I think that using “boring” to build a case is misguided. Boredom is on the individual, not on the game in front of them. Maybe I’m bored at watching football while thousands are roaring in the stands. If I don’t get it, then that is me.
That said, a prune is happening, we’ll have to play it to find out.
That may be, but if existing customers are bored by something they’ve previously enjoyed due to changes you’ve made then that’s something to consider.
I’ve gone from being excited about the addon changes and looking forward to the next raid tier to cautiously trying new things on alpha to see if I can find a new class to get invested in enough that I want to keep going.
That doesn’t feel good.
Almost all the changes in the alpha are over-pruning.
And no, “how you feel about the game is on you, not the game” is not true. It’s nonsense. Stop blaming the customers for bad product decisions.
Preface this with: the only classes I can speak intelligently on are Druid and DK. Other classes I’ve rarely done anything harder than getting portals on, some of this information may be old. All opinions expressed are my own and in no way are personal reflections of the people I’m talking to.
I think fire might end up being fine if tuning pushes them back towards more active abilities in the tree.
Shadow I have no clue on, I only play disc on my priest. When I’ve tried shadow, it falls into the camp of my damage feeling disconnected from what I’m doing. I feel the same way about moonkin. Tentacle slam looks super fun though.
But UHDK looks awesome. I have a few minor quibbles about resource flow with free coil procs returning, but it’s so much more fun than wound management. Granted, wound management sucked so bad maybe anything else would feel better, but churning out a veritable army and reacting to priority procs feels very UH-Core to me.
Devastation always made me sad. I wanted bouncing pyres to be a thing. I kinda feel like even on live just keeping your big stuff on CD is like 80% of the fight. I always try to play dev and channel my inner Onyxia, but I invariably end up swapping to pres before the season ends.
BM playing anything but pack leader will always feel bad to me. But my hunter is basically a glorified Pokémon tamer right now, so no dog in that fight.
For me, winners so far are DK and Druid. My two favorite classes both looking very solid going into midnight. Bear actually gains a damage cooldown and eclipse is made more fun and less maintenance-y. Dropping a lifebloom had me worried, but looks like they juiced the rest of the kit (and added ever bloom to cover the diff in AoE), really that part of it is mostly numbers tuning. The only thing I could really hope for is more powerful HoTs and taking some stuff away from regrowth spam. I was a tad skeptical with feral because of how crucial a good weak aura pack is to good damage, but I like the bloody icons over what I was using already and having 1 snapshot buff instead of 2 is still skill-expressive. It’s gonna feel weird not having blood talons for a while. Maybe we could get choice node with blood talons and TF and have them compete as active/passive variants of each other. All in all, very positive on Druid right now, disregarding tuning.
But DK — oh man. Blood DK is my baby. I feel like losing Tap was a little over the top, but if they’re juicing the base defense enough, could be ok; its usage was very skill-expressive. The whole shattering bones economy was also completely killed, but tbh that’s fine. I loved bonestorm before they ruined it in BfA. But again, managing bones was skill expression. I feel like too much power is baked into DRW right now, I’d like to see some of that split off. Maybe tie the swarming mist to vamp blood instead. I’m eagerly awaiting the proof that DK will work in high keys.
Frost looks good. Not too far off form live’s playstyle, but I’m a little fatigued with it tbh. It was never my favorite. I like DW master-frost, but that was so long ago, I’ve already finished my 5 stages.
UH is where it’s at. Don’t wanna retread what I already said, but it just looks so cool.
Fire spends 85-89% of the time outside of combustion pressing fireball waiting for a hot streak to convert. Idk how the odd meteor press is going to help with that.
Ultimately I feel like a handful of specs have been shafted, due to either a lack of understanding or investment from the individuals working on them. There’s a lot of great things on Alpha, and the direction on the whole is one I approve of. There’s just a spectacular difference between the winners and the losers and the specs I’m invested in are pretty much all losers.
BM MM are looking dicey. I may main mage or warlock next expansion.
[quote=“Hpellipsis, post:22, topic:2183677, username:Hpellipsis-whisperwind”]
That doesn’t feel good.
[/quote
You make a fine point. And saying that it doesn’t feel good is better, or more honest, than boring.
This is absolutely not the reason WoD fell off, class designed was one part that was done well in WoD
Pruning abilities usually feels bad, it’s nice to do more in an encounter that just hit the rotation well while not standing in fire.
But i think it, and bloat, both comment on the same issue. You only have so many viable keybinds to use. If I’ve 12 buttons my right hand can hit, i don’t need to try to fit 20 abilities in those spots. How about 4 attack buttons, a couple special moves, and maybe a few defensives. Right now I’m trying to fit 7 attack buttons, 3 offensive, 4 defensive, 2 movement, and of course now the cloak. It just feels too busy.