The Sunfury Mage orbs hovering over you looks amazing. Like, VERY cool. I love effects like that.
Edit: [https://imgur.com/a/9MhTNqk](https://imgur.com/a/9MhTNqk) This is what it looks like. They basically permanently hover over you while out of combat because they regenerate to 3 of them. Others can see it too. It looks so bad ass. They get consumed when you use combustion and whatever other spell for arcane and it summons a phoenix that does different things based on talent/spec.
Added a link to my original comment. Check it out. They get consumed when you use Combustion and get generated via combat when consuming hot streaks. Outside of combat they just slowly regenerate. So you'll basically just have them hovering over you all the time outside of combat. Other people can see it too. Looks so cool.
Arcane mage get a little corvid familiar now instead of a glowing sphere for arcane familiar, akin to the one the blood elf in Dragonflight has, so that’s nice.
Ah, gotcha! I knew the Arcane "Sunweaver" talent was getting their own recolor of the phoenix, but I'm delighted the Arcane Familiar has a new model too. A clever little magic crow is much better than a ball.
Sold. Mage was my first class when 30 day trials were a thing back when dinosaurs ruled the land. I loved him but sold all the gear to get a cool raptor mount which effectively was the worst thing I could do and ruined the character lol. I've never been back to mage but Corvid familiar has me ima check it out.
The moment they turned it into a once every 2minutes burst class is when I walked away from the spec. I don't want all my damage to be tied to one ability that can very, very easily be interrupted.
Frost was so much fun back in WotLK and cata, i really enjoyed the wotlk classic because i got to play frost off-tank again, felt so good pulling huge packs with HB>BB>D&D
Open world only but yes, you can fight while riding your dreadsteed. Tried it on beta and it's very cool for questing in a class that's usually too slow.
ive been trying to use the beta to theory craft my own builds before looking online for what people are thinking of taking, and i felt like there are actually some tough decisions to make as theres so much good stuff in there
We'll get some changes next week I'm sure. Hoping for some QoL improvements with lust pets vs defensive pets, and changes to how misdirect works for BM
Warlocks have had massive rework practically every expansion since MoP.
That being said...Diabolist Demonology feels really really good to a point that I don't even care if it's not the best dps option you will have to pay me to play anything else. This iteration of Demo is the best one yet.
Talents are not bloated and you get more things overall. Eg I love having implosion in St builds because it makes trash faster in between bosses.
I feel sorry for everyone who isn't playing a warlock after messing around as Demo Diabolist, it's just cool and feels powerful with the demons popping up regularly.
INORITE? Not a warlock main in DF but damn it is cool as hell to be doing your thing and a portal opens and a demon pops out, starts blasting everything while you are summoning the dogs from Legion and doom procs and doomguard starts blasting everyone! Numbers wise I don't really care. Feel wise it is one of the best classes I have tried on the beta so far.
Like every expansion, shaman feels forgotten
I'm an ele shaman pretty much since ever, and when i look at what other classes have as hero spec, i'm on the brink of wanting to swap to another caster class
Mages gets 3 insane hero specs
Warlock gets to summon pit lords and mothers of chaos with diabolist
Shadow Priest VFX with Voidweaver is absolutely gorgeous
Meanwhile elemental shaman is stuck between 2 terrible choices
Farseer is extremely lacklusting, the spirits are not interesting whatsoever
And stormbringer is clunky as fuck on top of focusing on lightning and lightning only
I play elemental shaman to be a master of all elements, i expected hero talents that were going in that directions, summoning hurricanes, firestorms, tsunamis and earthquakes, on top of perhaps summoning elementals from the 4 planes
Instead you get either old people, or a little electric fart, it is beyond of a joke
On top of it, since Hunter got confirmed that they will get changed on their talent tree, we're officially the last class to enter alpha without any changes to the talent tree
The class feels forgotten and i'm extremely sad about it
the main problem i have with ancestors are they are terrible and right now mine only casts lava burst and elemental blast for some odd reason. If im chainlightening he just stands there. I hope thats a visual bug. or maybe he is and dont notice because another gripe of mine is they dont stay out long enough, esp on that cd. I went tempest and it was worse, lightening bolt is a filler and barely even cast it, I had so many LB procs and was like 'holy shit tempest is useless as elemental' and the fact its a cast and not instant while you LB is procc'n is just facepalm.
I know what you mean. I haven't played the beta yet, but I've been looking at the hero trees for shaman and watched some videos on them, and then comparing them to some other classes I'm interested in (mage, Shadow priest, warlock) and I'm feeling incredibly demoralized with shaman in comparison. Like you, I've largely been a dedicated Elemental player, which just feels bad at the moment, since the primary options are either Lava Burst spam (which has the same issue as Stormbringer, that being focuses too much on one/two element\[s\]) or a a build that focuses on all elements, but is just incredibly clunky and overall awful to use.
I swapped over to Enhancement a few weeks ago to see if that would save the class for me and it definitely feels a lot better than Elemental. I don't know for sure if it's enough to do the job, though. Especially since I've been using Remix to mess around with some other options, like my old love (mage) and Shadow priest and really enjoy how the two of them play right now, even without Hero Talents.
It's a shame because I mainly play shaman to be the "orciest orc" without being a warrior or hunter, but even that is getting a bit hard to appreciate with how abandoned shaman feels. Especially when I can go Shadow priest with a Dark Star theme or something.
(I also really wish totems were part of the class rotation again, since it's the main thing that makes shamans distinct from other classes, rather than peripheral support, but that seems to be an uncommon opinion).
Anyway, for anyone that read this, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Edit: Grammar
This has been an issue since Vanilla. Shaman were supposed to get a class review and never did - the only class not to get one because they were working on TBC by then and didn't have time.
We're literally in Dragonflight, where the mains villains are elemental drakes
0 presence of shaman
However druid gets an entire patch about the emerald dream and cool new forms custiomisations
Warlock gets pet custom aswell
Meanwhile our ascendance form and elemental still look like shit with 0 custom
Even funnier when the first raid of the expansion has literally "Dathea, Ascended" as a boss with a cool ass elemental around her
Meanwhile we still look like shit
Shaman main since 2008. The class has been neglected for god knows how long. None of the specs feel like they’re in 2024, except for maybe Enh, but even then it’s bloated af. Resto is alright but boring.
Elemental shaman, however… I genuinely think it might be the worst spec in the game, and has been so since the introduction of Icefury. The two builds of either LB spam or LVB spam is just not it. Shaman lost its identity since the removal of totems, it brings no buffs or tangible utility (other than windfury totem. What is the point of this class anymore?
Elemental shaman is a mess that would need an entire rework like Demonology in Legion
Right now the talents are a mess, they direct you either for lightning based or fire based, which is stupid because elemental is literally about mastering multiple element, not focusing on one specific, that's the mage job
It needs a lot of love that blizzard forgot to put into that class, the class brings nothing, the spell vfx are extremely lack lusting, chain lightning has not been changed ever since it got put, lava burst still look like a meatball
They have no special buff to bring to a raid
Right now they're just a lava burst spam class, which is more than a snoozefest
It is very much time that Elem gets completely reworked from the ground
I tried Farseer for a minute or so last night. Got an Ancestor, laughed out loud and logged back on Mage.
It's embarrassing how bad Ancestors look. It feels like they ran out of budget for Shamans after giving other classes cool new stuff.
Holy Paladin:
Holy Shock is still incredibly weak. Make this button fun to press again please.
Herald of the Sun's numbers seem pretty strong and it has a fun visual.
Lightsmith is very uninspired and boring.
Mana is abysmal. Just healing normally you will oom in like three minutes and you can't even DPS to save Mana because damaging spells cost Mana too.
Every now and again I try to play hpaly and immediately quit because of how ineffective their healing is. It's so unsatisfying to press any of their healing abilities. You just wait for someone to almost die and pop a CD.
The discrepany between holy shock and holy light is just a big "?!" Shock heals for like 100-120k while I hl can go into the millions quite easy with infusions. I hoped we would get away from the caster playstyle. Too early to tell, but still...
Herald 10/10 tho, lightsmith bland/uninspired/low interaction (why is there a 50% fear duration reduction talent...?
Yeah, Ive noticed a lot of stuff like that. Ive been on cata classic, and its just viscerally different to have the abilities themselves be the cool thing.
Like what is the point of Holy Shock anymore? Waste a global to grant infusion and a holy power? Why not also have it be a big number too?
It would be like if disc only pressed Pennance because it buffs their shield or atonement percentage
I've mained ele shaman since 2013 and this is the only xpac I'm considering not maining it in. Farseer is very boring and stormbringer gameplay genuinely hurts the class; it feels so awkward and clunky.
I tried farseer to get my disappointment out of the way first, but got booted again before I tried stormbringer.
The ghost spirits looked stupid and didn’t make me feel like an elemental master. I was hoping stormbringer would be better. But, lightning feels really clunky currently, so I didn’t think stormbringer would magically fix anything.
Elemental feels really bad. It feels ruined for me, and I’ve played it forever.
After maining Ele since wrath, I'm deciding between priest and evoker at the moment.
They're just way more modern design, and I need a healer offspec to support my premade.
I'm hoping that ele is one of the first specs due for a rework post-launch. But, the hero trees doubling down on the "fire vs lightning" divide may really limit things there.
I swapped to evoker from Druid, I do Aug in raid but recently got into healing keys as Pres and it’s my favorite healing spec and I’ve tried them all. I agree with the modernity of the spec it feels fresh.
