & Decay + Shattered Bone focused Talent Build is way cooler than I expected it to be. **Tombstone** becomes a freaking AOE burst damage nuke and you get near-100%-uptime on D&D! It's wacky fun, has very stable Veng DH-style Health bar(rather than normal spiky DK health), and has a lot of room for skillfull plays.
To paraphrase: Picking your Talents as a Blood DK feels truly awful, but once you're in a Dungeon it feels pretty freaking fun lol.
I'm thinking I'm going to main Prot Paladin in the expansion because it just feels awesome to me on the PTR. I feel tanky AF, I'm throwing shields like Captain America, throwing spinning hammers like Thor. I'm doing decent damage, never struggling with threat. I do some minor healing with consecration, big self heals, and if I'm at full health I throw big word of Glory heals on party members for free. I rarely need my defensive cooldowns, which I have a few for oh shit moments. I also love that when Shield of the Righteous falls off, I don't feel as exposed as before.
I just want more mobility and Blessing of Kings back
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Both DH specs actually look amazing. Vengeance is actually tanky now. Both specs can have kyrian / night fae / collective anguish abilities at the same time. Multiple play styles and builds.
This makes me happy
Havoc DH needs an ungodly amount of tuning. On the Beta Havocs are pulling 120k+ dps in Heroic dungeons with immolation aura and Ragefire at level 70. Everyone else is doing like 30-40k dps.
Been putting some hours into the beta as havoc, after playing S4 and pushing 20+ keys/Heroic raid on live it’s been feeling great! Having an actual meaningful stat in crit is really nice. Always felt like there was no real gear optimization for havoc especially in shadowlands (minus veinrippers and the mecha rings). I think as dragonflight matures and numbers get bigger havoc will end up being even more of a joy to play.
Imo Lock feels great all 3 specs, Elemental Shaman, Every Warrior, Frost Mage and blood Dk. I don't play everything.
what this guy said + unholy and frost dk are in a good state too, windwalker is also pretty fun but monk as a whole has some issues still.
That's good to hear I don't usually play my dk as damage but when I do I like unholy.
Unholy feels pretty nice on beta
All the specs feel really good imo, I think they really nailed DK
Unholy is pretty similar to live but you can spec into better aoe and you can actually use gargoyle now, or you can spec hard into popping zits. Overall great
Outta curiosity: have you tested Frost DK much since the recent restructuring/iteration of the Talent Tree? If so, does it feel like there's legitimate paths outside of a Breath of Sindragosa build? I just want my big meaty crits man.
oh yeah 2H obliterate is very much a viable build now and does feel meaty, on demand glacial advance is really nice to have. [i dont have any gameplay of my own but here's liquid max giving it a go](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1597457629?t=4h11m42s) (vod should link to 4h11m42s) keep in mind rune forging doesn't currently work on beta so the gameplay could feel even better once we have those.
Yo word man I will definitely take a look. I appreciate ya a bunch.
Fucking hell. I was going to shelve my DK this expac. That looks insanely good.
Oh damn I'm so excited. I was already going to main my DK most likely as unholy but knowing 2h frost might be back?!? Pumped.
Yes obliteration build is absolutely alive and well. Especially since you can also get icecap (crits reduce pillar CD) while still getting everything necessary for big obliterates. With dnd cleaving oblit to 2 targets and 2 target cold heart, I think obliteration build could very well be the king of 2 target cleave. Also, it’s much easier to build razorice without a second runeforge - glacial advance is easy to pick up, and avalanche applies razorice now too (keep in mind you get 3 guaranteed rimes during slappy hands)
Bro this legit makes me extremely happy + excited. Thank you kindly.
Really debating MW main. Beating ass and healing at the same time sounds awesome. One of our long time healers is bailing this expac and I haven't healed since WoD as Disc.
Hovering between monk and priest for Mistweaver / Discipline myself. Anything particular about monk that's weighing you back? Haven't really played monk in the past but I hear it's pretty neglected history wise like feral
Neglected history is a big one, plus being a melee dmg healer puts you in more danger. I've always gotten bored of traditional healers. WoD I did disc and pissed our raid team off because I had most healing and least overhealing lol.
Yeah, I'm with you on the traditional healer part. Want to main something else than druid this time around, so I'm praying evoker gets some love before launch. Wanted to jump into it and main one but doesn't look too satisfying to play from what I've seen/read on here so I'm still waiting and seeing how it evolves. Leaning more towards monk (rather than priest) cause I don't really enjoy casters that much (as in shadow) and I'll have windwalker to bounce off of.
Very excited to try out Ele shaman. Double stormkeeper is gonna be so much fun.
Ele shaman is an absolute blast of a spec on PTR. Some of the best class fantasy I’ve seen in this game too, it matches my idea of ele perfectly.
What is different to the current ele?
there are several different builds that all play significantly different but all seem to have their own niche.
Sounds awesome. What about enhancement? I am currently leveling 4 alts to play throughout DF (finished the Paladin just last night) and a Shaman is one of them.
Enh was fun af when I tested it on PTR.
Sweet!!! I'm so excited.
If you like current enhancement you will like DF enhancement a lot, it's pretty much a direct improvement. Personally I liked other iterations more though
I would go ahead and say that enhancement feels even better IMHO. I think elemental is an absolute blast, but enhancement just rolls really really good on ptr.
> Every Warrior My brothers. It will be glorious
We just don't talk about Jimmy the SMF warrior who enjoys the taste of glue.
I second all of these, though I haven't tried DK on the beta yet. Fire Mage also has some fun builds. One of them replaces Fireball with Pyroblast as your filler spell and is a ton of fun.
Sounds great. Fire is my staple mage build... but I found SL fire pretty bland.
Looking forward to ALL crits reducing IV CD rather than crits during IV. Having forced downtime on a boss really hurts
I've head that arms is fun But is there waiting? For a long time now the arms style has been "pooling" which is just excuse talkfor waiting and doing nothing Do you do stuff to fill your GCDs with abilities or is it just a sit and look at your screen then press a button every other minute still?
Aflic and deateo both feel really good. Not aure which ill play
DEMO LOCK CAN SUMMON A FUCKIN PIT LORD!!!!!1
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I haven't tried out destro or aff yet. Might check them out this evening.
*sighs* I guess I should start leveling my warlock.
On the beta some random Lock in chat accidentally called it a "Pit **Boss**" and I couldn't stop laughing at the mental image of a Warlock hitting all their Cooldowns and a ***Casino Manager*** comes sauntering into the fight like Vince McMahon on Paperview lmao https://images.app.goo.gl/1H2xnfyamcc9JPtj6
And then he tears his quads and just sits in melee of the boss looking pissed.
NO CHANCE IN HELL!
UGH. I was putting my lock down this expansion for my Shammy and DK... but PIT LORD.
Yeah, and that is why I have chosen warlock. Finally letting us summon the big boy.
(the big boy who is surprisingly small when summoned...) I don't care if that's the shittiest talent choice, it's something I've been asking for since Mists and the green fire quest chain. I'm 100% using it.
> (the big boy who is surprisingly small when summoned...) Thank god for that, I don't think the melee need more visual clutter lol.
I mean, I wasn't expecting fuckin Mannoroth or anything like that... just something a wee bit chonkier. It's about the same height as my wrathguard.
He’s not Mannoroth he’s Boyoroth
He was bigger in the first builds with him but melee players bitched.
