#patch 7.0.3

Druid (Feral/Guardian): Feral is trash at AOE but otherwise OK (unless it’s PVP, then it’s probably broken as hell because this game can’t do anything without breaking PVP). Guardian might be the best, most well-rounded tanking tank spec so far, while also somehow being the most straightforward.

As before, Feral plays a lot like Rogues do, with Combo points building up to big Finishers. However, Feral is all about the bleeds, and the energy, and the bleeds, and waiting for energy. and more bleeding. Blood coming from everywhere.

It’s a gameplay style that I really enjoy in single-target but can’t stand in multiple-target situations, but I guess that’s not the Feral Druid’s thing. They’re like cats, they charge in on a single prey and take it down before moving on to the next.

Unfortunately, this makes having to deal with multiple targets almost unbearable because you’ll find yourself waiting for energy more often than not. Basically, you have to get close and spend a lot of energy to kill an enemy more slowly, Alternatively, you could try just tapping targets with your bleeds, but the damage benefit from bleeds is really only gained by using other single-target abilities on bleeding targets. For most other specs, one can just spam two or three AOE abilities in sequence and win.

Also, and this might be a personal thing, but I feel like Tiger’s Fury would have been better as a passive buff - either a passive boost in focus or a random proc that gives you focus back, say, on auto-attacks or critical hits or some thing. It may play completely different at max level, but for now it feels under-tuned for PVE content.

Guardian, on the other hand, has been a lot of fun for me. Its spread of damage reduction and healing abilities are very straightforward and simple - no gimmicky “stand here to heal” or “step on this to do that’ or “wait for X and then press Y” - Druid tanking was probably the easiest of all to pick up and roll with.

if you have rage, you spend rage on doing damage or reducing damage. If you’re taking physical damage, use a physical damage reduction skill - magical damage, use a magic damage resistance skill. if you’re taking a LOT of damage, pop a cooldown that cuts that damage in half. If you screwed up your timing on that, no worries - you get two charges. Also, you’ve got a HoT. Also, you’ve got a lot of health, whiich increases the health gained by your HoT.

I’d almost say that Druid is ‘too good’ but then I realize that it’s mobility is almost nothing. And while it’s ability to gain aggro and do damage is pretty easy, it wasn’t terribly overwhelming at this level. We’ll probably be seeing bear druids top AOE charts with all the other tanks, but on single target fights I can foresee their DPS being dramatically lower than other tanks.

Hunter: MONGOOSE BITE (is back)! BLACK ARROW (makes sense now)! DIRE BEASTS (are freaking ridiculous)! EXPLODEY THINGS (RIP Explosive Shot, long live Explosive Shot)! 10/10 best class forever.

So, when do we get a true pet-tanking spec, Blizz?

For real, Survival is fine melee deeps but I think it would have been better as a pure pet-tanking spec (something we may see in the future).

Also, while streamlining for BM and MM was over-all for the best, they are also sort of weird parallels of each other:

- Marksmanship gives you focus easy, as both Arcane Shot and Multi-Shots give you focus (!!!! WHY?), but it takes forever to spend it since only hard-cast Aimed Shots and proc-dependent Marked Shots (Hi, Noon) typically use focus. This is remedied by taking other focus-using shots, like Black Arrow, Barrage, and Murder of Crows - great talents for leveling but not sure if they’ll still be good for end-game. You also can get Piercing Shot, which does more damage based on how much focus you burn (which is super nice, considering how much focus you can wind up with).

- Beast Mastery lets you spend focus easy with Kill Command and Cobra Shot... and Multishot, too, for some reason. However, you can occasionally be waiting for focus because no ability gains it for you, directly. Dire Beasts increase your rate of focus gain, with the rate increasing for each beast proc’d. It’s possible to have a lot proc’d at the same time, and I imagine that there will be a soft haste-cap where you won’t be able to run out of focus for any given ability on any given GCD as long as you maintain uptime on Dire Beasts whenever possible.

Between the two ranged hunter specs, I find Beast Mastery to be more fun, but mostly because you eventually wind up lobbing Dire Beasts at the target like they are single-use, temporary Pokemon. Additionally, a lot of talents and abilities have great synergy with Dire Beasts, making Beast Mastery pretty powerful as a result. However, I get the impression that Beast Mastery will be the high-skill-cap, high-gear DPS spec, I imagine Marksmanship will be the more boring and much easier “press 2 buttons, win DPS” spec.

