Overall I really enjoy this period in WoW’s lifecycle. A relatively chill time in the game itself, working on alts, maybe achievements or whatever.
A new expansion on the horizon. Class changes are a big part of that. It’s good to have new talents and abilities to discover.
There is drama surrounding the Covenant abilities, of course, but that will work itself out in the coming months. I could see many variations on the basic idea of the Covenants being a lot of fun.
Still no changes in the GCD, and there will be an increase in the amount of buttons in a rotation?
On your requirements to play the game you guys need to include “20 button mouse, and foot pedals are required.” Button bloat has got out of hand, and you guys are doubling down on it in SL?
So the “Unpruning” of warriors seems to have limited all warriors of every spec to have a shield. That’s not “player agency”
Sounds like they’ve limited all warriors to just one-handed and shield, which is so much worse.
Bring back 2H ENHANCEMENT SHAMAN!!!
Thats what we think we want, and guess what, we do!
as someone who plays enhance I enjoy knowing ill have these abilities back, added the new playstyle enhance is getting back but I agree having grounding as a baseline would be amazing so I wouldn’t have to waste a pvp talent spot on it and to have poison cleansing would be even better considering shamans have no way of dealing with poisons
a lot of people complaining about having more buttons but forget that half those buttons they removed is what made the class what it is and helped it deal with obstacles in the game ( warriors having shield block ext. ) yes now as a warrior you are going to need a 1h and shield but back in vanilla thru wotlk (that is when I quit so I don’t know if the stances were still a thing) but back in the older expansions these abilities is what kept them chugging along, all the warriors in bfa who play arms and complain they have no survivability, well here’s your survivability. back then this is what the warrior class used to be.
Shamans, the best support class there is having some of their totems back(although I wish they added some others ones aswell…) anyway its still nice to see them adding abilities back that made a class what it was and not the simple." I press 3 buttons in bfa and win" playstyle they have gotten everyone used to.
They have even brought back the pvp vendors! yes my favorite of all, now players who just choose to pvp can now gear their toons without having to set foot into a dungeon or raid, because lets face it a lot of us just come on the game to smash other players faces and not hit a Ai :). bravo to blizzard starting to listen to the community, yes its not everyting we wanted but they are taking the steps to achieve that. super excited to play shadowlands
Priests seem a bit light, just tweaks on the post-Legion state of the class, though having access to other schools is a “nice to have” it’s more QoL change than something impactful to most end game.
Very disappointed that shadow priests aren’t back to being priests with a focus on shadow abilities. They’re staying as totally different void horrors with their own resource that bears no relation to the rest of the priest class.
I thought we were supposed to be going back to specs only being tweaks to a class’s baseline, not entirely different playstyles?
TLDR; Warriors need more flair and hunters need to be redesigned.
So I figured if i want something to happen I should provide my two cents. I understand that blizzard is aiming for a more class-based design rather than spec specific, but we must remember that due to legion, each spec will still feel like its own class. I will only be providing feedback on the two classes that I play and understand best and would be more interested in seeing the changes for. With that being said, let us begin.
Warriors
Arms: Arms warriors are essentially masters of weaponry. Experts in every single form of combat (swords, axes, maces, polearms, staffs) and should be represented as such by their abilities. As of right now, arms warriors feel more like brutes that walk in and slam the enemy until it dies. Maybe this is the intended design, but when I think of arms warriors I think of the legendary Burning Blade orcish clan. Warriors should swing their weapons with finesse and strategy. This can be displayed through a variety of abilities that lead to a massive strike sort of gamestyle. Additionally, I think it would be great to bring stances, specifically Gladiator stance, back but only for arms warriors. It would be the first and only sword and board dps spec and it could work like the druid affinity system.
Fury: Fury warriors are essentially melee nuclear bombs thrown into a battlefield that guarantee victory. I actually quite like the state of fury warriors in the patch notes right now, since I think it embodies the specialization perfectly. I do, however, there is one essential component missing. I think fury warriors should get stronger as the battle progresses (with an upper limit of course) such as a crit passive that stacks every 5 seconds up to 10 stacks while in combat. Fury warriors are gladiators, the name itself states it, they build on their rage to defeat their enemies. Makes sense for them to get angrier and stronger as the battle lengthens.
Protection: Protection warriors are the stalwarts of Azeroth, fighting until they can’t fight anymore to protect their allies. I kind of like the state of protection warriors right now, however I think they should focus their defenses more on their weapons. Warriors overall don’t have access to magic (in general), their strength is purely based on natural skill. Abilities like “ignore pain” belong more on a death knight rather than a warrior and should instead be replaced with something that focuses more on blocking attacks.
Hunters
Beast Mastery: BM hunters to me are the result of a man being raised by wolves. The hunter is one with the beasts and should be fighting side by side with them. For this reason, and please bear with me here, I believe BM hunters should actually be the melee spec with two handed weapons and dual wielding. It doesn’t make sense for someone that has such a close bond with beasts to be fighting from the distance while the beast takes all the damage. To make the transition easier, could just swap the name of survival with beast mastery and move some abilities around. I feel like this fix would not be particularly terrible.