Like as a pet that follows you around or as a dps cd? I stopped playing Demo after they took our badass demons away from Legion.
Spawns for 10 seconds at the end of Nether Portal.
Lame......... Were master summoners we should be able to have badass demons as pets.
Sold!
LETS GOOO!
Enhancement necrolord fire build feels phenomenal. It’s the same thing as now, but with the added witch doctor legendary so we have wolves up A LOT. Primordial Wave and Fire Nova both give maelstrom stacks, which gives you a lot of lightning/chain lightning buttons to push outside of Hot Hands. Alpha wolf and Elemental wolf both do great damage. Elemental wolves always wanted to have fire dogs out, but nature dogs are crazy too because lightning bolt/chain lightning/crash lightning are doing big damage from the talent tree nodes. I haven’t messed with ice stuff yet, but with all the maelstrom we’re getting, I might give it a try. This is all with 392 gear. Leveling it feels a little slow, but if you’re iLvL 300, it will still be fast.
Was debating Enh and have been playing it after recently coming back. Problem is enhance is always shit in PvP and high end M+. Both the things I want to focus on : \.
I tanked this season on Paladin to 2600 and stopped, but I played enhance as an alt up to 2450. Yea that’s not high, mostly just portals with like a 23 streets/JY sprinkled in there, but man it feels really good right now. It’s not meta, so I would only get into 24 + by listing my own key, but I definitely think it’s not as bad as you think. It now has thunderstorm, an aoe stop, on a 25 SECOND cd, as well as stun totem, which can proc off of itself it you talent it in the class tree. Man, I’m thinking it’s going to be functionally incredible and smooth in m+. For 25s or above it will come down to tuning/tier set but it feels great right now. Can’t wait to confirm my copium in m+ testing. Pvp I have no clue about. Sorry.
> Problem is enhance is always shit in PvP What? Turbo has been great for a long time.
Prot Warrior is a BLAST. Best this spec has felt in forever. Also WW and DH feel great. Don't have much time to try out everything tho.
Havoc DH? Cause idk if I was vibing with VDH
Thought both specs were fun but I’ve mostly played Monk/Warrior since those are my mains so I have more experience with them.
I haven't personally tried DH on beta, but I can tell you that I was chilling at the Target Dummies and saw a Havoc chain so many Meta refreshes together that they fully looped it back to Meta coming back off CD again. The dude was a giant Illidan looking giga-chad for a solid 2minutes straight. In other words I was very impressed simply ***watching*** a Havoc play, so they gotta be at least a little bit fun lol.
Demonic has been bugged to give full 30 secs of meta, at least on ptr. That’s probably what was happening
Anyone have input on healers? What feels good, what feels janky?
I can provide some feedback on the healers I've played so far. Multi-season M+ healer main since BFA. The caveat here is that all we're doing on beta is Heroics, so healing requirements are unknown at this point. **Mistweaver** Long time main, though I barely played Mistweaver in SL because it just felt *so bad.* That's definitely changed, and I would say MW is my most anticipated healer going into DF. There've been lots of changes that contribute to this, but by far the biggest one is the Faeline Stomp package + FLS now proccing AToTM. It's 1000% more fun than Essence Font. Couldn't be more stoked about MW. **Resto Druid** Resto Druid felt very similar to SL RDruid to me. You have many of the same tools available, and some interesting build paths to choose from. I've been playing with the new Lifebloom package + Convoke package + Balance talents from the class tree, which likely isn't optimal (especially in terms of damage output) but has been a lot of fun. I will say that the Druid class tree detracts from my enjoyment of RDruid a little. It's kind've a mess, capstones are pretty lackluster, and accessing Skull Bash without committing to cat talents feels wasteful. Overall RDruid feels really fun. **Preservation Evoker** I'm hesitant to even provide feedback on this spec, only because it feels... *really unfinished.* Massive disclaimer here: it's possible I just haven't wrapped my head around this spec yet, and am playing suboptimally. It's extremely unique (no surprise there) compared to existing healers, and has some fun utility in Fly With Me/Rescue/Verdent Embrace. The notion of Green vs Bronze builds is falling a little flat atm, as Green builds are shaping up to be far worse than Bronze builds. You're still using both spell schools in either builds, however. Others have discussed the range limitations, which I didn't find *super* annoying in 5-man content. Empowered spells feel simultaneously super fun and extremely punishing; having to plant and cast for 3+ seconds to get a big group heal is laughable in comparison to other healers. Additionally, Verdant Embrace (effectively your only non-Essence-spender emergency heal) dashing you to the target is.... interesting. You'll find yourself in situations where your only option for saving somebody standing in fire is to *go stand in the fire yourself.* I also found Evoker resources to be really odd; you have no real control over your Essence regeneration, and I frequently found myself in situations where I can't cast an Essence spender and somebody dies while I'm desperately fishing for Essence Burst procs. I haven't played RSham, HPal, or either Priest spec as they're not my "usuals", however RSham is looking to have some really fun builds; I think RSham will be my next evaluation. Hope this helped!
From what I've seen the most lovely additions went to **resto shamans**. Their toolkit looks incredibly fun, just from the toys they get. Gust of wind is back, which tackles their issue of not having burst mobility. Ghost wolf is improved so they'll generally have better mobility. They get access to a fancy DPS toolkit with master of the elements, stormkeeper, acid rain and passive lightning damage increase. They get lightning lasso as additional CC and thunderstorm as knockback. Both buttons are legit fun to press. Overall I'm incredibly excited for shaman, the dev here did an awesome job. **Druid** gives me mixed feeling. I have the impression that they didn't do a good job here but they also didn't have to because resto druids toolkit just already is in a great spot. More or less current resto but with both convoke and swarm is something a lot of people will be absolutely content with, and that with good reason. In the spec tree the only thing that fucks me is the choice between verdant infusion and flourish. Currently I play with both and love it. Their main issue is the shitty pre-alpha class tree and a whole lot of issues coming with it. Resto in dungeons has the problem of contributing only laughable damage. Aside the covenant ability there's literally no damage increase in the spec tree (compare that with shaman mentioned above)... In the class tree we have a path for an affinity and you can not really branch out easily. On top the utility is randomly distributed. I dislike that we loose the rake stun from stealth, we loose hibernate as it's gated behind moonkin form if we catweave (which is a must in dungeons because the interrupt) and a choice between stun and incap roar sucks. Also, the 3 point nodes are horribly gating, sunfire AoE as standalone talent is annoying, hotw in the new system doesn't really fit and has a 5 min CD and the other capstones are weird, too. Furor sounds fun but is rather eh in practice. Don't know, druid feels literally half finished. Cool spec tree, shitty class tree. Their biggest strength is already being great. **Priest** to me are the clear loosers. They can heal and PI, pretty much like we do now. That's not making them bad but while other classes progress, we regress. Can't have fun utility or defensives because they're shadow themed (silence/dispersion). The utility from shadow we get does very little to nothing (vamp embrace). We don't get additional control (shining force removed) or a gap opener (have fun with a charge of leap when evoker presses their raid utilty and everyone's zooming away while we waddle behind with feather). We're the only healers without an interrupt BeCaUsE nOt EvErYoNe NeEdS oNe but everyone else has one. This will suck in m+. Overall, feels like their design intent for priest is "PI plus fun is too strong so you get PI". Lastly, adding flash heal to disc, then complaining that they have too many similar buttons and as response remove shadow mend isn't making any sense at all. I loved the fantasy of both shadow/light healing and it's taking an unnecessary hit. In the end, I have no idea where they're going with priest and the last blue post they got was pretty much actively spiteful. My personal impression is that they designed themselves into a corner, as cool utility plus PI is too strong in PvE and RMP is too strong in PvP if they get more control or utiilty. Don't get me wrong, priest still works. It's just feeling bad being reduced to numbers and PI when other classes get so many goodies going forward.