Survival is another beast altogether (see what I did there). Survival is actually an amalgamation of several mechanics and all of them are fun. Harpoon Toss is like an Inverse Death Grip/Charge, pulling you toward the enemy and immobilizing the enemy. Flanking Attack (or whatever it’s called) is sort of like a close-ranged Kill Command with a pet taunt, allowing the player’s pet to tank hits from an enemy while the hunter lays on the damage. Lacerate is a bleed, Mongoose Bite is a quickly-building, bursty instant damage ability, and Raptor Strike is your go-to focus spender. Survival also gets somewhat solid AOE, with a Cleave and Explosive Trap ability, as well as others that can be talented in.

The fact that Survival Hunter keeps the traps that the other specs lost is bittersweet, though - the traps are fun to use, but they seem lost on Survival Hunter because it’s kit is otherwise pretty strong without them (other than in AOE, where Explosive Trap is a lunk chunk of your damage). Also, there may be other melee classes with better CCs , but the hunter’s main advantage is that it can throw its traps, instead of just casting them on a given target. I’d much rather have Freezing Trap on my MM or BM hunters, where I can toss one, MD the other adds to the tank, and then keep tabs on my trap from across the battlefield.

I also need to point out that - while a lot of Hunter changes were good and necessary - some of the changes have left Hunters definitely worse off. The loss of CC and AOE abilities from traps is the biggest difference that I have noticed, and apparently our beloved Stampede has been reworked. I’ve known and felt these changes the hardest, especially in 5-man instances and TWing, but I’m sure there’s more.

I’m placing the blame for these changes squarely on PVP. Nobody who has run a heroic or mythic or timewalking dungeon with a hunter has said “You know what? I wish this hunter just had a few less CCs, they’re making things way too easy/hard for me!”. That’s because a hunter that knows their class and knows their role can use their abilities well, and a hunter that doesn’t can still contribute with their damage.

However, in PVP, if a hunter has and uses these abilities - well, most of them honestly have pretty easy counters. For the longest time, in fact, Hunters have been the most counter-able class by the most other classes. The problem is who they are used against - if someone is hit by these abilities and knows how to deal with them, they can wipe the floor with almost any given hunter. However, if you don’t know what to do to a hunter who has disengaged or dropped traps or put you in an iceblock, then you’re just going to go yap about it on the forum.

Seriously, there is no rage quite like the rage of a WoW player who’s been killed by a hunter. It’s like there’s an implied “HUMILIATION!” voice calling out because, dude, you got killed by a Hunter. What the hell?

Add this to the fact that other classes have seen dramatic reductions and streamlining of their abilities, and the PVP nerfs for Hunters are pretty much inevitable, but also a bit easier to swallow, as well.

Hunter is my favorite class overall and the class of my main. I made it a point to test Hunter last through the Silver Proving Grounds, so that i’d have a firm idea of what other classes played like before comparing my hunter to them (rather than going vice-versa and perhaps unfairly comparing them to my Chosen One). Hunter is still my favorite, but I can also see how the patch-stick has knocked some of the sharper edges off my beloved Hunter.

Monk: Brewmaster is meh and weird, literally and figuratively doing a lot of juggling. Mistweaver is an interesting concept with a neat execution, but potentially flawed in the long term. Windwalker is silly (but fun).

As mentioned elsewhere, Brewmaster Monk is at a definite loss without Guard (which seems to belong to Warriors now, under the name “Ignore Pain”, but I digress). However, I think Brewmasters ARE OVERALL BETT-... well, no, they’re definitely overall worse, but probably not as much as people might think.

See, Guard was a fun ability, but I don’t think it ever became what was intended of it. Brewmaster was supposed to be about the combination of Staggered damage and other mitigation keeping it tanky, while unmitigated or un-staggered damage would still hurt, a lot. "Giant Absorb every 30 seconds that doubles your effective health” doesn’t really fit into that scheme, nor does it need to in order for the scheme to work.

Unfortunately, some of the things that I think would have made Brewmaster effective (without Guard) have also gone away. It doesn’t have the same self-healing or group-healing abilities that it had. Nor does it have the same damage mitigation abilities that it had. it’s kind of a 2 steps forward, 3 steps back situation, so I can understand players feeling like Brewmaster just isn’t as good as it was.