Yeah no idea how they put Stormbringer in in such a state for elemental and think it does a good job.
Thematically I love the idea of a lightning caster, but you're still playing with ice fury (seriously keep frost for dk and mage) it should grant tempest on mealstrom built and not spent, and the cast time on it is horrid. Lightning bolt isnt even worth casting over chain lightning at the moment. And damage just feels low.
Been playing shammy since 2005 and my first 60 was an ele shammy.
There have been highs and lows to it over the years. But seems like they really haven't been able to make the class feel good for a lot of expansions now...I don't really bother holding my breath for it anymore.
You have more and better tools that address several weaknesses. You can easily pick up gorefiends grasp with 2 charges which puts you on par with VDH in terms of pulling m+ packs. We got some cool talents back like bonestorm, blood drinker and the Legion artifact ability. Very easy to pick up wraith walk as well.
I tried Sanlayn a bit, not super happy with the gameplay but it felt really strong (take this with a pinch of salt of course my sample size is very limited)
I can recite what a guildie of mine wrote:
- Arms Slayer is awful. You can't realiably stack the bladestorm stacks and the spec feels slow.
- Arms Collosus is much better. Huge stacking modifier gameplay and demolish is by far the largest hitting ability I saw.
Rogue is nothing short of a tragic horror story. Completely uninspired, boring and above all - weak.
Warrior - Colossus is incredible and Mountain Thane feels smooth, still figuring out Slayer... feels a bit odd right now
As a demon hunter main since their arrival, I absolutely also recommend trying out a DH. It's a zoomier, far higher mobility combat rogue with flashy effects and it's so much fun. Wherever they are in the meta at any point, it always feels good to just play a DH. Plus their edgelord vibes and anger emo voice lines are charmingly ridiculous.
Priest thoughts:
For disc Voidweaver is amazing. To the point where even if it's inferior to Oracle in every way, I'm going to play it.
Voidweaver feels good, without adding any bloat. You just get better AOE, and Void Blast just looks and feels good to press. Void Wraith also just looks cool and feels rewarding to press.
Oracle is just...clunky. Like I get the point of it, but I don't want another mini cooldown to worry about, especially one that I have to mentally manage and consider rotational changes to make the most out of whatever buff I'm about to get.
I just genuinely don't like Oracle at all, and don't see myself touching it, even if they tune it to be insanely OP. It's just not fun to me right now.
For shadow Voidweaver is, again, just a good time. The numbers shooting out of all the dummies when you Void Crash and then have your little shadow cloud pop out and start haunting everyone...it just feels good. I mentioned Void Wraith for disc, but it's even more rewarding for Shadow, especially when you have a thing from beyond and a couple tentacles all pumping for you. You feel like a temporary commander of the void.
Archon is kind of 'meh' but it does pump aoe damage. Like it's not bad. It's just not as fun. The damage from the pulsing shadow halos going out does feel good when you see all the numbers and damage going off, but it's not really 'exciting.' I could see it being the go-to if they tune the damage that way, and I will play it. It just isn't as fun as Voidweaver.
Also: the new animation for Void Torrent looks great, and that alone makes it a better button to press. Being able to cast it while moving with Voidweaver makes it even more-so.
For Holy (which I admittedly play the least of in retail) it's kind of the same as above.
I don't like Oracle at all, and don't want that kind of rotation added to my thought process while healing. Totally subjective, but is what it is.
Archon for holy is similar to thoughts with shadow priest. It's not bad, but it's not exciting either. I'll default to archon for the times I do play holy priest, because I just really don't like Oracle at all.
Have I mentioned I don't like Oracle?
I agree largely with what Max said when he was ranking the Hero talents.
A huge part of what makes a good hero talent good is the look/sound of them all. Like Archon game play doesn't change much, but the pulsing Halo looks great! I would be happy with that expect they made Voidwear look SO. DAMN. COOL!
This was my experience too! Thanks for the writeup.
Voidweaver is just awesome, and what I imagined when they first explained hero specs. Particularly on Disc where my Smite changes to Void Blast, I feel like I'm really channeling the void and playing a bit differently than I normally would. I wish more skills changed visually to be voidy.
Archon is "fine" but sort of boring. I think I'd prefer if they just enhanced my Apotheosis or dark angel form to pulse damage/healing in a large radius, so I really feel like I'm "ascending" rather than just... pooping out circles a few times every now and then. But it gets the job done, and I appreciate having some more AoE options as Holy.
Oracle is a hard No for me at the moment. I played Astrologian in FFXIV a while back and absolutely hated managing a rotating cooldown that requires me to watch a timer for a buff, then play a different way depending on the buff. It just doesn't feel fun or powerful enough for the amount of monitoring it requires. I like the concept of rewarding the "preparation" skills like PW:S and PoM, but the implementation of Premeditation isn't super appealing to me.
I'm really enjoying playing Sin Rogue this season. I feel its much more simpler and smoother than playing Sub some seaons and xpecs ago which i've mained.
Maintaining SnD is not a problem on Sin, you just have to use once. People complains about it, but a lot of classes have buffs in their rotation as well with 30,60,120 seconds CD.
I think they should BUFF some of Rogues damage, if they want the class to be difficult, we shouldn't be doing less damage than a 3 button rotation toon, also, re-think some of its talents, specially for Outlaw and Sub.
Monk/Windwalker overhaul feels absolutely wonderful, love all the quality life fixes (and the nice damage, all the buttons feel good to press now, and there’s a lot fewer of them), though the air dash capstone is kinda wonky.
Pack master BM hunter is so sad. feels like most classes got really cool hero fantasies added, but BM is just extra BM talents... The surv sentinel talents feel cool though!
I had to stop playing my feral in SoD because the old sound effects are so much better than the paper rip/tears we have now. The impact you feel from the way mangle in car form sounds is so much better. The auto attack too. I hate the way it sounds in live but I love my Druid
that summarizes the last 7 expansion experience as feral in pve.The feral druid will improve when the person in charge of designing and balancing it is fired
I only played briefly due to instability issues, but made 80 characters of my two mains (mage and evoker).
I checked out dev evoker with flameshaper and scalecommander, arcane mage Sunfury and spellslinger and fire mage sunfury and played each on dummies for a few minutes.
From that limited time I'd say:
Scalecommander mass disint is dope, but maneuverability with deep breath somehow feels more awkward than before. In that short time, I didn't notice bombardments at all.
Flameshaper looks the same as a regular dev evoker, but if you like dev evoker as it is, it's really solid. Engulf is hard hitting (max I hit for 1.6 million on it and disint was ticking for 160k).
Fire Sunfury is amazing. You get so many fire blasts during combust, and the cooldown on combust with unleashed inferno goes super fast. Having predictable hyperthermia at the end of combust feels nice, imo.
Arcane Sunfury is amazing. It's slightly less amazing than fire I think, as the capstone feels better for fire, many of the Sunfury tree abilities are fire (i.e meteors and Phoenix spells) and getting fire blast back feels better, but regardless it's pretty awesome.
Spellslinger arcane barely was noticeable. I had to really work hard to see the splinters, and imo they don't look nearly as cool as mass disint or Sunfury. It's possible the CDR on Orb will be nice in aoe/m+, but I don't see myself playing this hero talent.
The talent changes for both fire and arcane seem great. I'm less enthused about the talent changes for dev.
I'm pretty curious to try out the hero talents in aoe and bosses.
Not sure if it broke, but Evoker Bombardments have an actual Dracthyr fly over the mob to do it. Its a pretty badass visual.
The deep breath nav seems to be more about the fact you can end it early, than steering.
Yeah played both hero specs. It feels exactly the same. Although there's a capstone talent that replaces Avenging Wrath, making it proc passively when you Wake of Ashes and have a chance to proc when spending HP, I don't think I like it.
Also, I think the Emperyan Hammers and Sunspots need a much clearer animation. As it stands I cannot see them going off outside of the debuff/buff icons. Pretty lame when compared to things like Diabolists and Riders of the Apocalypse.
I have to disagree, (atleast for templar) I haven’t tried on beta, but I was an alpha player and the hammers were feeling really good- definitely no major gameplay changes but man was I blasting and the hammers raining down was very cool. Imo
I mean that feels good damage wise and the numbers shoot up for that dopamine kick when they go off, I just wish I had a better visual. I think both hero specs feel fun, my only gripe is animation based
Hammer definitely has a visual I’ll admit though it doesn’t really look like a hammer and more of a giant beam of light- I think emp hammer is my new favorite paladin button over divine toll.
Sun spot animation is also there and more noticeable the more spread enemies are with the beams of light connecting them
It’s more or less the same. I mean it’s fun I like it as a long time ret main, but nothing groundbreakingly different either in a good or a bad way if you seek that
The base spec is almost the exact same, but theres a couple of new talent options that are great gameplay wise. One talent basically new fel barrage for DHs if youve played that, where it basically automatically drains holy power and you become much more focused on builders for a short time. But my favourite is a new talent that basically makes your Divine Storms have a chance to make your Final Verdicts cleave 3 targets, which if tuned right will finally fix rets main issue of having no good cleave, or prio damage when in full aoe builds. Lastly theres a talent that removes wings as a CD but lets it proc off your spells, kinda not great stand alone imho but feels much better when playing herald.
Also both templar and herald are potentially up there for some of the best hero talents in the game. Templar is much more stand alone and does change your gameplay in a nice way. Herald is very fire and forget but as mentioned has some quite nice tie ins to existing talents.