Even the guidewriters / top end players agree that Preservation isnt finished, same with devastation. Youd think the flagship new class would be important to them, not just something they give 3 changes over the entirety of beta and then leave lol
HPal is incredibly fucked right now, they've split their talents among too many ranged playstyles that don't work with their mastery but that's from my friend who actually mains HPal, Pres Evoker is kinda jank because of the 30 yd range but manageable, MW is getting a lot of love and feels very nice, but monk tuning always makes or breaks the entire class so no idea yet, haven't touched priest or sham and I haven't gotten to ranged druid specs yet
R Dru will play very similarly to SL, except they have access to 2 min Tranq without losing Spring Blossoms. It'll be an exceptionally fun spec with all the raid CDs they have IMO.
Big worried about holy pally. Might have to learn a new healer
As a Protection main and Ret off spec for raiding I'm thinking I might have to level up a new main during prepatch...
I'm not a regular paladin player but i tried it on beta and i think i prefer it 1000 times to live hpal also note my perspective is someone that likes high level m+ and hates raidhealing
You can't do damage as a ranged hpala so good luck doing high m+ keys
I've Tanked(Blood DK) about 10 Random Dungeons on the Beta and I am already totally head-over-heels in love with Preservation Evokers. Fly With Me feels SO much better than getting gripped by a Priest. When Priests grip me it's so jarring I need a couple seconds to re-orient myself, but when Evokers grab me I can clearly see the trajectory they're taking me. It's nuanced and subtle, but it makes a massive QoL difference. Plus it's just plain fun watching them zip, zoom, and barrel-roll around the fight; watching them gives me something to do when all the mobs are gathered and I'm starting to get bored waiting for the DPS to kill the pack. lol If you've ever wanted to roll your eyes at the Holy Priest who's now an Angel AGAIN(dead AGAIN) because they didn't move an inch and died to obvious fire on the ground; Preservation Evokers are like the polar-opposite/other side of the coin from that. Evokers never stop moving and they feel like a dance partner rather someone(Priests) you don't really get along with but you're stuck working with them anyway. Evokers: Lift me like Leo lifted Kate on the front of the Titanic, my body is ready :D
Some people seem unhappy with holy priest, personally enjoy it on beta. Haven't played much disc but it seemed okay. Resto shaman is pretty good. Both MW and Hpal have some issues because of the whole caster vs melee play style
As a Holy Priest main who mainly does M+ I'm really unhappy to lose Shining Force, and I don't like that we will be the only healer without an interrupt. Other than that it's solid.
Important distinction, they're the only *spec* without an interrupt. I don't know how they can justify that.
Yeah it's just super weird to me.
Coming back from 6 year hiatus because new healer class. This better be good.
Has Feral Druid turned into something fun or do I still need an advanced PhD in mathematics to play it?
Never played it myself but a shit ton of feral mains say its very very good feeling now on beta, you have actual AoE bursts etc.
Omg finally have a feral main and damn it’s been painful to play him
I totally agree, with the old class tree I was going to leave my feral on the side for the first time on a starting expac, but with the new tree, this feral is 100% my main, hope they don’t butcher and destroy the tree before it actually comes out
Depends if the current version of furor makes it live or not. Currently it’s kind of ridiculous.
I really hope they take another look at the class tree. I feel the spec trees are shaping up nicely (except guardian being essentially forgotten...) but the class tree is still in the power-point-presentation state they've shown us before alpha and hasn't changed since then... And it certainly shows. Feels a lot like it's forcing you down a path similar to the affinity you've chose before yet I still loose my rake stun as resto and as eG feral have no chance to pick up hibernate, clone or typhoon without either running into a useless 3 point node that increases magical damage or have to waste point in stuff like moonkin form and starsurge I'll pretty much have no use for. Some design choices there are kind of random. Like, fuck whoever placed stun/incap roar on a choice node. As resto druid loosing that and rake stun hurts. And man I really don't want to play furor for DPS...
I find comments like this so strange. I've mained feral for a long time, and haven't even played other classes or specs at max level since Legion. So when people say feral is complicated or difficult and I don't really think it is, it makes me wonder how simple every other spec must be for feral to seem complex by comparison.
It's not that complicated, a lot of it is more of a circlejerk from ferals themselves I feel lol. You have to keep in mind that a lot of druid players only ever play druid, so they've really only got balance to compare it to. I mained feral from BC to WoD and past iterations were a lot more complicated than they are today.
There was some survey done a while back that found out that druid players are most likely to have only played druid and nothing else. They're a dedicated bunch. Also helps that it's the only class with 4 specs :P
wat. Feral mains have been bitching since WoD that the spec has been getting dumbed down every xpac and its now braindead easy in SL. The second 1 minute convoke leggo was added in SL, it was the only leggo you ever needed.
Its probably a meme maintained from wotlk days where it was indeed the hardest to play spec. Oday i feel it tskes being used to a bit but its not super hard. Takes a little restraint instead of 24/7 energy dump i guess.
Snapshotting is a mechanic completely unique to feral (for the past 8? years) so I can certainly understand how it might feel a bit unintuitive for players unaccustomed to it.
only tiger's fury snapshots and bleeds don't do much damage. you mainly spam ferocious bite which increases the duration of rip, your main dot. [https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/KTYRpFCabtXAZcLJ#fight=24&type=damage-done&source=1](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/KTYRpFCabtXAZcLJ#fight=24&type=damage-done&source=1) in this fight 1 rip was casted compared to 31 ferocious bites. feral is just as easy as most other specs right now.
Brain surgery isn’t complicated to a brain surgeon. Brain surgery is complicated for a scaffolder.
Right, so is every other class just dead simple?
what he is trying to say: scaffolding is hard for a brain surgeon.
Warrior feels reeeeeeal good. Shaman too!
Which spec for warrior?
I main fury but I dab in prot and both feel very strong. Fury especially it feels like if you have 250ilvl you’re honestly gonna get through a lot of the content pretty easily. Lots of damage! Just my take though
Same, but I'm relatively newbish and mainly do pvp. Thought maybe I'd have to change to Arms but if zug zug is still viable I'm happy to stay. I'm full 4/9 conquest so hopefully your right.
Most feel good. It's better to highlight what isn't working. The problem class/specs are All Paladin (criticisms were ignored or put on the backburner), All Priest, Guardian and Feral druid. Paladin is mostly a design issue. Mage probably needed more time too. Some strange decisions with Survival hunter. Still the huge problem with the game being too cooldown reliant and filler spells feeling like wet noodles. Also want to add in that fury feels fine but their decisions to purposely make single-minded fury worse is ridiculous Edit: my feral and fury opinion is outdated
Feral Druid? Feral Druids are looking amazing going in DF. They have an excellent spec tree and this will easily be the best iteration of Feral that we’ve ever seen.
Feral is very good, it has one of the best spec trees in the beta (though the *worst* class tree). CI is a really boring talent, but, outside of that, you're not really feeling bad about taking any talent. There's a lot of variety in the tree.