What it does have is lots of Staggering, and lots of mobility, and a healthy amount of damage. It doesn’t rely on Combo Points- Chi anymore, so your main abilities all merely cost Energy and have short cooldowns. instead of Chi.For example, you have (shared) charges of Ironskin and Purifying Brew.

Ironskin increases the amount of damage you stagger, and Purifying Brew cleanses 50% of your staggered damage. At times, this is a hilarious combination, as you basically shrug off lots of damage, and then purge the damage that you’re intended to take from staggering. At first, it seems pretty smart.

Unfortunately, it’s really easy to get into a situations where you need to both mitigate incoming damage, but also need to cleanse staggered damage that you have taken. This is where the shared charges fall a bit short, for me - I would’ve rather seen them either operate off of different resources (energy for one, charges for the other, etc), had a more see-saw effect (Purifying reduces the cooldown on Ironskin, and vice-versa), or even triggering a self-heal when one or the other is activated (which relieves some pressure when one needs both and has neither).

Combined with the loss of CCs, Effigy, and other core abilities, and I think that overall, Brewmaster is in kind of a worse place than it once was, which is a shame. I still think Monk is fun to play, and I get the feeling that it will be very good in raids, but I think it will require a lot more work to get Brewmaster tank to be ‘OK’, versus the amount of work it would take to make any other Tank to be ‘Great’.

Mistweaver, on the other hand, is a lot more fun to me, and much more interesting as a healer.

Mistweavers are good “stream” healers - they can heal a steady amount of damage over time, but they may have some trouble with lots of big bursts of damage. Most of their abilities trigger passive healing through a channeled spell, and with the right talent choices, you can move while channeling this spell, and it isn’t broken unless you use some other ability (or get interrupted somehow, maybe).

This results in your Monk basically becoming the World of Warcraft equivalent to a Team Fortress 2 Medic or Overwatch’s Mercy, and it’s amazing.

You channel streams of health into your targeted party member in order to sustain them through the fight. You can improve mana efficiency by casting fewer, weaker heals and letting the stream do all the healing. Or you can improve output by casting more, stronger heals, and letting the healing gains from synergizing spells boost your overall healing done.

While Mistweaver seems optimally tuned against streamed damage, there are also good cooldowns for those “oh shit” moments of big burst damage. These spells are notably much less efficient, though. And while Fistweaving is gone, Mistweaver monks do benefit from using their melee abilities while they wait for mana to recuperate, since their attacks cost no mana. However, most monks are probably going to want to stream their healing as much as possible.

That said...

...It’s worth pointing out that this is functionally very similar to something Druids already do - heals over time - except Druids do it much, much better. Druids can place a heal over time on multiple targets, move while casting at least three of their best spells, and can attack from range or chill out and replenish their mana when they’re not casting heals.

The difference, really, is that Monks have to focus their healing, rather than laying out a bunch of instant-cast spells to build healing over time. So I can’t say that this style of healing is actually going to be more popular or functionally better than what Restoration Druids already do. We may see Monks getting a buff or Druids getting nerfed, or certain situations where the Monk’s healing cheeses some mechanic that would otherwise cripple a Druid.

I’m not trying to make too many comparisons, here, but this is a hard one to avoid. If the Druid can already do what a Mistweaver Monk does, but does it better, and for more targets, then what, exactly, does the Mistweaver bring to the table, that’s worthwhile? I’m not sure, yet.

Finally, there’s Windwalker and honestly this spec is just silly. You’re basically a fighting game character. You may have a bad-ass weapon but you’re going to be using your fists and feet all the time. You get bonus damage for not using the spamming the same abilities over and over again, which leads to whacky chains of smashing different buttons. I had the overwhelming urge to say “BREAD AND BUTTER!” and start watching Evo 2016 streams. It’s ridiculous.

For being a silly spec, though, it is a lot of fun. The “fighting game character” aesthetic is way more enjoyable for Monk than I thought it would be, and it makes me happy that the spec favors mixing up your attacks with combinations rather than just spamming your highest-priority available attack at all times.

I’m not usually a fan of melee DPS specs, but I’m a fan of Windwalker.

The only thing it’s missing is a solid Jump + Dive-Kick move, but for that, we have the Rogue’s Death From Above, so...

Rogue: Assassins are fine nerds. Subtley is odd for nerds. Outlaws are fun and all the awesome, attractive, cool kids play Outlaw. (Star)

I’ll stand by this until the day I cheat death.

