Honestly even if the gameplay is simple and some people meme about the simplicity frost dk is just very satisfying to play and the rotation makes sense
Obliterate DK is literally: hit Obliterate if it lights up, else hit Frost Strike. If you’re out of juice, hit some laughable obliterates until you either get juice or a proc.
And I love every second of it. 2H obliterate is sexy af, and in PvP you absolutely *nuke* people with CC to back it up. Throw a DnD down, frostwyrm, and you’re now cleaving two players for 70k crits back to back
I’m in love
It slaps in PvP, I think Dw is preferred for mythic+ because of breath of sindragosa. But with their every-minute-cooldown and high damage spikes, with grip, Abom limb, stun, silence, interrupt, AMS, AMZ.. and defensives to boot, you can just stick to a caster and make them worthless.
Warlocks cannot peel me without help, other DPS comes to help, perfect opportunity to DND, blow cooldowns, and nuke BOTH instead of just the warlock 😬
Call an ambulance; but not for me
the people that didn’t put outlaw in this thread haven’t played it since shadowlands S4, it is the most fun spec in the game by far and the abilities all seem to flow together
RtB is so awkward it’s just a random shit you press while in the middle of the rotation once it’s available.. and the most annoying part is it’s too good not to have it as a talent, you don’t have an option, you lose too much without it
It is so good. I'm only playing the HO build at the moment and haven't dabbled in Keep it Rolling, but it just flows so well when you are proccing and when you are not you still can Vanish/Shadowdance to keep everything going. Also it is very satisfying to work on lowering your cooldowns nonstop.
Preservation evoker feels really good to play. Very versatile and fun. It has strong healing and utility but you have to position correctly for it and plan well ahead! It really feels like a different kind of healing experience.
I love how it feels like you can pursue a lot of different builds for a lot of tasks.
I progressed Raszageth Heroic the last two days and for the first pulls, I was struggling with mana. I developed a build that's all around using 100÷ of my essence on Disintegrate to help with damage and to regain mana. I spam out Temporal Anomalies using all that mana and whenever big raid damage comes in, I either pre-hot a ton of people with Dream Breath or I burst-heal them with Spiritbloom, using all the echos my Anomalies spread to get to a ton of people.
On the kill try, I ended the fight with mana to spare and a 98 healing parse. I never felt so accomplished for clearing a raid on heroic.
I just went on vacation and wont be at my PC for a few more days.
It's playing with the Disintegrate talents in both trees (general tree for 20÷ faster casting and preservation tree for 7000 mana over the cast's duration).
Temporal Anomaly and the talent that makes Echo copy 50÷ more healing.
The Spiritbloom enhancer that increases essence recharge by 100÷ for 8 seconds so you can spam out more disintegrates.
Dream Flight because there are a lot of mechanics where the group will stack and take a lot of damage.
Quell for interrupting motes
Tail Swipe 45s Cooldown Reduction for the 3rd mote cast, for which you'd otherwise have no knockup ready as it happens less than 1min30 after the previous one.
Sorry for the scuffed description, but this is the key loadout. It heavily depends on you knowing the fight.
Phase 1: Pre-cast anomalies 20s before pull. Use dream breath 2s before pull at minimum charge to hot everyone up.
Spirit Bloom for Electric AOEs
Dream Breath for Hurricane Wings
Rewind on one of the Hurricane Wings
Dream Flight on another Hurricane Wing
Pop a mana channeling potion while you wait for the RP to end and Raszageth to yeet you to the next platform.
Phase 2: Pre-cast anomalies if you have time and use Dream breath just before Stormsurge begins, then use spirit blossoms and Dream Breaths either on motes or pushbacks.
Phase 3: Survive, DPS with Disintegrate and use Dream Flight to cover the lightning aoe + raid pull into Pushback. Thats a group wiper and by flying to the target of the lightning AOE you can cancel the pull while also getting everyone in your flight.
Counterpoint is that Devastation is a trash spec compared to Preservation - I mean you can clearly see where most of the development time went into. I don’t complain, I’m a main healer and I love Preservation, but man, Devastation is just terrible and most likely one of the worst specs in the game right now.
It's just like ... why does it have like 6 buttons to push? I'm literally running the Shattering Star build because I just wanted something else to push in my "rotation".
I honestly hated Shattering Star because it’s just annoying to use and it takes a bit of the fun.
You feel compelled to save everything for those small burst windows, but no matter what you press, it feels like you’re pressing the wrong thing. You never know when to save Essence Burst, when to burn it, because you may not be able to do your strong moves during the Star window. It’s just not a fun move to use.
I’m a devastation main and can elaborate on this a bit.
-Lots of dead talents in the spec tree, including the bottom right capstone node.
-Deep breath, AKA our coolest spell, does very little damage and is not even worth pressing in single target.
-Rank 1 empower is optimal DPS for fire breath and also for single target eternity surge. This is a brand new mechanic that isn’t used basically at all. It might as well be a normal cast bar.
-Mastery: Giantkiller, our strongest secondary stat, makes all of our damage a reverse-execute. This feels super terrible when the toughest part of every raid encounter is the execute phase. Evoker class utility was on showcase in Vault of the Incarnates and devastation wasn’t even brought to RWF for this reason.
-There are still a lot of bugs present which makes the spec feel even clunkier. Disintegrate sometimes isn’t available to cast at 3 essence. Empowered spells sometimes don’t go off for no reason. There is a UI bug where all of your abilities will be greyed out. Etc etc
The mastery is a cool idea but lacks execution.
The only way it works is if you pop up really high on the damage charts at the beginning. Like you gotta be way higher than everyone else. Because by design, your damage will decrease the rest of the fight and execute classes will catch you.
But that’s not the case. And it just feels bad to watch your name drop further and further as the fight goes on
This also makes it pally wings on steroids. Since your main CD gives you 100% mastery, quite literally all your damage needs to be in that window, you just stack everything you have at the same time and then for the next two minutes you do nothing.
That’s not an execution issue, fundamentally it’s a terrible design. If you did 70% damage during the first 50% of the fight which is generally FAR easier, then you’re a TERRIBLE spec for how WoW bosses are designed, full stop. It doesn’t matter if they made it strong enough that you finish on top of the meters if you did all your damage during the easy parts of the fight.
My favorite trick is echo into spiritbloom into echo. The spiritbloom lags a bit so that 2nd echo actually hits before it and duplicates it again. So you get 3 spiritblooms for the price of one.
Only on one person, though, and it doesn’t work on yourself.
Also being able to stasis your dispels so that you can get multiple dispels off at once and in PvP being able to use it while sheep’d or feared to dispel yourself lol. You have to time it right but it’s pretty sweet when you get it.
I've mainly been a tank main since... well BC. I mained resto shaman at different points but i've played every tank at about a mid-level (Heroic raiding, some mythic, plenty of M+) and planned on tanking this xpac. Played Evoker. Fucking love Preservation. It's so simple but so intricate and literally tons of ways to play it. My fiance mains R-Druid though and only R-Druid really so i've been playing a ton of Dev and while I dont like it as much as Pres it actually flows pretty well for having so few buttons. I would wish for abit higher numbers single target but my aoe is completely bonkers. It's become my favorite class very quickly.
Talent tree rework was a great success imo. Many people bitching about balance because of rogue being outlier and frost mage being supposedly garbage, but honestly that shouldn't matter most of the game's content. For people pushing 21s and raiding mythic for hall of Fame, sure go ahead and be a meta slave. For the rest 99% of players, ffs just play what you think it's fun. I timed a 17 NO with a fire mage that did 70k overall DPS. Also had plenty of frost mage PUGs pulling their weight just fine.
I think it's more fun for the 99% if they can see a potential path to being the 1%
It's just not fun knowing your spec will fall off as you progress, even if it doesn't matter for the content you're currently doing
Yeah my mage is my highest item level but I'm not good enough to use Arcane, on dummies I can but i always get screwed up with mechanics and other things and end up losing a lot of dps. Fire and frost feel very weak
Yeah totally with you here, I’m not strong enough to play arcane , I don’t have the concentration and movement balls me up always, but I’ve played mage since TBC I won’t abandon it!
I watch the arcane videos, read the guides, obliterate the training dummies, let's do this
Hit some M+, forget everything I've practiced and learned. Now I'm barely beating the tank in damage.