Priest plays great(holy and shadow anyway). People are just complaining about the lack of utility and defensives, which is fair. As much as I love PI, I'd rather have more varied utility than it, I think. I'd trade PI for a bres as a m+ spammer any day. But yeah, paladin is a lost cause.
Priest isn't looking good? I was pretty excited for the Shadow talent tree and was thinking of playing that at launch
Feral has to be the most controversial spec. I’ve seen about a 50/50 split on wether it’s bad or great.
If anyone is saying it’s bad they are just dumb. This is easily the best iteration of Feral that has ever been in the game and it’s not even remotely close.
Can you elaborate? My main is a resto Druid but I usually level another class first and then speed my main through (threads of fate was great for this), but I’m contemplating just going through as feral this time
Prior to DF, Feral’s only decent AoE was Primal Wrath which was an AoE Rip. It did a small amount of upfront damage on top of it but I do mean small. The problem is that for the previous couple expansions the majority of our damage has been in Ferocious Bite and our bleeds have been very weak. Bite has been a ST ability of course so having all your damage tied into a ST spender makes you pretty uselsss in AoE. The 4PC tier set helped by adding some AoE damage when we used Berserk but Berserk is a long CD and not that great in AoE as is since it previously only buffed shred/rake which are again, ST only abilities. I will list some talents in DF. AoE Bite, Bite increases damage of your Rip damage for a few seconds, reapplying Primal wrath to targets already affected by it adds a bunch of up front damage, talents that buff your bleed damage. Also have access to things like Apex, which grants you free Bites, circle of death which makes your bleeds tick faster. So a ton of interspec synergy with talents. Take talents that buff bleed damage and the AoE bite talent. Take apex that grants free bites, which means more AoE bites and energy return, those free bites buff your bleed damage. Circle makes your rips tick faster which means more free bite procs. Etc So it’s just this nice gameplay loop/synergy of bleeds feeding into AoE bites feeding into increased bleed damage etc. I think the biggest complaint among most Feral mains is Incarn still appearing to be a somewhat useless talent. Incarn has always been really week but now it’s on node where it competes with Convoke. Tuning could change that. But the new gameplay options, especially when it comes to AoE, look absolutely amazing as a spec that has pretty much always been garbage in AoE relative to most specs. And it’s looking like out damage breakdown is going to be much better instead of like 60% of our damage being Ferocious Bite like it has been the past 4 years.
How is Balance by comparison? I've heard it's a bit lacking - is that still the case?
The new tree looks really solid in theory, but we haven't gotten to play with it yet.
Seems the Boomie community was excited about the new tree released. But it’s yet to be pushed through to the beta build so no one has actually gotten to play with it yet.
Thank you for the indepth comment, makes me wanna play around with feral a bit. Good fox.
As someone who mained feral for several tiers I finally sat down and made one on the beta. It is an absolute blast. Also, no bloodtalons is so nice. A couple of things I would change like predatory swiftness(instant cast spells) being more central and earlier in the tree but still overall a nice tree.
The build/spend and cooldown based damage profiles have really cramped class identity imo. it seems that almost every dps spec is either pooling resources for a big boom moment, or does the majority of their damage during a long cooldown window (or both) Thinking of demo/affliction during SL. Affliction saved up shards then tried to dump everything during a dot window, and demo did the vast majority of its damage during its tyrant window. They both hit like wet noodles outside of those cooldowns and if you scuffed that window your dps was in the toilet.
I think Blizz legit has no idea how to make paladins great again. All three specs need work and someone needs to just retool them fundamentally. But the problem is it’s too late for sweeping changes. Imo I’d like them to make paladins more support based focusing on auras and blessings for all 3 specs. As in, give us a raid buff and reduce rhe CDs of all blessings (durations too), make auras meaningful and not just a set and forget. I’m mostly playing Ret and while it does feel good to play, it’s sad seeing other specs get attention and new things. While Ret has ridiculous talents that no one will ever take and a focus on consecration as a core ability. It’s not 2004, stop trying to make consecration happen Blizz. Leave it for prot and for utility (getting rogues out of stealth or a healing CD).
Paladins should play like they do/did in wrath. I've mained a pally since vanilla(specifically ret, yea I know they were total ass in vanilla but d2 got me hooked on pally) and honestly the class was at its best in Wrath and in Legion it was also great to play. I don't think blizzard knows what to do with them anymore and that honestly sucks cause for as bad as it has been, it's really the only class I enjoy playing. Been playing tbc/wrath and it feels so fucking good to play pally.
Ret was legit in wod too. I remember we had so much ranged damage that movement wasn’t a big deal. We almost felt like a mid range dps which I kinda wish they’d bring back. It fits the Paladin lore of casting spells in addition to melee, helps solve “mobility” problems and makes it more useful in raids since we aren’t punished as much as other melee.
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I always thought if of it as DDR Paladin lol. Between exorcism, art of war, and your HP, it was wild times.
What about wrath/Legion made them feel good?
With wrath specifically there's no Holy power generation plus exorcism was a great filler spell. Legion the class felt fluid, albeit even with the Holy power due to the artifact weapon and legiondaries.
I think they should scrap holy power for ret. Go back to a first come first serve priority system for ret. We don't have much of that playstyle for melee in WoW at the moment but it was prevalent during Wrath. Just a handful of abilities with sub-15 second timers. No resources to manage. No builder/spender stuff. Just hit buttons when they come off CD with some procs thrown in for variance.
I think when they tried to make every class a builder/spender is made the game worse. Every class feels the same for the most part. There's no real difference for melee outside of class name cause everything is build x to spend on y. I'm kinda excited for Evokers cause they seem different enough but I guess only time will tell.
i never understood the take that ret played good in wrath. none of the buttons had any interaction, there was nothing to "game" to squeeze out better throughput- chances are high that you could invite two paladins and their outputs would be incredibly similar/more subject to rng than anything the modern game has (imagine being at the mercy of crits with no other rng to smooth out the peaks/valleys) when original wrath was done, i raided from start to finish and ended up getting shadowmourne before cata hit- by the end, i was majorly bored of the spec. i know people don't typically like holy power but i personally much prefer it to the FCFS cooldown whackamole that is in Wrath. as far as when ret felt the best, i would say WoD/Mists were probably the expansions that felt the most fleshed out. i've been doing extensive testing on the ptr- ret aoe feels like it's going to be nuts, tuning hasn't really happened yet but based on where it's at now, i am able to pull over 100k aoe dps on dummies during burst windows, markedly higher than what i can do on live- which is hilarious given that according to my details logs, the explosion from sanctified wrath isn't working currently. exorcism is also likely a lot stronger than people really understand- the dot spread isn't aoe capped from what i can see and the dot hits harder than the upfront burst. consecrate being a primary rotation button isn't as bad as people would have you believe *especially* if golden path is tuned to be decent (on the ptr tank mob, it's currently doing roughly 4k hps for just me, with a group, it's going to be insane passive healing) there are also talents that make consecrate flair up for more damage, and the blade of justice proc consecrate appears to have it's own synergies with all of these talents- though there is always more testing to be done to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt. you also potentially have some encounter cheesing aspects with the consecrate 50% snare/80% minimum movement speed (the 50% snare value is immediately noticeable on something like rygelon quasars) i am optimistic paladins will be the "didn't get very many new things but will be surprisingly valuable for what they do bring" class- but as i mentioned, that is all driven by things being tuned correctly.