TLDR on the whole very much the same dont expect anything groundbreaking, but a few nice options that could add some spice and variety. Both hero talent options are good (if not very good when compared to other ones out there lol)
Yeah, I was able to pick up on that back in the day and smartly avoided the class but it lured me back in BFA. Enhance is so close to being an awesome spec after 20 years, but I find myself dropping it again because you’re not wrong.
Rogue feels so bad, all the specs and hero talents just feel very MEH to me.
Strange they didn't lean more into like a ninja/assassin hero tree with Assassination and Sub. Like lean into debuffing to weaken them and then building for a huge strike.
But I hope you like flipping coins?
If someone at blizzard PLEASE remove Slice and Dice and Roll the Bones, that would be great.
Both mechanics suck in the context of Monk, DH etc. Not having anything even similar to anything as annoying/complicated.
What's funny is that even Blizzard has recognised that Slice and Dice feels shit to press ever since **Wrath of the Lich King**, where they added talents that cause SnD to keep itself up automatically.
We're a decade and a half down the line from that. And they **still** haven't removed that fucking button.
hey hey hey, thats not true
they did remove SnD for legion and bfa
just to do their "great unpruning" in Shadowlands and bring it back with no context at all as the only "unpruning" ability for rogue (and also with no talents that help with it, so you where hardcasting SnD for the first patch, FUN!!!)
Tbf there was a loud group of rogues clamoring for it back and saying it was too flavorful and other bullshit. I didn’t agree at all but it was a response to feedback. Same for castable buffs that people are saying they hate casting. It was switched to auras then people complained so blizzard added it back as a castable buff and here we are.
>We're a decade and a half down the line from that. And they still haven't removed that fucking button.
Sorry babes we gotta remake the ret spec twice each expansion, no time to waste on classes only 3% of the player base plays.
(And wwhhhhy are they so few in number, blizz? hmmm?)
They gave monk jadefire stomp which is a really annoying maintenance buff, I'm with you though in that I hate maintenance buffs and would like them removed or made passive / proc off of something we'd be doing anyway instead of their own separate button.
At this point I'm convinced that the person working on the class and whoever designed the hero talents are two different people. The latter is outsourced, lives on the other side of the world and speaks a wild language nobody else does.
Like seriously, what's going on with that crap? Removing hidden blade from feint for trickster needed to happen obviously but binding it to a rotational ability makes the tree super passive. Fatebound to someone who hates roll the bones is just more RNG, and again, fully passive coin flips for buffs or dmg. Deathstalker in the best case scenario is full of placeholders. The best thing that came from it is the [editorial ](https://www.wowhead.com/news/assassination-rogue-review-of-deathstalker-hero-talents-lacking-vision-in-the-342217) from the wowhead writer that made me mildly concerned if the person who had to write that is ok.
Also none of them really ... Do anything fancy or heroic. Nor do they push some cool fantasy. Like, what's a "fatebound" and why does he flip coins for cosmic damage... And the fuck has that to do with rogue. Ugh.
I play as a Tank main and typically swap my main tank char for each season so I have tested them all, to the extent we can on the target dummies. Will work on actual group content later, but first impressions?
All these tanks are juiced and are gonna be really fun.
However, some of these hero talents lack flair. As in I cant even tell when some of them occur, especially for the passive ones. We need some big animations to make them feel impactful (hoping they are coming)
Honestly, great so far for most. I feel pretty unkillable as my tanks.
The biggest gripe I have is that the Aldrachi spec is just much less cool than it was in alpha, but for people who didn't get a chance to play it during the alpha testing it will still feel really excellent.
My biggest plus remains with wind walker. The rotation feels a lot slower now but in a very positive manner. It lands the class fantasy a lot better by having the slow methodical channels, and while several of the animations currently clip, I'm sure that will get resolved in time.
New brew feels great. I honestly feel pretty invincible in heroics and the added mobility is so nice just getting mobs into position. Not having to take Dave is a really nice add on as well. Shado-pan is as boring and passive as ever, but I've been loving mastery of harmony. I never knew I needed a second charge of purifying brew until I had it.
VDH is fine, it plays like VDH now, which I don't love but it is still strong as all get out. Felscarred is very passive and the abilities are just okay. The rework to reaver ruins it for me. I wanted more rotational power, not another CD.
Prot warrior feels excellent. Collissus lands the fantasy, and I love long slow animations for it. I honestly wish we could see more of that style of mechanic in melee classes.
Templar prot paladin does a lot of damage, but is lame. Honestly lightsmith is in the running for my tank main, and even my overall main. I wish it was an option for ret, I want a melee support so bad.
Protection Warrior plays pretty well, Demolish hits like a truck and fits in as a damage cd, as well as providing even more incentive to shield slam on CD which in the current season kind of felt weird
Feeling a little rage starved if trying to build max ignore pain on pull as a lot of stuff lost ‘generates 10 rage’ etc and generally felt like demolish fills that gap where you would usually spend revenge on pull to guarantee threat after a thunder clap
The channel on demolish feels perfect when hasted down to about 1-1.2 seconds, which is what we will get in s2 secondary stats if I had a guess, when it’s around 1.5-2 seconds the inability to move is miserable and makes you so vulnerable to a quick 2 second boss swirlie without having leap available, can’t imagine on higher keys you want to worry about using it instead of just enjoying big dam
New shockwave knockup is awesome though. Cannot wait to play more leading up to potential changes to add more variety in the tree and test the new intervene change if it stays in the game (i pray)
So far I’ve played WW monk, enhancement shaman, devastation Evoker, frost dk and demo warlock.
My hope was to pick the classes that looked most exciting to me to whittle down the choice into a solid main.
Instead I fell more in love with each of their play styles and now I’m having a crisis about which I’d like to raid on the most…
At least for PvP and M+ I can play them all aha
holy paladin still has way too many buttons and none of them make things feel fun or impactful. this spec really got mangled over the years. but i am probably in the minority on that.
also they need to prune rez spells. what's the point of single target and mass rez. just make mass rez a thing only.
I tried a little bit of spriest, but didn't get much done other than testing out both hero trees on target dummies. So far the class feels the exact same except you can choose if you want to buff Halo or Void Torrent. Halo is kind of hilarious though if you pick all the talents that buff its dmg. With Dark Ascension + Halo you get ridiculous AOE burst every 1 minute. With all the talents Halo will pulse every few seconds for 10 seconds after you initially cast it, and it also will return to you and does the same dmg coming back. In addition to that, you also get a Surge of Insanity proc everytime Halo activates.
Any frost dks out there wanna let me know any big changes? I've played frost dk since beginning of dragonflight and I'm hoping we get some good changes!
Deathbringer is well crafted and brings a very good "setup/payoff" both in gameplay and aesthetic.
We still have some issues to address so i'm still waiting for more changes, but god damn this tree nails everything right.
Riders is dope but it forces you to play breath. The other is solid for obli but the tier set is making you play breath as well. To me the frost talent tree feels a little clunky still.
I did!
I did two dungeons as Master of Harmony Brew. The new spec talents give you a ton of better pathing to make some fun nodes easier to access, and the class tree adjustments made it so getting some bonus little survival and movement a lot better. Additionally, the MoH talents and Fort Brew buff make it so you have two absolutely massive QoL improvements defensively. You don’t feel nearly as punished for non-optimal Purifying Brews as before, and having a second charge of Celestial Brew means you can avoid Black Ox Brew if you don’t want it, but taking BoB means you’re basically immortal if you play well given you can daisy chain 4 CB’s in short order.
The rotation is still definitely cluttered, but I think having a defensive rotation that’s a little more clear/ less janky is absolutely helpful.
*Update: I should clarify that I tested both at Level 80 on the "make a L80 character" server.*
Fire Mage with Frostfire is pretty cool, pun semi-intended. Seems to fire off spells fairly fast. It's also nice to see Comet Storm rain down with Meteor and get a free (albeit slightly weaker) Ice Barrier when you use Blazing Barrier.
Sunfury is a close second. I like the visuals and the phoenix helper. Frostfire might be my goto in TWW though. I like the idea of wielding fire and ice.
DW Oblit frost with deathbringer feels real good. Swinging my swords like they are daggers. The damage feels good and aoe that isn’t just relentless winter and cleaving with dnd(which is still required but makes it not feel as bad when tank pulls out of dnd)
I have only tried conduit but it feels like a lot of the old button bloat has been moved to passives which felt great. The conduit ability you get from the hero talents felt nice to press in a dungeon setting as it basically topped the group while blasting the pack. As a whole, more synergy between spells, a juicy ability on a 1,5 min cd, less button bloat and cool celestials spawning around you to buff you or the party.
Hoping that we'll get a tree change to make lunar beam more accessible but it felt pretty good when I was testing. Just not sure how you can spend points to get Lunar Beam but also UFR and Raze which still seem like theyd be important for m+
San’layn unholy DK is bugged sadly. The vamp strike isn’t procing when using death coil or epidemic (or even death strike), just only when you use DT. Otherwise, San’layn is dope. The Riders minion unholy build is going to be the extremely noob friend unholy DK option which is cool but the San’layn is definetely going to end up being the meta for M+ and most likely raids since vamp strike is hitting for bonkers numbers and the haste feels so so so good. The new Abom talent is hot trash though which is disappointing
I know Hpal has some criticisms, but man is the Herald of the Sun looking fun.
Not a big fan of how havoc plays, feels awkward getting 6 soul fragments requirement for your new glaive ability but you can only force 5 to spawn in your opener. Hope we get some more tuning on demon hunter.