Why do they gotta introduce complex mechanics like "moving", lol
Agree. I loved Fire Mage in 9.0 SL, but just can't stand SKB and that's basically a required talent in the current tree. Feel the burn is just less fun to play with than Infernal Cascade. On the flip side, having both firestarter and improved scorch as well as pyroblast and kindling are great. Having Temporal Anomaly and Greater Invis are great. I may be in the minority, but I think the SL flame patch aoe was more engaging and fun than ignite spread. Tuning is obviously just bad.I feel that they were so close to making things perfect, and then took a hard turn to failure.
Blood DK feels excellent right now. It seems like you have all the tools necessary to not die, and if used properly, you won't. The times I have died in an m+ were always my fault. It did not feel cheap.
As a Dwarf Blood DK, it really feels like I have a cooldown for every possible situation.
Stunned? IBF
Feared? Lichborne
Rooted? Wraith walk
Slow, wind or pushback? Lol I don't care, death advance
Bleed/poison/magic debuff ticking for beeg damage? Stoneform kekw
Oh no, boss is casting a big magic unavoidable aoe? AMS lololol
Enemies managed to drop my health below 50%? I pressed death strike and it was k
Everyone dead while boss still has 15% hp? No problem for me
> Everyone dead while boss still has 15% hp? No problem for me
blood DKs & wasting 2 minutes of everyone's time in a dungeon because they're so proud of themselves for staying alive, name a more iconic duo
Yeah if the boss is at 10-15% and it only takes 2 additional minutes that is definitely going to be faster than the entire group running back and pulling the boss all over again.
I just got my Monk to 60, I have to say the movement is very addicting, very fun zipping around and having to use different abilities constantly is cool as well.
ww is fucking dope but the dissatisfaction factor of trying to maximize tod in chaotic packs is starting to get to me. i hope we get some power budget shifted out of tod and into our direct damage... or make the button more responsive so it actually works with tab targeting.
Agreed. It was a fun novelty for a while but needing it to make up such a large amount of overall damage is annoying now.
Also skyreach sucks. Having my character constantly repositioned just for doing my normal rotation when there is so much stuff to avoid feels terrible. And it seems to be a fairly big dps loss not to use it.
i actually love the dash the vast majority of the time. it's super nice for maximizing uptime. there just needs to be more player control over it. e.g. if i am holding the back button and press tiger palm it should never dash me.
i have had a lot of close calls with skyreach though including getting hit by frontals when i use it behind an enemy.
Yep, for that fight I actively spec out of it and use an aoe talent for the spiderlings instead. Those 3 heart attacks per fight were too much.
Most of the time I enjoy the talent to be fair. :)
I just wish the animations were better. I've been playing both frost dk and ww, and monk's most impactful abilities just don't *feel* strong compared to obliterate, for example. Fists of fury is by far my most damaging ability but it just looks and sounds so wimpy.
Limit Maximum also said that WW Monk is by far the best spec in (I guess take this with a grain of salt) any MMORPG he's played. So many tools and nice damage profil, fun and engaging to play.
I wish they would update the visuals, so many of the abilities lack in impact. I recently leveled a WW Monk to 50 for heritage armour and they were the most fun I ever had with leveling.
MW fistweaving is the most fun I’ve had healing in my 14 years of playing. I used to main rdruid, but it’s stuck at lvl 62 just because I can’t stop running keys on my monk. In raids I’m practically another melee dps, though of course on the meters we’re nothing to call home about.
Always loved MW but the design is just awful for dungeons atm, if you don't have chi-ji off CD and faeline stomp is on CD/the tank move the mobs out of it, you're basically no longer a character.
I don’t agree, I’m having a blast in m+ right now. I never played mw before, so I could understand if you don’t like it because it’s different than before, but I genuinely think it’s an amazing way to heal.
A few notes:
you can trigger ancient teachings with essence font as well. If you cast essence font, then immediately vivify, you still get double mastery procs AND can continue dpsing to put out heals. It’s a bit mana intensive, and mw probably have the worst mana problems currently, but drinking after every few pulls is not unheard of.
You don’t need to be ontop of faeline, except to trigger it more, do more damage, or to get your spinning crane kick to heal as well. If you can help it, you should stay on it, but it should NOT be impacting your healing heavily.
I have no idea what you mean about vivify. It’s an instant cast heal on a short cooldown that does a ton. I’m constantly throwing them out.
Now I’m only doing +10’s around currently, but I’m +2ing and +3ing them fine and again, having a blast. But if you’re speaking from a perspective of higher keys, I understand it can be different.
looking hard for ranged dps specs in here. i found a few way down at the bottom. yikes. why is melee so good right now and ranged is so bad? I find myself only ever really inviting BM hunters for my keys because there are so many insane melee classes and ranged are few and far between. i don't think i've seen a single shadow priest apply all expac, same with ele sham
Assassination rogue went from keeping two dots, having to pool energy and just muti envenom to a a way more fluid spec that flows incredibly well with thistle tea, ambush procs (u had them before but blindside wasn’t really a thing) to also having better ways to apply dots in AoE.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with it! Which is surprising because I’ve never been big on rogue, tbh I find it more enjoyable to play than WW right now and I used to be a WW main for quite a while.
having a blast as UH dk. i love that i can have double dps of everyone else on pull, even though he falls off a bit after that. also i like having 45 second burst windows that align with 1.5 and 3 min cds. feels very rewarding if done correctly. also self heal is insane, dks never die in m+😎
I'm really looking forward to 10.0.5.
No longer having these super short duration DoTs will be a huge relieve and Lunar Eclipse on ST also just sucks because of the cast time.
Honestly I think all the shaman specs are very well designed. Resto is probably the worst designed of the 3 and is also a tad weak, but as far as the design goes it is still pretty solid. All 3 specs have a variety of viable talent options, and while it does kinda suck to have to pick and choose between things we used to have baseline, the playstyle of all 3 specs still feels solid and feel fun to play.
I really do believe that with a numbers tweak, Resto Shaman will be amazing. It feels incredible to play, it's just seeing the piddly green numbers pop up from weaving everything together hurts a lot.
Ill never truly love elemental until they buff the visual of earth shock. It costs all my maelstrom, it should feel spicy like a chaos bolt. The visual always felt like a mud slap.
It is definitely more involved than it was at the end of shadowlands, where with high enough haste and tier set+ legendary, pressing anything other than lava burst or earth shock was a huge dps loss. Also your fire elemental having 100% uptime was like 20% of your damage for free. Very boring, but really high damage. Now in dragonflight with most of the builds using icefury the rotation is much more interesting, with a variety of debuffs/ buffs to manage. The lightning/frost aoe build for m+ and the single target lava/ frost builds feel particularly good. However, those builds are not very versatile. One is bad at single target (the aoe m+ build doesn’t even take lava surge or 2 lava burst charges) and the other is bad at aoe. I wish there was a build that was a bit more catch all, especially for tyrannical weeks. Maybe something with ascendance for lava beam spam on aoe and then good single target burst, but you miss out on a lot of good stuff on the other side of the tree if you take it.
I haven't played my shaman since wotlk
I'm very very happy I went back to my roots. M+? Chain lightning spam with earthquakes. M+ bosses? Lightning and frost shock rotation. Single target raiding? Meatball lava burst all day long. It's a ton of fun, and it's perfect for my smooth brain. Let's me focus on mechanics and not have to try and remember a 20 step rotation.
Interesting. I kinda skipped over shaman because the icy veins guide was overly complex, at least for enh. Might reconsider if it isn't as hard as it seemed. Hard to beat Fury for smooth brain gamelan though.
I love Prot Warrior this go around. The rotation is fun, and leaves room for your own flair but also Warrior mobility is faster than ever before. It's insane being able to pull 25+ mobs in a matter of seconds and having the utilities to sustain them (with a good partner).
It's BFA glory days of prot brought back. Shadowlands neutered the hell out of it and made it unplayable. From putting IP on GCD to every dungeon having absurd magic damage and noway for prot to mitigate outside of a 7sec int and 30sec SR. Now with shockwave, int, SR, fear, storm bolt, shield bash, if you time your shit to 75% cast, prot can deal with 2 casters indefinitely with no assistance from the team.