Survival: Survival hunters should be mobile tricksters. A survival hunter is someone that shoots down their enemies without letting them get close. Using an assortment of traps, explosive arrows, trick shots, and bombs, survival hunters should, in my opinion, be ranged, focusing on dealing damage with dots from both the hunter and its pet.
Marksman: MM hunters are currently in a terrible state quite frankly. The rotation feels bland and incredibly slow. Granted, MM hunters are supposed to be the artillery of the game, however they still feel weak and boring. When I think MM hunters the character from Marvel, Hawkeye, comes to mind. MM hunters should tap more into the fictious side of warcraft, using an assortment of magical arrows to kill the enemy from a distance before they even get close. For MM hunters what I am mainly requesting is an animation overhaul and replacing steady shot and rapid fire with three different focus building abilities than can work together to bring the hunter to that heavy hit aimed shot. Matter of facts, could give Aimed shot the arcane shot animation and replace arcane shot with some sort of builder.
Conclusion
This post has gone on for long enough, but the basics are simple. Warriors are quite frankly in a good state right now, but could be much betters. Balancing arms might be difficult due to all the alternatives in weapon styles but I think this is a simple matter of number plays. Hunters do need a lot of work though. I understand my opinions are quite controversial and a lot of people like melee survival and a lot don’t, but I think melee beast mastery makes a lot more sense and I feel like there will be a decent amount of people agreeing with me. Thank you for reading this far, stay safe!
I agree, melee Beast Mastery makes more sense than Survival melee. However, there is something unique to being ranged and your damage comes from your melee pet LOL.
I am no DK now but I was hoping that all the DK specs would get Army of the Dead again.
All of these are looking really great. Currently I am unsubbed and playing FFXIV because of the horrible state BfA is in and I’m pretty much going to be resubscribing for Shadowlands. One class ability that wasn’t listed that I think many would like to see return is Death Knight’s Presences.
So far there is one thing about Shadowlands which is making me very worried; that being Covenant Abilities and the Class Abilities associated with them. In WoW I play every class except monk and I do PvP, M+ and Raiding. What I feel really needs to happen is what Bellular suggested in one of his latest videos. Have us be able to freely change the covenant abilities, lets say there is an additional talent row with 4 options, you chose one of the covenants to champion and you get the class and covenant ability and can be changed freely in a rest area (this shouldn’t change which Covenant you changed your allegiance to and 100% agree with having the Covenents themselves be difficult to change because of cosmetics and story). This is because it makes the game more fun for people like me who don’t focus on just PvP/M+/Raiding but two or all of the aspects. Certain Covenant abilities I absolutely will be changing depending on which content I am playing especially if I am going for high M+ keys, High Rated PvP and Heroic Raiding. If we cant freely chose between the covenant abilities its going to severely damper my experience and may just drive me away from WoW like BfA has because I simply can not be performing my best in one of those 3 areas because I have an unoptimal Covenant Ability.
Also this is more of a minor suggestion but Soulbinds I feel should be like the Glyph system (and to extent essences) where you simply can toggle the soulbind out with another and not destroying it.
PLEASE Don’t go back to Holy Power for Paladins. It isn’t fun to try and manage mana and HP for healing, or DR and HP for prot. If you want the same resources across specs, remove it for ret and let us deal with the additional resource we also have to manage, mana.
Just curious, but what do you not like about it? I’ve had 0 issues with it, so kinda curious what others aren’t liking.
I like the idea of a melee spec for hunters, but I’ve not been impressed with Surival. For one, I don’t really want to use a spear. I figure it makes sense because it’s a hunter’s weapon, but meh.
I’d rather have some sort of Ranger spec where you’re using ranged bow attacks till the distance is closed and then whip out my swords and join my animal companion in the melee.
No.
Hell no.
The legion passive was mind-numbingly boring.
Yeah Roll the Bones just sucks in general.
Any ability that says “spam this until you get something good” is stupid.
Should have got rid of it at the end of Legion imo, if not half way through it lol.
Now I look at this new version and I’m like “cool, it doesn’t cost combo points so at least it’s not going to replace spenders” and then I notice the cd being added and I’m like “cool, now you can’t spam it”, but then I’m like “wait…since it’s got a cooldown and you are stuck with what you get RMG can just screw you over if you are unlucky with rolls”.
It’s like they noticed the negative play pattern, attempted to fix it, yet didn’t do anything to solve the ridiculous RNG involved within the ability.
Any ability with the RNG that ranges from “this might as well be another dps cooldown” to “why did I even bother pressing this button it currently is doing nothing” is horrible design.
You’ve got Marksman and Beast Mastery, I mean it’s kind of nice because honestly does one class need 3 of the same or two very similar spec choices? Now you have 3 very different choices on one class.
They need about 3 jackhammers of “bloat” to come close to what the game felt like at its best when you actually had moments of “oh I have a tool for this situation!” instead of…“oh hey, I guess I need to spam the glowy button faster”
This “ranger spec” is what Survival actually was originally lol. Shoot them till they get to you, then finish with your pet and dodge/parry buffs and melee/reactionary attacks. Id agree, a reimagined version of that would be ideal.