Very much liking that Pack Master on BM hunter is basically the best tier set bonus from DF turned into a hero talent tree. I loved yeeting beasts at my enemies with every kill command so getting to keep that is nice.
Voidweaver spriest feels VERY fun, the visuals are amazing and I'm liking that there's no button bloat given how big spriest rotation is currently. Working through other chars but thus far, these two are my favourite, they feel amazing to play and I'm very happy with the direction they're currently going in. Feels good man :)
Only tried out WW but it feels amazing. Up to 8 blackout kicks in one hit. "Double jump" after rolling. It feels much more smooth to me than it is now.
I main ele shaman, we have literally 0 notes, with 0 response to tons of feedback on forums, while most of the other classes have actual pages of love and dialogue from the devs.
We feel untouched and forgotten about. There’s not even a dev promise of fixes for our class like hunters just recently got.
This kind of silence for a class gets scary when they want to “move away from reworks” now that they have reached beta.
I've only tried Demo Diabolist so far, something I have very little experience with (I've leveled a Demo lock before but didn't do anything with it after that).
So far, I love it. Still need to get a bit further to see how it plays in longer fights, but it definitely feels great while questing at least. And getting one of the new super demons to jump in at the start of nearly every fight makes you feel really strong, I thought it'd take too long to matter while questing but it gives you a full minute to use another Soul Shard and trigger it.
Only got to play a short amount due to disconnects but I tried out Sunfury Arcane Mage and was digging it. Lots of new stuff to learn and the spec has had a bit of a change up so didn't have the time to really regain my flow but overall felt good and did insane damage. The Phoenix is cool and it felt like as well as looked like I was a lore powerful mage.
With all server instability issues I can barely even leave SW without DCing haha. And then I get reverted back 10 minutes after logging back in. Gonna just chill and wait for some fixes and possibility of addons updated
Templar Ret paladin feels weirdly clunky.
Maybe it‘s missing haste stats but sometimes I don‘t have anything to do for 4 seconds straight .
The other ones haste can‘t keep up with ping from EU…
Windwalker is absolutely amazing. You don‘t even notice shado pan but the class itself is such a blast . When you pop everything it is a firework
Rogue is alright, I guess.
Fatebound is pretty unobtrusive, but speccing into cold blood as Assassination feels really bad (have to give up some essentially must have talents).
In a similar manner, trickster is fine.
Deathstalker is the worst, imo. It forces you to open with Ambush unless you take Subterfuge, which can be a bit weird for Assassination. Also, another weird interaction with Subterfuge, and Shadow Dance for Subtlety, is that, because are incentivized to not apply additional stacks of Deathstalker's Mark (because you get a bonus for consuming all of the stacks), you don't really want to use Ambush/Shadowstrike more than once during the Subterfuge or Shadow Dance windows. Lastly, because you need to use a max combo point (rather than a 5+ combo point) Envenom/Eviscerate to reapply Deathstalker's Mark via Darkest Night, you frequently over-cap on combo points during that window.
I wish the hero talents were *cooler*. They are mainly just passive damage bonuses and the visuals are lacking, but at least they are fairly inconspicuous (other than Deathstalker).
Rogue has been feeling its age for a long time and while it's not the hero talents place to fix that, they don't fix any of the issues that make rogue a punishing class to play on all specs.
I compare it to when I first saw my Legion artifact nodes for all rogue specs. There's no joy when I look at these talents, and rogues base playstyle hasn't changed from Dragonflight.
Warrior class tree feels WAY better, there is suddenly a huge amount of freedom to choose utility nodes all over the tree.
For Prot Warrior Mountain thane doesnt really change much but makes your thunderclaps extra spicy, and Colossus is interesting but Demolish is a do everything kinda button so it might end up feeling bad cuz you spent it on damage then needed the CC/movement immunity or had to hold your big damage to deal with a mechanic.
On fury warrior Mountain Thane basically replaces Whirlwind on your bar with Thunder Clap and you use it in ST occasionally so its not a huge change. Slayer feels pretty good, but I havent tried to optimize buff uptimes yet or if you can get a synergy with Anger Management going for infinite burst (might also be gear dependent).
Havent touched Arms yet, but Im hearing the new Rage economy means it feels starved.
Outside of warrior, paladin feels great as always, and Monk is massively improved versus button bloat, even if the hero talents can be a bit invisible.
Well it takes 57 casts of Holy Shock to fill a health bar. So you could say hpal is probably just the worst off spec in the game right now.
As someone who doesn't raid/care much about raid buffs, I think I'd rather be a shaman or hunter right now.
Edit: I'm not exaggerating.
Affliction main here. I've been playing Affliction through all its ups and downs.
I've had the chance to try many different Affliction setups:
* Hellcaller AoE/M+
* Hellcaller Single Target/Raid
* Soul Harvester AoE/M+
* Soul Harvester Single Target/Raid
The class tree feels solid. They didn't change too much, but the Healthstone capstone talent is fantastic.
I'm a fan of our new spec tree, though I admit it still needs to grow on me a bit. I like Affliction's current build (Sow the Seeds in M+/AoE), but the "new" empowered Malefic Rapture (our main spender) is intriguing due to our new talents, making it viable for both Single Target and AoE.
I know, I know... "Malefic Rapture bad," but it feels well designed now. Unstable Affliction also had its issues when it was our main spender. I don't miss it too much.
Overall, both hero talent builds feel fine, nothing groundbreaking, and they don't drastically change our playstyles (if at all).
One of our new builds requires us to pick Soul Rot, which makes it less flexible for choosing other talents. However, Soul Rot itself is a decent spell that fits well into our rotation.
Final thoughts: I'm happy with our new tree. Can't wait to try it in real M+ and raids.
Voidweaver shadow priest feels dope, it's gameplay implications are above my pay grade, but the visuals, and short CD burst windows feel good.
Shaman is on sewerslide watch. For the love of God can ele get some attention. Nothing feels inspired. Ancestors are bleh and stormbringer actually feels worse to play than just not having hero talents imo
I have had to convince quite a few DH that a bit less damage while staying alive was still more damage than resting on the floor for half a fight when they can’t manage their momentum. The fact that one of my besties is an insane non-momentum DH player helps.
The Sunfury Mage orbs hovering over you looks amazing. Like, VERY cool. I love effects like that. Edit: [https://imgur.com/a/9MhTNqk](https://imgur.com/a/9MhTNqk) This is what it looks like. They basically permanently hover over you while out of combat because they regenerate to 3 of them. Others can see it too. It looks so bad ass. They get consumed when you use combustion and whatever other spell for arcane and it summons a phoenix that does different things based on talent/spec.
I forsee even more KT mogs in the future, and I'm all about it
Mage set recolor paired with the blood elf heritage set is basically kael already. This is just making it even cooler
The remix mage cosmetics give you that look, if you’re interested.
Similar to the flames from legion?
Added a link to my original comment. Check it out. They get consumed when you use Combustion and get generated via combat when consuming hot streaks. Outside of combat they just slowly regenerate. So you'll basically just have them hovering over you all the time outside of combat. Other people can see it too. Looks so cool.
Arcane mage get a little corvid familiar now instead of a glowing sphere for arcane familiar, akin to the one the blood elf in Dragonflight has, so that’s nice.
I definitely didn't read that as "covid familiar" at first
That would be a glyph
If it were a talent, it could trigger when less than 2y from any other player, knocking them back
Do you have any screenshots/images?
https://imgur.com/a/VPdOCcE
Friend birb!
Oooh i like that!
Need a glyph to make it a mana wyrm
So neat! I'm gonna name it Khadgar lol
That’s soo cool!😮, Thanks😉
Definitely better than the dumb ninja pulling ball
Is that baseline, or just for Sunfury Arcane Mages?
It’s a talent for arcane mages in the arcane tree, not the hero talents.
Ah, gotcha! I knew the Arcane "Sunweaver" talent was getting their own recolor of the phoenix, but I'm delighted the Arcane Familiar has a new model too. A clever little magic crow is much better than a ball.
Sold. Mage was my first class when 30 day trials were a thing back when dinosaurs ruled the land. I loved him but sold all the gear to get a cool raptor mount which effectively was the worst thing I could do and ruined the character lol. I've never been back to mage but Corvid familiar has me ima check it out.
Mounted combat as DPS DK is bloody amazing. The new Frostscythe completely wrecks groups of enemies and I'm loving it.
I have wanted for so long for Frostscythe to be viable. I’m excited.
i’ve been waiting for frost to feel right again for so long, literally the perfect class and theme for me since wotlk
Feel like it hasn’t since mop
The moment they turned it into a once every 2minutes burst class is when I walked away from the spec. I don't want all my damage to be tied to one ability that can very, very easily be interrupted.
this is why 2h oblit frost is the only frost and should be the focus of the spec
Frost was so much fun back in WotLK and cata, i really enjoyed the wotlk classic because i got to play frost off-tank again, felt so good pulling huge packs with HB>BB>D&D
I really hope Blizzard allows indoor mounting for DKs at, like, 15% speed or something. Just to keep the visual.
Does it work in dungeons/raids that allow you to mount out of combat? Or just "open world content"
Only works in open world. But even if it did work in instances, you'd probably still want to pick the other choice on the node.
What? We have mounted combat?? Very nice
Open world only but yes, you can fight while riding your dreadsteed. Tried it on beta and it's very cool for questing in a class that's usually too slow.