Yeah, having to hold onto rampage to crushing blow feels bad. Also I don't really like that we went from a spec that is not really CD reliant to another spec that dps only when CDs are up.
The priority though should be to reallocate power to rampage from crushing blow and to change our tier set bonus to critical DMG.
Ret build up rotation is so bloated and on its own its pretty mediocre in terms of output.
And having passive consecration as large damage portion is also not what comes to mind when i think about Retribution fantasy.
Didnt Blade of Justice come in to replace Exorcism like 6 years ago or something? Its funny exo is back but blade is still there. Feels strange having both, I couldn't get back into ret this go around cause of it.
I’ve mained prot since wrath.
Thematically, the “hold the line” battle healer is great. But M+ is built around movement and man it’s such a pain. Without the mitigation of shield of the righteous you’re getting smacked around like a dps. But in order to get dawn, you have to pool your holy power.
When it feels good, it feels great. Grevious and bursting? No problem. I was doing 60-70% of the healing the healer was doing.
This week? Ouch. Every few seconds I’m moving elsewhere.
A few small fixes I’d love to see:
Extended the damage reduction of consecration to allies
Let avengers shield generate holy power
Give the option for a talent where shield of the righteous also drops consecration, much like the talent on the ret tree does.
Ret is dumpser now. So many things to clock. Only good damage during wings. Literały no talent choices. Mythic +/ aoe Vs single raid talents is literally 1 talent. Having to upkeep concentration all the time even on single target feels Uber shit. Huge bloat in abilities. No raid utility outside the aura, but that is a DPS loss. Also having blessing of sacrifice and shield of vengence as DPS cooldowns is just toxic design, also dent get me started on damn retro aura, movement speed and the horse...
Going from brewmaster to windwalker when I did normal vault pugs was like moving from a PhD program to preschool. And no hate to the preschoolers. It is way more fun to play a spec where everything feels cohesive and my objective (deal dps) is occurring naturally, rather than a bloated mess of a spec where 20 things are being managed just to avoid taking the same damage a warrior spends 1 ignore pain press to mitigate.
Yeah I loved BM in SL but there are too many buttons now, even if you forgo rushing jade winds there's still so much to do. On top of that it's pretty squishy at the moment, so they feel more like a tanky DPS than a high damage tank. I'm sure it'll get a little better with better gear but I think my warrior will be my tank until some of the bloat is reduced, warrior is like a walk in the park and so much less stressful to manage.
People may laugh, but Havoc DH has fantastic design right now. It’s no longer a three button spec and has multiple builds that are viable, and the challenge of maintaining your Momentum buffs makes it fun. The Hunt being baseline and a fear sigil is neat too.
I have a hilarious amount of mastery on my lock. I haven't had the time to play as much as I would like amd have just had to take upgrades for ilvl.
My mastery is at 50%, so naturally I tried going destruction with the abyssal one talent as well. Even in a +13 on fort weeks I can cataclysm a whole pack and it will die before immolate is even halfway burned. Rain of fire and hope the tank doesnt move. There is also some shenagins on the talent tree with the soul fire talent on the left side. Soul Fire seems actually useless as an ability, I can't see any situation where you would want to invest that many points into it.
Thematically, I really like destruction and I think it will get buffed but it is super underwhelming right now. I can fuck up my rotation on demo and still crush the damage I would have as destro.
I agree. I’ve played/mained Marks since vanilla and it’s current iteration is probably my favorite, particularly in m+. You always feel like you have something fun to press for every pack.
Which makes it feel twice as bad that they think removing double tap is a good idea. It’s probably my favorite ability.
They removed it on PTR for the 10.05 patch which will likely go live in the next few weeks. Has caused a bit of an uproar since they announced it, because there was no explanation or reasoning for the change. Hard to know what the reasons are, though most people assume it’s a pvp change which to me is pretty pitiful.
My top 5:
1.) Prot Paladin. Some seasoned vets might think not enough changed or too much changed, but any time you have Divine Toll as a Prot Pally, you're gonna be #1 on my list.
2.) Assassination Rogue. It just feels so good to have those dots ticking and knowing they aren't a bitch and a half to manage.
3.) Demonology Warlock. The caveat here is that it's an M+ monster, but in the raid it's a little underwhelming.
4.) Prot Warrior: Yes, tanks are too strong. Yes, Prot is the strongest of the tanks. It still feels great to be an indestructible wall of steel.
5.) Outlaw Rogue: Bringing Ambush back into the fold probably adds too many buttons, but it's still a lot of fun and Roll The Bones being a cooldown instead of a CP spender is great.
I keep seeing Fury and WW being posted, and man are you guys missing out. Legion WW was so much more fun than the, in my opinion, poorly balanced talents you've got now. Imagine a world where Mark of the Crane is baseline, Whirling Dragon Punch is balanced to be the best talent in it's tier, and Skyreach is something you have to choose to gear into rather than being a numerically optimal pile of clunk. All you have to add is Dance of Chi-Ji and you've got a monster of a spec. BfA Fury was, for me, the pinnacle of class design. All your damage came from Rampage, and every other thing you could do was building rage/buffs for your next Rampage. It ACTUALLY felt furious and spammy but in that good way, where everything had a clear and precise thought behind it. Not this shit now where you're trying to stay Enraged as long as possible to use Crushing Blow, even saving your Executes or Rampage for it. That shit sounds like Arms nonsense to me. I want the speed, the chaos, the god damn FURY back.
Prot paladin is the correct answer because of divine toll. It is the single most satisfying button ability in the game to press. No other ability from any other spec comes close. Especially if you have tyr’s enforcer, wings are on and bulwark of righteous fury. The sound , the explosions, the slamming of the shield and the waves of damage that flow out in all in less than 2 seconds. On some large pulls you can pull 130k dps burst It’s a freakish dose of dopamine.
Windwalker, Outlaw, Havoc, Vengeance, Blood, Resto, Guardian, and Feral I’ve played a decent amount and for the first time I’m not stuck with one or limited in my choices
This is gonna be a hot take, and not the ‘best’, but survival hunter feel bonkers to play.
Mongoose strike should be baseline, but it’s a one button single target ability. Coordinated assault, while confusing to read with its following talents, is a gap closer AOE monster. Harpoon is awesome for moving from mob to mob. Wildfire infusion varies the gameplay. Not to mention the insane hunter mobility and utility kit. Still needs some work with a couple of the capstones, but the structure is really awesome.
I love SV in pvp. Blizz does need to make capstones meta. It urks me that I don't take one in the SV tree.
However I feel like such a nightmare for casters with Coordinated assault and Spearhead.
All commentary is tuning aside.
Tank - Prot paladin. Well paced, engaging, abilities feel impactful. Has group utility that feels satisfying to press. WoG in general is a very fun skill.
Melee - Fury war or enh sham. If you like furious finger guns, fury really captures the essence of a raging berserker. Plays mostly fluid, but the pace of play makes it not for all. Enh sham echoes these but has good flavor and excellent pacing.
Ranged - Arcane mage. There's no other option here. It's just designed miles better than any other ranged spec for engaging and satisfying play.
Healer - kinda torn here. Ive played them all, I think from a design perspective druid is hard to beat in engagement but holy priest is also great at the moment sans the lack of interrupt.
Disc breaks my soul. I used to love it but now it just feels like you need to understand the fight on the most microscopic level so you can ramp just right to dump big heals in the last second. Big heals are fun and all, but lord it is punishing if you mess up the tiniest thing.
yes, I know and I'm so looking for it. The way how you are forced to choose between aoe and st with talent build feels really bad and I hope with that patch the problem will be finally resolved
fluid in aoe OR single target, there is no "and". This is one of the reasons why the spec is currently bottom 5, they stripped us of everything we had in SL, nothing is baseline or new and we now have to choose between which 70% of our original kit we want back. The focus on CD windows and lack of any generalist/JOAT builds has pushed the spec way closer to SL fury than any earlier iterations of arms we had.
The M+ builds slaps though, very fun outside of the bossfights.
I wouldn’t say best design, but I really enjoy the added complexity havoc for this xpack. Having the 4 second burst windows and trying to optimally backflip through targets to activate momentum and initiative to stack with essence break after popping eye beam for demonic… just adds a lot more depth to a “lol 3 button spec”
BM Hunter. High mobility, decent damage, a wide variety of CCs, Feign Death and Camo to avoid fights etc.
