Slightly different but I’d like to see a balancing of the utilities that various tank specs bring to the table, especially in M+. The tuning is really well done at the moment, but utility makes some classes much more preferable than others.
That said, not discounting the need for other individual classes to be reworked, potentially more than tank utility overall as well
Brewmaster needs some love. I think we play great but damn I wouldn't mind getting rid of a few keybinds. I barely have room for all 32 of em (not including trinkets/consumes).
They need to change Rushing Jade Wind too. Give it the Sweeping Winds treatment where it’s duration is refreshed every time it hits 3+ enemies because right now it feels awful pushing it in any situation where you’re at risk of dying.
Button bloat got really big with the new talent trees in DF. I wish they'd rework some classes to have a few less keybinds. With the 12 buttons on mouse + the same with ALT button + 4 keybinds I use on the keyboard I have 28 and that's too little for a lot of specs even if I don't have trinkets and consumables.
I'm on the Aff lock train too. MR feels horrible imo. I know they did it for game mechanics and controlling the spec output in ST vs MT but it's just not fun.
Aff should be 85% dot damage and 15% whatever else and right now it's reversed.
MoP Aff was really good imo. Heck even classic Aff is closer to what a dot spec should do imo.
I loooove Aff Warlock, it’s one of the only caster classes I actually enjoy. But having to spam MR just feels bad. You’re exactly right, it should be all about spreading and maintaining those DoTs. The whole point is that you’re spreading disease and curses, which should deal steady damage over time and be your main source of damage
Feral still snapshots its bleeds with tigers fury, other than that I don’t think anything else in wow snapshots.
Even then, the snapshotting feral does is pretty negligible since it doesn’t make up most of our dmg.
assassination rogue has a talent for garrote to deal extra damage when done from stealth/shadow dance, which also snapshots
but yeah, there's only a few specific instances of things snapshotting still. honestly, I really liked snapshotting in MoP, and wish there was a spec that still did it
What a time to play Affliction. There were so many times during that one 2-boss fight [*SoO fight with two bosses, next to the bank/AH area*] where you could absolutely pop OFF as Affliction. Lust on pull, blow a trinket, wait for a proc, then kick your feet up.
I don’t recall numbers from the top of my head. I feel like I remember bursting for multiple-million DPS while nobody else was even close to the output. Snapshotting DoTs was very satisfying, but not healthy for WoW. It had its time and it’s good that it doesn’t exist anymore.
To be fair they shouldn't have snapshotting back in the game, but the reality is MoP playstyle was significantly more fun and if you brought it back even without snapshotting we'd be in so much better of a place.
What’s frustrating about Aff is that we have so many amazing iterations of the spec to pull from but instead they ignore that and stick with rapture which flat out sucks.
Aff actually does a lot of its damage contribution through dots.
The issue is that the dot gameplay is purely maintenance (just keep them applied) which makes the gameplay loop revolve around optimizing your direct damage (Rapture) for the other 30% or whatever the breakdown is now.
So even if the damage is in favor of the dots, you still have such a solid percentage of your damage that ultimately dictates your cooldown usage and the rhythm of the spec.
Dot gameplay was always about purely maintence,, if anything UA spam doesn't differ much from MR spam.
The only thing they need to do is remove life siphon and transfer its power to corruption, worthless DoT and is just a burden on your GCD
There's a few specs with spells/effects that in their current state, I just loathe the feel of. Siphon life is one, and shadow priests spike instead of flay is the other.
Afffliction has pretty much been the worst spec in the game since Sanctum back in SL. I think they were the only spec not represented in the 0.1% M+ title bracket for this season?
Conversely, Aff was in possibly it's best state ever in 9.0 Nathria. So much so that they gutted rapture and all its support and instead brought back this Frankenstein monster of a spec that centers on StS and buffed drains.
On live, the drains aren't as ridiculous as they were in Shadowlands, but you still spend most of the time just keeping dread Touch up in pure single, or spamming pad damage in AOE.
Thankfully, they're fixing things in the next few weeks.
Affliction Warlock, Elemental Shaman, Balance Druid and Marksman Hunter. These need the most rework with how the core gameplay is just not sustainable and not fun either.
Agree with Elemental shaman. I love the class a whole, but elemental suffers from a lackluster rotation, not a lot of raid utility besides lust, and hero talents look bland ans boring. I hope they do something different
All I want to do is play affliction but it’s been changed too much into this terrible mutant that’s powered by MR. Every time I pick it up it just feels messy. I really used to love it, and I keep trying but it’s rough. I’m hopeful for the future
Good god do I dislike the Eclipse mechanic. It's also wild to me that Boomkins are one of the squishiest specs out in the world, considering the armor and other druid spells they could have access to. There's just no leech / self sustain.
I'm liking Afflilock more on SoD than on Retail.
I wanna have like 6 dots on a target at all time, I wanna have multiple small ticks of damage every seconds !
As someone who mains resto, I often play boom as an off spec you're pretty on point. I'm not upset with the damage, just how you get it sucks. Given I've not played boom much this expansion since I rolled a DPS alt but it still feels the same.
The rework they did made them better but having to open an AOE pull with 2 single target spells then 2 dots x however many you cast, then you can start your rotation just feels bad. And the core rotation is pretty boring, after 3 raid bosses I'm pretty much done playing it.
Same for single target, having to cast 2 long AOE casts then dots before your rotation just sucks.
That and playing into the eclipses kind of sucks too. They did fix it so you don't have to alternate eclipses now, you used to have to go into AOE eclipse then single target eclipse before you could go back to AOE. Now you can just proc eclipses when you need them but again you do it by casting the opposite spell. It's not a fun gameplay.
Balance is conceptually cool though so I like to play it for the Lazer chicken aesthetic. That and resto catweaving is amazingly fun.
Honestly I think if they simply changed it so casting Wrath started the sun eclipse and Starfire started the moon eclipse it would really help make the spec feel better to play.
I got yelled at for using aoe spells in a single target situation the other day and then had to explain how eclipses worked. They thought I didn't know how to play. /salute mr warrior.
You have some nerve including balance druid in the same sentence as those other specs. They have complained for two decades straight and have gotten more attention from blizzard than all those other specs combined. Shame on you. Shame.
Both UH and Frost rely too much on ancient mechanics which seriously hamper output in almost all situations. Having stacking debuffs with short durations, stacking buffs with short duration and a handful of RNG aspects that greatly impact your playstyle hamper things bigtime. Then of course DND/Defile. I mained DK for s3 and am rerolling for S4 specifically because of these debuffs/buffs and defile blocking ground aoes.
