World of Warcraft: Class Change Thoughts

On the topic of class changes, I decided to write a post about somethings I wish were changed with classes/specs.

• Feral Druid – Remove Shred or change its purpose entirely. Right now, Shred and Mangle share a similar purpose where Mangle seems to be favored as a better combo builder (it’s cheaper and the damage is nearly the same) whereas Shred’s positional requirement (unless you take the glyph AND are under the effects of Tiger’s Fury) as well as the higher energy cost make it a severe pain in the rear. Also, re-think AoE rotation. Energy requirements for Swipe are pretty high so most of the time kitty is just sitting around waiting for their energy to return and/or Tiger Fury to come off of cooldown. Just feels awkward.
• Balance Druid – Remove Starfall from the main rotation. I just don’t get the idea of adding an AoE type of spell into a single target rotation. It’s really irritating, especially if you accidentally aggro numerous mobs (Typhoon is bad enough). Also, decrease the cast time for Starfire. Wrath feels fine as it is but Starfire is just horrible when you solo creatures or are in high movement fights because of the long cast time.
• Retribution Paladins – Re-do the UI so that the extra two holy power can be seen when you build it up. Either that or get rid of that and make it so that the optimal requirement for using Templars Verdict is not involved with generating 5 holy power at first. Also, I would like to see Seal of the Righteousness revamped. It’s one of those abilities that really make you stop and wonder at times because of its situational basis. It’s a general problem with the way Retribution Paladin’s AoE is handled at the moment, which all depends on the number of enemies at hand. I prefer how Blade Flurry was simplified into a generic AoE type of passive. I think Seal of the Righteousness would probably be better off re-designed in a similar manner.
• Enhancement Shamans – Rework how their AoE rotation is supposed to be handled. Magma Totem -> Flame Shock on a single target -> Lava Lash on that target -> Fire Nova is waaaayyyyyy too much work. The problem in this AoE rotation is the dependency of the primary target’s health relative to the other mobs around him. If they have a large amount of health, this rotation works fine. However, if their health is the same or low, then it’s impossible to establish step three before getting to Fire Nova even once. Either eliminate Flame Shock and Lava Lash as a prerequisite to Fire Nova or make Fire Nova add dots once Flame Shock and Lava Lash are established on a single target.
• Frost Mage – Pet’s Freeze ability is mostly useless against bosses. So the Frost Mage loses some big procs for Ice Lances. Even if you can’t freeze down a boss, it would be nice to still gain some of the proc effects for Ice Lance. Put Blizzard back into AoE rotation rather than Arcane Explosion. Not sure how the hell that started in the first place. Also, they need to fix Invisibility for Frost Mage’s elemental pets.
• Mages, general – Kill Rune of Power. It’s awful. It’s seriously awful. Either make it an instant cast or make it auto positioned. Either way, it’s certainly one of the most annoying elements in the game that make mages just so un-fun to play.
• Beast Master Hunter – What the hell happened to our pet’s aggro? Cataclysm fucked up the aggro meters because Blizzard wanted aggro to be harder. After people (i.e. tanks) complained about holding aggro during Cataclysm, Blizzard increased the threat generated for tanks to make holding aggro a lot easier. But hunter pets never recovered. Originally, tenacity hunter pets could hold aggro quite well and that would make Beast Master Hunters an excellent off tank for those periods where the main tank died. Also, what’s the point of Snake Trap if it’s not part of any hunter’s AoE rotation? And why does ferocity pets have Heart of the Phoenix yet Tenacity pets do not? Doesn’t it make more sense for tanking pets to be able to revive faster (not to mention that this was the original intent)? Lastly, what happened to the survivability for tenacity pets?
• Destruction Warlocks – Just like Balance Druids, why do we have an AoE (i.e. Rain of Fire) in our rotation? Also, why isn’t Rain of Fire channeled like Blizzard? Its usage seems more aligned like that. Part of the problem with Rain of Fire is that it’s difficult to keep track of when it falls off. Also, Chaos Bolt is one of those spells that has a weird timing/trigger notion. It’s not really proc’d but relies on the person knowing when to use it. With some add ons like SpellFlash, Chaos Bolt has an odd sense of timing, despite how it does pretty consistent damage on average.
• Demonology Warlocks – Switch between demonic form and normal requires more smoothness. The two toolbar setup ends up being confusing compared to say the rogue when they stealth since a warlock’s abilities are practically identical between the switch. It would make far more sense just to keep the toolbar as is and change the icons appearance. That would make managing states similar to Balance Druids and the game play a lot smoother overall.
• Warriors, general – Shattering Throw is a weird ability. It functions like a spell steal/tranq shot from a hunter, but has a cast time and long CD. Although I can deal with the cast time, I’m really surprised at the 5 minute CD. The 20% armor reduction does sound nice but I wish that aspect was separate from the spell steal part. On some fights where you are required to periodically spell steal effects, this ability is the warrior’s only ability to affect the situation.
• Rogues, general – Ambush’s bugginess needs massive fixing. Part of the problem is that your character’s position is switched depending on what the game considers the “back” of an enemy. For some encounters like Megaera, there really isn’t the concept of a “back”, which causes your toon to be placed in the water. Also, you can easily screw up a pull because of how the game arbitrarily will place you. I get the concept but for all practical purposes, this should function more like a warrior’s charge.
• Rogues, Combat – Killing Spree. I know that they intend to fix some aspects of Killing Spree in the upcoming patch with regards to how it functions against multiple mobs and make that work in relation to Blade Flurry. However, I hope to god they fix the graphical element. On so many boss encounters, this ability is a horrible nuisance because, once again, of how it repositions your toon. I think there’s a glyph to fix this issue but I think it’s far better just to fix the graphical aspect. I mean, the fact that you can appear “inside” an enemy just is really annoying. Also, combat rogues feel far squishier than before and I attribute part of that to the removal of the old talent tree where you could select the equivalent of certain passives to buff up your armor, parry and dodge abilities. I dislike active mitigation for the most part and I feel that active mitigation really should be an optional play style.
• Priests, Shadow – I would like to see Vampiric Touch become an instant cast. A lot of the Shadow Priest spells without the procs are not instant cast and applying dots can be a slow process. Compare that to Affliction Warlocks and Boomkins and it makes you feel slightly slower in a multidot fight. Also, I find Shadow Priests tend to ramp up “slowly” in single target fights or single target chain fights (such as soloing). Part of the problem is that again they only have one instant spell and their two major cooldowns are either too long or can be problematic (since one is an AoE effect). You could argue that Devouring Plague also is an instant cast but it’s suboptimal without the build up of Shadow Orbs, which can take time in chained single target encounters.

Anyway, these are just some basic thoughts. You’ll probably notice that Death Knights and Monks don’t make it into my list. I think Death Knights are in a pretty good spot overall and it’s just one of the smoother classes to play (which is partly why I think Blood Death Knights often are touted as being able to solo virtually everything in the game). In the case of Monks, I hardly have played the class so I’m not very familiar with it and won’t comment on it. I’m hoping to try a few new specs out in the near future like Elemental Shaman, Subtlety Rogues and perhaps even Arms Warrior and Fire Mage just to give a few other specs a go. Afterwards, I’ll provide some thoughts into each.

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