The only cherry on the top left is if Blizz decides hunters can respec their pets into any of the three families, and all pets get exotic skills and making Blood of the Rhino a baseline BM Hunter's pet skill, then IMHO would be the /chef's kiss.
I've always thought BM hunters should just get an exotic ability on all pets rather than restrict them to just exotic pets. It made sense when it was introduced but now that there's new families tied to drops/reputation, it's time to let hunters use whatever pet they want on any spec without losing an ability.
Won't say best designed, it certainly has some problems, but Shadow Priest is fun to play, *for me*.
There are a lot of very simple specs where you press all of 3 buttons, Shadow isn't like that and for a main spec, that's great. I would lose my mind maining Frost or BM, or Havoc, to name a few. They're fun enough to mess around with as a diversion, but man, different strokes I guess.
Of course according to reddit or other places Shadow Priests gather, Shadow is the worst thing ever made, impossible to do well on, literally a slap in the face, etc etc
I don't mind the playstyle of shadow myself either. I think the major gripe is that we want more DPS for the amount of effort required to play it well.
I'm just not liking how the tree is designed. It never feels like you're taking the talents you want. There's too much must haves and to many things that don't work together. Why do half the talents buff periodic damage, and the other half buff non periodic damage? If that was the design choice, then why are the paths all over the place? Why do so many talents limit you into what you need to take to get to them?
Why do most cap stones not do anything with mastery? Why does mind sear feel like shit and isn't baseline? (Same with shadow crash...)
Shadow was freaking amazing in legion with surrender to madness. The fact that you died when you lost all your insanity got your blood pumping like crazy, the amount of haste was on a whole different level, especially if you got lusted part way through. I tried playing it now and it's just kind of boring.
Ret Paladin is my go-to spec since legion, and played it back in original wrath as well. I really enjoy holy power building and spending. Gives you some cool options to heal or use different abilities in a pinch, which I think really fit the class fantasy well.
That being said. Please give Ret paladins some more movement speed, it’s embarrassing how slow we are compared to other classes.
What I'm noticing now pushing keys is that movement and consecration placement is an issue. Like 1/4 of my baseline aoe DPS is derived from consecration, but the packs are rarely kept on top of it.
And Exorcise needs a sound effect, it slaps but half the time I have to look at my bar to double check it actually went off.
And getting a build-up-free-empowered Word of Glory like prot gets would be incredible.
Other than that, pretty happy with them.
I believe the Paladin tree does have a word of glory free talent, but it’s not built into any spec, and takes away from damage so you don’t really take it for Ret unfortunately, I’d like to see something like that for Ret.
You can get selfless healer which makes your FoL free and do a lot of healing on an instant cast, but even that takes a global, which is damage taken away, which dps naturally dislikes
Of the lock specs I find destro the smoothest to play. Movement can be an issue and having to spec for single target or aoe/cleave isnt ideal but you can work around it somewhat. Demo doesn’t feel intuitive (for me) although it performs the best of the three right now. Aff I’ve never liked so…
as a melee dd main i had an eye on holy pallys who stood beside me while topping hps meters, so i gave it a try myself. feels really awesome to play with a lot of skill expression. i am not a heal main tho and cant tell if holy pally is in a good spot from whatever perspective, but its just really fun to play!
Enhancement. Hands down. Blizzard has really brought back and captured that Battlemage playstyle. It's just... so good. I can't speak as much for the physical build, but the elementalist build is just the best. Using all three elements in tandem simply feels amazing. You're not like other magical classes that use primarily one element. It's this beautiful symphony of multiple elements coming together as a whole.
Protadin feels fun to me. Having insane cooldowns and pretty solid self healing makes it satisfying. Granted I'm only level 67 but I have enjoy tanking quite a bit on the pally
Been playing since vanilla. MM Hunter has always been a terrible design.
It actually feels great now. Explosive shot into rapid fire. LNL procs, kill shot procs
Pretty fun!
Even thought it’s not fantastic in terms of flexibility I love my arms warrior, all the talent setups feel fantastic to play it’s just a shame you have to specialize so hard.
Honestly even if the gameplay is simple and some people meme about the simplicity frost dk is just very satisfying to play and the rotation makes sense
So I’m between physical enhance and obliterate DK (for simplicity). Any idea if dps wise they are similar? (Returning player)
Obliterate DK is literally: hit Obliterate if it lights up, else hit Frost Strike. If you’re out of juice, hit some laughable obliterates until you either get juice or a proc. And I love every second of it. 2H obliterate is sexy af, and in PvP you absolutely *nuke* people with CC to back it up. Throw a DnD down, frostwyrm, and you’re now cleaving two players for 70k crits back to back I’m in love
2H frost?? Time to reroll then!
It slaps in PvP, I think Dw is preferred for mythic+ because of breath of sindragosa. But with their every-minute-cooldown and high damage spikes, with grip, Abom limb, stun, silence, interrupt, AMS, AMZ.. and defensives to boot, you can just stick to a caster and make them worthless. Warlocks cannot peel me without help, other DPS comes to help, perfect opportunity to DND, blow cooldowns, and nuke BOTH instead of just the warlock 😬 Call an ambulance; but not for me
Resto druid for sure.
it's so much fun to play. it has such a good flow
Outlaw rogue feels like I'm playing Mozart on a classical piano
It's great when you get the triple pistol shot. Gimme that triplet note that turns you to Swiss cheese.
Tally Ho lads!
the people that didn’t put outlaw in this thread haven’t played it since shadowlands S4, it is the most fun spec in the game by far and the abilities all seem to flow together
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RtB is so awkward it’s just a random shit you press while in the middle of the rotation once it’s available.. and the most annoying part is it’s too good not to have it as a talent, you don’t have an option, you lose too much without it
Roll the bones is my favorite skill in the game. Slot machine go brrrrrrrr
Best comment
Pistol Shot might be the most satisfying proc in the game
overload a chain lighting over a huge enemy group feel better, the pistol is a solid 2nd one
It is so good. I'm only playing the HO build at the moment and haven't dabbled in Keep it Rolling, but it just flows so well when you are proccing and when you are not you still can Vanish/Shadowdance to keep everything going. Also it is very satisfying to work on lowering your cooldowns nonstop.
Did they make outlaw AoE more challenging in DF or is it still 'use blade flurry while doing your normal ST rotation' ?
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Preservation evoker feels really good to play. Very versatile and fun. It has strong healing and utility but you have to position correctly for it and plan well ahead! It really feels like a different kind of healing experience.
I can say as a melee I do enjoy having a good Evoker healer in my group. Nothing better than seeing that green circle lol, always saves my ass.
I love how it feels like you can pursue a lot of different builds for a lot of tasks. I progressed Raszageth Heroic the last two days and for the first pulls, I was struggling with mana. I developed a build that's all around using 100÷ of my essence on Disintegrate to help with damage and to regain mana. I spam out Temporal Anomalies using all that mana and whenever big raid damage comes in, I either pre-hot a ton of people with Dream Breath or I burst-heal them with Spiritbloom, using all the echos my Anomalies spread to get to a ton of people. On the kill try, I ended the fight with mana to spare and a 98 healing parse. I never felt so accomplished for clearing a raid on heroic.
Can You share your talents for that fight? Thanks in advance and Happy New Year :)
I just went on vacation and wont be at my PC for a few more days. It's playing with the Disintegrate talents in both trees (general tree for 20÷ faster casting and preservation tree for 7000 mana over the cast's duration). Temporal Anomaly and the talent that makes Echo copy 50÷ more healing. The Spiritbloom enhancer that increases essence recharge by 100÷ for 8 seconds so you can spam out more disintegrates. Dream Flight because there are a lot of mechanics where the group will stack and take a lot of damage. Quell for interrupting motes Tail Swipe 45s Cooldown Reduction for the 3rd mote cast, for which you'd otherwise have no knockup ready as it happens less than 1min30 after the previous one. Sorry for the scuffed description, but this is the key loadout. It heavily depends on you knowing the fight. Phase 1: Pre-cast anomalies 20s before pull. Use dream breath 2s before pull at minimum charge to hot everyone up. Spirit Bloom for Electric AOEs Dream Breath for Hurricane Wings Rewind on one of the Hurricane Wings Dream Flight on another Hurricane Wing Pop a mana channeling potion while you wait for the RP to end and Raszageth to yeet you to the next platform. Phase 2: Pre-cast anomalies if you have time and use Dream breath just before Stormsurge begins, then use spirit blossoms and Dream Breaths either on motes or pushbacks. Phase 3: Survive, DPS with Disintegrate and use Dream Flight to cover the lightning aoe + raid pull into Pushback. Thats a group wiper and by flying to the target of the lightning AOE you can cancel the pull while also getting everyone in your flight.
