I’m writing this up to give complete feedback about my experience during beta so far, and hoping we can get further improvements before the official launch. For context I have leveled a skyborne warrior to 20 and completed both of the new dungeons, as well as deadmines. Also, I don’t pvp so everything will be from the perspective of a pve only player, primarily a raider. I will share my positive and negative feedback without specifying actual design changes I would make as that is the developers responsibility, and I will instead focus on how gameplay feels.
Overall I am very happy with the game, and if the game released in it’s current state I would happily play it. That being said, I think things can always be improved. I will start by going deep on general feedback that every player experiences, and then go deep on warrior specifically since that is what I played.
- World and Graphics: The world is absolutely beautiful. It sometimes gets a little too dark but overall it is still enjoyable even then. I leveled through the skyborne zone to test it out and it is very well laid out and has great visuals. The story is pretty good, and the ending before going to Dalaran is very cool and exciting for the future. The quests also give you great xp with many quests available, I ended at level 14 by the time I finished the zone. Overall the extra quests added into each zone make things a bit more smooth, and reduce the backtracking needed nicely while never making your character consistently overleveled while moving at a natural pace(until you get to dungeons, we will get to that later).
The world refreshing is very nice as well, and it seems the server does a good job of rebalancing layers, however sometimes it seems to fail as well, particularly in Westfall when farming the harvest watchers and Defias quests. It would be nice if there was maybe some way to hint to the server that a refresh is likely needed, and if enough people on the layer independently do that then it does the refresh. Having a lot of people in the world is nice, but spending an hour doing a single quest because you can’t get mob tags for loot drops is annoying.
- Dungeons: The new dungeons are very cool, and in particular I liked that the regular trash mobs even had some basic mechanics, such as the mobs in Hall of Thanes that throw the grenades, forcing your group to spread out, especially the melee. It wasn’t overly difficult even if you didn’t do that, but it allows room for learning and optimization which is nice. The bosses also had mechanics like the final boss fearing the tank and someone needs to OT or dispel the fear. I hope over time the mechanics in both the trash and bosses become more advanced. Ideally I think I’d like them not so difficult they require progression, that is what raids are for, but not so easy you can just stand still and spam your rotation.
I like the xp change for dungeons a lot, it makes them feel very rewarding and like going well out of my way to do Ruins of Lordaeron as an alliance is worth the long trip over there, even if I only have time to run it once. If anything, I’m worried they might give too much xp, it seems at a bare minimum you get one level, maybe more. That could result in certain zones being borderline skipped. For example, since I finished Skywall at level 14, I went straight in Hall of Thanes, and came out at almost level 16. Then I did only the very core Westfall quests for the Deadmines chains and a few other convenient ones to get 17. Then I went to Ruins of Lordaeron and came out at nearly 19. This resulted in feeling like I somewhat skipped Westfall, which could be either a good or bad thing depending on if you want to allow players to intelligently skip parts of zones they don’t like by timing their dungeon quests around those levels. The range of levels seemed very large, for example most mobs in Ruins of Lordaeron were about level 17 or so, but the quests were level 21 or 22.
The items inside the dungeons were very cool and powerful, and I feel like it rewards doing them very well, even if the xp inside is nerfed. The rewards are good enough that you would be willing to go do them even if they didn’t give xp, similar to raids, which is nice, and the quests are a nice one time bonus on top. However, it seemed like the items inside were significantly better in the newer dungeons than the old, and I’m somewhat worried they might be too powerful and trivialize some of the leveling process in the open world, but I don’t really have enough data to know for sure. I would need to see what later levels are like, and what fighting mobs with this powerful gear feels like alone, which is what I’m used to, rather than with hundreds of players around killing everything in sight. Overall that is just a tuning problem though, so I think it is fine.
- Itemization: I like how weapons were made much more powerful for both melee and casters, so that casters can feel the powerful upgrades that melee do much sooner, and so they can get gear that actually increases their damage and healing meaningfully instead of just more int and stam than before. I’m a little concerned, as previously mentioned, that some dungeon items are too powerful, and in particular are much more powerful than anything you can find from regular quests, effectively making regular quest items obsolete, especially when combined with professions which we will get to next.