Rogues are easily my least favorite class in WoW (which is sad because Rogues are one of my favorite classes in D&D) 

I don’t like that they are melee DPS but don’t have a tank spec. I don’t like their squishiness (unless it’s PVP in which case they’re ridiculously resistant/evasive and immune to all things). I don’t like PVPing as one or against one. I just generally don’t care for them under any circumstances.

And yet, I’m finding myself enjoying Rogue more, in this incarnation.

This is all thanks to Outlaw, because Assassination is basically more of the same and Subtlety is basically “Shadowdancer Prestige Class! But not as cool.”

Assassination is the “poison pokey murder bleedy stabby stabby” spec and it’s perfectly serviceable. It retains the most ‘classic rogue’ elements, like poisons and stealth attacks, and it does pretty good damage over all, split evenly between your bleeds and your poisons.

Once upon a time this was the spec of PVP assholes everywhere, and it might still be. I don’t know. I don’t care. It hits hard in single-target and has decent-enough AOE. If you feel like just tearing things up, this is the spec for you.

Subtlety is the “cloaky dagger shadow magic spoopy creppy” spec and it’s a much better concept than execution. Really, it’s kind of a mess.

The big problem is that shadowdancing doesn’t feel like you’re leaping into or out of the shadows to strike your foe where they are vulnerable.

It feels weird. It feels clunky. it feels like you’re filing your taxes. It feels like submitting a form in order to get a permit to use a single ability that grants additional damage for your other abilities for a just long enough period of time to forget that you need to file another form to use that ability again to do continue doing damage.

It may be potentially very powerful but it feels like crap and it plays like crap and I really don’t like it at all. And the AOE sucks, too. I mean, they don’t even get Kiling Spree as baseline, to make up for it. Why the heck not?

Really, the best and only spec that matters for Rogues right now is Outlaw because it makes you into a pirate. We didn’t have a pirate class in WoW and we needed one. Now we have it, and it’s awesome.

Now, you don’t NEED to be a pirate - you can just be a dude with a pistol and a sword. You can be that guy from “Whiskey in the Jar”, producing your pistol and rapier and getting money. Either way, you can be way more awesome as Outlaw than as Assassination or Subtlety.

Outlaw is very simple to play but has an interesting level of depth. On the surface, you really only have 4 abilities that need used - your Sabre Slash is your default combo builder, which has a chance to proc a free use of your Pistol Shot (Shout Out to ‘Invisible Pistol RPers’! ;) ) . Your Pistol Shot is another combo builder, which fires your pistol, slows the target, and has a 20 yard range. You spend your combo points on Slice and Dice (same as before) and Evis- I mean, Run Through. For AOE, you still have Blade Flurry, which inflicts all of your single-target damage on targets nearby you.

So far, so good, right?

Where it gets interesting for Outlaw is in the talent selection - there are talents that increase the chance of gaining a free Pistol Shot proc, or to gain more combo points when it does proc, or to gain more energy, or to increase your melee range, or to have cannons from an invisible pirate ship fire at the target, or to roll dice and get a random buff.

Mage: All specs are fine. All of the essential spells are there, but really the most fun is playing with Shimmer and Displacement, basically making your mage into Tracer, in WoW form. There is one problem, though: A lot of the specs feels really eerily similar to each other.

Here’s what I mean -

Arcane mage: You have a big instant-cast spell that blows things up real good, but you have to activate it by building up Arcane Charges with your weaker spells in order to get the most damage.

Fire mage: You have a big instant-cast spell that blows things up real good, but you have to activate it with procs of “Heating Up” from your weaker spells / spell crits, in order to get the most damage.

Frost mage: You have two big instant-cast spells that blow things up real good, but you have to activate them with ‘Fingers of Frost’ / ‘Mind Freeze’ procs from your weaker spells - or a cooldown, in FoF’s case - in order to get the most damage- do you see a pattern, here?

Basically all of the specs play very, very similar to each other and the biggest differences really are either the visuals, or the spells that don’t really get much PVE usage (like slow, cone of cold,  etc.).

There are some subtle variations to the rotations: Arcane uses mana as a real resource and needs to balance damage output with mana consumption, Fire’s proc-tastic gameplay is still heavily influenced by crit gear, and Frost’s talent choices can dramatically change the way that spec plays by eliminating the Water Elemental, manually triggering your Icicles, and other spells. All of the specs feel a little ‘faster’, as well.