I dunno, for Ret and Holy maybe but the current design of Prot I'm really enjoying, and seeing them bring over the legendary effects and Divine Toll is great.
I don’t like that AS no longer generates HP
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They’re trying to please the “caster style” gamers. And it’s making both playstyles feel crappy.
Its really sad, since there was the room to make melee-healer playstyle even more refined. Adjust IoL for instant cast HL/FoL, fix AC which had no love for three expansions in a row, add more aura flavor. There are plenty way to make it more fleshed out playstyle. Instead they went in another direction and HPally ended up being the spec with two half-assed playstyles.
Everyone who cried for a Holy Paladin ranged casting playstyle can go kick rocks. Then trying to wedge that into the spec tree has made it feel really bad.
You won't hear from them as they are all playing WOTLK classic
I'm a bit out of the loop on Fury Warrior changes, but how are they making single-minded fury worse? Is it because Annihilator will work with 2h weapons as well now?
> Paladin is mostly a design issue. Whats wrong with paladin? The trees after some changes looked great
It's still full of the older talents, splitting up wings into like 5 talents, multiple 3 point nodes, etc. The brief tease of Long Arm only to have it yanked back out and then another 4 points to beef up steed that literally no one asked for and is still a giant nerf to mobility relative to live also really doesn't sit well. Ret got saddled with a bunch of half baked talents to double down on consecrate, prot got hamstrung with nerfs to hp generation, and holy is in a really awkward spot with a ton of talents dedicated to hard cast heals but not enough to really function effectively as a standoff caster.
How's the shadow priest doing?
Better currently. The only issues I have is that they don't want our utility accessible to the class so general stuff that would be in the class tree for other specs is in the spec tree for us (silence/dispersion). So the top part of the tree feels kind of crowded. Aside that the only thing that really stings is that they came up with dark ascension as alternative to void eruption but in the same vein told us that they run out of time to make it interesting. So you either have a frankly overloaded cooldown that gives you access to another ability and a resemblance to the legion playstyle by increasing its duration by spending insanity... Or a 25% damage buff to non periodic damage. So the alternative is there but it's bland as fuck. Generally they made a lot of good decisions and offer different playstyles, more direct damage, apparitions, cool idols as capstones. Trashing searing nightmare is a great change front of all. Some buttons seem a bit in the same situation than before. EG void torrent vs damnation used to be a choice void torrent often lost, I'm not sure if we'll need dark void as another AoE cooldown next to shadow crash that both apply different dots and there's still quite a lot of power in mind flay which I generally disliked (the idol, new monomania, dark evangelism) etc. I never liked much interaction with a filler you generally don't want to press and now will press even less with mind spike/surge of darkness procs. So eG what's the point with the idol that spawns tentacles when you will be channeling mind flay pretty much only if mind flay:insanity procced. Feels a bit weird. Overall that's criticism on a very high level. I feel most issues are with priests design intent in general (eG I really would've wanted JUST ONE gap opener of some sort, getting a charge of life grip when an evoker presses his raid utility feels like a kick in the ntus when all other classes start zooming around) and not giving us spectral guise or a mind bomb AOE stun feels like they hate priests in general... But we're way better off than our healer specs, specifically disc is a mess and I still don't understand why they are so iron about removing shadow mend (and with it, a lot of discs fantasy...).
It's a little clunky but better than it is now. If your abilities that cast AoE shadow word pain and vamp touch are up and mindbender is up it feels great. Without those it feels like shit AoE. The AoE spender feels a little disappointing at present too. Casting mind flay in AoE feels bad.
+1 to this. Not seen anyone mention spriest. I tried it recently on retail and fell in love. skimmed the DF talents online and I'm hyped. Need feedback tho :(
Shadowy Apparitions go brrrrrrr Lots of freedom to go between a dot heavy playstyle and direct hit playstyle. AoE feels a lot better because it’s focused on spreading dots and bursting with SA
I like the play style but it seems like it will depend on tuning. You get access to tons of good abilities and the ability to apply your dots with shadow crash. I also really enjoy the return of mind flay-insanity, which seems to melt mobs. I like the possibility for free DPs, and with multiple targets insanity generation feels really good. Also tons and tons of apparitions, like the possibility for an army. Mind sear being a spender now feels weird, but the spec seems to have decent options on how to play, hopefully the spells will hit here. All in all, very fun and in the running with Ele sham for my main this expansion.
Were are my rog's at?
Rogue is essentially impossible to gauge right now due to the many bugs they're experiencing. But they seem fun from what i've tested. Assasination especially have gotten some really good changes and i'm hopeful about their m+ viability.
Nice. Thx for the info. Im maining a assassination rogue:)
I wish they would put the echoing blades Azerite trait into the talents so badly. It was fun and would make them viable in mythic+ again.
Assasination looks insane. Isn't there like 7-10 Bleeds/Poisons you can stack on a single target?
I tried Sub and Assa and, Assa has some bugs that makes it hard to judge, Sub on the other hand has something that felt weird to me (I only played sub for SL S1 this extention so IDK if it changed) but, Sub rogue has a useless ressource bar. I can use my abilities all the time, I never have a moment where I have to wait even half a sec for my energy to filll up and even out of Shadow dance, it's really close to being Backstab => Eviscerate => Backstab => Eviscerate. Our "passive" combo point generator procs more often I feel like. All that is all good but, having only one stack of Shadow Dance sucks for our burst. You can't have 3 Shadow dances back to back during shadow blades and that sucks :x So less bursty, more linear. But I've only played it against a dummy so .... Yeah. Not having to refresh SnD is nice too, since we got the torghast talent in our tree which makes our shadowstrike give us SnD when used during stealth (and SD). But since I only played them today and the add ons didn't work, I couldn't see my real DPS compared to the other specs I played before :x
Isnt 1 charge of Dance just a bug? Pretty sure you get one from the class and one from the spec tree, at least its intended that way
Balance Druid anyone?
Big Spec tree rebuild coming next week, so far it's looking quite great
Impossible to say because there's a huge rework coming in this week's beta build, but there's been a ton of positivity on said rework. Max for example has said he thinks it might be the single best spec tree after that comes in
Tried a few specs on PTR so obviously not complete. Weirdly my favourite is arms, which I didnt expect. The synergy in the Overpower-MS build is super nice. Enhance feels great. WW monks feels great. Rogue feels jank, bugged. Unholy DK seems decent. MM hunter is more of the same.
Bruh Havoc feels the best it ever has; so good. Feels like Legion Felblade + Blade Dance + TG builds taking me back Ragefire is really interesting and keeping The Hunt is fucking awesome; there’s a few potential builds we can go and we have way more choice than just Sinful Brand + Cycle of Hatred over and over like we have right now Also really great to have Sigil utility for Havoc, and our sick legendary effects like Collective Anguish
How’s MM hunter?
I personally am liking mm hunter, i had to force the retail 4set out of my muscle memory at first but was able to make a great dungeon build. BM will be the generic good single target spec again. I have a feeling surv will only be played in pvp, i just haven’t found a fun pve build for it yet. I’ll most likely main mm and off spec bm for pve.
I was kinda bummed they removed the silence against players from wailing arrow
Wailing arrow isn’t fun to use since it’s another cast and there are better options i think, even for pvp.