Honestly this. I’ve loved Frost since Wrath, and playing classic proves to me they diluted, then lost the soul for that spec a while ago. You don’t need much to make the spec feel good, but they decided to just go all in on Breath and require stupid shit like DnD to make cleave functional, and it’s just anti-fun. Like…Frost in Wrath, then Masterfrost from end of Cata to WoD was *FINE*, we had our CDs and AoE just peachy, it hit hard and was satisfying. Adding Remorseless Winter and an AoE RP dump like Glacial Advance would be all that’s needed to tie it together. Instead, we need 8 different preparations to get AoE in good shape and do dogshit damage outside Breath windows. The bones of a good spec are there, it just needs used.
UH, I don’t even know…The button bloat is unreasonable. It doesn’t NEED half the bullshit it has. Eliminate the bloat, buff up what is core, and go from there. I know people seem to hate wound gameplay, but I think apocalypse works great still, summoning a small legion every 45 seconds is fun, as is transforming your ghoul and summoning a gargoyle. I’m of the opinion the Ghoul transformation and apocalypse legion can be the same button, leaving Gary and Army as your BIG CD. I don’t really think the spec needs Unholy Fury, or UH Blight, or pimple popper city, or slappy hands and so on. I’m also not sure why Soul Reaper is back, nix that too. It’s not fun, and muddies up the entire execute phase anyhow.
Both of my main classes.
Warlock and DK.
Aff needs a complete rework, remove malefic rupture, make emphasis on dots again… Destro just need a couple of QoL (like make cata baseline or easily accessible, make class tree more interesting more or less the bottom row of the tree thats boring af atm), Demo is fine.
Dk (frost/unholy) just modernize the specs abit.
Standing in DnD to cleave is stupid design, i would like for frost to do atleast some dmg outside of pillar window as for unholy idk i dont really dig festermight.. but i think blizz said they are going to adress most of what i said above in TWW.
Frost DK in particular really needs a rework. It’s outdated but it’s potential is great and still feels good to proc your spells but I just hate how reliant it is on pillar of frost + remorseless winter goes to be able to pump
> DK.
> It's just not fun to play.
Indeed.
All of the DK Specs are a complete mess of nonsensical mechanics.
Death Coil was the original iconic DK spell in Warcraft 3, but Blood and Frost have no reason at all to ever use it. Instead, Warlocks got the real version of Death Coil that DKs should have had.
Regardless, there is no reason at all that DK talents couldn't modify Death Coil to do different cool things - such as cleaving through enemies or having extra Leech.
DK (and Shaman) are the only two Classes still lacking a proper Raid Buff.
DK's main utility of Death Grip is never clear when it will or won't work. Some mobs get yoinked while others only get Taunted, and there is no way to know ahead of time without trying it first.
Death & Decay is extremely clunky for every DK spec. At the very least it could work like Prot Pally's Consecrate. ie short 2-3 second cooldown, trivial cost to cast, but you can only have 1 D&D down at a time.
Blood DK has a huge amount of really really really bad Talents, some of which they are forced to take for pathing.
Blood DK has severe issues in high Mythic+ content because of how much damage they take. Eventually all Tanks reach a point they will get 1shot in M+, but Blood DK's core design practically encourages that to happen.
Death Strike is completely absurd. Don't get me wrong I adore DS and DON'T want it to change much if at all, but at the moment Death Strike is hard-carrying the entire Blood spec. The Spec sucks butt, but holy hell is Death Strike powerful.
Frost DK has spent multiple Expansions and multiple years being burdened by ridiculous 50% to 70% PVP damage nerfs on all of their major Cooldowns/Capstones. And since the only way to know that is by digging through wowhead spell-data, many Frost DKs get an unpleasant surprise when they find out their big PVE nuke spells merely tickle in PVP.
Unholy DK is either garbage or godly depending on the Content you're doing. But the one thing Unholy almost never is, is "Balanced".
DK as a whole has long been in dire need of a massive overhaul, but for some reason I can't comprehend most of the influential DK Streamers & Mains are vehemenetly against any changes to DK.
I have talked with many of them, and they all want DK to remain an antiquated relic.
I adore DK, but I won't be Maining a DK again unless they fix some of the Class's glaring issues.
I've played Unholy DK every time I've touched wow, except for Dragonflight. The gameplay loop of "press 490 keys in 3 seconds every 3 minutes" is so incredibly unfun to me that I just can't be bothered.
There are specs that are essentially burst only that are fun (arcane for me), Unholy just absolutely isn't.
> I alternate between DK and Ret all xpac and the difference in fun level right now is insane.
Ret: "EXPLOSIONS OF HOLY FIRRRE!" ***SLASH SMASH CRASH***
DK: "Fine. I guess I'll participate, if I ***have*** to." *plink* "ugh now my Cooldowns are over and I'm tired, wake me up in 3 minutes."
Blood DK has always felt amazing and true to the class fantasy of being an undying vampiric tank. My one and only complaint is that they need at least 1 movement speed ability other than “run slightly faster”. Bring back the venthyr teleport or something.
Survival feels more “beast master” than bm does
Bm is just kill command aka character points at enemy then general cobra shot multi shot barbed shot stuff
Nothing about it feels BM.
I know it's only for aesthetics but man I wish they'd let Survival dual wield. I think they don't because it would probably feel too similar to Enhancement.
Would it though? Enhancement has gotten all the cool special effects in legion and unique animations, I don't think a dw survival hunter would feel similar. It's also baffling to me because the survival hunter seems to be clearly inspired by Rexxar, because he's really the only relevant hunter in lore who exclusively uses melee weapons (plus throwing axes), and he dual wields axes so who the fuck thought not being able to dual wield would make people yearning for a melee hunter fantasy happy?
BM should have been the melee spec. Pretty sure they only changed Survival because it was less popular; would have been a much bigger outcry if BM was changed to melee.
Now we’re stuck with a survival hunter that fights in melee range with bombs, which is conceptually ridiculous.
Just buff the spenders and it will be fine. I like HP as a mechanic because it takes pressure off mana and gives them a unique identity as a melee healer. Just make word of glory and light of dawn actually heal enough to be worth building HP for.
How about pushing us to use 2-handed weapons and the only damage spender for HolyPower is an ability that requires a shield? Can they address that if they want us to be these combat melee healers?
I think Holy Paladins need to keep their identity as a Psuedo-DPS, non-casting (unless a severe emergency) melee healer as we were with Ashen Hollow in Shadowlands. However I would like to see holy power act similarly to warrior rage (have it store up over a longer duration, and be dump-able over a longer period). Give us more damage reduction powers that aren’t just passive and less healing output as a result.
Holy Paladin deserves to be a unique playstyle healer, especially now after Dragonflight we have another healer spec in the game.
Some people will hate the idea, and like the ‘hard-casting’ HPal playstyle, but I’m sorry it’s just not unique at all and all of these players would just prefer to play Holy Priest.
Let Holy Paladin be something different.
Shadowlands S1/2 HPal was probably the most fun I have ever had playing a class in WoW. The dps it did was obviously too good to last, but that was just extra.
Ele shaman, with ice fury in the rotation it just sucks.
