I am making this forum post to list out my thoughts related to the Season of Discovery PTR on the BWL/ZG Raids, class changes, and gear changes. While I am relatively new to classic only getting really into the game starting in SoD as well as leveling one character in Wrath, I have played Retail WoW starting at the end of Battle for Azeroth through Dragonflight so far. I may make updates to this post as I play a bit more this weekend but these are my initial thoughts from playing the this Friday and Saturday.
With this post I will be going over my opinions based on the classes I have played extensively thus far in SoD, that being Firelock & Warlock Tank, Resto Druid, Rogue Tank, and Frost Mage. Firstly, I will begin with the things I liked/thought were good changes. Then I will move onto the stuff that desperately needs changes, and finally talk about the stuff that has potential but needs improvement.
Pros/Positive Changes of the PTR for Season of Discovery
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Firstly, the addition of actual healing runes in the ring slots. This was a huge disappointment in Phase 4 of Season of Discovery, where it felt as if there was not beneficial runes for healers in these slots. I am glad to see the Healing Power addition and the 5mp5 change. I am glad to see these changes being made, I would also love to see either a ring rune or something to help classes that struggle with spell push-back issues.
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ZG being 10-20 man flex, and BWL being 20-40 man flex. I know a lot of people have issues with this change and I do think it needs some balancing, I think having flex raids is a good thing since being able to do a ZG with 10 people is a very easy thing to do, and being able to do BWL with up to 40 can really help guilds or players who are not as good at the game be able to attempt to do some of the raiding and content. That being said I do think the difficultly definitely needs to be looked at.
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Celestial Boomkin Toy, I think additions like this are great for the game and add a lot of fun and goofy moments, especially now that they can go on the key ring. I would also love to see one of these for tree form druid. Additionally, I would love it if pets such as the bombay cat and etc could also go on the key ring.
Cons/Negative Changes of the PTR for Season of Discovery
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First thing I need to discuss with this section is the Tier Sets/Gear, and no I don’t mean in relation to the color for each of the tier set pieces, that doesn’t matter to much. However some of these Tier Set Bonuses we have seen both from the raid and from Data Mining of the game so far are extremely disappointing, and feel like the benefit play-styles that are non existent even with the runes in place, while other classes and specs that are in a more playable state have not gotten dedicated tier sets for them yet.
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Warlock Tier Sets. Honestly, this is hard to find a place to begin with. I am not really sure on why the direction with these tier sets is to focus on buffing Demons when the Demonology skill tree and runes aren’t there. Meanwhile, Firelock still doesn’t really have a dedicated tier set as the Molten Core set is more focused on Affliction in general and both specs struggle with spell push back. Additionally, for Tank-lock, I am very confused on this design choice especially since in Phase 2 of Season of Discovery, the Ability to utilize Soul Link was removed from working with Tank-locks, so the focus and drive the go down the demonology tree has been honestly hard to justify especially, when the Destruction and Affliction Trees offer more ways to generate threat, get more mana back through life taps and health from drain life. I honestly would love to see a pivot away from these demonology focused Tier Sets and a shift on fixing some of the issues like spell push-back for these classes as well as giving firelock an actual tier set.
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Resto Druid Tier Sets. While not as detailed as my warlock focused one, the tier set focus for Resto Druid being on Restokin is quite annoying, especially considering the Molten Core Tier set for Resto Druids specifically was not good aside from the 2 piece. I would love to see changes here to instead of focusing on Restokin but to actually make a set that benefits the healing nature of Resto Druids.
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Onyxia Cloak, I would love to see items like this that are necessary for doing specific bosses get updates to benefit a variety of classes instead of being just a bit of stamina and fire resist. Add a couple versions, one with strength and agility, one with spellpower & heal power, and etc.
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Some of the new items and trinkets feel very lackluster while others seem insanely good, such as the shaman one that increases damage, healing and etc by 20% while the warlock one only benefits demonology. Make all the special items and trinkets benefit all the specs or make options that you can pick to benefit specific specs because at the moment they are disappointing.
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Next on my list of changes, I want to discuss the class specific changes that have been made, as well as some changes that should be made to classes that were not addressed.
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Warlock Tanks & Rogue Tanks, The damage nerfs to these classes feels terrible, and the additional threat generation doesn’t compensate nearly as much as people would like to think. It also makes it incredibly hard to maintain threat when tank swapping with paladin tanks specifically. And with Rogue tanks holding threat on aoe targets is now even harder. I think reverting these changes would be a good thing. And when it comes to PvP you have far more broken classes than these two running about… cough cough hunters and shamans to name just two…
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One last warlock tank/caster change, add less counterspell/spell reflects or at least make it so there is a visible wind up to know when this is going to happen or a way to interrupt it because at the moment bosses like Azurgos, and Shazzarath in MC make playing a caster feel less viable in pve from a boss design stand point, not including the different in power scaling in gear atm.
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For casters, a lot of them need help with spell push-back issues, two in-particular are warlocks and boomkin, as well as few different healing classes. Adding some way to address this issue would be great.
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If the Rogue Tank and Warlock Tank nerfs are going to stay, at least do the same for some of the other tank classes such as Shaman tanks which are running rampant in PvP, as at the moment it is crazy how much damage, utility, and etc they are able to do. At this point me and my friends in my guild have leveled Shamans to 60 and are just running around unkillable with infinite mana just one shotting people even after the PvP health and defense changes.
