That’s not entirely true. They did away with static buffs (which were never interesting, remembering to press a button every hour wasn’t exactly compelling), but classes like Enhancement Shamans still have moves that give buffs to random party members in combat and such. Ele shammies also have a talent totem that can increase the move speed of allies who run through it.
I don’t think there are any real “support roles” like Warlock used to be way back when, but aside from arguably Disc priest I don’t think that’s existed for a long time.
I think my point about homogenization largely stands.
At one extreme were the raids and similar content that simply could not succeed without a fairly restrictive class (and spec, later) mix. This was bad trying to get into raids if you weren’t one of the needed few. (This can never go away, really. “Tank” and “Heal” are just broad versions of this, but I hated “we can’t use you, Hunter, we need a boomchicken now.”)
But this other extreme? There’s very little special sauce for any particular class to contribute. I already bemoaned that some of Hunter’s specialties have gone away unless you wish to respec. (Trap-kiting and CC, for example. I always enjoyed doing that, and it was always a good and appreciated contribution in groups, but I’ll be damned if I respec melee huntard in order to do it.)
Yaay for mostly being soulless interchangeable parts. I appreciate Blizz reminding us in the face that we’re not unique snowflakes, we’re just $14.99 a month to them.
I like the ret paladin changes, and the spec doesn’t feel too much different from before.
Fire mage seems to have improved - displayed fairly good survivability in Tanaan.
BM hunter feels like it sucks, but I may just need to get used to the new stuff. Haven’t had much time yet.
Shadow priest … really taking some getting used to, since it was completely overhauled. Played it through Tanaan yesterday, got mostly comfortable with it, and was pleased with the performance.
Arms warrior is kind of weird. I love the new animations and feel, and he seemed to be putting out good, or at least comparable damage, but seems to have lost some defense, because at the same time he was dealing good damage, he also seemed to be taking a lot more damage. Had to stop and eat after almost every tough fight. Granted, he’s only around iLvl 640 at this point.
Destruction warlock: Holy fracking shite! Totally kicks ass. I had the “Demonslayer of Tanaan” daily, so I was over in the Temple of Sha’naar. I ended up tagging along with a random ret paladin and killing the felguards and elite Eredar Chaosborn demons on the upper level of the cave. At the end of the upper level we encountered the rare spawn, Mistress Thavra, and took her down together. The paladin looted and ran off, and then I ran up and looted … and Mistress Thavra respawned right on top of me (I have never seen a rare spawn respawn that quickly). Not only did she respawn, but a felguard spawned right next to her a few seconds later, and then a group of three of those felbinders spawned behind me. I successfully soloed all of it.
In spite of my rant earlier, I have to concede that this patch there are clearly winners and losers, and in spite of Blizzard’s much-trumpeted desire to prune, some classes actually got more complicated. Shadow Priest is a good example. My 1st alt (former main) is one of those, and after speccing I discovered I no longer could fit my rotation plus all support spells into the normal action bar. :mad: SP used to be basically a 4-button rotation, but now I have to weave in a couple of other temporary on-cast buffs or procs.
So, this xpack, yesterday’s winners are over-nerfed and yesterday’s losers are overbuffed. Typical Blizzard balance.
On non-bitching news, I see from sites like WoWHead that there’s a feat of strength for 7.0.3 you can get now, as it’s preparatory to the Legion Invasion event.
(It’s a feat of strength, so there’s no placeholder for it before you get it. Just looking at the Achievements UI you’d never know it was there.)
Talk to “Doomsayers” in any any capital city. You’ll get one of 12 pamphlets related to the impending inevitable doom of Azeroth. :rolleyes: But the pamphlets are at least amusing to read.
You also get a hidden 15-minute debuff that prevents you from getting another pamphlet immediately.
If you can collect all 12 pamphlet varieties, you score the achievement. It’ll take more than 12 pamphlets, though, since it’s random.
You can cheese the delay by dying. The technique described by the WoWHead posters is to put anything breakable (i.e., with a durability number) into the bank (both what you were wearing, and anything in your bags like fishing rods or alternate gear). Find a Doomsayer near to a spirit healer. Talk to the doomsayer, mount a flying mount, fly up to suicide heights, dismount, die, spirit rez, lather, rinse, repeat.
Took me about an hour and more than 50 attempts to get all 12. Don’t know if it’s worth it really, but a decent way to waste time.
My biggest complaint about Retribution Paladin is that they removed Pursuit of Justice as a level 15 talent and added Seal of Light as a level 90 talent.
Seal of Light lets you spend all your Holy Power to increase your move speed by 20%, for a duration of 20 seconds per Holy Power spent.
Pursuit of Justice just flat out gives you +15% move speed all the time, plus up to another +15% if you have - not spend - Holy Power.
At best, you’re spending 1 Holy Power every 20 seconds for a +5% MS bonus over what Pursuit of Justice gave you for free. At worst, you’re spending 1 Holy Power every 20 seconds for a -10% MS penalty over what Pursuit of Justice gave you for free just for possessing 3 or more Holy Power.
It looks like the same morons responsible for the ability prune have got to the forums too. They got rid of the links to individual pages of a thread, the number of views and the name of the last person to post.
Some of it is comically badly itemized for most purposes. For example, I give you the Mark of Supreme Doom, a 705 trinket with the most puzzling (and worthless for day-to-day play) itemization ever. A smidgen of strength/int/agility, less than Highmaul LFR stuff. A surprising amount of tertiary stats: movement speed, leech, and avoidance.
The only use I have ever found is soloing previous-xpac raid content (MoP), where the leech is useful to keep you healed up as long as you can do damage. For this, it’s almost indispensable, but that’s the only reason not to vend it.
Wait, 720? I missed that. (And overlooked the significance in your post).
Reading through stuff on the intarwebs, looks like that can even be warforged or titanforged, so possibly up to ilvl 740. Not bad. Not likely, but not bad.
Hmm. May have to grind the lad this week. I guess being terrible (because I’m not familiar with how to play most of my alts) wouldn’t be as mortally embarrassing in a 40-man pickup zerging a world boss. :dubious:
I guess if gold’s no object, it balances out the minor nuisance of going to be bank. I guess I’m just cheap. But grats on getting the FoS so quickly. The RNG must have loved you.
I’ve seen lots of suicides in capital cities lately, hopefully for this.
So I quit the crack just before MoP, and after about 3 1/2 years, I decided to re-download and check things out. After about 3 days of poking around, the 7.x patch hit and everything was different. My main is a disc priest, and after playing around some, I’m not sure how I like the changes. I went from being the Master of Bubbles, to having to heal by doing damage. I only have 4 direct heals, none of which actually heal for all that much. My damage spells are similarly lacking in number and my rotation seems to be shadow word pain followed by spamming smite and penance when its off cd. And what’s with needing a talent to make penance a heal, anyway?
I’m getting better at fire. Hit 17K dps in a heroic today. Not great, but decent enough to not be last place for the run. I may run with this as my primary spec for the expansion. Setting things on fire is more fun that freezing them, and has way better sound effects.
Oakminster, I play an Arcane mage. I’m currently running around in my 710 PVP gear and I do upwards of 27K in heroic/mythic dungeons and raids. The rotation is a freaking PITA now as far as mana levels go but it’s doable and gets easier with practice.
Just some info and a suggestion to give Arcane a try, eh.
I guess I’m just cheap. But grats on getting the FoS so quickly. The RNG must have loved you.