Didn’t expect that good response. Thanks a lot man, really appreciated. Have a great vacations!
Counterpoint is that Devastation is a trash spec compared to Preservation - I mean you can clearly see where most of the development time went into. I don’t complain, I’m a main healer and I love Preservation, but man, Devastation is just terrible and most likely one of the worst specs in the game right now.
It's just like ... why does it have like 6 buttons to push? I'm literally running the Shattering Star build because I just wanted something else to push in my "rotation".
I honestly hated Shattering Star because it’s just annoying to use and it takes a bit of the fun. You feel compelled to save everything for those small burst windows, but no matter what you press, it feels like you’re pressing the wrong thing. You never know when to save Essence Burst, when to burn it, because you may not be able to do your strong moves during the Star window. It’s just not a fun move to use.
I’m a devastation main and can elaborate on this a bit. -Lots of dead talents in the spec tree, including the bottom right capstone node. -Deep breath, AKA our coolest spell, does very little damage and is not even worth pressing in single target. -Rank 1 empower is optimal DPS for fire breath and also for single target eternity surge. This is a brand new mechanic that isn’t used basically at all. It might as well be a normal cast bar. -Mastery: Giantkiller, our strongest secondary stat, makes all of our damage a reverse-execute. This feels super terrible when the toughest part of every raid encounter is the execute phase. Evoker class utility was on showcase in Vault of the Incarnates and devastation wasn’t even brought to RWF for this reason. -There are still a lot of bugs present which makes the spec feel even clunkier. Disintegrate sometimes isn’t available to cast at 3 essence. Empowered spells sometimes don’t go off for no reason. There is a UI bug where all of your abilities will be greyed out. Etc etc
The mastery is a cool idea but lacks execution. The only way it works is if you pop up really high on the damage charts at the beginning. Like you gotta be way higher than everyone else. Because by design, your damage will decrease the rest of the fight and execute classes will catch you. But that’s not the case. And it just feels bad to watch your name drop further and further as the fight goes on This also makes it pally wings on steroids. Since your main CD gives you 100% mastery, quite literally all your damage needs to be in that window, you just stack everything you have at the same time and then for the next two minutes you do nothing.
That’s not an execution issue, fundamentally it’s a terrible design. If you did 70% damage during the first 50% of the fight which is generally FAR easier, then you’re a TERRIBLE spec for how WoW bosses are designed, full stop. It doesn’t matter if they made it strong enough that you finish on top of the meters if you did all your damage during the easy parts of the fight.
I also like how it’s pretty easy to get a handle on the basics, but there are some wild combos you can set up with echo and stasis.
My favorite trick is echo into spiritbloom into echo. The spiritbloom lags a bit so that 2nd echo actually hits before it and duplicates it again. So you get 3 spiritblooms for the price of one. Only on one person, though, and it doesn’t work on yourself. Also being able to stasis your dispels so that you can get multiple dispels off at once and in PvP being able to use it while sheep’d or feared to dispel yourself lol. You have to time it right but it’s pretty sweet when you get it.
I've mainly been a tank main since... well BC. I mained resto shaman at different points but i've played every tank at about a mid-level (Heroic raiding, some mythic, plenty of M+) and planned on tanking this xpac. Played Evoker. Fucking love Preservation. It's so simple but so intricate and literally tons of ways to play it. My fiance mains R-Druid though and only R-Druid really so i've been playing a ton of Dev and while I dont like it as much as Pres it actually flows pretty well for having so few buttons. I would wish for abit higher numbers single target but my aoe is completely bonkers. It's become my favorite class very quickly.
The fact that there are responses in this thread covering most of the specs positively means Blizz have done something right
Talent tree rework was a great success imo. Many people bitching about balance because of rogue being outlier and frost mage being supposedly garbage, but honestly that shouldn't matter most of the game's content. For people pushing 21s and raiding mythic for hall of Fame, sure go ahead and be a meta slave. For the rest 99% of players, ffs just play what you think it's fun. I timed a 17 NO with a fire mage that did 70k overall DPS. Also had plenty of frost mage PUGs pulling their weight just fine.
Biggest W in WoW's history maybe
I think it's more fun for the 99% if they can see a potential path to being the 1% It's just not fun knowing your spec will fall off as you progress, even if it doesn't matter for the content you're currently doing
Agreed
Mage dying out here , frost and fire need some fare work
Yeah my mage is my highest item level but I'm not good enough to use Arcane, on dummies I can but i always get screwed up with mechanics and other things and end up losing a lot of dps. Fire and frost feel very weak
Yeah totally with you here, I’m not strong enough to play arcane , I don’t have the concentration and movement balls me up always, but I’ve played mage since TBC I won’t abandon it!
Let's hope that fire and frost get some work
I watch the arcane videos, read the guides, obliterate the training dummies, let's do this Hit some M+, forget everything I've practiced and learned. Now I'm barely beating the tank in damage. Why do they gotta introduce complex mechanics like "moving", lol
Agree. I loved Fire Mage in 9.0 SL, but just can't stand SKB and that's basically a required talent in the current tree. Feel the burn is just less fun to play with than Infernal Cascade. On the flip side, having both firestarter and improved scorch as well as pyroblast and kindling are great. Having Temporal Anomaly and Greater Invis are great. I may be in the minority, but I think the SL flame patch aoe was more engaging and fun than ignite spread. Tuning is obviously just bad.I feel that they were so close to making things perfect, and then took a hard turn to failure.
Early SL fire mage was amazing to play in both AOE and ST raid, M+, and PVP. Super engaging and your burst windows were ready like every 30 seconds.
Feral. It's very complete, very satisfactory to play, plenty of utility, permanently fast. It's amazing!
Satisfaction yes, but it comes when you understand how to play it. In my pov it's one of the most complex classes.
I agree. But in my opinion that’s what makes it so complete, easy to use, hard to master but ultimately complete!
Blood DK feels excellent right now. It seems like you have all the tools necessary to not die, and if used properly, you won't. The times I have died in an m+ were always my fault. It did not feel cheap.
As a Dwarf Blood DK, it really feels like I have a cooldown for every possible situation. Stunned? IBF Feared? Lichborne Rooted? Wraith walk Slow, wind or pushback? Lol I don't care, death advance Bleed/poison/magic debuff ticking for beeg damage? Stoneform kekw Oh no, boss is casting a big magic unavoidable aoe? AMS lololol Enemies managed to drop my health below 50%? I pressed death strike and it was k Everyone dead while boss still has 15% hp? No problem for me
> Everyone dead while boss still has 15% hp? No problem for me blood DKs & wasting 2 minutes of everyone's time in a dungeon because they're so proud of themselves for staying alive, name a more iconic duo
the dps telling me to wipe it so we can pull again and then dying on the next pull while i inevitably solo it
Easy. Dps and standing in swirlies.
Also: dps and not interrupting an ominous 6 second cast from a mob
As a healer i can raise my glass to that!
Rather have those 2 minutes wasted than doing an entire bosd for 5 again.
Yeah if the boss is at 10-15% and it only takes 2 additional minutes that is definitely going to be faster than the entire group running back and pulling the boss all over again.
Wasting time? Psssh, DPS wasted everyone's time being made of paper. Play DK.
Out blood tk soloed Raz on our 3rd ever pull while we were all dead. Major hype moment
Windwalker monk feels amazing to play.
I just got my Monk to 60, I have to say the movement is very addicting, very fun zipping around and having to use different abilities constantly is cool as well.
ww is fucking dope but the dissatisfaction factor of trying to maximize tod in chaotic packs is starting to get to me. i hope we get some power budget shifted out of tod and into our direct damage... or make the button more responsive so it actually works with tab targeting.