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Remove Immunities to physical damage, magical/spell damage, and etc across the board. It feels awful that certain tanks can’t tank BRD or other dungeons and etc because certain enemies are immune to damage types or etc. I get these changes can affect Era, however my suggestion would be to make it so spells like sear pain count as two damage type or etc to bypass this issue as an example.
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Affixes for BWL, at the moment these affixes feel like they are worse for certain classes than others, as the damage over time hurts classes with no spell-pushback protection more than they hurt the classes like rogue or warrior who have nearly all insta-cast spells or abilities. At the moment it feels as if 3/5 affixes are worse for healers and casters than they are for melee because they slow there attacks down/the ability to do anything while also doing damage.
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I have a bunch of other minor things that I would like to list here from previous Season of Discovery phases as well as the PTR.
- Firelocks still not having the same number of runes as affliction, is disappointing, also the play-style for decimation with Soulfire doesn’t feel very good as it just turns into soul fire spam once the enemy drops below 35% hp, would love to see this rune get addressed, and changed. Since the Firelock Play-style phases 1-3 was fantastic for the most part.
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Demonic Knowledge, Honestly just make this rune baseline at this point, since at the moment one warlock runs mark of chaos and now since demonic knowledge is nerfed in an optimal situation it provides at most 20-30 spell power, which is nice but is till less spell power than if we would get from item if we had actual spell hit and more spell crit built into our talents such as mages, and etc.
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Demonic Grace nerf, I get this getting nerfed since it makes the damage from demons insane, however it really hurts tanklocks as they lose there one consistent defensive in dodging. Which compared to the other tanks which either get dodge+ parry or dodge+block or all three this feels awful. I would revert this change and not focus on Demonology/Demon warlock gameplay since the runes and spells are not really there in this version of classic. I would save changes for Demonology Warlocks for a Classic+.
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Fingers of Frost and Ice Lance for Frost Mage. At the Moment without gear set Fingers of Frost procs way too inconsistently and it feels awful would love to see that be addressed. And Finally, Ice Lance… Oh man this spell/rune has some issues in Season of Discovery that have gone unaddressed since Phase 1. At this moment in time because of how the damage scales with Ice Lance it does pitiful damage after around level 15. I would love this spell to actually utilize spell power properly and do actual damage when it triples the damage.
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Tree of Life & Restokin. So in phase 1-3 we had both pure Resto Druids and Restokin, however in Phase 4 with the introduction of Tree of Life, it feels as if both got screwed a bit. My proposition instead of using gear sets to make them viable is to do the following.
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Revert the Wild Growth Nerf so that boomkins still get good healing from this spell.
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Adjust Tree of Life form, instead of Wild Growth getting a 60% increase since its got it base healing back up to previous levels drop it down to like 30-40% this way both Restokin and Boomkin can cast the spell and be viable without gear.
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Like listed above make the Resto Tier Set focused on Resto Druid to truly make them heal more, as Resto Druid should be healing more than Restokin, as Restoking is sacrificing healing for Damage, while Resto Druid is sacrificing Damage for Healing.
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Other Thoughts/Things I think are good in theory just need some adujusting
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Affixes, I think these are a decent idea in terms of scaling difficultly compared to the Fire resist in Molten Core. However as it stands I think these affixes need some changes as it feels more targeted towards casters and healers, which casters specifically outside of Fire-Mage were not doing nearly as well as melee were this Phase 4. I find this especially problematic, since almost every class in the game now is bring some form of Utility. I.E. Hunters with Heart of the Lion, Warriors with both tanking & dpsing and there own unique raid wide buff, and etc.
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Tier Sets & Runes, With Season of Discovery so far it feels as if Runes were added for 2 reasons. 1. to add new play-styles to the game such as tanklock, rogue, shaman, and etc. 2. To fix issues with classes. Now at the moment, I think it would be best to instead of utilizing Tier Sets to fix problems with classes to utilize to rune systems to do that, and instead to design Tier Sets to boost/empower those fixed and already existing play-styles even further. An example of this is, instead of having frost mage need 2-6 pieces of tier from Molten Core/ZG to function, to instead adjust the runes in question to make them more consistent, and then to make that Tier Sets push that play-style direction even farther or in the case of mage and other casters fix the huge mana issues they have at the moment.
Final Thoughts
So far I have love a lot of the direction Season of Discovery has gone on, however at the same time I have had some issues that have bubbled up over time as well. I would really hope some of these issues I brought up get addressed, because at the moment as a player of many of the different classes, some feel like the get preferential treatment, where as others are left at the wayside. Whether that be because the designers for SoD don’t play the classes and don’t really understand what the players of those want, or just because they have great ideas for some classes and none for others. Now this is not me trying to spread hate, or toxicity when I say this, but rather it comes from a place of love I have developed for this game specifically over the last year-ish. I would love it if the love was spread around instead of just being focused on certain classes. Like Paladins and Shamans who get a redesign it feels every few weeks to every phase. Where as other classes have had major issues since phase 1.
I am excited to see what the future of Season of Discovery and Classic World of Warcraft hold!