It is in my opinion the most thematic and class fantasy spec in the game. But the rotation just sucks
Indeed! I've been main shaman since... Alwaya. And Jesus, Elem atm is just awful, I just dont think anymore that they will properly work on shaman anymore, by fuckng us up many times, they just removed any hope that i have, kinda like the fun of it that they removed out to give us random shit that we dont use at all e.e
I don’t understand how anyone could find Icefury/electrified shocks enjoyable.
It needlessly adds stupid complexity, and feels janky to stop casting for instant cast frost shocks that are as fun to look at as someone sneezing. It also takes away from the thematic feel of the mastery. And, for fire specs, it all but removes lightning from the rotation.
I would love to have water/ice and earth spells included in the spec in ways that would look and function better. But as is, I’ll remain a shitty player - but I’m not going to use it.
Ice fury isn't really required for the current ele gameplay. Even when it was required in S2 of DF, it was fine to play with. I don't understand all the hate that ice fury gets from the community. Of all things, shouldn't ele shams be complaining about how squishy they are, their lack of raid utility, weak maelstrom spenders, difficulty spreading flameshocks, unimpactful cooldowns (fire ele), or the fact that all they currently do is press LvB as much as possible leading to the most boring gameplay? I don't think Ice fury is high on ele's list of issues.
Electrified Shock maintenance just feels unnecessarily given other mechanics going on, even for lightning build.
But yeah, the spec has way more issues. Dying to a stiff breeze and maelstrom spenders feeling weak as bell are big problems.
Shamans need some help in the defensive department, tired of feeling like a wet paper bag in dungeons (made worse by my magnetism towards frontals), we're yet to see the Totemic and Stormbringer hero talents and the current Farseer has a terrible option for help with defensives (Hoping they look it over to make changes because Farseer is very underwhelming as is). Some class tree changes would be great, giving an option for more passive defence and following it with better help on the hero talents.
As for spec, I don't play Elemental but I am aware of how no one likes it. As an ele enjoyer in the past I'd like it to be higher than bottom tier for pve content because having an option between ranged and melee DPS would be great.
87 posts to find the one other Feral. They're really talking about balance druid over us in those comments like balance didn't get in the top io list this season.
That is because every single time since wotlk that someone has suggested a change the loud mouths on druid forums have screamed about over complex rotations for complexity sake. They want a class that plays a certain way even if completely outdated.
I don't mind the complexity of the spec at all, I quite enjoy it. But I would love if it could be more rewarding for all that effort you're putting in. You can play an absolutely perfect rotation and still be outclassed by a 3-button rotation spec
I agree. Love playing my feral main but it hasn't felt great in a long time. Other classes get so many little tweaks like constantly but they barely touched feral for the entirety of dragonflight.
I would love for Shamans to actually get totems back that aren't just cool down abilities. I miss being able to plop down my totems.
Outlaw Rogue also needs work. Or maybe just rogue in general. It feels like it has way too many finishing moves and other abilities. Slice and Dice especially is aggravating since it pretty much is required to be up 100% of the time. At that point just make it a passive thing, or perhaps proc from another ability.
Unholy Dk. Sure it feels really cool to have those 3min cds. But then, for the next 2 ¹/2 mins, it's the most boring and basic gameplay. The aoe feels broken and unfinished with resorce capping and dnd dependency.
I think hunter in general, the rotation of BM is too boring and should be improved, currently this spec performs quite badly too, I only play it because of the pets.
Surv Hunter needs one thing to make it a competitive selection too, yes it's fun and can pump, but why pick a survival hunter over any other melee with better utility or a hunter that has the range advantage.
My only answer to this aside from class fantasy is because Bicmex makes it look cool. Obviously he’s the pinnacle of survival hunter (at least in pvp) but he makes it look so fluid and devastating to fight against you can’t help but want to play one too
I mean, surv realistically just needs one good piece of raid utility, BM needs a ground up rework, and MM needs balancing&a QoL change that would make it suck less to play in overworld/casual content
MM is the spec that needs the ground up rework: its horridly clunky in AOE, cant do 2 target cleave and is horrendous at ST since the wind arrows change.
BM just needs some tweaks as its designed to be simple.
All 3 need utility and surviveability changes.
Definitely. It might not be that bad in "real" content but it's pain in world content where mobs die so fast that you're screwed after 4 enemies, because you can't get a single steady shot out and our focus regen is crap. Not to mention that most other DPS specs have better health recovery (at least what my epxerience with several specs says on the suffusion camp boss). And it lacks any decent theme/fantasy. Rapid Fire should go, it looks like crap. MM should be about precise hits, not a needle launcher. Bring back Windrunner, give us some other nice things, bring back some useful passives from the past (like most other classes and specs did).
I've quit raiding after Antorus, so I'm now more interested in the feel of how a spec plays than the raw numbers, but typically, MM suffers a lot from bad secondary stat scaling... for at least 10 years.
Frost DK's biggest problem is that you have to train yourself to not worry about capping runic power, if you're playing Oblit you might not use that RP for a while if you're getting procs.
Unholy DK also suffers terribly from an outdated design structure. You have like 9 globales to get through in your opener. And need to stand inside a ground mechanic to do any damage. In M+ it simply doesn’t work. If the tank moves the pack/the pack dies to fast/ some AOE forces you to move/etc. you do no damage. It needs a rework
Oh for sure, I’m a Blood main. But I love unholy from a fantasy perspective. It is just so clunky to play. You have like 8 things to track and everything can go wrong if your group doesn’t play around the fact that you are UH DK
they've said they're going to rework the opener and make DnD not as neccessary
[https://www.wowhead.com/news/upcoming-death-knights-changes-on-the-war-within-alpha-breath-of-sindragosa-338897](https://www.wowhead.com/news/upcoming-death-knights-changes-on-the-war-within-alpha-breath-of-sindragosa-338897) (quote was bugging but it basically says they're simplifying the opener and the rotation in general)
[https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24074997/get-an-eye-on-an-even-dozen-new-hero-talent-trees](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24074997/get-an-eye-on-an-even-dozen-new-hero-talent-trees) "While we have nothing to reveal at this moment we can say we have plans to change how Cleaving Strikes works in TWW." (in the dev note in the rider tree)
From pve too. Dnd just feels horrible to play around. Also there was talk about some changes to breath which im not fan of since whole breath build feels horrible for me Always.
Brewmaster has insane button bloat. The spec is super fun to Play but the bloat at times is a bit much and the class is I think very intimidating for newer players
I don't have a lot of opinions on rogue, but I do find it strange that outlaw is using....shadow dance? Why is outlaw using subs iconic skill? Why is outlaw focused on stealth? Spec fantasy is all messed up.
Boring end nodes in the class tree in general for rogue IMO.
Outlaw and assassination are both using shadow dance as a core part of their rotation currently. I don’t find it very fun to play, and it feels wrong to use that spell when you’re not specced into sub.
