Legion Class Preview discussion
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
Now that they're all out, let's discuss.
First, the links:
I really like the idea that Blizzard is putting so much effort into re-focusing the lore and fantasy of each class, and re-establishing it into the game world to help make each class feel unique rather than just putting them into role buckets.
There's a lot of salt about some classes (ahem Shaman), while others are getting huge accolades (Rogue, Priest) for freshening things up. What are your thoughts for your preferred class? Are you going to change your main for Legion?
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For the classes I'm most familiar with:
Shadow Priest being reconnected to the lore of old gods, the void, and shadow is super cool to me. I hope they bake that into the shadow priest quest lines and class hall stuff. The idea that we are the antithesis of the Light is really cool and one of the reasons I started playing shadow priest back in BC. I love the idea of entering into void form and working to maintain the balance of insanity and shadow orbs. Seems like the changes are going to be super positive and make the class more fun.
I love the idea of Holy Paladin benefiting from proximity. They want to put plate-wearing healers right on the front lines and it makes perfect sense. Having beacon on your tank and standing next to her, helping do some damage and soaking melee damage is going to change up the dynamic quite a bit.
Balance druid focusing more on resources rather than watching a slider is pretty cool to me, but then I really liked the slider stuff and casting spells at certain times based on the cycle of the moon and sun, but that's just me.
Affliction Warlock: Yessssss moar dots
I thought the warrior notes were strange regarding Fury.
We focus on having a high uptime on enrage to deal the extra damage, but they are talking about taking 30% more damage as well. If we hit the 50+% enrage uptime as in the past, warriors will be difficult to heal or will spend less time DPS'ing to keep themselves alive.
Nope, it is 30% (for the moment) increase in damage taken. Huh.
I'm happy about the changes to bear.
I hate that I am happy about that.
As a Fury Warrior Enhancement Shaman you'll need to generate rage Maelstrom using Bloodthirst Rockbiter so that you can use more powerful attacks like Raging Blow Stormstrike. Though, sometimes, you'll want to use attacks like Wild Strike Lava Lash when stronger attacks are on cooldown.
I am 90% apathetic, 10% displeased.
Shaman got no love this time around. Or any time around. Or Ever.
I'm used to it. If I come back to play Legion, I'm feeling the urge to switch. I haven't played a ranged class full time since vanilla. But I also intend to wait and see. Maybe Blizzard has some balancing activities up their sleeves in the legendary, talents or itemization.
Not gonna lie, pirate rogue outlaw sounds preetttttty cool. Skeevil may just come out and dust his pistolas off.
For the classes I play:
Hunter: I'm happy with these changes. The diversity is nice. Not much to say otherwise. Still my favorite.
Priest: On Discipline, I'm not sure how it sounds reading about it. The intention is ok but it's something I would have to "feel" to get a good read on it.
On Shadow, it felt a little too simple and these changes help flesh it out I think.
Fire Mage: The change to combustion is HUGE, as will the damage resulting from it. It's a "Advance to Go" card for the crit minigame.
Monk: On Mistweaver I'm happy that my ramp for raid healing is gone. It was a ton of effort to get it ready on time and the results felt REALLY underwhelming. All that effort but only some and all 13 people I've tagged still end up with less health then when I started. Can't say how I feel about the additions and removals until I've played around with 'em, but they seem to do the job on paper. As for Fistweaving being removed, I'm ok with that. Like they said it hasn't really worked out. It's nigh impossible to be viable unless there isn't much damage going out, or everyone involved is flawlessly taking 0% of the unnecessary damage. It feels weird though that Disc will be able to be the combat medic but Fistweavers no.
I would have liked to see them fix whatever was wrong with fistweaver. That was the whole POINT of monk healing, right? Now you're just a druid?
Holy Paladin: Nonplussed.
"Light of dawn hits in a cone" - this was changed AWAY from "cone" because you can't aim the cone reliably, and in raids with more than 15 or so raiders, it's too unreliable in who it heals - you'd get more mileage casting a HoT (if we still GET one), or taking one person out of harms way. Nobody will use this BECAUSE of the cone problem, just like they did the LAST time they made it a cone ability. This is not learning from one's mistakes.
"Light of the Martyr" - fuck off. You and I BOTH know that no matter how much you want healing to be more like "plugging holes in a sinking ship," you're eventually going to fall back to Mists of Pandaria style "if you're not a full health and you take a hit, you're dead." You did it this expansion - so what makes you think I'll want to use something to pass my health away? And - wait, wait - THIS is a no-cooldown instant-speed? So what, sacrifice one of my GCDs to move health around rather than actually increasing the health of the raid? The amount of balance that needs to go into this spell before I use it is intense... and I predict it being a big liability at the end of the expansion, where the whole 'one-hit-almost-dead' thing is more serious.
Also give us SOMETHING other than straight mana. Straight mana healing is rotational healing and is SUPER dull. Where's the minigame?
I DO, however, like what they've done with the mastery. Mastery is a pretty stupid stat - it usually translates into 'have more mastery, do more dps/heals/absorbs.' This MAY
Unless talents really change hpally a lot, I am displeased.
Protadin: Pretty much the exact opposite of how I feel about hpally - all these new abilities look interesting, AoE looks more streamlined and less like having two separate ability sets, and using active mitigation looks way more meaningful without holy power. I approve.
HOWEVER: Mastery. wtf, guys? "getting more mastery makes you better at all the numbers." Real creative.
Retadin: Nothing looks different. Remove one of our damage spells, replace with another damage spell = I'm still mashing out a rotation and making no meaningful decisions. Standard dps. Worried by their 'we're taking away range from Paladins' - they've already nerfed out our utility with the last expansion, looks like we're about to lose more. At least medium-range spells isn't a HUGE reason to play paladin. Oh, and of course, mastery: "lol do more damage."
tl;drI ain't really about this. It really seems like paladins are getting WAY more generic and boring.
I'm not completely sure on Druid healing yet but I believe Mistweavers are somewhere inbetween Shaman and Druid currently.
I wouldn't say that Fistweaving was the point of being a Mistweaver. At first I think they just wanted it to be soft raid healing to contrast with Uplift's somewhat substantial raid healing, and Revival's massive raid healing. Cause they like to have the small, medium, and large heal sets. Basically I feel it's like having a Resto Shaman/Druid combo and a Disc Priest in one class. Therefore Blizz can only really make one side strong balance wise. So they're opting to remove one side to fully realize the other. If WoW was purely a PvE game then they might try to bring both sides up. Thematically speaking, Mistweaving makes sense more sense and is cooler. Yes, martial arts are cool, but Brewmaster and Windwalker have that in spades. Mistweaving is about the ethereal part of the mystical martial arts, controling your life energy (chi) to accomplish feats. In this case I'm using my own, the natural life energy in the environment, and that of my allies to heal.
That makes me think about them adding either a new spec, or a lot of talents for Windwalker to make a chi blasting class similar to Dragonball's fighting. Blizz pls!
Learned a lot from some Tweet coverage. The overall conclusion to the huge amount of questions asked over all the classes and such tells me that they are putting so much emphasis on the new variety of talents that you need to take those basic abilities pretty much with a grain of salt. So I'll withhold final judgement until the talents are revealed.
Also gnome hunters confirmed to be a thing in Legion. I may just hold off creating a hunter alt for IC till Legion.
(gnome... hunters... like, an achieveme-ohh, he means HUNTERS who are GNOMES...)