But otherwise they all seem to follow the same basic idea of “build-up spell > build-up spell > insta-cast proc”. In the past, you could talent each spec to play very, very differently from each other - right now, you can talent them to play basically the same as each other. I can foresee three-mage multiboxers playing all three specs, with the same keybinds, simultaneously.

Paladin: Overall, not bad, but not great. Holy is OK. Prot is terrible. Ret seems meh to somewhat okay for damage for now. It’s not terribly exciting but if you like easy mode melee DPS then you’ll be well-served by your Ret Paladin.

The biggest loss is that everyone who doesn’t main a paladin basically has no excuse not to be able to beat one, any more, though.

Like, I’m 90% convinced that people complaining about Retribution right now (or, really, any Paladin at any time) are just a displaced PVPers or end-game raiders who can no longer count on their class to carry them through everything:

”What? Are you saying... my character... can take damage... and DIE?!?!”

“You mean I can use my cooldowns... and NOT automatically become the highest DPS/heals the raid?”

“But.. But.. My own sparkly butt doesn’t propel me through the battlefield at light speed anymore!”

“THE HORROR!!!”  

That is to say, Paladins being tuned down to anywhere near “mediocre” or even “bad” in any sense is a huge nerf for everyone involved. Every spec of Paladin has gotten to be an invincible CC-spamming death machine since Vanilla. For a period of time, it was the only spec that could kill people just by standing adjacent to them. Paladins are a hybrid class that has created players who think they must be indispensable at everything, forgetting that usually a jack of all trades is a master of none. But now, for the first time in their history, ‘master of none’ is about where Paladins are now - pretty OK at everything but not super great or even better than the specialists at any one thing.

And for the first time in my WoW playing career, I actually feel kind of bad for Paladins. High-end content almost demands teams of specialists, not well-rounded generalists. The fact that Paladins don’t really excel at any one niche anymore is a devastating blow to a class that used to be the best at virtually everything.

Holy is the only spec that I felt was playing as it should (your targets benefit from being close to you for heals, and you benefit from being close to the action). It’s pretty balanced as far as throughput and efficiency, and there are just enough tools in the kit for Holy paladins to do their job and keep people alive, even if they’re not necessarily dropping healing bombs everywhere or shielding everyone to high heavens. Basically, if you heal when people are damaged and you smack things with your weapon when everyone is fine, then that’s about as good as it gets.

Protection is proper screwed. There are players who will probably disagree, and I’m sure after a certain gear threshold it will be fine for some folks, but in my opinion it just doesn’t do well - not enough innate mitigation, not enough active damage mitigation, not enough self-healing, not enough cooldowns with a reasonable duration - just a whole lot of not enough. You’re obligated to stand in Consecration in order to get the most out of all of your abilities, which feels more like a constraint that other tanks just don’t have. You’re not just ‘less’ effective when you’re not on Consecration - you’re outright ineffective. Players with lots of gear will probably experience different results, but Protection is just not in a great place and I’m probably going to leave it be for Legion.

Retribution looks fine, somewhat. The rotation isn’t a clunky mess (or as clunky a mess as it was). There’s a combination of spells and melee attacks and each one does good damage with little downtime. They have some self heals, some genuine “Retribution” abilities, and Greater Blessings look like what Blizz originally intended for Buffs before they decided to standardize them (and then make them go away). It needs Divine Steed as a standard spell, but really, aren’t all Paladins in need Divine Steed as a standard spell?

If nothing else, Paladins should have sparkly butts that propel them at light speed on a 22.5 second cooldown. I think that’s fair.

Anyway, they’re probably not topping any charts, but that’s OK. That’s OK. IT IS OKAY, PEOPLE. YOU’RE NOT AS SPECIAL ANYMORE AND THAT’S FINE. ASHBRINGER.

Of course, I’m probably going to regret my words when a buff patch comes that makes paladins ridiculously godly at everything again. Oh well.

Shaman: Mostly all good changes and improvements. Elemental and Resto have been streamlined for the better (though RIP Earth Shield). Enhancement is a lot of fun.