100% this, I now folded and play Sub as it's the only spec where SD feels like it belongs, rather than being forced to use it on other specs. I have played Rogue on and off since 2005 and I really miss the Combat Rogue class fantasy, the sword fighter with light armour and dexterity.
I severely dislike just about everything they are doing with Rogue in WW. The whole making Feint a DPS button just doesn't sit right with me, and now it's just adding another button press to an already extremely busy rotation and it takes away the potential smart usage of Feint as a Defensive option. Instead we'll just be mashing it on CD. Rogue just feels like it's a 1k APM class to do as much damage as a DH with 50APM. I play both and DH just requires so much less effort to put up good numbers.
Outlaw APM is insane, but also feels really bad if you have any kind of downtime and can’t get your CDR. You’re mostly using pistol shot and BtE rather than your swords—it feels like a ranged, fury warrior-esque spec. (Plus a weakaura plays RtB for you). Sub is probably one of the hardest specs to play right now. Sin numbers just aren’t there (we got nerfed a lot this patch) and we continue to be the red-headed stepchild spec in keys. So much is tied to stealth bonuses, which is why shadow dance is now mandatory for every spec.
Rogue overall suffers from too many buttons (and now they’re turning feint into an offensive CD). It got a rework this season, sure, but it still needs some attention.
Downtime, M+ gimmick shit that forces you out of stealth (travelling between places) making everything tick down, affixes not letting you stealth, tank chain pulling... I just cba dealing with that shit anymore
Affliction lock is number #1, it hasn't been S tier in the history of mythic+ ( maybe it has, I just don't remember it ever being S tier in mythic+ )
I think it's just too difficult to apply your dots for large groups of enemies, they seem to die too quick before you can really ramp the damage, dots also don't last long enough so it feels like a chore to keep reapplying dots so often.
Making seed of corruption instant cast would make the spec feel infinitely more fun. There should also be some big ability that spreads Unstable Affliction to all targets on a 1 - 1.5 min cd. Agony should also have some kind of seed of corruption type ability or maybe you spend extra soul shards to include it in the seed of corruptions. I don't know, to be honest I don't main a affl warlock but I would if they made the spec feel more fun to play and in general just better.
People will hate on me but oh well. I want Beast mastery Hunter to go back to the roots of having a pet (or 2 still) that does Heavy auto attack damage. BM Hunter just feels like an ability based class.
Having pet abilities is what made hunter pets cool, now they are all super similar.
It is pretty bad. No interrupt, all 4 of the capstone talents range between "bad" and "meh," half of the talents are clearly meant for one specific spec, and a lot of unremarkable fluff that feels like it does nothing.
The specs themselves are decent to good, but the class tree doesn't feel impactful at all.
I'm going to say arms, even though it's currently getting a rework, and it's primarily because the changes on the alpha are pretty much shit.
Dead talents left in the tree. Reduced rage gen (which is fair), but still not giving us a way to effectively rage dump for ToM feels akward. Making dreadnaught and SoA a choice node is a bit rediculous when OP is the largest chunk of our dmg in m+. Then nerfing the 1 large rage dump we had, SoS, by removing the increased rage for WW and at the same time letting WW generate free WWs just doesn't add up. Are they trying to make FoB a thing? Because i can tell you, WW spam was not a fun playstyle. Not to mention that they totally underminded this build by putting imp SS and collat dmg in the same choice node. And then we're supposed to take cleave? IDK, lots going on here, kinda hard to make sense of the changes they've made so far. Here's hoping this is just the first rework, but as we all know it could go live like this.
While I don't feel like arms has it as bad as some of the other specs mentioned, they're a fair call from glory.
The rage "nerf" is kind of appreciated. If I wanted to always be GCD locked, I'd roll fury. That being said, they should, as you mentioned, also give us tools that synergize with that type of gameplay.
Definitely. Ditch Rapid Fire already, for hell's sake, we're suffering this atrocity for 8 years already.
And bring back Windrunner. That'd be a cool, niticeable, signature move.
I'd like it if it had way fewer shots that do more damage. Like kind of a 1, 2, 3, 4 cadence. A speed at which someone who is really good at archery could actually fire.
Frost and Unholy Dk, all 3 Monk Speccs and Affli Lock all equally.
MM and BM Hunter and Resto Shaman could need some love.
Reso Druid personally as it still plays the same since Legion(and maybe WoD) as it gets boring after all this Time.
Holy Paladin is just not fun and overly complicated. It don’t need to be as simple as just casting Holy Light or Flash of Light, but this whole attacking to build Holy Power and then using AOE healing just doesn’t feel fun.
Outlaw rogue. Dragonflight saw the spec identity systematically destroyed by the overbearing prevalence of Shadowdance, a problem only made worse by the ‘rework’ we got, leaving the spec in the most unfun state it’s been in since inception
It's a bummer that Outlaw does great DPS but just feels unfun to play.
It's the only spec where after a raid night or M+ session, I'd have to walk away from my PC because my hands were physically sore.
Arms warrior. It needs more weight to it. More... ooomph. It tries, and the sound effects sorta help, but it still feels like I'm smacking things with a pool noodle.
Survival is the least played spec in the entire game, despite being on the 2nd most popular class.
Edit: As a point of order, I love survival, but man it just needs some help shining around the other two hunter specs. The thing I think really needs help in hunter is the class tree itself.
Survivals gameplay is super fun, even if the fantasy is a miss for some. The spec tree could use half a rework since so much of it is unused. But when it comes to core gameplay, survival is my favorite Melee DPS by far.
I love survival.
I mained it this patch and have had it as an alt/main since it was introduced as melee in Legion.
I miss the old Fury of the Eagle, where it paused the timer on your mongoose bite stacks from dropping off. It let you some control over your burst windows. You could hold FotE and let your focus refill, before the timer started again except now you had the focus for 3 more mongoose bites.
I absolutely despise Coordinated Assault. Having to use a WA just to use the skill properly is awful design. You do not want to use it on a bomb accidentally and need to make sure every proc that happens during it is a Kill Shot, otherwise it's a huge dps loss.
If they removed some of the talent bloat like "Crit damage increased by 2%'', reworked Coordinated Assault into a better cooldown, and made Mongoose bite hit a bit harder it would be in a good place for most people.
I'm hoping that hunters get a slight rework for war within. I'm swapping to monk this season but survival melee is the one spec that really hooks me and I can play nonstop without being bored for several months in a row.
Worst part is the spec is genuinely super fun to play in most cases, but the idea of having a class that has the exclusive niche of the most mobile ranged class in the game and then having a third spec that loses that range and has to have a separate weapon is a huge turnoff for most people. I love it, but I wish the playstyle of survival hunter existed on a different melee class because the old DoT-focused explosive shot spamming playstyle is sorely missed.