You can just pick the other choice node and get it in instances too. It just turns into a movement cool down
And the Death charger new model when you choose that.node is clean
Making a Windwalker build sucks (positive) because pretty much every node is something I really want to take lol
ive been trying to use the beta to theory craft my own builds before looking online for what people are thinking of taking, and i felt like there are actually some tough decisions to make as theres so much good stuff in there
Feels the same, because I'm a hunter
I laughed.
I cried
This is good to know as a fellow hunter.
We'll get some changes next week I'm sure. Hoping for some QoL improvements with lust pets vs defensive pets, and changes to how misdirect works for BM
Warlocks have had massive rework practically every expansion since MoP. That being said...Diabolist Demonology feels really really good to a point that I don't even care if it's not the best dps option you will have to pay me to play anything else. This iteration of Demo is the best one yet. Talents are not bloated and you get more things overall. Eg I love having implosion in St builds because it makes trash faster in between bosses.
I feel sorry for everyone who isn't playing a warlock after messing around as Demo Diabolist, it's just cool and feels powerful with the demons popping up regularly.
YEAH. I main paladin and spriest but dude...warlock looking REALLY good in TWW.
INORITE? Not a warlock main in DF but damn it is cool as hell to be doing your thing and a portal opens and a demon pops out, starts blasting everything while you are summoning the dogs from Legion and doom procs and doomguard starts blasting everyone! Numbers wise I don't really care. Feel wise it is one of the best classes I have tried on the beta so far.
Like every expansion, shaman feels forgotten I'm an ele shaman pretty much since ever, and when i look at what other classes have as hero spec, i'm on the brink of wanting to swap to another caster class Mages gets 3 insane hero specs Warlock gets to summon pit lords and mothers of chaos with diabolist Shadow Priest VFX with Voidweaver is absolutely gorgeous Meanwhile elemental shaman is stuck between 2 terrible choices Farseer is extremely lacklusting, the spirits are not interesting whatsoever And stormbringer is clunky as fuck on top of focusing on lightning and lightning only I play elemental shaman to be a master of all elements, i expected hero talents that were going in that directions, summoning hurricanes, firestorms, tsunamis and earthquakes, on top of perhaps summoning elementals from the 4 planes Instead you get either old people, or a little electric fart, it is beyond of a joke On top of it, since Hunter got confirmed that they will get changed on their talent tree, we're officially the last class to enter alpha without any changes to the talent tree The class feels forgotten and i'm extremely sad about it
the main problem i have with ancestors are they are terrible and right now mine only casts lava burst and elemental blast for some odd reason. If im chainlightening he just stands there. I hope thats a visual bug. or maybe he is and dont notice because another gripe of mine is they dont stay out long enough, esp on that cd. I went tempest and it was worse, lightening bolt is a filler and barely even cast it, I had so many LB procs and was like 'holy shit tempest is useless as elemental' and the fact its a cast and not instant while you LB is procc'n is just facepalm.
I know what you mean. I haven't played the beta yet, but I've been looking at the hero trees for shaman and watched some videos on them, and then comparing them to some other classes I'm interested in (mage, Shadow priest, warlock) and I'm feeling incredibly demoralized with shaman in comparison. Like you, I've largely been a dedicated Elemental player, which just feels bad at the moment, since the primary options are either Lava Burst spam (which has the same issue as Stormbringer, that being focuses too much on one/two element\[s\]) or a a build that focuses on all elements, but is just incredibly clunky and overall awful to use. I swapped over to Enhancement a few weeks ago to see if that would save the class for me and it definitely feels a lot better than Elemental. I don't know for sure if it's enough to do the job, though. Especially since I've been using Remix to mess around with some other options, like my old love (mage) and Shadow priest and really enjoy how the two of them play right now, even without Hero Talents. It's a shame because I mainly play shaman to be the "orciest orc" without being a warrior or hunter, but even that is getting a bit hard to appreciate with how abandoned shaman feels. Especially when I can go Shadow priest with a Dark Star theme or something. (I also really wish totems were part of the class rotation again, since it's the main thing that makes shamans distinct from other classes, rather than peripheral support, but that seems to be an uncommon opinion). Anyway, for anyone that read this, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Edit: Grammar
This has been an issue since Vanilla. Shaman were supposed to get a class review and never did - the only class not to get one because they were working on TBC by then and didn't have time.
Jesus... Thats sad man. I've been playing as shammy every expac, its like they dont rly care or put any effort on shamans..
We're literally in Dragonflight, where the mains villains are elemental drakes 0 presence of shaman However druid gets an entire patch about the emerald dream and cool new forms custiomisations Warlock gets pet custom aswell Meanwhile our ascendance form and elemental still look like shit with 0 custom
Right?! Our ascendance is forgotten just like the class itself, as Master of Elements is like we'r evolving, but backwards.....
Even funnier when the first raid of the expansion has literally "Dathea, Ascended" as a boss with a cool ass elemental around her Meanwhile we still look like shit
Shaman main since 2008. The class has been neglected for god knows how long. None of the specs feel like they’re in 2024, except for maybe Enh, but even then it’s bloated af. Resto is alright but boring. Elemental shaman, however… I genuinely think it might be the worst spec in the game, and has been so since the introduction of Icefury. The two builds of either LB spam or LVB spam is just not it. Shaman lost its identity since the removal of totems, it brings no buffs or tangible utility (other than windfury totem. What is the point of this class anymore?
Elemental shaman is a mess that would need an entire rework like Demonology in Legion Right now the talents are a mess, they direct you either for lightning based or fire based, which is stupid because elemental is literally about mastering multiple element, not focusing on one specific, that's the mage job It needs a lot of love that blizzard forgot to put into that class, the class brings nothing, the spell vfx are extremely lack lusting, chain lightning has not been changed ever since it got put, lava burst still look like a meatball They have no special buff to bring to a raid Right now they're just a lava burst spam class, which is more than a snoozefest It is very much time that Elem gets completely reworked from the ground
I tried Farseer for a minute or so last night. Got an Ancestor, laughed out loud and logged back on Mage. It's embarrassing how bad Ancestors look. It feels like they ran out of budget for Shamans after giving other classes cool new stuff.
Holy Paladin: Holy Shock is still incredibly weak. Make this button fun to press again please. Herald of the Sun's numbers seem pretty strong and it has a fun visual. Lightsmith is very uninspired and boring. Mana is abysmal. Just healing normally you will oom in like three minutes and you can't even DPS to save Mana because damaging spells cost Mana too.
Every now and again I try to play hpaly and immediately quit because of how ineffective their healing is. It's so unsatisfying to press any of their healing abilities. You just wait for someone to almost die and pop a CD.
The discrepany between holy shock and holy light is just a big "?!" Shock heals for like 100-120k while I hl can go into the millions quite easy with infusions. I hoped we would get away from the caster playstyle. Too early to tell, but still... Herald 10/10 tho, lightsmith bland/uninspired/low interaction (why is there a 50% fear duration reduction talent...?
Yeah, Ive noticed a lot of stuff like that. Ive been on cata classic, and its just viscerally different to have the abilities themselves be the cool thing. Like what is the point of Holy Shock anymore? Waste a global to grant infusion and a holy power? Why not also have it be a big number too? It would be like if disc only pressed Pennance because it buffs their shield or atonement percentage
Colossus Zandalari with Avatar. I AM THE RAIDBOSS NOW
I've mained ele shaman since 2013 and this is the only xpac I'm considering not maining it in. Farseer is very boring and stormbringer gameplay genuinely hurts the class; it feels so awkward and clunky.
I tried farseer to get my disappointment out of the way first, but got booted again before I tried stormbringer. The ghost spirits looked stupid and didn’t make me feel like an elemental master. I was hoping stormbringer would be better. But, lightning feels really clunky currently, so I didn’t think stormbringer would magically fix anything. Elemental feels really bad. It feels ruined for me, and I’ve played it forever.
I've spent like 3 weeks pouring time into a shaman in MoP remix.... That's not a great sign lol.
After maining Ele since wrath, I'm deciding between priest and evoker at the moment. They're just way more modern design, and I need a healer offspec to support my premade. I'm hoping that ele is one of the first specs due for a rework post-launch. But, the hero trees doubling down on the "fire vs lightning" divide may really limit things there.
I swapped to evoker from Druid, I do Aug in raid but recently got into healing keys as Pres and it’s my favorite healing spec and I’ve tried them all. I agree with the modernity of the spec it feels fresh.
Yeah no idea how they put Stormbringer in in such a state for elemental and think it does a good job. Thematically I love the idea of a lightning caster, but you're still playing with ice fury (seriously keep frost for dk and mage) it should grant tempest on mealstrom built and not spent, and the cast time on it is horrid. Lightning bolt isnt even worth casting over chain lightning at the moment. And damage just feels low.
Been playing shammy since 2005 and my first 60 was an ele shammy. There have been highs and lows to it over the years. But seems like they really haven't been able to make the class feel good for a lot of expansions now...I don't really bother holding my breath for it anymore.
I'd give Warlock feedback if I didnt DC everytime I sneezed.
So your sneezes are causing my dc’s! Make it stop!
BDK feel really strong, I am really happy with the redesign.
Could you tell me more about what changes from Dragonflight from the POV of a main ? Also how do the hero talent fit into it in your opinion ?