Also, while we didn’t get to the point where we have things like hit, crit, expertise on gear, I like that they are all streamlined and simplified.
- Professions and Campfires: I like the new professions a lot. I chose mining and blacksmithing, and starting as soon as level 5 or so I was able to craft actually good and useful gear for myself. I also love that some of the gear is BoP, and really strong, like the Gemmed Copper Boots. I hope this system stays and this ability to craft actually good gear stays with us as we continue to level, and even into endgame. It would be amazing if in every tier there was an item or two that were competitive, if not BiS, that had to be crafted, both BoP and BoE. Similar to the above however, I’m slightly worried that regular quest rewards are getting left in the dust, I felt like I was almost never excited about an item from a regular quest because the crafted gear and dungeon rewards simply beat it outright.
The campfire system is cool, and to me it seems like the main thing is solves is requiring certain classes for their buffs in smaller groups like dungeons and 10 man raids. For example, if we don’t have a priest or a mage, maybe that is fine because we can get their buff from a campfire instead. This helps allow people to choose what they want to play, and to bring the player not the class.
However, I do wish we could create campfires inside instances. I tested even in the outdoor area of Ruins of Lordaeron and it didn’t work. Also, I wish we didn’t have to just literally /sit afk, it would be nice if we could do other profession stuff while we wait like craft bandages or make flasks, especially since it seems like some of the items you can place at the campfire are the worktables needed, like the anvil for blacksmiths.
One final thing about first aid in particular: due to the extra stats we have from the very powerful dungeon and crafted gear, it seems like the early level first aid bandages and health potions do almost nothing now. I was running around with over 600 health unbuffed at one point, so a bandage that heals me for 150 feels like almost nothing, while before an appropriate level bandage would heal like half my hp.
- Legacy System: Overall I like the philosophy of these and the effects all seem cool and useful, with the only one being potentially dangerous is the reduced talent one. However, I still think it will be fun to have that, allowing you to get your build online sooner and play with your class at full power a full 5 levels before 60 would be nice.
Warrior Deep Dive: Overall it felt more or less the same, especially since I was playing arms and we only got to level 20. The main differences are in prot which we will get to later, but like I said it feels pretty much the same, it is a classic warrior and just as fun now as it was before, hopefully more later one once we get more talents and levels. I’m now going to go very deep on each of the talents and highlight things that I love and that I’m worried about.
Arms: Overall I think this tree is very encouraging and makes me excited to play it, with a few concerns.
Improved Rend: This is pretty much the same, and it was very weak before because rend was never worth using at high levels. My hope is that rend, and honestly all spells from all classes, become worth using in their own right and not simply because they tie into some other effect, which we will get into later.
Improved Tactical Mastery: I like having 10 rage preserved baseline now a lot, however 5 points for 15 more rage here feels like a lot. I think 3 would feel a lot better at 5 points each. That allows you to do things like stance swap and also heroic strike(without a talent reducing it) with a single point, whereas right now the first point giving 3 extra rage feels functionally worthless, its only relevant on the second point, and similarly the third feels like it’s only worth it if you get the 4th and 5th.
Deep Wounds: Thematically I like this, but if I remember correctly this historically was not that strong due to it not stacking the way ignite does, where consistent crits would just keep overwriting the dot. However, since dots can also crit now maybe this will math out to being better.
Spearing Strike: Thematically excellent and I think this will be a very fun ability to use in both pvp and the pve situations that allow it. It is essentially a better mortal strike at half the cost, but with triple the cooldown. I hope there are sets in the future that help reduce this cooldown for dragon and giant fights.
Impale: This no longer being dependent on deep wounds is nice.
Weaponmaster: These being combined is extremely nice, and the mace/staff being armor pen instead of stun is potentially very interesting as well depending on future bosses armor values.