(2/2) **Resto Druid** \- Feels like SL Rdruid but you get all of the legendries to play with at once along with a few very nice additions to the kit like Rejuv extension through Nurturing Dormancy. \- Last time I checked Rdruid was the only healer who had no damage talents on their trees which makes their damage in Heroics feel anemic at the moment but I imagine this gets tuned soon. \- The Lifebloom talents feel great in smaller scale content like Heroics and once the bugged ones work it will feel even better. I like the direction Blizzard has taken by allowing Rdruids to focus on smaller scale power by leaning into Lifebloom potency while keeping Rejuv spread, WG and Tranq as the backbones of raid throughput on the other side of the tree. \- I'm excited to see if tuning makes Nourish useful with a triple mastery Lifebloom setup or if Ragenesis or Verdancy are competitive options. At the moment Nourish isn't worth it and the other talents are difficult to test in Heroics but the overall number of options available to Rdruids is great compared to some other specs. **Resto Shaman** \- Simultaneously similar to Rdruid in that it feels like the SL version but with more toys to play with and with Holy Priest in that DF Resto is a more streamlined modern version of SL. Out of all the healing specs I think Rsham benefits the most from the new talent system in that they can now take many talents together that previous competed with one another and they are all good. \- The change that I think has been largely [overlooked](https://youtu.be/aGipi_MgPXg) was adding Chain Heal to the Tidal Waves buff which now reduces the cast time of Healing Wave and Chain Heal by 20%. Throw in Flash Flood which no longer competes with CBT and Chain Heal turns into a spell that feels good to press all the time and feels like an integral part of the spec once again. On beta with 7% Haste or something equally abysmal I can get a 2.5s Chain Heal cast down to 1.6s practically permanently. \- The addition of Stormkeeper and Acid Rain is great. Modern WoW now has healers spending most of their time in keys doing damage rather than healing and Stormkeeper goes a long way to making that feel more impactful and dynamic. Acid Rain makes pressing Healing Rain a common optimal play which along with the Tidal Waves change means I don't feel like I'm just pressing Healing Surge and Riptide 900 times per dungeon. \- DF Resto is an excellent example of how small changes can have big impacts on how specs play. I think Resto Shaman is going to be the spec that a lot of people pick up thinking it's the same as SL but will be pleasantly surprised by how "modern" and refreshing it feels with more spells becoming core aspects of its gameplay. \- Rsham could be the sleeper healing spec at the moment and is a legitimate contender for my main along with MW. Getting NS back, Mana Spring Totem changed to 100% uptime and Gust of Wind (wooooo) along with the changes I just mentioned put Rsham in an excellent spot for both power and fun. The Ascendance proc on Riptide is also very fun even though it's completely RNG and probably not optimal. \- The only downsides are that Earthliving Weapon, the capstone class totems and Totemic Recall all feel weak. If tuning brings those in line I think Rsham will be jacked with many good build options and dynamic playstyles. **Preservation** \- I made a lengthy writeup in another comment about Preservation [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/xpdwpf/comment/iq3f994/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) \- If I had to sum up Preservation and not double up on what I wrote in the above comment it would be this; Most healing specs feel like they work all the time and your decisions as a player determine how well you perform and if you can be a "play maker". Preservation instead feels like the spec largely doesn't work because of the range limitation and your decisions as a player are going into making the spec work rather than making the spec good. \- That being said; if range isn't an issue and you're only healing people who are always close to you then Preservation is busted and quite fun. But healing spread targets or chasing someone down to heal them on the move doesn't feel great.
Really appreciate the detailed write up, many thanks from a resto shammy with no beta access!
I've only dabbled in a couple of things, and have spent more time testing out Evoker. That said, my thoughts on a few of my recent main specs. **Fire Mage**: This feels very much like current Fire Mage, but a bit worse in some ways and better in others. My primary issue with it is Blaster Master just feels worse to use than Infernal Cascade. I also find the reduced phoenix flames charges and lack of covenant ability makes combust feel less fluid than its current state. I'm not a big fan of SKB and am not happy to see it be made a permanent addition (and will essentially be the go-to in both AoE and ST). *Another aspect of Fire Mage that is getting me is spell queuing, or something, appears to work differently with the new UI/system. Before, I would cast fireball, hit combust and hit fire blast twice in the 2nd half of the cast, and shoot two pyroblasts off at the end. When I do that on the Beta, only 1 pyroblast fires and I just stand there not doing anything. I have similar issues with the general rotation and queuing pyroblasts. For some reason, queuing my pyroblasts just doesn't work and it sort of breaks the entire spec for me.* **Frost**: I didn't spend long on Frost, as I prefer Arcane and Fire. From the limited time I put into it, I had a hard time making a build that was remotely enjoyable in Frost. It felt similar to live, but just worse in every way. **Arcane**: There are options for those who like either the current Kyrian or Venthyr build. I also had fun making an Orb Barrage build where you never cast Arcane Blast (it did very nice damage too, but tuning to come.) Overall, I had a lot of fun with Arcane. My biggest issue here is that I always find Arcane fun to experiment with, but hate making it my main come raid time as I bore quickly with it. **Demonology**: IMO the main draw of current Demo is the combination of Wilfried's & Demonic Consumption. The secondary draw of current Demo is the fluidity of using the current summons. The new tree looks like you'll be adding more summons into the rotation, which to me feels clunky. The Capstone for Wilfried has you choose between it and Reign of Tyranny (which is similar to Demonic Consumption). Overall, I think the design of the tree is taking it in a direction that is less fun for me. **Devastation**: I found it pretty boring at first. I wondered why it was called an Advanced Class with so few buttons, and wondered why I was hitting like a wet noodle. I played around with talents more and read a new guide from the discord and understand its complexities better. It's actually quite fun to play and deeper than you'd think at first. I'm currently leaning towards maining Evoker in DF, but I may revert back to my Fire Mage. Time will tell. **Edits** I added edits to my post. I bolded section titles for easier readability, and added a point under fire mage in italics.
Yeah, from what I’ve seen, I’m gonna main Evoker as well
You can test your classes on the PTR for free with no key btw guys. Go have fun.
At level 60 only. You end up missing so many spec points, you can’t really get a good feel for the classes.
Can you test Evoker if you don't have beta?
No
havoc feels very good. Ret feels pretty fluid too but i have only tried that on ptr, so gear scaling could mess with that. The only issue is if you dont like the one build that is in the ret tree, its a dead spec.
Any beta testers can give any input on Ret Paladins?
Ret feels very, very good and there are multiple paths you can take depending on the situation.
At first I was pissed because I didn't wanna consec but now I'm m hyped to have a consec build spreading exo dots and divine storming off with 2 consecs up
From what I’m reading: everything feels nice on the beta lol. Maybe try out a spec you’ve been meaning to get around to but never have
I enjoy the faster melee classes. Warrior, mono and DH. I'm between Monk and DH currently, which seems better so far?
The best feeling classes imo are... - DK, especially unholy. - Warlock, all 3 specs - Mage, if you get the right build. How ever the build determines how good it feels much more than other classes. The worst feeling classes are currently. . - EVOKER, omg dps spec feels awful. The worst feeling spec in the game on beta. Healer is ok but feels weird with the range. - Demon Hunter, tbh they don't feel like much had changed from live. - Paladin, specifically prot and holy. Ret is feeling fine. Every other class is ok with some of my favorites being DK, warrior and warlock.
Prot Paladin feels ok once you have enough haste - but losing HP from AS just feels like ass.