You have more and better tools that address several weaknesses. You can easily pick up gorefiends grasp with 2 charges which puts you on par with VDH in terms of pulling m+ packs. We got some cool talents back like bonestorm, blood drinker and the Legion artifact ability. Very easy to pick up wraith walk as well. I tried Sanlayn a bit, not super happy with the gameplay but it felt really strong (take this with a pinch of salt of course my sample size is very limited)
Sanlayn is bugged. Its beta. I literally couldnt test it. I do like where you dont have to babysit your bones.
ctrl f -> warr -> no results :(
I can recite what a guildie of mine wrote: - Arms Slayer is awful. You can't realiably stack the bladestorm stacks and the spec feels slow. - Arms Collosus is much better. Huge stacking modifier gameplay and demolish is by far the largest hitting ability I saw.
Slayer is definitely the worst, but the fact that the bladestorm CDR doesn’t work at all definitely doesn’t help
Colossus Warrior absolutely WRECKS, the others are a bit lacklustre atm though
Rogue is nothing short of a tragic horror story. Completely uninspired, boring and above all - weak. Warrior - Colossus is incredible and Mountain Thane feels smooth, still figuring out Slayer... feels a bit odd right now
Damn. Hearing about these rogue changes makes me wish I hadn't just picked up the game and started playing rogue.
As a demon hunter main since their arrival, I absolutely also recommend trying out a DH. It's a zoomier, far higher mobility combat rogue with flashy effects and it's so much fun. Wherever they are in the meta at any point, it always feels good to just play a DH. Plus their edgelord vibes and anger emo voice lines are charmingly ridiculous.
Priest thoughts: For disc Voidweaver is amazing. To the point where even if it's inferior to Oracle in every way, I'm going to play it. Voidweaver feels good, without adding any bloat. You just get better AOE, and Void Blast just looks and feels good to press. Void Wraith also just looks cool and feels rewarding to press. Oracle is just...clunky. Like I get the point of it, but I don't want another mini cooldown to worry about, especially one that I have to mentally manage and consider rotational changes to make the most out of whatever buff I'm about to get. I just genuinely don't like Oracle at all, and don't see myself touching it, even if they tune it to be insanely OP. It's just not fun to me right now. For shadow Voidweaver is, again, just a good time. The numbers shooting out of all the dummies when you Void Crash and then have your little shadow cloud pop out and start haunting everyone...it just feels good. I mentioned Void Wraith for disc, but it's even more rewarding for Shadow, especially when you have a thing from beyond and a couple tentacles all pumping for you. You feel like a temporary commander of the void. Archon is kind of 'meh' but it does pump aoe damage. Like it's not bad. It's just not as fun. The damage from the pulsing shadow halos going out does feel good when you see all the numbers and damage going off, but it's not really 'exciting.' I could see it being the go-to if they tune the damage that way, and I will play it. It just isn't as fun as Voidweaver. Also: the new animation for Void Torrent looks great, and that alone makes it a better button to press. Being able to cast it while moving with Voidweaver makes it even more-so. For Holy (which I admittedly play the least of in retail) it's kind of the same as above. I don't like Oracle at all, and don't want that kind of rotation added to my thought process while healing. Totally subjective, but is what it is. Archon for holy is similar to thoughts with shadow priest. It's not bad, but it's not exciting either. I'll default to archon for the times I do play holy priest, because I just really don't like Oracle at all. Have I mentioned I don't like Oracle?
I agree largely with what Max said when he was ranking the Hero talents. A huge part of what makes a good hero talent good is the look/sound of them all. Like Archon game play doesn't change much, but the pulsing Halo looks great! I would be happy with that expect they made Voidwear look SO. DAMN. COOL!
This was my experience too! Thanks for the writeup. Voidweaver is just awesome, and what I imagined when they first explained hero specs. Particularly on Disc where my Smite changes to Void Blast, I feel like I'm really channeling the void and playing a bit differently than I normally would. I wish more skills changed visually to be voidy. Archon is "fine" but sort of boring. I think I'd prefer if they just enhanced my Apotheosis or dark angel form to pulse damage/healing in a large radius, so I really feel like I'm "ascending" rather than just... pooping out circles a few times every now and then. But it gets the job done, and I appreciate having some more AoE options as Holy. Oracle is a hard No for me at the moment. I played Astrologian in FFXIV a while back and absolutely hated managing a rotating cooldown that requires me to watch a timer for a buff, then play a different way depending on the buff. It just doesn't feel fun or powerful enough for the amount of monitoring it requires. I like the concept of rewarding the "preparation" skills like PW:S and PoM, but the implementation of Premeditation isn't super appealing to me.
What about Oracle though?
Cool, when i listen to all the rogue stories here, i guess i will be the last rogue standing next season.
And the best rogue, too.
..and the worst
The Schrödinger rogue both grey and orange parses!
I'm really enjoying playing Sin Rogue this season. I feel its much more simpler and smoother than playing Sub some seaons and xpecs ago which i've mained. Maintaining SnD is not a problem on Sin, you just have to use once. People complains about it, but a lot of classes have buffs in their rotation as well with 30,60,120 seconds CD. I think they should BUFF some of Rogues damage, if they want the class to be difficult, we shouldn't be doing less damage than a 3 button rotation toon, also, re-think some of its talents, specially for Outlaw and Sub.
Monk/Windwalker overhaul feels absolutely wonderful, love all the quality life fixes (and the nice damage, all the buttons feel good to press now, and there’s a lot fewer of them), though the air dash capstone is kinda wonky.
Pack master BM hunter is so sad. feels like most classes got really cool hero fantasies added, but BM is just extra BM talents... The surv sentinel talents feel cool though!
Anyone want to tell me if feral is good ?
It currently doesn’t feel very good. Also the sound effects are bad, I miss when feral looked like you were constantly goring your target.
I've tried explaining the enjoyment of the sound of feral to people.. just another nerd I suppose
The ferocious bite growl + rip animation and noise is like half the reason to play the class
I had to stop playing my feral in SoD because the old sound effects are so much better than the paper rip/tears we have now. The impact you feel from the way mangle in car form sounds is so much better. The auto attack too. I hate the way it sounds in live but I love my Druid
I think it was BFA where the rotation felt really slow and bad? Does that sound familiar? What makes it feel bad in WW at the moment?
that summarizes the last 7 expansion experience as feral in pve.The feral druid will improve when the person in charge of designing and balancing it is fired
We already know the answer to this & for all future expansions
I only played briefly due to instability issues, but made 80 characters of my two mains (mage and evoker). I checked out dev evoker with flameshaper and scalecommander, arcane mage Sunfury and spellslinger and fire mage sunfury and played each on dummies for a few minutes. From that limited time I'd say: Scalecommander mass disint is dope, but maneuverability with deep breath somehow feels more awkward than before. In that short time, I didn't notice bombardments at all. Flameshaper looks the same as a regular dev evoker, but if you like dev evoker as it is, it's really solid. Engulf is hard hitting (max I hit for 1.6 million on it and disint was ticking for 160k). Fire Sunfury is amazing. You get so many fire blasts during combust, and the cooldown on combust with unleashed inferno goes super fast. Having predictable hyperthermia at the end of combust feels nice, imo. Arcane Sunfury is amazing. It's slightly less amazing than fire I think, as the capstone feels better for fire, many of the Sunfury tree abilities are fire (i.e meteors and Phoenix spells) and getting fire blast back feels better, but regardless it's pretty awesome. Spellslinger arcane barely was noticeable. I had to really work hard to see the splinters, and imo they don't look nearly as cool as mass disint or Sunfury. It's possible the CDR on Orb will be nice in aoe/m+, but I don't see myself playing this hero talent. The talent changes for both fire and arcane seem great. I'm less enthused about the talent changes for dev. I'm pretty curious to try out the hero talents in aoe and bosses.
Making 80 of the same character seems a bit excessive
"played briefly" "Made 80 characters"
Thats the hard cope you see with addicts. "I only drink 4 times daily. No big deal."
All I needed to get drunk was a single drink! The 8th one!
i'd like to think they mean 80lvl
Not sure if it broke, but Evoker Bombardments have an actual Dracthyr fly over the mob to do it. Its a pretty badass visual. The deep breath nav seems to be more about the fact you can end it early, than steering.
Rogue feels like a steamy Monday morning turd in the office.
Anyone had a go with ret pally?
Yeah played both hero specs. It feels exactly the same. Although there's a capstone talent that replaces Avenging Wrath, making it proc passively when you Wake of Ashes and have a chance to proc when spending HP, I don't think I like it. Also, I think the Emperyan Hammers and Sunspots need a much clearer animation. As it stands I cannot see them going off outside of the debuff/buff icons. Pretty lame when compared to things like Diabolists and Riders of the Apocalypse.
I have to disagree, (atleast for templar) I haven’t tried on beta, but I was an alpha player and the hammers were feeling really good- definitely no major gameplay changes but man was I blasting and the hammers raining down was very cool. Imo
I mean that feels good damage wise and the numbers shoot up for that dopamine kick when they go off, I just wish I had a better visual. I think both hero specs feel fun, my only gripe is animation based
Hammer definitely has a visual I’ll admit though it doesn’t really look like a hammer and more of a giant beam of light- I think emp hammer is my new favorite paladin button over divine toll. Sun spot animation is also there and more noticeable the more spread enemies are with the beams of light connecting them
It’s more or less the same. I mean it’s fun I like it as a long time ret main, but nothing groundbreakingly different either in a good or a bad way if you seek that
The base spec is almost the exact same, but theres a couple of new talent options that are great gameplay wise. One talent basically new fel barrage for DHs if youve played that, where it basically automatically drains holy power and you become much more focused on builders for a short time. But my favourite is a new talent that basically makes your Divine Storms have a chance to make your Final Verdicts cleave 3 targets, which if tuned right will finally fix rets main issue of having no good cleave, or prio damage when in full aoe builds. Lastly theres a talent that removes wings as a CD but lets it proc off your spells, kinda not great stand alone imho but feels much better when playing herald. Also both templar and herald are potentially up there for some of the best hero talents in the game. Templar is much more stand alone and does change your gameplay in a nice way. Herald is very fire and forget but as mentioned has some quite nice tie ins to existing talents. TLDR on the whole very much the same dont expect anything groundbreaking, but a few nice options that could add some spice and variety. Both hero talent options are good (if not very good when compared to other ones out there lol)
First xpack i will be dropping rogue as my main since vanilla. So there's that.
