Boring!
So I've taken a break at the end of BC, I've been back for three months now, my mage is learning Mimiron and my warrior is plodding through eastern Northrend killing beasts and gathering herbs.
Both classes are clearly more effective than they were at the end of BC, but they're boring! Well, they're not boring, they're OK, but they're less fun than they were at the end of BC just before the 3.0 changes.
Tanking has become slow. I get decent AoE threat and this shockwave talent, but everything is just happening more slowly. The thunder clap CD is longer. Shockwave stuns the mobs and yes, that's helpful but I feel I should tell a joke while they recover. I don't have to frantically hit block, devastate, and cleave/HS all at once. I just lazily watch for procs and things coming off their several-second CD and hit them again. Yaaawn. The only tanking talent that I find genuinely fun is Warbringer.
Then I thought I would try fury. In BC I had the lovely claw weapons from the IQD badge vendor and I enjoyed doing pretty respectable devastate DPS when I didn't have to tank. But now prot DPS is all about shield moves, and fury is all about TG. I'm supposed to pick up these... gigantic... 2H... weapons... that... take... hours... to... swing... What the heck is that weapons talent doing in Fury? Fury is about speed. That's why it's called fury. Where's my speed? Bring me Bladestorm and put that ridiculous arms-wielding skill in Arms.
The mage is in a kind of similar spot. Just before 3.0 arcane spec had a fabulously complicated and fast-paced design for arcane blast, where successive casts hastened the spell. You could interweave spells to play with slower or very fast casting speeds, and tune your haste so that you could fit exactly so many other spells between the arcane blasts. It was interesting and *fast*. Now it's all the same speed and the damage goes up. No rush of getting the timing right with chains of under 2-second casts.
We also get instant casts, in both arcane and fire spells, which we have to use, and when we use them we have to wait for the GCD. Waiting for the GCD is about the most boring thing you can ask a chain casting class to do. Give us fast spells and slow spells. Give us variable speed spells. Forward casts and reverse casts (channeled). All are good. But don't have us wait out the GCD please...
The BC design was also based on a rotation, for most classes. The Wrath design is based on procs. I'm sure Blizzard though this would be less monotonous, but you see the point of a rotation is that your muscles learn it and you learn to make adjustments to the rhythm when you know your resources are down or something like that. All that happened in the back of your brain while you focused on the fight. Now we have procs. And if we have procs we have to watch the procs. We have to install an add on to beep when we get procs, so that we don't miss them, and then we have to hit the button that procced. Instead of flow we have reflexes. Are we fighting, or are we fishing?
So, overall although the classes and much more effective and many issues were solved. I think the current design is less fun. I'd miss Warbringer, but other than that I'd rather have the previous hectic playstyle.
Both classes are clearly more effective than they were at the end of BC, but they're boring! Well, they're not boring, they're OK, but they're less fun than they were at the end of BC just before the 3.0 changes.
Tanking has become slow. I get decent AoE threat and this shockwave talent, but everything is just happening more slowly. The thunder clap CD is longer. Shockwave stuns the mobs and yes, that's helpful but I feel I should tell a joke while they recover. I don't have to frantically hit block, devastate, and cleave/HS all at once. I just lazily watch for procs and things coming off their several-second CD and hit them again. Yaaawn. The only tanking talent that I find genuinely fun is Warbringer.
Then I thought I would try fury. In BC I had the lovely claw weapons from the IQD badge vendor and I enjoyed doing pretty respectable devastate DPS when I didn't have to tank. But now prot DPS is all about shield moves, and fury is all about TG. I'm supposed to pick up these... gigantic... 2H... weapons... that... take... hours... to... swing... What the heck is that weapons talent doing in Fury? Fury is about speed. That's why it's called fury. Where's my speed? Bring me Bladestorm and put that ridiculous arms-wielding skill in Arms.
The mage is in a kind of similar spot. Just before 3.0 arcane spec had a fabulously complicated and fast-paced design for arcane blast, where successive casts hastened the spell. You could interweave spells to play with slower or very fast casting speeds, and tune your haste so that you could fit exactly so many other spells between the arcane blasts. It was interesting and *fast*. Now it's all the same speed and the damage goes up. No rush of getting the timing right with chains of under 2-second casts.
We also get instant casts, in both arcane and fire spells, which we have to use, and when we use them we have to wait for the GCD. Waiting for the GCD is about the most boring thing you can ask a chain casting class to do. Give us fast spells and slow spells. Give us variable speed spells. Forward casts and reverse casts (channeled). All are good. But don't have us wait out the GCD please...
The BC design was also based on a rotation, for most classes. The Wrath design is based on procs. I'm sure Blizzard though this would be less monotonous, but you see the point of a rotation is that your muscles learn it and you learn to make adjustments to the rhythm when you know your resources are down or something like that. All that happened in the back of your brain while you focused on the fight. Now we have procs. And if we have procs we have to watch the procs. We have to install an add on to beep when we get procs, so that we don't miss them, and then we have to hit the button that procced. Instead of flow we have reflexes. Are we fighting, or are we fishing?
So, overall although the classes and much more effective and many issues were solved. I think the current design is less fun. I'd miss Warbringer, but other than that I'd rather have the previous hectic playstyle.
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