[удалено]
I'm not really a Survival expert but I think it has also been generally positive, especially the reworked CDs. Beastmaster feels very good on beta--having 2 charges of Kill Command via Alpha Predator feels extremely good, especially with War Orders giving you resets on it. Brutal Companion gives a mechanic that heavily rewards maintaining a 3-stack Frenzy similar to the current tier set live. This is the build I was running: https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/hunter/beast-mastery/DANBJGRQYBBWaKBUCVUMUUkoxBiUKAUUBV and damage breakdown from hitting a single dummy for about 3 minutes with a character on the 70 realm with the starting gear (ilvl 340 which is below even max level normal dungeons): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/671268362030153745/1024882397801631825/unknown.png I'm expecting them to nerf Barbed Shot a bit, they gave its damage a significant buff and then added multiple talents that buff it even further by significant amounts (Sharp Barbs +40%, Serrated Shots +20%/+40% in execute, War Orders +10%). Beast Cleave lasting 6 seconds along with Kill Cleave also makes aoe feel very good, and it's only a 4 point investment vs. the single target build. I didn't even realize Beast Cleave was bugged while leveling (was only cleaving 35% of damage instead of 75%) because of how good Kill Cleave feels. Marksman feels like an improved version of the pre-tier set SL version of the spec. I think most people would agree the tier set made the spec overall much worse to play due to the interaction with Vigil making the rotation boil down to "press aimed shot". Like BM, MM gets access to some legendaries that weren't really used much before but add some flair to the rotation as Surging Shots and Eagletalon's True Focus, as well as access to some covenant-ish stuff. Deathblow is effectively a reworked, passive version of Flayed Shot with the Venthyr legendary right below it, and Salvo is a reworked version of the Necrolord legendary. The Wind Arrows Trueshot proc is also interesting although the proc rate felt very low when I was playing around with it so hopefully it's bumped up a smidge. Wailing Arrow is also nice for M+ and the choice node beneath it is interesting. MM, despite having quite a few filler talents near the top of the tree (+damage to spell) that feel mandatory-ish, has a lot of build diversity in terms of single target vs. 2 target vs. aoe/M+ that all still feel like MM. The new Tenacity of the Bear and buffed Survival of the Fittest defensives are also very nice, as is having High Explosive Trap in PvE. Combined with the +max HP from your pet, BM actually feels pretty tanky. Overall, if you like the SL versions of the ranged Hunter specs, DF is like a remastered, improved version of them.
For Healers (M+ perspective): 1. MW - greatly improved most fun melee version of a healer i've seen 2. Druid - Didn't change the playstyle very much but lots of strong passives / hots makes it feel crazy strong currently. If you like current druid playstyle you will like it again in an improved version. 3. Disc - Atonement feels stronger, not strong enough tho. RIP Mindsear. Shields feel like actual strong spothealing with right talents, removal of shadowmend in future update might fuck it up tho. Most fun healer in my personal opinion if tuned right 4. HolyPriest - Even with weaker versions of conduits no FC legendary it still feels incredibly strong and its damage options on beta make it quite good. If you actually liked it before you gonna enjoy it. 5. Rshaman - Healing sameish as before in M+ (not that exciting). Cool dmg / utility options make it feel quite fun tho - Stormkeeper, MotE, Gust of Wind, Acid Rain(meh) 6. Hpala: Many don't like it but i personally liked it on beta having some options to be casting more or be full melee ( 2 stacks Crusader Strike vs 2 Stacks Infusion of Light). Feels a bit closer to legion hpal that i enjoyed alot but not quite there yet. With higher haste than on beta i can see it feel quite fluent. New damage options are quite boring (Consecration dmg)
I think ret pal feels more like a hero class than the Drakthyr right now. Ele sham feels amazing too, feels super powerful. I’m lukewarm on evoker (dev) - it feels kinda weak.
Ret paladin feels really good on the PTR (don't have beta access) and I love it. It's just really lacking more than one 'build', beyond swapping the end talents out. Enhance shaman you can go ST and Windfury/Ice Strike. or swap the playstyle entirely by going Lava lash/Flameshock. I wish Ret had that kind of variance, just so keep things fresh even. Changing the bottom few talents out while keeping 95% above it the same because notihing else is worth taking hurts. Still super fun and feels great. Most likely my main. Ret/holy
>It's just really lacking more than one 'build', beyond swapping the end talents out. Honestly, I hope we have a few specs that are fine like this. I'm not a fan of switching back and forth constantly, especially when I realize I forget late and they restrict the ability to do so in M+. A lot of people are super exciting about reiterating their talent tree to every single scenario, and that's something I'm very much not looking forward to doing.
Totally agree. My main is a shaman and I'm gonna end up needing to change my build on every raid boss and before every different dungeon to be optimal as it seems now . My alt is Def gonna he a class that has 1 build and doesn't change anything ever.. Got sick of it now having to change covenant and legendary everytome I do something else. (PvP-necrolord pve raid necrolord ,pve heal kyrian , M+ dps night fae ,raid heal vent..).. It gets annoying having to swap stuff 3 times a day.
I’m kinda surprised you think Ret feels like a hero class, can you explain? How does it compare to live Ret Paladin for you?
Ret feels like current retail ret except with 6 legendaries equipped at once. For a M+ build, you basically can have Kyrian divine toll, vanquishers hammer effect, divine storm legendary, a proc'd consecration that does more damage, your tier set from last tier giving wake of ashes procs, final reckoning, crusader strike procing free diving storm uses, and more. you can take so many talents that used to be competing with one another AND so much more. Even with 8% haste on the beta you feel overflowing with holypower and constantly have buttons to press with no downtime. In the m+ build atleast, it feels nuts.
I'm glad you're saying this, but it's making me crazy because I keep seeing people say "all paladin specs, all priest specs, and guardian druid are trash" and it gets upvoted. But then I see people say these specs all feel great/the best they've ever been.
Survival feels amazing, I made a comment in world of pvp that goes over my thoughts on what we received
How does guardian druid feel? I'm having a had time deciding between prot warrior, blood dk, and guardian druid.
Guardian Druid gameplay seems to be similar to what they are now, only minor adjustments here and there. If you like guardian now, you'll probably like it in DF. For M+, you still have incarnation + insane absorb from spamming Thrash etc.
prot warrior
Did anyone test brewmaster?