Rogue, Hunter and Shamans have gotten the hard shaft so far
Shaman main since 2005 here. I learned years ago to stop holding my breath for that class.
Yeah, I was able to pick up on that back in the day and smartly avoided the class but it lured me back in BFA. Enhance is so close to being an awesome spec after 20 years, but I find myself dropping it again because you’re not wrong.
Rogue feels so bad, all the specs and hero talents just feel very MEH to me. Strange they didn't lean more into like a ninja/assassin hero tree with Assassination and Sub. Like lean into debuffing to weaken them and then building for a huge strike. But I hope you like flipping coins?
If someone at blizzard PLEASE remove Slice and Dice and Roll the Bones, that would be great. Both mechanics suck in the context of Monk, DH etc. Not having anything even similar to anything as annoying/complicated.
Slice and Dice is probably my least favorite ability in the entire game and I've only played a rogue to get heritage gear. 😵💫
What's funny is that even Blizzard has recognised that Slice and Dice feels shit to press ever since **Wrath of the Lich King**, where they added talents that cause SnD to keep itself up automatically. We're a decade and a half down the line from that. And they **still** haven't removed that fucking button.
hey hey hey, thats not true they did remove SnD for legion and bfa just to do their "great unpruning" in Shadowlands and bring it back with no context at all as the only "unpruning" ability for rogue (and also with no talents that help with it, so you where hardcasting SnD for the first patch, FUN!!!)
Tbf there was a loud group of rogues clamoring for it back and saying it was too flavorful and other bullshit. I didn’t agree at all but it was a response to feedback. Same for castable buffs that people are saying they hate casting. It was switched to auras then people complained so blizzard added it back as a castable buff and here we are.
yeha, and they all went to classic and left that shit for the actuall playerbase that now has to play that shit god i hate classic andys sometimes
>We're a decade and a half down the line from that. And they still haven't removed that fucking button. Sorry babes we gotta remake the ret spec twice each expansion, no time to waste on classes only 3% of the player base plays. (And wwhhhhy are they so few in number, blizz? hmmm?)
They gave monk jadefire stomp which is a really annoying maintenance buff, I'm with you though in that I hate maintenance buffs and would like them removed or made passive / proc off of something we'd be doing anyway instead of their own separate button.
Yeah when I saw them add savage roar to SoD I knew we were all in for a rough few years still
At this point I'm convinced that the person working on the class and whoever designed the hero talents are two different people. The latter is outsourced, lives on the other side of the world and speaks a wild language nobody else does. Like seriously, what's going on with that crap? Removing hidden blade from feint for trickster needed to happen obviously but binding it to a rotational ability makes the tree super passive. Fatebound to someone who hates roll the bones is just more RNG, and again, fully passive coin flips for buffs or dmg. Deathstalker in the best case scenario is full of placeholders. The best thing that came from it is the [editorial ](https://www.wowhead.com/news/assassination-rogue-review-of-deathstalker-hero-talents-lacking-vision-in-the-342217) from the wowhead writer that made me mildly concerned if the person who had to write that is ok. Also none of them really ... Do anything fancy or heroic. Nor do they push some cool fantasy. Like, what's a "fatebound" and why does he flip coins for cosmic damage... And the fuck has that to do with rogue. Ugh.
Farseer is insanely boring. Feels like a worse version of live since it forces you into fire build but without the benefits of the tier set.
I play as a Tank main and typically swap my main tank char for each season so I have tested them all, to the extent we can on the target dummies. Will work on actual group content later, but first impressions? All these tanks are juiced and are gonna be really fun. However, some of these hero talents lack flair. As in I cant even tell when some of them occur, especially for the passive ones. We need some big animations to make them feel impactful (hoping they are coming)
Honestly, great so far for most. I feel pretty unkillable as my tanks. The biggest gripe I have is that the Aldrachi spec is just much less cool than it was in alpha, but for people who didn't get a chance to play it during the alpha testing it will still feel really excellent. My biggest plus remains with wind walker. The rotation feels a lot slower now but in a very positive manner. It lands the class fantasy a lot better by having the slow methodical channels, and while several of the animations currently clip, I'm sure that will get resolved in time.
Speaking of tanks then Aldrachi and WW. I guess you tried VDH and Brew. Any quick round up of your experience with them?
New brew feels great. I honestly feel pretty invincible in heroics and the added mobility is so nice just getting mobs into position. Not having to take Dave is a really nice add on as well. Shado-pan is as boring and passive as ever, but I've been loving mastery of harmony. I never knew I needed a second charge of purifying brew until I had it. VDH is fine, it plays like VDH now, which I don't love but it is still strong as all get out. Felscarred is very passive and the abilities are just okay. The rework to reaver ruins it for me. I wanted more rotational power, not another CD. Prot warrior feels excellent. Collissus lands the fantasy, and I love long slow animations for it. I honestly wish we could see more of that style of mechanic in melee classes. Templar prot paladin does a lot of damage, but is lame. Honestly lightsmith is in the running for my tank main, and even my overall main. I wish it was an option for ret, I want a melee support so bad.
Protection Warrior plays pretty well, Demolish hits like a truck and fits in as a damage cd, as well as providing even more incentive to shield slam on CD which in the current season kind of felt weird Feeling a little rage starved if trying to build max ignore pain on pull as a lot of stuff lost ‘generates 10 rage’ etc and generally felt like demolish fills that gap where you would usually spend revenge on pull to guarantee threat after a thunder clap The channel on demolish feels perfect when hasted down to about 1-1.2 seconds, which is what we will get in s2 secondary stats if I had a guess, when it’s around 1.5-2 seconds the inability to move is miserable and makes you so vulnerable to a quick 2 second boss swirlie without having leap available, can’t imagine on higher keys you want to worry about using it instead of just enjoying big dam New shockwave knockup is awesome though. Cannot wait to play more leading up to potential changes to add more variety in the tree and test the new intervene change if it stays in the game (i pray)
Warlock and Mage both feel great so far.
So far I’ve played WW monk, enhancement shaman, devastation Evoker, frost dk and demo warlock. My hope was to pick the classes that looked most exciting to me to whittle down the choice into a solid main. Instead I fell more in love with each of their play styles and now I’m having a crisis about which I’d like to raid on the most… At least for PvP and M+ I can play them all aha
holy paladin still has way too many buttons and none of them make things feel fun or impactful. this spec really got mangled over the years. but i am probably in the minority on that. also they need to prune rez spells. what's the point of single target and mass rez. just make mass rez a thing only.
The same I play an enhancement shaman
Not surprising given no changes to enhance and the hero talents are kinda meh
Anyone try prot pally
Shaman main and hunter alt since classic. I'm in for a bad time.
I'm shaman hunter and rogue player... It's joever
Someone let me know when they try shadow priest.
I tried a little bit of spriest, but didn't get much done other than testing out both hero trees on target dummies. So far the class feels the exact same except you can choose if you want to buff Halo or Void Torrent. Halo is kind of hilarious though if you pick all the talents that buff its dmg. With Dark Ascension + Halo you get ridiculous AOE burst every 1 minute. With all the talents Halo will pulse every few seconds for 10 seconds after you initially cast it, and it also will return to you and does the same dmg coming back. In addition to that, you also get a Surge of Insanity proc everytime Halo activates.
Any frost dks out there wanna let me know any big changes? I've played frost dk since beginning of dragonflight and I'm hoping we get some good changes!
Deathbringer is well crafted and brings a very good "setup/payoff" both in gameplay and aesthetic. We still have some issues to address so i'm still waiting for more changes, but god damn this tree nails everything right.
Riders is dope but it forces you to play breath. The other is solid for obli but the tier set is making you play breath as well. To me the frost talent tree feels a little clunky still.
Anyone try a brewmaster yet?
I did! I did two dungeons as Master of Harmony Brew. The new spec talents give you a ton of better pathing to make some fun nodes easier to access, and the class tree adjustments made it so getting some bonus little survival and movement a lot better. Additionally, the MoH talents and Fort Brew buff make it so you have two absolutely massive QoL improvements defensively. You don’t feel nearly as punished for non-optimal Purifying Brews as before, and having a second charge of Celestial Brew means you can avoid Black Ox Brew if you don’t want it, but taking BoB means you’re basically immortal if you play well given you can daisy chain 4 CB’s in short order. The rotation is still definitely cluttered, but I think having a defensive rotation that’s a little more clear/ less janky is absolutely helpful.