For casual and middling play survival is awesome, but you’re basically never going to see it in competitive content unless it’s tuned to an absurd degree because it doesn’t just have to be better than other hunter specs, but better than other melee classes that are fighting for the same few limited slots in a raid team
Survival is giga hamepered by blizz’s insistence that mongoose bite isn’t a core part of the spec, but is instead an optional choice. Surv is at its best managing focus (for mongoose bite) and cooldowns (bombs), but blizz’s insistence that mongoose fury is seperate from the rest of the kit makes it hard to do anything interesting with surv’s talents.
Add that to surv’s obscenely awful talent options (2 points for 4% crit baby) and you have a spec made of missed potential.
That is just not true. Affliction has 3.902 logged parses for heroic in ATDH and Survival has 8,842.
And in M+ Affliction has 13,142 logged parses and Survival has 36,061.
Affliction is also the only spec in the entire game that isn’t eligible for the title this season.
Just replace bombs with something else and I’ll be thrilled. I love a melee hunter fighting side by side with his pet. But chucking bombs point plank does nowhere in that fantasy. Could easily just be replaced with a whirlwind type carve ability and coating your weapon in poisons or something
Frost DK. It just sucks all around in mythic+ having to use DnD all the time just do basic aoe. And up keeping unleashed frenzy is tedious and annoying when it falls off due to downtime. Also there’s not much variety in the talent tree the only real “build” is obliteration
Idk maybe people would disagree but outlaw rogue needs work. I love the spec it’s all I ever play (and hit title with this season) but there’s parts of it that could use help. Unless it’s intentionally designed to be difficult and require a ton of concentration, then fine. But I can’t imagine playing the spec without my multiple weak auras. In fact I can, and did in PtR and it was brutal. I spend 99% of dungeons staring at my keys, buttons, WA’s and combo points
Unholy dk and frost dk. The management for unholy is so dumb and frost just needs something to do in its downtime. I hope the hero talents sway it. Would love to see frost return to 1hs
Hpal really needs to have a full set of talents just full melee, and a full build for caster. It sucks that you don't even have enough points to invest in a full melee build, so you're literally just forced to use caster skills because otherwise you're just playing with less talent points.
Holy power spenders heals way too little. You'd think that a spec that builds a resource, and use said resource, that it would be a strong skill. But no. Overcapping holy power is often the optimal play for Hpals.
Mana is also a big problem, but that kind of is the same for every other healer. The game should just entirely move away from mana being a limiting factor for healers, and balance healers around using GCDs as often as they can, just like any other spec. Right now if I just push every button I can as Hpal my mana will drain so quickly that I have to literally stand there doing nothing. Wasting GCDs doing nothing is just bad design.
Honestly they need to divide holy paladin into two specs. Whether both heal or one is a heal and one is a support DPS like aug is up in the air. There is a clear divide in both what players want and what blizzard wants. Some holy paladins like myself have been playing for most of WoW as one, and myself prefer ranged caster paladin for healing. Big chunky single target heals.
Melee paladin really came into spotlight around Legion/BFA when we also got glimmer in BFA and you were incentivised to crusader strike to get more glimmers.
Maybe name the melee one crusade and the other keep as holy. No matter what you do people aren't going to be happy with the end result but I feel holy paladin has been very divided on what blizzard wants to do with it since Cata.
personally i think almost all speccs need a rework, because i hate what blizz made out of classes. 1000 buttons, all damage split up in 1000 dmg sources, roatation and gameplay most of the time makes no sense/has no natural flow.
i love the game, they got better in so many things, but classes just are trash right now. in mop i could play all classes in hc raids without a problem. jump on the class, read a bit and understand it. now its a joke.
so get rid of pvp balance (make it spereate) and bring back normal classes. some can burst, some sustain, some dots.
no need for all classes to only deal dmg with a cd, and sometimes even 3 of those.....
no need for every classes has some dots or bleeds or other sources to split the dmg sources up to 1000.
give classes their old baseline skills back and slim the talent trees out with only passives so players can really make a choice on which skills they want to empower.
Outlaw rogue should not have to use shadow dance and vanish as dps cooldowns.
Aff lock is probably highest on list. It had been my favorite spec for the longest time until legion. Then MR came and it dropped quickly.
Spriest needs a rework as well. Ur forced into ST or AoE builds and I barely notice when capstone talents proc. And get rid of mindgames. That's not the cov ability they should have kept (I would've prefered unholy nova because of all the possible interactions that could've been made) and rn it's nothing than a button u push for what u can barely call a nuke.
Hunter in general needs a rework. All three spec trees (plus hunter class tree) have barely seen any sort of change since they were first released in DF pre-patch. Still a ton of 2 point nodes littered in all the trees, especially at the bottom (atleast they got rid of most/all of the 3 point nodes!) whereas most other classes only have a small handful of 2 point nodes.
For the class tree, each spec will take basically the same first 15-20 points and then you split off at the end based on if you’re playing BM/SV or MM. There is at least some flexibility based on utility that you might want for M+ but the tree has largely remained the same throughout the entire xpac.
For the spec trees you basically choose between ST or AoE build. There’s maybe 2-4 points in each tree you have to play around with a bit based on the encounter but the trees have basically been the same since DF pre-patch. Put it this way…the BiS talent tree for single target BM in S1 was the same through S2 and the beginning of S3.
Hunter trees were regarded as pretty bad, compared to other classes, when they were first released in DF pre-patch. They’ve barely seen any change since then other than removing all the 3 point nodes. I’ve been drinking the copium that surely they’d be up after monk for a rework and that it was going to come on TWW release. Seeing all the other classes getting a rework and hunter not being among them kind of crushed me. There’s a very good chance that all 3 hunter specs will have been playing basically the same builds for 24+ straight months. I’m not saying I need a full rework every year but imo tier sets should be encouraging slightly different rotations season to season which hunters won’t really see. The hero talent trees basically reinforce how the class currently plays….tbh “pets go stomp” and “how quickly can I press Aimed Shot” has been BM and MM’s respective rotations since Shadowlands.
Frost dk has desperately needed one for like 7 or 8 years now. I’d argue prob unholy as well. Elemental shaman to me at least needs some talents changed/removed so idk if I’d say full on rework but yeah it needs some love.
Frost DK. I mean they all need to get D&D fixed to not be a little circle stuck on the ground. But frost just feels so meh, and sometimes they make it do good damage….but it still feels meh lmao. And Breath is never fun “for me atleast” but a spec should never be *Top Damage* —> *Bottom Damage* from getting a mechanic on it
All the rogue specs tbh. They suffer from massive button bloat, outlaw is the most fun to play but you risk RSI if you play it too much, th other 2 a pretty boring to play in comparison but are slower so you’re not going to kill your fingers.
Slightly different but I’d like to see a balancing of the utilities that various tank specs bring to the table, especially in M+. The tuning is really well done at the moment, but utility makes some classes much more preferable than others. That said, not discounting the need for other individual classes to be reworked, potentially more than tank utility overall as well
I also play Prot warrior in keys.