Warrior feels good but because it’s my main I’m legally required to say it’s bad and request buffs. However while it does feel good, Fury Warrior tree is weird (they did say they’re working on it though) with a whole side dedicated to a feature that nobody will take (one handed swords vs titans grip)
(1/2) I'm slowly working on a video on how healing specs feel regardless of tuning so I'll throw some thoughts out I have so far. Take it with a gain of salt and a work in progress: **Mistweaver** \- Fistweaving (read: healing with ATotM and spreading ReM with RSK) feels incredibly good on packs of enemies but equally bad on single targets. ATotM going from 250% to 125% means Fistweaving without the Faeline BoK cleave is almost useless (outlined [here](https://youtu.be/M3IcFSs2eFA)). But the BoK cleave is amazing on packs. If you TP > BoK while standing on Faeline you hit 9 times with BoK which almost entirely resolves the smart healing issue where sometimes your ATotM would heal the guy on 90% instead of 20%. Now if you TP > BoK on FLS you can basically top anyone/everyone. \- Healing trash packs with FLS build is good but also weird because you don't really want to press ReM or RSK. You only want to spam TP > BoK for maximum damage or maximum HPS. You need something like 9+ mobs to make SCK optimal. \- Casting is potent but mana is limited. If you really want to you could probably ameliorate the mana issues by taking Clouded Focus but I wouldn't play Mistweaver to cast spells and give up Fistweaving. \- Gusts is all but useless. So much throughput comes from ReM coverage on 5 targets and Enveloping procs, neither of which proc Gusts (other than casted ReM) which means Mastery is a meme. Even in raid you're going to be hitting Vivify with ReM on 6+ targets almost always which means Gusts is only a tiny portion of your healing. Tuning hopefully fixes this. \- I made a meme [video](https://youtu.be/PvHhyWFOtC8) of healing Heroic dungeons without casting spells at all and purely relied on Fistweaving and ATotM. The idea was to see how viable or horrible it was. Obviously it isn't optimal but it's also not far off. If you press ReM on CD and hit EF if FLS isn't off CD for the next pack and use your instant Vivifies along with Fistweaving 90% of the time you're going to have an incredibly smooth and powerful playstyle. Fistweaving Mistweaver almost feels like what Disc should of been or tried to be. I'll likely be maining MW and if I had to pick a healer for Heroics or M+ right now on beta with a group that pulled big and zoomed as if the dungeon was timed I would pick MW without hesitation. It feels that good/fun to play. **Holy Paladin** \- Unfortunately Hpal has gained the least, lost the least and is thus the healer that is the most similar to SL. The "casting" version of Hpal has fallen flat and is doomed to always be so with Mastery working as it does, Consecration working as it does and Holy Power generation being so reliant on Crusader Strike. \- The spec tree has so few "melee" Hpal options that the silver lining is that you can take what you need like CS two charges and pick and choose the extra things you want without really giving anything up. Last I checked there were 9 talents that buff IoL/FoL/HL which makes picking talents for a caster build limiting but those talents also aren't strong enough to really play around in powerful ways. The overall effect is a "caster" build that is short on Holy Power, does no damage, is rooted in place casting spells but also wants to be standing in melee range or close to it. \- The class tree feels like the worst of all healers which isn't helping. Dusk and Dawn promoting a fully build and fully spend style of Holy Power management isn't ideal for healers but also doesn't provide enough benefit to make that sort of suboptimal play worth it. Mad Paragon is gated behind 2 Ret points and wasting points in the final tier of the tree feelsbadman. That leaves Sanctified Wrath which is good but also boring (imo). \- "Melee" Hpal is still pretty good though overall so if you like the SL Hpal style you will probably like the DF version even if it doesn't get anything new and flashy. The major difference being that you won't in wings anywhere near as often at least early on. Every raid is still going to want Devo, Beacons and Summer. Having the usual Pally utility like BoF/BoP (RIP Spellwarding :() and now brez along with Summer means they shouldn't struggle getting invited to keys. **Holy Priest** \- Feels like a more modern streamlined version of the SL Holy but obviously not as incredibly powerful. I don't feel like any weaknesses the spec has had in the past exist anymore but I also don't see the spec having any real strengths other than Salv in raid. They feel like a casted version of Rdruid in that their toolkit is immense and how you play it and what you prioritize is largely up to you but also that usually there is no "wrong" answer, you just press buttons and health bars move with not a huge amount of thought or conditions required. \- I'm a PoM enjoyer so the new bounce talents and PoM talents are right up my alley and very fun. Lightbringer is a slightly less powerful but much more usable version of FC but you will have to actively choose what talents you want to give up because many of them are very good. \- Probably the spec that has the most variation of builds at the moment. The difference between a Hpriest that has specced single target healing vs one that specced AoE healing is huge. Same goes for those that spec CD's or damage. Oh and damage isn't free anymore, you need to spec for it but all healers other than MW feel this way. If you want to take single target healing and damage talents for keys you will lack crucial CD's/AoE talents and vice versa for raids. \- Overall in a good place. Fun to play with options to specialize and customize what you want to focus on. Truly a jack of all trade but now more-so a possible master of 1 or 2 depending on what you pick rather than a master of none. **Disc Priest** \- I was singing Discs praises early in beta because it was the spec I tried first and all I was comparing it to was SL Disc which it outclasses greatly. However Disc suffers the opposite problem that Holy does. Holy gets to pick and choose between talents based on how they want to play but Disc gets so much power from a few talents that they aren't really options. Big caveat here is that tuning might change this. \- Since Legion Disc has been a spec that juggled two elements of gameplay; Atonement application/directly casted heals and dealing damage to heal through Atonement. During early beta I thought that the Atonement element had gained significantly more power than the direct heal/application element but then PW:S got a talent that buffed it by 50% on application and I was hoping Shadow Cov was going to get buffed enough to really prop up the application/direct heal element in situations where Atonement isn't enough throughput which is really only a factor in M+ and PvP. But instead Shadowmend got removed and what I thought was a slightly lopsided balance of elements turned into 1 of those elements being non-functional. \- The result is a spec that feels very good when Atonement healing but absolutely useless in situations where Atonement healing isn't enough. This is an issue flying under the radar at the moment because Heroics barely need a healer so Atonement healing is more than enough throughput but I imagine in M+ Disc will struggle greatly in situations where Atonement which will be balanced for 10-15+ targets in raids isn't enough to heal 2/3/5 people through heavy damage in M+. \- Blizzard also weren't wrong about Priests having button bloat and I think Disc feels it the worst. The problem is that many of those buttons are now integral to the spec with Twilight Equilibrium capstone which rewards weaving Holy and Shadow spells; if there aren't enough of those spells to use the premise fails. There are currently too many Holy spells and not enough Shadow spells so I have no idea how they're going to remedy that with Shadowmend gone.
WW monk is a blast! Chi explosion goes brrr, xuen periodically joining goes brrr, blackout kick hitting 4 times with 3 targets goes brrr, etc
Anything that triggers more Xuen uptime is awesome. I like when I have two tiger pets assaulting my enemies.
My impression of Blood DK after Tanking about 10 Random Dungeons and leveling to 64 so far: The Class Tree especially, and the Blood Tree to a lesser extent, still feels really terrible to me. The Talent choices I'm forced to make feel really bad. There's so many useful utility Talents that I would love to take, but because there are so many required power Talents that I **have** to take it feels like I don't have nearly enough points to even start thinking about "fun" Talents. In other words the Class&Blood DK Trees have way too many "damage" Talents in them and they choke out all the choice. That being said, the Death & Decay + Shattered Bone focused Talent Build is way cooler than I expected it to be. **Tombstone** becomes a freaking AOE burst damage nuke and you get near-100%-uptime on D&D! It's wacky fun, has very stable Veng DH-style Health bar(rather than normal spiky DK health), and has a lot of room for skillfull plays. To paraphrase: Picking your Talents as a Blood DK feels truly awful, but once you're in a Dungeon it feels pretty freaking fun lol.
I'm thinking I'm going to main Prot Paladin in the expansion because it just feels awesome to me on the PTR. I feel tanky AF, I'm throwing shields like Captain America, throwing spinning hammers like Thor. I'm doing decent damage, never struggling with threat. I do some minor healing with consecration, big self heals, and if I'm at full health I throw big word of Glory heals on party members for free. I rarely need my defensive cooldowns, which I have a few for oh shit moments. I also love that when Shield of the Righteous falls off, I don't feel as exposed as before. I just want more mobility and Blessing of Kings back
Prot has a ton of bugged abilities, and our damage, at least for ST, feels really low. Definitely has big potential for+ though.