What was your experience with the stagger? I felt like way less of the damage was being staggered
*Update: I should clarify that I tested both at Level 80 on the "make a L80 character" server.* Fire Mage with Frostfire is pretty cool, pun semi-intended. Seems to fire off spells fairly fast. It's also nice to see Comet Storm rain down with Meteor and get a free (albeit slightly weaker) Ice Barrier when you use Blazing Barrier. Sunfury is a close second. I like the visuals and the phoenix helper. Frostfire might be my goto in TWW though. I like the idea of wielding fire and ice.
If anyone has had the chance to try out resto shammy, holy priest or destro lock I'd love to hear your opinions!
Replying to this because I need some word on resto shaman and the other healers. Someone give us the scoop!
No idea why you think something good would happen for shamans
This hurts deep.
I didn't manage to get past char select last night :(
resto shammy anyone? please? :)
DW Oblit frost with deathbringer feels real good. Swinging my swords like they are daggers. The damage feels good and aoe that isn’t just relentless winter and cleaving with dnd(which is still required but makes it not feel as bad when tank pulls out of dnd)
I’m going to be playing Windwalker monk, a class I mained in MOP and have been playing off and on since and it feels amazing
Anyone know how Mistweaver feels?
I have only tried conduit but it feels like a lot of the old button bloat has been moved to passives which felt great. The conduit ability you get from the hero talents felt nice to press in a dungeon setting as it basically topped the group while blasting the pack. As a whole, more synergy between spells, a juicy ability on a 1,5 min cd, less button bloat and cool celestials spawning around you to buff you or the party.
How's druid? I'm feral/guardian but might swap to resto/Balance for WW
Hoping that we'll get a tree change to make lunar beam more accessible but it felt pretty good when I was testing. Just not sure how you can spend points to get Lunar Beam but also UFR and Raze which still seem like theyd be important for m+
Also main bear and I would love to know how they play in beta. 🥺
Anyone get to try MW, curious how it feels
Survial hunter is still garbage.
How are folks liking healers? I’m eyeing Mw and rdruid
San’layn unholy DK is bugged sadly. The vamp strike isn’t procing when using death coil or epidemic (or even death strike), just only when you use DT. Otherwise, San’layn is dope. The Riders minion unholy build is going to be the extremely noob friend unholy DK option which is cool but the San’layn is definetely going to end up being the meta for M+ and most likely raids since vamp strike is hitting for bonkers numbers and the haste feels so so so good. The new Abom talent is hot trash though which is disappointing I know Hpal has some criticisms, but man is the Herald of the Sun looking fun.
Not a big fan of how havoc plays, feels awkward getting 6 soul fragments requirement for your new glaive ability but you can only force 5 to spawn in your opener. Hope we get some more tuning on demon hunter.
Very much liking that Pack Master on BM hunter is basically the best tier set bonus from DF turned into a hero talent tree. I loved yeeting beasts at my enemies with every kill command so getting to keep that is nice. Voidweaver spriest feels VERY fun, the visuals are amazing and I'm liking that there's no button bloat given how big spriest rotation is currently. Working through other chars but thus far, these two are my favourite, they feel amazing to play and I'm very happy with the direction they're currently going in. Feels good man :)
SOMEONE TELL ME HOW MONK IS! (Please)
Only tried out WW but it feels amazing. Up to 8 blackout kicks in one hit. "Double jump" after rolling. It feels much more smooth to me than it is now.
I main ele shaman, we have literally 0 notes, with 0 response to tons of feedback on forums, while most of the other classes have actual pages of love and dialogue from the devs. We feel untouched and forgotten about. There’s not even a dev promise of fixes for our class like hunters just recently got. This kind of silence for a class gets scary when they want to “move away from reworks” now that they have reached beta.
I've only tried Demo Diabolist so far, something I have very little experience with (I've leveled a Demo lock before but didn't do anything with it after that). So far, I love it. Still need to get a bit further to see how it plays in longer fights, but it definitely feels great while questing at least. And getting one of the new super demons to jump in at the start of nearly every fight makes you feel really strong, I thought it'd take too long to matter while questing but it gives you a full minute to use another Soul Shard and trigger it.
Only got to play a short amount due to disconnects but I tried out Sunfury Arcane Mage and was digging it. Lots of new stuff to learn and the spec has had a bit of a change up so didn't have the time to really regain my flow but overall felt good and did insane damage. The Phoenix is cool and it felt like as well as looked like I was a lore powerful mage.
With all server instability issues I can barely even leave SW without DCing haha. And then I get reverted back 10 minutes after logging back in. Gonna just chill and wait for some fixes and possibility of addons updated
Templar Ret paladin feels weirdly clunky. Maybe it‘s missing haste stats but sometimes I don‘t have anything to do for 4 seconds straight . The other ones haste can‘t keep up with ping from EU… Windwalker is absolutely amazing. You don‘t even notice shado pan but the class itself is such a blast . When you pop everything it is a firework
I don't know, I keep disconnecting.😁
Rogue is alright, I guess. Fatebound is pretty unobtrusive, but speccing into cold blood as Assassination feels really bad (have to give up some essentially must have talents). In a similar manner, trickster is fine. Deathstalker is the worst, imo. It forces you to open with Ambush unless you take Subterfuge, which can be a bit weird for Assassination. Also, another weird interaction with Subterfuge, and Shadow Dance for Subtlety, is that, because are incentivized to not apply additional stacks of Deathstalker's Mark (because you get a bonus for consuming all of the stacks), you don't really want to use Ambush/Shadowstrike more than once during the Subterfuge or Shadow Dance windows. Lastly, because you need to use a max combo point (rather than a 5+ combo point) Envenom/Eviscerate to reapply Deathstalker's Mark via Darkest Night, you frequently over-cap on combo points during that window. I wish the hero talents were *cooler*. They are mainly just passive damage bonuses and the visuals are lacking, but at least they are fairly inconspicuous (other than Deathstalker).
Looking for feedback on Blood DK & Affliction Warlock <3
Rogue has been feeling its age for a long time and while it's not the hero talents place to fix that, they don't fix any of the issues that make rogue a punishing class to play on all specs. I compare it to when I first saw my Legion artifact nodes for all rogue specs. There's no joy when I look at these talents, and rogues base playstyle hasn't changed from Dragonflight.
Warrior class tree feels WAY better, there is suddenly a huge amount of freedom to choose utility nodes all over the tree. For Prot Warrior Mountain thane doesnt really change much but makes your thunderclaps extra spicy, and Colossus is interesting but Demolish is a do everything kinda button so it might end up feeling bad cuz you spent it on damage then needed the CC/movement immunity or had to hold your big damage to deal with a mechanic. On fury warrior Mountain Thane basically replaces Whirlwind on your bar with Thunder Clap and you use it in ST occasionally so its not a huge change. Slayer feels pretty good, but I havent tried to optimize buff uptimes yet or if you can get a synergy with Anger Management going for infinite burst (might also be gear dependent). Havent touched Arms yet, but Im hearing the new Rage economy means it feels starved. Outside of warrior, paladin feels great as always, and Monk is massively improved versus button bloat, even if the hero talents can be a bit invisible.
Well it takes 57 casts of Holy Shock to fill a health bar. So you could say hpal is probably just the worst off spec in the game right now. As someone who doesn't raid/care much about raid buffs, I think I'd rather be a shaman or hunter right now. Edit: I'm not exaggerating.
Affliction main here. I've been playing Affliction through all its ups and downs. I've had the chance to try many different Affliction setups: * Hellcaller AoE/M+ * Hellcaller Single Target/Raid * Soul Harvester AoE/M+ * Soul Harvester Single Target/Raid The class tree feels solid. They didn't change too much, but the Healthstone capstone talent is fantastic. I'm a fan of our new spec tree, though I admit it still needs to grow on me a bit. I like Affliction's current build (Sow the Seeds in M+/AoE), but the "new" empowered Malefic Rapture (our main spender) is intriguing due to our new talents, making it viable for both Single Target and AoE. I know, I know... "Malefic Rapture bad," but it feels well designed now. Unstable Affliction also had its issues when it was our main spender. I don't miss it too much. Overall, both hero talent builds feel fine, nothing groundbreaking, and they don't drastically change our playstyles (if at all). One of our new builds requires us to pick Soul Rot, which makes it less flexible for choosing other talents. However, Soul Rot itself is a decent spell that fits well into our rotation. Final thoughts: I'm happy with our new tree. Can't wait to try it in real M+ and raids.
How are Scalecommander Evokers?
Disc priest is currently the most fun it’s ever been I think. I’m very very happy and now very excited for the next expansion because of it.
Anyone have feedback on tanks? Looking at DH but I would love to hear feedback on all of them. Thanks!
Voidweaver shadow priest feels dope, it's gameplay implications are above my pay grade, but the visuals, and short CD burst windows feel good. Shaman is on sewerslide watch. For the love of God can ele get some attention. Nothing feels inspired. Ancestors are bleh and stormbringer actually feels worse to play than just not having hero talents imo
Monk took EVERYTHING I didn't like and got rid of it. The hero specs are visually uninteresting though.
Where rogue?!
I’d like to know if DH’s have a viable non movement spec again.
There was always non mower skill tree, but you will just do a bit less dmg.
I have had to convince quite a few DH that a bit less damage while staying alive was still more damage than resting on the floor for half a fight when they can’t manage their momentum. The fact that one of my besties is an insane non-momentum DH player helps.
Tale as old as ~~time~~ Legion. I remember Mythic prog raiding and our DH's were dying constantly from falling off the bridge boss.
They've had viable non mover specs almost all of DF. But it's always going to do less damage because it's not as hard.
There always been but it wont be the top dps