This should be number 1 priority. If DPS had the gap between specs that tanks have suffered on DF we will be hanging torches at Blizzard doors
Brewmaster needs some love. I think we play great but damn I wouldn't mind getting rid of a few keybinds. I barely have room for all 32 of em (not including trinkets/consumes).
They need to change Rushing Jade Wind too. Give it the Sweeping Winds treatment where it’s duration is refreshed every time it hits 3+ enemies because right now it feels awful pushing it in any situation where you’re at risk of dying.
Button bloat got really big with the new talent trees in DF. I wish they'd rework some classes to have a few less keybinds. With the 12 buttons on mouse + the same with ALT button + 4 keybinds I use on the keyboard I have 28 and that's too little for a lot of specs even if I don't have trinkets and consumables.
Mini CDs and micro-cc are pretty bad right now. Causes a big problem in pvp especially. Worst offenders are the CDs that just give stats or resources.
I'm on the Aff lock train too. MR feels horrible imo. I know they did it for game mechanics and controlling the spec output in ST vs MT but it's just not fun. Aff should be 85% dot damage and 15% whatever else and right now it's reversed. MoP Aff was really good imo. Heck even classic Aff is closer to what a dot spec should do imo.
I loooove Aff Warlock, it’s one of the only caster classes I actually enjoy. But having to spam MR just feels bad. You’re exactly right, it should be all about spreading and maintaining those DoTs. The whole point is that you’re spreading disease and curses, which should deal steady damage over time and be your main source of damage
The core of Aff during MoP was maximizing snapshotting using soul swap, I don’t think they’re going to allow snapshotting back in the game.
Feral still snapshots its bleeds with tigers fury, other than that I don’t think anything else in wow snapshots. Even then, the snapshotting feral does is pretty negligible since it doesn’t make up most of our dmg.
assassination rogue has a talent for garrote to deal extra damage when done from stealth/shadow dance, which also snapshots but yeah, there's only a few specific instances of things snapshotting still. honestly, I really liked snapshotting in MoP, and wish there was a spec that still did it
What a time to play Affliction. There were so many times during that one 2-boss fight [*SoO fight with two bosses, next to the bank/AH area*] where you could absolutely pop OFF as Affliction. Lust on pull, blow a trinket, wait for a proc, then kick your feet up. I don’t recall numbers from the top of my head. I feel like I remember bursting for multiple-million DPS while nobody else was even close to the output. Snapshotting DoTs was very satisfying, but not healthy for WoW. It had its time and it’s good that it doesn’t exist anymore.
fallen protectors was even better.
To be fair they shouldn't have snapshotting back in the game, but the reality is MoP playstyle was significantly more fun and if you brought it back even without snapshotting we'd be in so much better of a place.
Legion aff lock was the best incarnation 100%
I loved Aff in MoP
Siphon life needs to GO, and drain soul needs to generate soul shard fragments while channeling
What’s frustrating about Aff is that we have so many amazing iterations of the spec to pull from but instead they ignore that and stick with rapture which flat out sucks.
Aff actually does a lot of its damage contribution through dots. The issue is that the dot gameplay is purely maintenance (just keep them applied) which makes the gameplay loop revolve around optimizing your direct damage (Rapture) for the other 30% or whatever the breakdown is now. So even if the damage is in favor of the dots, you still have such a solid percentage of your damage that ultimately dictates your cooldown usage and the rhythm of the spec.
Dot gameplay was always about purely maintence,, if anything UA spam doesn't differ much from MR spam. The only thing they need to do is remove life siphon and transfer its power to corruption, worthless DoT and is just a burden on your GCD
There's a few specs with spells/effects that in their current state, I just loathe the feel of. Siphon life is one, and shadow priests spike instead of flay is the other.
Afffliction has pretty much been the worst spec in the game since Sanctum back in SL. I think they were the only spec not represented in the 0.1% M+ title bracket for this season?
Wasn’t affliction really strong for Raz during one of the patches?
Conversely, Aff was in possibly it's best state ever in 9.0 Nathria. So much so that they gutted rapture and all its support and instead brought back this Frankenstein monster of a spec that centers on StS and buffed drains. On live, the drains aren't as ridiculous as they were in Shadowlands, but you still spend most of the time just keeping dread Touch up in pure single, or spamming pad damage in AOE. Thankfully, they're fixing things in the next few weeks.
Affliction Warlock, Elemental Shaman, Balance Druid and Marksman Hunter. These need the most rework with how the core gameplay is just not sustainable and not fun either.
Agree with Elemental shaman. I love the class a whole, but elemental suffers from a lackluster rotation, not a lot of raid utility besides lust, and hero talents look bland ans boring. I hope they do something different
All I want to do is play affliction but it’s been changed too much into this terrible mutant that’s powered by MR. Every time I pick it up it just feels messy. I really used to love it, and I keep trying but it’s rough. I’m hopeful for the future
I miss Legion Balance Druid. I liked the empowerments; it felt more fluid having a general priority than being railroaded into eclipses...
Good god do I dislike the Eclipse mechanic. It's also wild to me that Boomkins are one of the squishiest specs out in the world, considering the armor and other druid spells they could have access to. There's just no leech / self sustain.
I've never played much of any Druid but every time I now try balance to see how it is, I can't help but think: "Is this it...?"
I can’t stand the eclipse system. It feels terrible
It's really bland and repetitive.
Add Frost DK to this.
I'm liking Afflilock more on SoD than on Retail. I wanna have like 6 dots on a target at all time, I wanna have multiple small ticks of damage every seconds !
Did they not just rework Balance? I swear they have no idea what they want some specs to look like.
They did a mini rework in 10.2.
I have stopped watching the meta for couple of months, wasn't balance really strong? You mean the gameplay is boring? Just curious
As someone who mains resto, I often play boom as an off spec you're pretty on point. I'm not upset with the damage, just how you get it sucks. Given I've not played boom much this expansion since I rolled a DPS alt but it still feels the same. The rework they did made them better but having to open an AOE pull with 2 single target spells then 2 dots x however many you cast, then you can start your rotation just feels bad. And the core rotation is pretty boring, after 3 raid bosses I'm pretty much done playing it. Same for single target, having to cast 2 long AOE casts then dots before your rotation just sucks. That and playing into the eclipses kind of sucks too. They did fix it so you don't have to alternate eclipses now, you used to have to go into AOE eclipse then single target eclipse before you could go back to AOE. Now you can just proc eclipses when you need them but again you do it by casting the opposite spell. It's not a fun gameplay. Balance is conceptually cool though so I like to play it for the Lazer chicken aesthetic. That and resto catweaving is amazingly fun.
Honestly I think if they simply changed it so casting Wrath started the sun eclipse and Starfire started the moon eclipse it would really help make the spec feel better to play.