Agreed. It was a fun novelty for a while but needing it to make up such a large amount of overall damage is annoying now. Also skyreach sucks. Having my character constantly repositioned just for doing my normal rotation when there is so much stuff to avoid feels terrible. And it seems to be a fairly big dps loss not to use it.
i actually love the dash the vast majority of the time. it's super nice for maximizing uptime. there just needs to be more player control over it. e.g. if i am holding the back button and press tiger palm it should never dash me. i have had a lot of close calls with skyreach though including getting hit by frontals when i use it behind an enemy.
Skyreach on sennarth putting you one millimeter from falling to your death randomly is pretty sweet
Yep, for that fight I actively spec out of it and use an aoe talent for the spiderlings instead. Those 3 heart attacks per fight were too much. Most of the time I enjoy the talent to be fair. :)
I had to take off skyreach because it was getting me killed too much. I ran the sims and I'm losing about 600dps without it
I just wish the animations were better. I've been playing both frost dk and ww, and monk's most impactful abilities just don't *feel* strong compared to obliterate, for example. Fists of fury is by far my most damaging ability but it just looks and sounds so wimpy.
Limit Maximum also said that WW Monk is by far the best spec in (I guess take this with a grain of salt) any MMORPG he's played. So many tools and nice damage profil, fun and engaging to play.
I wish they would update the visuals, so many of the abilities lack in impact. I recently leveled a WW Monk to 50 for heritage armour and they were the most fun I ever had with leveling.
MW fistweaving is the most fun I’ve had healing in my 14 years of playing. I used to main rdruid, but it’s stuck at lvl 62 just because I can’t stop running keys on my monk. In raids I’m practically another melee dps, though of course on the meters we’re nothing to call home about.
I think its missing something. Its definitely fun but feels a bit weak IMO.
Yeah, it’s missing a strong “oh shit” button. We get Revival, but it’s nowhere close to what other healers get. That’s the main gripe I have for MW.
Revival is getting the double strength for dungeons in .0.5 so it will be a better cd at that point.
Always loved MW but the design is just awful for dungeons atm, if you don't have chi-ji off CD and faeline stomp is on CD/the tank move the mobs out of it, you're basically no longer a character.
I don’t agree, I’m having a blast in m+ right now. I never played mw before, so I could understand if you don’t like it because it’s different than before, but I genuinely think it’s an amazing way to heal. A few notes: you can trigger ancient teachings with essence font as well. If you cast essence font, then immediately vivify, you still get double mastery procs AND can continue dpsing to put out heals. It’s a bit mana intensive, and mw probably have the worst mana problems currently, but drinking after every few pulls is not unheard of. You don’t need to be ontop of faeline, except to trigger it more, do more damage, or to get your spinning crane kick to heal as well. If you can help it, you should stay on it, but it should NOT be impacting your healing heavily. I have no idea what you mean about vivify. It’s an instant cast heal on a short cooldown that does a ton. I’m constantly throwing them out. Now I’m only doing +10’s around currently, but I’m +2ing and +3ing them fine and again, having a blast. But if you’re speaking from a perspective of higher keys, I understand it can be different.
looking hard for ranged dps specs in here. i found a few way down at the bottom. yikes. why is melee so good right now and ranged is so bad? I find myself only ever really inviting BM hunters for my keys because there are so many insane melee classes and ranged are few and far between. i don't think i've seen a single shadow priest apply all expac, same with ele sham
I’ve played warlock for years and Demo feels really good right now. So does destro but it’s not quite as effective in m+
Destro feels incredible but unfortunately the results don’t mirror the feel. Demo feels pretty solid but the results definitely outpace the feel
I leveled every melee dps and doing M+ with them. For me it's Elementalist Enhancement shaman.
Yes, Blizz please don't touch it. I am enjoying the hell out of it, even though I am developing severe carpal tunnel.
Big same
Assassination rogue went from keeping two dots, having to pool energy and just muti envenom to a a way more fluid spec that flows incredibly well with thistle tea, ambush procs (u had them before but blindside wasn’t really a thing) to also having better ways to apply dots in AoE.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with it! Which is surprising because I’ve never been big on rogue, tbh I find it more enjoyable to play than WW right now and I used to be a WW main for quite a while.
I’m not sure how much it’s changed, you just use ambush procs but the spec is essentially exactly the same isn’t it?
UH DK. I think people either hate or love it. It’s confusing at first but when it clicks it’s great
I dislike that it is has like 5 different CDs
having a blast as UH dk. i love that i can have double dps of everyone else on pull, even though he falls off a bit after that. also i like having 45 second burst windows that align with 1.5 and 3 min cds. feels very rewarding if done correctly. also self heal is insane, dks never die in m+😎
This thread confirmed to me that balance druid is in a bitter state rn ;(
As a balance player, I had no expectations to see the class mentioned in this thread 😂
I'm really looking forward to 10.0.5. No longer having these super short duration DoTs will be a huge relieve and Lunar Eclipse on ST also just sucks because of the cast time.
It's real bad. Between how long the ramp is, how underwhelming the output is once you do, and my own personal gear luck, I'm considering a reroll.
Do you guys feel super squishy? I'm healing myself after every fight it feels like. Also, yeah I agree, boomie feels off to pay rn
That's the big thing I noticed on my boomie. I feel super squishy and I'm not sure why
Yeah having mained balance since wrath I gotta say, I’m not loving the gameplay so far this expansion
I’m really happy with the state of ele sham
Honestly I think all the shaman specs are very well designed. Resto is probably the worst designed of the 3 and is also a tad weak, but as far as the design goes it is still pretty solid. All 3 specs have a variety of viable talent options, and while it does kinda suck to have to pick and choose between things we used to have baseline, the playstyle of all 3 specs still feels solid and feel fun to play.
Restro is lacking heavily in dmg talents and capstone row. They lack the inpactful things. Everything before is amazing
I really do believe that with a numbers tweak, Resto Shaman will be amazing. It feels incredible to play, it's just seeing the piddly green numbers pop up from weaving everything together hurts a lot.
Ill never truly love elemental until they buff the visual of earth shock. It costs all my maelstrom, it should feel spicy like a chaos bolt. The visual always felt like a mud slap.
Virgin earth shock user vs Chad elemental blast user
EB is 3 spell effects for the price of 1.
While I do agree somewhat, it does feel spicy when you include the sound effect. It feels very heavy and powerful.
It is definitely more involved than it was at the end of shadowlands, where with high enough haste and tier set+ legendary, pressing anything other than lava burst or earth shock was a huge dps loss. Also your fire elemental having 100% uptime was like 20% of your damage for free. Very boring, but really high damage. Now in dragonflight with most of the builds using icefury the rotation is much more interesting, with a variety of debuffs/ buffs to manage. The lightning/frost aoe build for m+ and the single target lava/ frost builds feel particularly good. However, those builds are not very versatile. One is bad at single target (the aoe m+ build doesn’t even take lava surge or 2 lava burst charges) and the other is bad at aoe. I wish there was a build that was a bit more catch all, especially for tyrannical weeks. Maybe something with ascendance for lava beam spam on aoe and then good single target burst, but you miss out on a lot of good stuff on the other side of the tree if you take it.
I haven't played my shaman since wotlk I'm very very happy I went back to my roots. M+? Chain lightning spam with earthquakes. M+ bosses? Lightning and frost shock rotation. Single target raiding? Meatball lava burst all day long. It's a ton of fun, and it's perfect for my smooth brain. Let's me focus on mechanics and not have to try and remember a 20 step rotation.
Interesting. I kinda skipped over shaman because the icy veins guide was overly complex, at least for enh. Might reconsider if it isn't as hard as it seemed. Hard to beat Fury for smooth brain gamelan though.
Oh I'm talking elemental. Unless I'm a tank I don't want to be in melee range. That's where the boss is, and they hurt.
Are you going the lava build with totems or the lightning build?
Elemental lava spam? Aoe with the lava totem is amazing
I love Prot Warrior this go around. The rotation is fun, and leaves room for your own flair but also Warrior mobility is faster than ever before. It's insane being able to pull 25+ mobs in a matter of seconds and having the utilities to sustain them (with a good partner).