I always liked Elemental but I’ve also had a love-hate relationship with the sheer number of buttons I had to push to achieve the beastly damage it can do. There used to be several long and short-term cooldowns to consider, set-up spells to use, and you’re trying to weave these all in between random procs and stacks of Fulmination (RIP).

Honestly, though, as much as I love being able to eek out a huge damage spike now and then, there gets to be a point where doing ranged DPS feels like filing your taxes with the number of steps and procedures you have to follow. Right now, Elemental feels less like that, and more like setting things on fire, and then electrocuting them, and then.. uh... well, I really don’t know what “Earth Shock” is supposed to do or look like. Maybe hit them with a rock?

Either way, your big deal is keeping Flame Shock up on a target, while alternating between Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst while you build up enough Maelstrom power for Earth Shock. That’s... pretty much it. Simple, but sweet.

I’m still getting a grip on Enhancement but the one thing I can say is that it is pretty powerful and pretty fast. I’m getting the impression that Blizz wants its dual-wielding specs to play fast and furious, and it wants the two-handed specs to play steady and methodical. All things considered, those are good, general themes to go with - your ambidextrous guys try to cause death by a thousand cuts, while your big-weapon guys just focus on landing fewer, more devastating hits. The thing is that, Enhancement included, dual-wielding specs feel the most bursty, and the single-weapon specs feel like steady, streamed damage.

Restoration Shaman seems to have lost Earth Shield and its Riptide/Earthliving/Healing Surge Heal Bomb combo, but I’m glad to report that Riptide/Healing Surge does just as well, takes fewer buttons to cast, and is generally just a better, more streamlined approach to taking your tank from dying to healthy. I miss Earth Shield’s ability to keep persistent heals on the tank even when I’m targeting others, but I find that Healing Rain, Chain Heals, and totems actually fill that niche just as well, and if you’re using them already, anyway, then it shouldn’t be a problem. 

Other than that, not much else to say - I feel like the things they’ve taken from Resto Shaman, they’ve given back more than enough to keep it worthwhile.

Death Knight: Pretty much every spec is good! Rolling Bone Shield into Marrow Strike feels better than I thought it would. I miss having Bone Shield up as a “preparation” and maintanence, but rolling it into an attack means I need care about my runes. Death Strike is still the most important ability, but feels much easier to use now that it’s on RP. Blood Boil’s new animation is perfect.

While I typically play Blood because I like to tank much more than I like to melee DPS, Frost and Unholy are still pretty enjoyable. Frost DK feels much more button-mashy and Unholy feels much more technical. I imagine this is intentional, but played well it looks like either spec is capable of bringing the customary huge DK DPS numbers.

Druid: Only did Balance and Resto so far, and both are fine! Balance feels better overall and Resto feels about the same (some abilities I liked are gone but some abilities I missed are back, so it’s about a wash for me).

Balance feels like a complete improvement over what was. While I enjoyed the see-saw nature of  MoP/WoD′s Boomkins, it became impossible for me to know when I was doing well or not. Having Druid’s build Astral Power with their normal abilities, then spend it on their most powerful abilities, and then having those abilities buff their normal abilities again plays really well.

Resto feels about the same, though some of the talent choices had me a bit vexxed. I miss Germination and just spamming Rejuvenate on things, but I like not needing to spend a glyph in order to place my Efflorescence where I like. Output seems pretty OK for me, as well.

Priest: Holy and Shadow seem pretty good. Discipline is a mess, and it’s terrible, and I hate everyone who thought it needed this change, including myself.

I have the most, strongest feelings about Disc because it was the spec that I played most on my Priest since Wrath, and was for the longest time my favorite healing spec. I don’t know who decided that Discipline priests need to press more buttons to do less healing, but that’s where they are, right now. 

Atonement only really works as a smart heal, and it is not a smart heal anymore. The current incarnation requires players to maintain Atonement buffs on the targets they want to heal, and that buff simply doesn’t last long enough, nor is the healing generated by it sufficient. Forcing players to switch between spamming Plea (or any other spells that place the Atonement buff) on party members and then spamming Smite on enemies really isn’t as enjoyable or as rewarding as just spamming Power Word: Shield on allies and then spamming Smite on enemies, letting the smart heals keep everyone topped off, or occasionally dropping Flash Heals against quick bursts of damage. Instead, you have almost no snap-healing ability, and you’re pretty much locked into DPSing when you should be healing because that’s the only significant way to heal. As such, it’s a hybrid Ranged DPS/Healing spec that does neither job well. And this makes absolutely no sense to me, because it was already a solid healing spec with a solid ranged DPS mechanic, and they changed that for no good reason.