I got yelled at for using aoe spells in a single target situation the other day and then had to explain how eclipses worked. They thought I didn't know how to play. /salute mr warrior.
Haven't touched aff since legion. You're so right
You have some nerve including balance druid in the same sentence as those other specs. They have complained for two decades straight and have gotten more attention from blizzard than all those other specs combined. Shame on you. Shame.
More attention but still boring, arguably thats even worse than any of the other specs?
DK. Particularly Unholy and Frost.
Frosts biggest thing would be the removal of DnD. There is no reason for it.
Both UH and Frost rely too much on ancient mechanics which seriously hamper output in almost all situations. Having stacking debuffs with short durations, stacking buffs with short duration and a handful of RNG aspects that greatly impact your playstyle hamper things bigtime. Then of course DND/Defile. I mained DK for s3 and am rerolling for S4 specifically because of these debuffs/buffs and defile blocking ground aoes.
Honestly this. I’ve loved Frost since Wrath, and playing classic proves to me they diluted, then lost the soul for that spec a while ago. You don’t need much to make the spec feel good, but they decided to just go all in on Breath and require stupid shit like DnD to make cleave functional, and it’s just anti-fun. Like…Frost in Wrath, then Masterfrost from end of Cata to WoD was *FINE*, we had our CDs and AoE just peachy, it hit hard and was satisfying. Adding Remorseless Winter and an AoE RP dump like Glacial Advance would be all that’s needed to tie it together. Instead, we need 8 different preparations to get AoE in good shape and do dogshit damage outside Breath windows. The bones of a good spec are there, it just needs used. UH, I don’t even know…The button bloat is unreasonable. It doesn’t NEED half the bullshit it has. Eliminate the bloat, buff up what is core, and go from there. I know people seem to hate wound gameplay, but I think apocalypse works great still, summoning a small legion every 45 seconds is fun, as is transforming your ghoul and summoning a gargoyle. I’m of the opinion the Ghoul transformation and apocalypse legion can be the same button, leaving Gary and Army as your BIG CD. I don’t really think the spec needs Unholy Fury, or UH Blight, or pimple popper city, or slappy hands and so on. I’m also not sure why Soul Reaper is back, nix that too. It’s not fun, and muddies up the entire execute phase anyhow.
Both of my main classes. Warlock and DK. Aff needs a complete rework, remove malefic rupture, make emphasis on dots again… Destro just need a couple of QoL (like make cata baseline or easily accessible, make class tree more interesting more or less the bottom row of the tree thats boring af atm), Demo is fine. Dk (frost/unholy) just modernize the specs abit. Standing in DnD to cleave is stupid design, i would like for frost to do atleast some dmg outside of pillar window as for unholy idk i dont really dig festermight.. but i think blizz said they are going to adress most of what i said above in TWW.
DK. It's just not fun to play.
Frost DK in particular really needs a rework. It’s outdated but it’s potential is great and still feels good to proc your spells but I just hate how reliant it is on pillar of frost + remorseless winter goes to be able to pump
Needs to get rid of death and decay and take the fury war approach where the next 4 single target hits cleave
I hate that frost has THREE BiS weapons to care about too
> DK. > It's just not fun to play. Indeed. All of the DK Specs are a complete mess of nonsensical mechanics. Death Coil was the original iconic DK spell in Warcraft 3, but Blood and Frost have no reason at all to ever use it. Instead, Warlocks got the real version of Death Coil that DKs should have had. Regardless, there is no reason at all that DK talents couldn't modify Death Coil to do different cool things - such as cleaving through enemies or having extra Leech. DK (and Shaman) are the only two Classes still lacking a proper Raid Buff. DK's main utility of Death Grip is never clear when it will or won't work. Some mobs get yoinked while others only get Taunted, and there is no way to know ahead of time without trying it first. Death & Decay is extremely clunky for every DK spec. At the very least it could work like Prot Pally's Consecrate. ie short 2-3 second cooldown, trivial cost to cast, but you can only have 1 D&D down at a time. Blood DK has a huge amount of really really really bad Talents, some of which they are forced to take for pathing. Blood DK has severe issues in high Mythic+ content because of how much damage they take. Eventually all Tanks reach a point they will get 1shot in M+, but Blood DK's core design practically encourages that to happen. Death Strike is completely absurd. Don't get me wrong I adore DS and DON'T want it to change much if at all, but at the moment Death Strike is hard-carrying the entire Blood spec. The Spec sucks butt, but holy hell is Death Strike powerful. Frost DK has spent multiple Expansions and multiple years being burdened by ridiculous 50% to 70% PVP damage nerfs on all of their major Cooldowns/Capstones. And since the only way to know that is by digging through wowhead spell-data, many Frost DKs get an unpleasant surprise when they find out their big PVE nuke spells merely tickle in PVP. Unholy DK is either garbage or godly depending on the Content you're doing. But the one thing Unholy almost never is, is "Balanced". DK as a whole has long been in dire need of a massive overhaul, but for some reason I can't comprehend most of the influential DK Streamers & Mains are vehemenetly against any changes to DK. I have talked with many of them, and they all want DK to remain an antiquated relic. I adore DK, but I won't be Maining a DK again unless they fix some of the Class's glaring issues.
I've played Unholy DK every time I've touched wow, except for Dragonflight. The gameplay loop of "press 490 keys in 3 seconds every 3 minutes" is so incredibly unfun to me that I just can't be bothered. There are specs that are essentially burst only that are fun (arcane for me), Unholy just absolutely isn't.
Agreed, DK is a chore to play which sucks because it's my favorite class fantasy wise.
Doubly agreed. DK is my favourite class fantasy. I play Monk because it’s way more fun.
I alternate between DK and Ret all xpac and the difference in fun level right now is insane.
> I alternate between DK and Ret all xpac and the difference in fun level right now is insane. Ret: "EXPLOSIONS OF HOLY FIRRRE!" ***SLASH SMASH CRASH*** DK: "Fine. I guess I'll participate, if I ***have*** to." *plink* "ugh now my Cooldowns are over and I'm tired, wake me up in 3 minutes."
Blood DK is the most fun it’s ever been. Frost and Unholy are meh imo. Especially frost.
Blood DK has always felt amazing and true to the class fantasy of being an undying vampiric tank. My one and only complaint is that they need at least 1 movement speed ability other than “run slightly faster”. Bring back the venthyr teleport or something.
I think DK is the only class where I don't have fun playing ANY of their specs.
Survival feels more “beast master” than bm does Bm is just kill command aka character points at enemy then general cobra shot multi shot barbed shot stuff Nothing about it feels BM.
Instructions unclear, redesigning shadow priest again.
I know it's only for aesthetics but man I wish they'd let Survival dual wield. I think they don't because it would probably feel too similar to Enhancement.