Bloodthrill: This is cool, and I like having more gameplay through Overpower, however there is some slight antisynergy here. Since bloodthrill procs from auto attacks, you are incentivized to use a fast weapon for more procs, however overpower damage is based on weapon damage, which wants a slow weapon. Although, I suppose that is also true for dodges to proc overpower normally. The bigger problem I have is not related to this talent itself, but how overpower interacts with expertise on gear now. We want expertise so our auto attacks and abilities don’t get dodged and we generate rage, however we also want to get dodged so we can overpower, which pulls us in 2 different directions. Perhaps you can make the argument that arms warriors can simply not take expertise and use that stat budget elsewhere, but that depends on exactly what itemization is available.
Improved Slam: Overall I love this talent and getting more abilities to use, however since the second points only reduces the cast time by an additional 0.25 seconds, this seems like it is a permanent 1 out of 2 talent. Maybe make the swing time not being interrupted baseline so other specs like fury can use it and put something else here like reduced cooldown?
Improved Hamstring: In my opinion this is the most disappointing talent across all 3 trees. This is very deep into the tree so you expect something very powerful, however what you get is 3 points for a 15% chance to immobilize on hamstring. I don’t see how even pvp players would be excited about this, they would need to hamstring an average of 7 times to get this to proc once. There are better examples of good pvp talents being done well in fury with Improved Berserker Rage. I think something much better should be here, maybe something playing on Arms being the master of all weapons that involves weapon swapping or stance swapping or something. It would also be nice if arms didn’t feel the need to sit in berserker stance for 3% crit or miss out even if you are being sweaty and stance swapping every ability.
Fury: Overall I have similar sentiment with Fury as I do with arms.
Booming Voice: If Improved Hamstring was the most disappointing, this is the weakest, and I think it goes directly against blizzard’s stated philosophy. They stated they wanted to roll all of the buff increasing talents into the abilities themselves, which they did with the increase attack power and duration talents for battle shout, but they left this here. Also, they want talents to be meaningful choice, and right now this will never be taken and is effectively a dead talent.
Iron Will: I know this is a pvp talent, so it’s not relevant to me at all as a pve only player, but even then this feels like too expensive. I think 3 points would be more reasonable.
Unbridled Wrath: I like this change a lot, it goes stronger baseline(40% to 60%) and allowed 2 handed weapons to be use this. However, if the intention is that 2 handed weapons and dual wield generate similar amounts of rage over time, then this is not balanced correctly. Assuming standard 1h weapon speed of around 2.3, and 2h of 3.6, then dual wield will generate (60 / 2.3 x 2 x .6) = 31 rage per minute(OH hit penalty is significantly negated by Dual Wield Specialization), meanwhile a 2h will generate (60 / 3.6 x 2 x .6) = 20 rage per minute. In order for these to be balanced a 2h would need to generate 3 rage, unless the intention is that they are not balanced.
Improved Cleave: Much better than before, not bait anymore.
Blood Craze: Bloodthirst triggering this is very nice.
Boundless Rage: Not sure how relevant this will be without very high crit levels from world buffs anymore, remains to be seen but it has the potential to very either very powerful or completely useless.
Dual Wield Specialization: Amazing change that will make fury feel significantly better to play with much more smooth gameplay.
Raging Blows: Thematically excellent, looking forward to playing with this. In particular I like that it has value even if you aren’t dual wielding.
Enrage: Very nice not requiring to be crit anymore, and potentially very useful for tanking which is interesting and allows nice build variety.
Improved Execute: I’ve always thought this was a weird talent because it’s balanced around the fact that you want to use execute at the minimum possible rage because the extra rage conversion is terrible. I think it would make more sense and be more fun if this made you want to have a lot of rage to dump into execute instead for some giant numbers.
Improved Berserker Rage: Primarily a pvp talent, but also something that I could see myself reasonably wanting in pve which is great if there are fights that impair movement a lot.
Protection: I think this tree is extremely well designed, and the only “downside” is that some of the choices are so hard to make that I’m upset I can’t pick everything. I feel like I need to give up genuinely good talents to get others. As a result I’m not going to go talent by talent. I also love that a shield is practically mandatory now. The only nitpick is that Improved Disarm is the only talent here that feels uniquely weak, but maybe it’s mostly a pvp talent(although you can often disarm in pve effectively too, I just think 20 seconds off a 1 minute cooldown isn’t enough for 3 talent points considering the competition).