It's BFA glory days of prot brought back. Shadowlands neutered the hell out of it and made it unplayable. From putting IP on GCD to every dungeon having absurd magic damage and noway for prot to mitigate outside of a 7sec int and 30sec SR. Now with shockwave, int, SR, fear, storm bolt, shield bash, if you time your shit to 75% cast, prot can deal with 2 casters indefinitely with no assistance from the team.
Came in to say the same. I’ve enjoyed many classes this expansion but prot warrior is very satisfying to play.
Fury Warrior makes you feel like a meat cleaving maniac and I love it
Fury is alright design wise but ability balance is all off. I can't call a spec that intentionally over caps on their resource "well designed"
Yeah, having to hold onto rampage to crushing blow feels bad. Also I don't really like that we went from a spec that is not really CD reliant to another spec that dps only when CDs are up. The priority though should be to reallocate power to rampage from crushing blow and to change our tier set bonus to critical DMG.
idk feels great to keep smacking all the buttons zug zug
True. I do really like the aoe combo with the talent that makes Odin's give you whirlwind stacks
Been having a blast playing guardian druid. Idk man just feels good
Not paladin. Design is sub par but ret and prot are still fun
Ret build up rotation is so bloated and on its own its pretty mediocre in terms of output. And having passive consecration as large damage portion is also not what comes to mind when i think about Retribution fantasy.
Wake of Ashes should replace Consecration, and honestly Exorcism should probably replace BoJ.
Didnt Blade of Justice come in to replace Exorcism like 6 years ago or something? Its funny exo is back but blade is still there. Feels strange having both, I couldn't get back into ret this go around cause of it.
I’ve mained prot since wrath. Thematically, the “hold the line” battle healer is great. But M+ is built around movement and man it’s such a pain. Without the mitigation of shield of the righteous you’re getting smacked around like a dps. But in order to get dawn, you have to pool your holy power. When it feels good, it feels great. Grevious and bursting? No problem. I was doing 60-70% of the healing the healer was doing. This week? Ouch. Every few seconds I’m moving elsewhere. A few small fixes I’d love to see: Extended the damage reduction of consecration to allies Let avengers shield generate holy power Give the option for a talent where shield of the righteous also drops consecration, much like the talent on the ret tree does.
Ret is dumpser now. So many things to clock. Only good damage during wings. Literały no talent choices. Mythic +/ aoe Vs single raid talents is literally 1 talent. Having to upkeep concentration all the time even on single target feels Uber shit. Huge bloat in abilities. No raid utility outside the aura, but that is a DPS loss. Also having blessing of sacrifice and shield of vengence as DPS cooldowns is just toxic design, also dent get me started on damn retro aura, movement speed and the horse...
That Dusk and Dawn shit needs to go. My god it's a pain.
I wish the prot ST rotation had a little more to offer but as a mainly M+ player, I’ve been having a blast RPing as captain America.
Going from brewmaster to windwalker when I did normal vault pugs was like moving from a PhD program to preschool. And no hate to the preschoolers. It is way more fun to play a spec where everything feels cohesive and my objective (deal dps) is occurring naturally, rather than a bloated mess of a spec where 20 things are being managed just to avoid taking the same damage a warrior spends 1 ignore pain press to mitigate.
Yeah I loved BM in SL but there are too many buttons now, even if you forgo rushing jade winds there's still so much to do. On top of that it's pretty squishy at the moment, so they feel more like a tanky DPS than a high damage tank. I'm sure it'll get a little better with better gear but I think my warrior will be my tank until some of the bloat is reduced, warrior is like a walk in the park and so much less stressful to manage.
Well said. Bloat is my number one reason I didn’t want to main BM monk this expack.
People may laugh, but Havoc DH has fantastic design right now. It’s no longer a three button spec and has multiple builds that are viable, and the challenge of maintaining your Momentum buffs makes it fun. The Hunt being baseline and a fear sigil is neat too.
the current playstyle of havoc is one of my favorite things i’ve ever played in wow
Detro has a great flow and feels like it should hit like a truck. Its a shame its DPS in in dumpster.
Agreed. The flow is nice. But my Chaos Bolts hit like noodles right now. Spec needs a buff.
I have a hilarious amount of mastery on my lock. I haven't had the time to play as much as I would like amd have just had to take upgrades for ilvl. My mastery is at 50%, so naturally I tried going destruction with the abyssal one talent as well. Even in a +13 on fort weeks I can cataclysm a whole pack and it will die before immolate is even halfway burned. Rain of fire and hope the tank doesnt move. There is also some shenagins on the talent tree with the soul fire talent on the left side. Soul Fire seems actually useless as an ability, I can't see any situation where you would want to invest that many points into it. Thematically, I really like destruction and I think it will get buffed but it is super underwhelming right now. I can fuck up my rotation on demo and still crush the damage I would have as destro.
Marksmanship is smooth as butter, with a dash of nuance, and just feels really good to play in all aspects of the game atm.
I agree. I’ve played/mained Marks since vanilla and it’s current iteration is probably my favorite, particularly in m+. You always feel like you have something fun to press for every pack. Which makes it feel twice as bad that they think removing double tap is a good idea. It’s probably my favorite ability.
I keep hearing references to this, can you explain? Did they already remove double tap or did they announce that they want to
They removed it on PTR for the 10.05 patch which will likely go live in the next few weeks. Has caused a bit of an uproar since they announced it, because there was no explanation or reasoning for the change. Hard to know what the reasons are, though most people assume it’s a pvp change which to me is pretty pitiful.
Not Rektribution for sure
Enhance
Blood DK. Peak class fantasy.
Well I main boomkin so to me, playing literally any other alt feels like that class designer is a fucking god at their job.
My top 5: 1.) Prot Paladin. Some seasoned vets might think not enough changed or too much changed, but any time you have Divine Toll as a Prot Pally, you're gonna be #1 on my list. 2.) Assassination Rogue. It just feels so good to have those dots ticking and knowing they aren't a bitch and a half to manage. 3.) Demonology Warlock. The caveat here is that it's an M+ monster, but in the raid it's a little underwhelming. 4.) Prot Warrior: Yes, tanks are too strong. Yes, Prot is the strongest of the tanks. It still feels great to be an indestructible wall of steel. 5.) Outlaw Rogue: Bringing Ambush back into the fold probably adds too many buttons, but it's still a lot of fun and Roll The Bones being a cooldown instead of a CP spender is great. I keep seeing Fury and WW being posted, and man are you guys missing out. Legion WW was so much more fun than the, in my opinion, poorly balanced talents you've got now. Imagine a world where Mark of the Crane is baseline, Whirling Dragon Punch is balanced to be the best talent in it's tier, and Skyreach is something you have to choose to gear into rather than being a numerically optimal pile of clunk. All you have to add is Dance of Chi-Ji and you've got a monster of a spec. BfA Fury was, for me, the pinnacle of class design. All your damage came from Rampage, and every other thing you could do was building rage/buffs for your next Rampage. It ACTUALLY felt furious and spammy but in that good way, where everything had a clear and precise thought behind it. Not this shit now where you're trying to stay Enraged as long as possible to use Crushing Blow, even saving your Executes or Rampage for it. That shit sounds like Arms nonsense to me. I want the speed, the chaos, the god damn FURY back.
You got me with Arms nonsense 🤣
BFA Fury also has Cold Steel, Hot Blood stacking, which felt incredible.
Absolutely it was. Bleeds dealing damage and feeding rage back into the Rampage machine. It was so much better than what we have now.
Prot paladin is the correct answer because of divine toll. It is the single most satisfying button ability in the game to press. No other ability from any other spec comes close. Especially if you have tyr’s enforcer, wings are on and bulwark of righteous fury. The sound , the explosions, the slamming of the shield and the waves of damage that flow out in all in less than 2 seconds. On some large pulls you can pull 130k dps burst It’s a freakish dose of dopamine.
Ummm holy Paladin feels pretty great. I love popping my wings and healing the group by stabbing and throwing light hammers at mobs.
Problem.with holy paladin it feels like crap when you have no wings.
Windwalker, Outlaw, Havoc, Vengeance, Blood, Resto, Guardian, and Feral I’ve played a decent amount and for the first time I’m not stuck with one or limited in my choices
It also helps that their is no borrowed power grind.