I know the Devs were concerned that Disc was substantially better than Holy priest. That’s because their class design for Holy Priest was terrible. Disc priest is not made more enjoyable or more balanced by these changes, and it may even be made completely non-viable for end-game content, and I have no idea why anyone thought that was a good idea.

Fortunately, Holy Priest is alright. Having never played it much before, it plays now much more like how Disc priests used to play (sans Atonement and insta-cast spells). The best innovation with Holy is Serendipity, where your single-target heals reduce the cooldown of your single-target Holy Word, and the AOE heals reduce the cooldown of your AOE Holy Word. Holy Word spells are like Healing Bombs, and they’re a lot of fun to use, as you can drop a significant amount of healing very quickly, but their long cooldown means you have to use them strategically. The cooldown-reduction mechanic rewards players for using the appropriate heal at the appropriate time (as opposed to Chakras, which seemed to punish players for trying to heal smarter rather than harder), and they have all the spells they need in order to provide substantial, no-frills healing.

Shadow is a lot of fun as a DPS spec and while I miss the Shadow Orbs, the Insanity mechanic is admittedly much cooler. It reminds me of a better version of the formerly Demonology Warlock’s Metamorphisis (RIP). Basically most/all of your abilities charge your insanity meter, and after a point you can use it to activate Voidform and use more powerful versions of your spells. You can still gain insanity while in this mode, but the insanity drain gets steeper as you go on. This is another mechanic that is pretty simple but rewards optimized gameplay without necessarily punishing the player if they do something other than stand still and spam 1.

Warlock: Played Destruction and Demonology. Affliction Warlocks are not made for people but actually tactical supercomputers developed by NASA, so I haven’t tried them yet. Destruction is nerfed but otherwise fine, Demonology is kinda trash.

Demonology would probably be more fun if it had more CC options, but with a cast time on Fear, no Shadowfury, your other CCs locked up in specific demon summons, and no otherwise way to control said demons, I just can’t recommend it. It was fun to summon a bunch of demons at once to attack things, but this mechanic just doesn’t ramp up enough damage fast enough for me. There might be good end-game or PVP applications for players who can cheese the summoning mechanics and cooldowns, but this spec just isn’t doing it for me right now.

Destruction is where it’s at. It’s a straight forward game of building up shards by setting things on fire, and then spending them on chaos bolts or rains of fire, in order to set them on fire even more, I guess. There’s not much else to it. If you like fire and chaos (and I do!) then Destruction is the spec for you. 

Warrior: Played all the specs. They’re all fine so far. I heard Bad Things about Warrior and those are probably true, but for now, you can play Arms and Fury and Prot without fear.

Arms still feels like the weakest of the bunch, which is a shame because it used to be such a grand spec. It either needs more Rage generation/management abilities, or more abilities that just don’t use Rage at all, in order to keep it active and dynamic. It also needs for the most effective spec to not be the most boring one. That’s to say nothing about the self-healing, because I’ve literally got nothing to say about self healing for Warriors. We’re talking Warrior DPS here. You don’t heal damage. You do damage. You ignore damage. You make your damage do damage. But you’re not, as a Warrior DPS, ever expected to heal damage, ever, and nor should you. You want self-healing, go play a Blood DK (or Fury Warrior, I guess, because they’re cheaters like that).

Fury is bloody good fun and I can see myself sticking with it into Legion. I switched from Arms to Fury in Warlords, but wound up leaving both DPS specs alone altogether for Gladiator Stance (RIP). I once told someone that the more a spec makes me feel like I’m playing Dynasty Warriors, the better that spec is for the Warrior class. That’s the example that the Warrior class needs to aspire to, and that’s where Fury Warrior is, for me - a button-mashing good time.

Protection is still my favorite Warrior spec because it’s a tanking spec and I like to tank. I like the change of “Heroic Strike” and “Shield Barrier” or whatever it was to “Get Angry And Do More Damage” and “Get Angry and Take Less Damage”. This was a change that Warriors needed, IMO. What we didn’t need was for Gladiator Stance to be taken away, those bastards. There will forever be a sword-and-board-DPS-shaped hole in my heart, where Gladiator Stance once was. Gone, but not forgotten, my friends.