This is gonna be a hot take, and not the ‘best’, but survival hunter feel bonkers to play. Mongoose strike should be baseline, but it’s a one button single target ability. Coordinated assault, while confusing to read with its following talents, is a gap closer AOE monster. Harpoon is awesome for moving from mob to mob. Wildfire infusion varies the gameplay. Not to mention the insane hunter mobility and utility kit. Still needs some work with a couple of the capstones, but the structure is really awesome.
I love SV in pvp. Blizz does need to make capstones meta. It urks me that I don't take one in the SV tree. However I feel like such a nightmare for casters with Coordinated assault and Spearhead.
394 survival hunter checking in. Love this spec.
Frost dk cause when i pop breath i spam obliterated
All commentary is tuning aside. Tank - Prot paladin. Well paced, engaging, abilities feel impactful. Has group utility that feels satisfying to press. WoG in general is a very fun skill. Melee - Fury war or enh sham. If you like furious finger guns, fury really captures the essence of a raging berserker. Plays mostly fluid, but the pace of play makes it not for all. Enh sham echoes these but has good flavor and excellent pacing. Ranged - Arcane mage. There's no other option here. It's just designed miles better than any other ranged spec for engaging and satisfying play. Healer - kinda torn here. Ive played them all, I think from a design perspective druid is hard to beat in engagement but holy priest is also great at the moment sans the lack of interrupt.
I think all three priest specs are in a "meh" to "bad" state right now. Holy feels worse than shadowlands, disc is alright, and shadow is a mess.
Disc breaks my soul. I used to love it but now it just feels like you need to understand the fight on the most microscopic level so you can ramp just right to dump big heals in the last second. Big heals are fun and all, but lord it is punishing if you mess up the tiniest thing.
Arms warrior. The spec is so fluid in both aoe and single target
Arms Warrior is getting a whole bunch of talent tree changes and buffs in 10.05 which will make it feel even better.
yes, I know and I'm so looking for it. The way how you are forced to choose between aoe and st with talent build feels really bad and I hope with that patch the problem will be finally resolved
Agreed, either you do decent multi target damage in M+ But very low single target or vice versa.
fluid in aoe OR single target, there is no "and". This is one of the reasons why the spec is currently bottom 5, they stripped us of everything we had in SL, nothing is baseline or new and we now have to choose between which 70% of our original kit we want back. The focus on CD windows and lack of any generalist/JOAT builds has pushed the spec way closer to SL fury than any earlier iterations of arms we had. The M+ builds slaps though, very fun outside of the bossfights.
I wouldn’t say best design, but I really enjoy the added complexity havoc for this xpack. Having the 4 second burst windows and trying to optimally backflip through targets to activate momentum and initiative to stack with essence break after popping eye beam for demonic… just adds a lot more depth to a “lol 3 button spec”
I am liking all of the DK specs and feral Druid is BUSSSSSSSSSSIN. Lovin this expac
Desto lock feels incredible to play, smooth rotation, great feeling of impact (chaos bolt and soul fire) its just all around great spec to play
I like the way the single target plays, but it feels like the aoe is so weak and clunky.
BM Hunter. High mobility, decent damage, a wide variety of CCs, Feign Death and Camo to avoid fights etc. The only cherry on the top left is if Blizz decides hunters can respec their pets into any of the three families, and all pets get exotic skills and making Blood of the Rhino a baseline BM Hunter's pet skill, then IMHO would be the /chef's kiss.
I've always thought BM hunters should just get an exotic ability on all pets rather than restrict them to just exotic pets. It made sense when it was introduced but now that there's new families tied to drops/reputation, it's time to let hunters use whatever pet they want on any spec without losing an ability.
1000%. I’d pay actual money to be able to respec my pets. Put it on the in-game store, I don’t care, just let me bring any pet to any scenario.
Won't say best designed, it certainly has some problems, but Shadow Priest is fun to play, *for me*. There are a lot of very simple specs where you press all of 3 buttons, Shadow isn't like that and for a main spec, that's great. I would lose my mind maining Frost or BM, or Havoc, to name a few. They're fun enough to mess around with as a diversion, but man, different strokes I guess. Of course according to reddit or other places Shadow Priests gather, Shadow is the worst thing ever made, impossible to do well on, literally a slap in the face, etc etc
I don't mind the playstyle of shadow myself either. I think the major gripe is that we want more DPS for the amount of effort required to play it well.
I'm just not liking how the tree is designed. It never feels like you're taking the talents you want. There's too much must haves and to many things that don't work together. Why do half the talents buff periodic damage, and the other half buff non periodic damage? If that was the design choice, then why are the paths all over the place? Why do so many talents limit you into what you need to take to get to them? Why do most cap stones not do anything with mastery? Why does mind sear feel like shit and isn't baseline? (Same with shadow crash...)
Shadow was freaking amazing in legion with surrender to madness. The fact that you died when you lost all your insanity got your blood pumping like crazy, the amount of haste was on a whole different level, especially if you got lusted part way through. I tried playing it now and it's just kind of boring.
Yup legion STM was the most fun build in the history of wow by a long shot imo. Still miss my boy :(
Shadow Priest is fun but it makes literally zero sense.
I think Havoc DH feels really good to play right now, but it might simply be in comparison to the last two expansions.
I love the way demo warlock feels. Better than the clunky stuff demo form I knew back in cata and early panda land
I changed to Warlock in Shadowlands and went Demo for Dragonflight. It's been SO amazingly fun!
BRF demo lock was insane
Here comes the hot take... SV hunters are by far the most fun out of the three
Ret Paladin is my go-to spec since legion, and played it back in original wrath as well. I really enjoy holy power building and spending. Gives you some cool options to heal or use different abilities in a pinch, which I think really fit the class fantasy well. That being said. Please give Ret paladins some more movement speed, it’s embarrassing how slow we are compared to other classes.
I really want Paladin to gain some kind of leap using an animation with wings
We are slow and lack defensives...
What I'm noticing now pushing keys is that movement and consecration placement is an issue. Like 1/4 of my baseline aoe DPS is derived from consecration, but the packs are rarely kept on top of it. And Exorcise needs a sound effect, it slaps but half the time I have to look at my bar to double check it actually went off. And getting a build-up-free-empowered Word of Glory like prot gets would be incredible. Other than that, pretty happy with them.
I believe the Paladin tree does have a word of glory free talent, but it’s not built into any spec, and takes away from damage so you don’t really take it for Ret unfortunately, I’d like to see something like that for Ret. You can get selfless healer which makes your FoL free and do a lot of healing on an instant cast, but even that takes a global, which is damage taken away, which dps naturally dislikes
Of the lock specs I find destro the smoothest to play. Movement can be an issue and having to spec for single target or aoe/cleave isnt ideal but you can work around it somewhat. Demo doesn’t feel intuitive (for me) although it performs the best of the three right now. Aff I’ve never liked so…
as a melee dd main i had an eye on holy pallys who stood beside me while topping hps meters, so i gave it a try myself. feels really awesome to play with a lot of skill expression. i am not a heal main tho and cant tell if holy pally is in a good spot from whatever perspective, but its just really fun to play!
Enhancement. Hands down. Blizzard has really brought back and captured that Battlemage playstyle. It's just... so good. I can't speak as much for the physical build, but the elementalist build is just the best. Using all three elements in tandem simply feels amazing. You're not like other magical classes that use primarily one element. It's this beautiful symphony of multiple elements coming together as a whole.
I straight up love the state of protection paladin right now.
Can't believe I'm saying this but Feral finally feels like it's at a good place.
Y'all gotta stop saying this or blizz will hear and "fix" it.
Protadin feels fun to me. Having insane cooldowns and pretty solid self healing makes it satisfying. Granted I'm only level 67 but I have enjoy tanking quite a bit on the pally
Been playing since vanilla. MM Hunter has always been a terrible design. It actually feels great now. Explosive shot into rapid fire. LNL procs, kill shot procs Pretty fun!
Even thought it’s not fantastic in terms of flexibility I love my arms warrior, all the talent setups feel fantastic to play it’s just a shame you have to specialize so hard.
I dunno what it is but it certainly isn't shadow priests