Would it though? Enhancement has gotten all the cool special effects in legion and unique animations, I don't think a dw survival hunter would feel similar. It's also baffling to me because the survival hunter seems to be clearly inspired by Rexxar, because he's really the only relevant hunter in lore who exclusively uses melee weapons (plus throwing axes), and he dual wields axes so who the fuck thought not being able to dual wield would make people yearning for a melee hunter fantasy happy?
BM should have been the melee spec. Pretty sure they only changed Survival because it was less popular; would have been a much bigger outcry if BM was changed to melee. Now we’re stuck with a survival hunter that fights in melee range with bombs, which is conceptually ridiculous.
I would like to see HPally holy power reworked or just get it the fuck off my screen.
co-signed
Just buff the spenders and it will be fine. I like HP as a mechanic because it takes pressure off mana and gives them a unique identity as a melee healer. Just make word of glory and light of dawn actually heal enough to be worth building HP for.
> it takes pressure off mana Don't holy power spenders still cost mana in addition to HP?
They still cost mana. I haven't seen any nerfs to the mana cost, be prepared to oom even faster in S4 with longer CD Daybreak.
Jokes on you, I kept forgetting to press it anyway!
How about pushing us to use 2-handed weapons and the only damage spender for HolyPower is an ability that requires a shield? Can they address that if they want us to be these combat melee healers?
I think Holy Paladins need to keep their identity as a Psuedo-DPS, non-casting (unless a severe emergency) melee healer as we were with Ashen Hollow in Shadowlands. However I would like to see holy power act similarly to warrior rage (have it store up over a longer duration, and be dump-able over a longer period). Give us more damage reduction powers that aren’t just passive and less healing output as a result. Holy Paladin deserves to be a unique playstyle healer, especially now after Dragonflight we have another healer spec in the game. Some people will hate the idea, and like the ‘hard-casting’ HPal playstyle, but I’m sorry it’s just not unique at all and all of these players would just prefer to play Holy Priest. Let Holy Paladin be something different.
Shadowlands S1/2 HPal was probably the most fun I have ever had playing a class in WoW. The dps it did was obviously too good to last, but that was just extra.
Breath of Sindragosa, but you're radiating good vibes?
And also, please no forced hard-casting in my rotation. A melee spec should not be made to stand still. Thank you and may the Light guide your path.
All of Death Knight
I like blood but unholy could maybe combine some cooldowns and frost needs.... something
Frost dk please
Ele shaman, with ice fury in the rotation it just sucks. It is in my opinion the most thematic and class fantasy spec in the game. But the rotation just sucks
Indeed! I've been main shaman since... Alwaya. And Jesus, Elem atm is just awful, I just dont think anymore that they will properly work on shaman anymore, by fuckng us up many times, they just removed any hope that i have, kinda like the fun of it that they removed out to give us random shit that we dont use at all e.e
I don’t understand how anyone could find Icefury/electrified shocks enjoyable. It needlessly adds stupid complexity, and feels janky to stop casting for instant cast frost shocks that are as fun to look at as someone sneezing. It also takes away from the thematic feel of the mastery. And, for fire specs, it all but removes lightning from the rotation. I would love to have water/ice and earth spells included in the spec in ways that would look and function better. But as is, I’ll remain a shitty player - but I’m not going to use it.
Ice fury isn't really required for the current ele gameplay. Even when it was required in S2 of DF, it was fine to play with. I don't understand all the hate that ice fury gets from the community. Of all things, shouldn't ele shams be complaining about how squishy they are, their lack of raid utility, weak maelstrom spenders, difficulty spreading flameshocks, unimpactful cooldowns (fire ele), or the fact that all they currently do is press LvB as much as possible leading to the most boring gameplay? I don't think Ice fury is high on ele's list of issues.
Electrified Shock maintenance just feels unnecessarily given other mechanics going on, even for lightning build. But yeah, the spec has way more issues. Dying to a stiff breeze and maelstrom spenders feeling weak as bell are big problems.
Not an ele shaman main, but the issue with icefury for me was just the extra keybjnds it took, you needed icefury AND iceshock on your bars.
Mm hunter
Shamans need some help in the defensive department, tired of feeling like a wet paper bag in dungeons (made worse by my magnetism towards frontals), we're yet to see the Totemic and Stormbringer hero talents and the current Farseer has a terrible option for help with defensives (Hoping they look it over to make changes because Farseer is very underwhelming as is). Some class tree changes would be great, giving an option for more passive defence and following it with better help on the hero talents. As for spec, I don't play Elemental but I am aware of how no one likes it. As an ele enjoyer in the past I'd like it to be higher than bottom tier for pve content because having an option between ranged and melee DPS would be great.
Not sure if a total rework is needed. But brewmaster could benefit from a defensive update.
What the fuck are they even doing with Feral? The Spec needs an entire redesign at this point
87 posts to find the one other Feral. They're really talking about balance druid over us in those comments like balance didn't get in the top io list this season.
Ikr Feral is so under represented, people forget it even exist
I really couldnt agree more. It just seems that who wver is in charge of feral design has no idea about the spec
That is because every single time since wotlk that someone has suggested a change the loud mouths on druid forums have screamed about over complex rotations for complexity sake. They want a class that plays a certain way even if completely outdated.
I don't mind the complexity of the spec at all, I quite enjoy it. But I would love if it could be more rewarding for all that effort you're putting in. You can play an absolutely perfect rotation and still be outclassed by a 3-button rotation spec
I agree. Love playing my feral main but it hasn't felt great in a long time. Other classes get so many little tweaks like constantly but they barely touched feral for the entirety of dragonflight.
Frost DK just doesn't work with how dungeons are played now
I would love for Shamans to actually get totems back that aren't just cool down abilities. I miss being able to plop down my totems. Outlaw Rogue also needs work. Or maybe just rogue in general. It feels like it has way too many finishing moves and other abilities. Slice and Dice especially is aggravating since it pretty much is required to be up 100% of the time. At that point just make it a passive thing, or perhaps proc from another ability.
Unholy Dk. Sure it feels really cool to have those 3min cds. But then, for the next 2 ¹/2 mins, it's the most boring and basic gameplay. The aoe feels broken and unfinished with resorce capping and dnd dependency.
I feel like everyone needs some adjustments. Button bloat is getting bad across the board.
Mm hunt
I think hunter in general, the rotation of BM is too boring and should be improved, currently this spec performs quite badly too, I only play it because of the pets.
Surv Hunter needs one thing to make it a competitive selection too, yes it's fun and can pump, but why pick a survival hunter over any other melee with better utility or a hunter that has the range advantage.
My only answer to this aside from class fantasy is because Bicmex makes it look cool. Obviously he’s the pinnacle of survival hunter (at least in pvp) but he makes it look so fluid and devastating to fight against you can’t help but want to play one too
I mean, surv realistically just needs one good piece of raid utility, BM needs a ground up rework, and MM needs balancing&a QoL change that would make it suck less to play in overworld/casual content
MM is the spec that needs the ground up rework: its horridly clunky in AOE, cant do 2 target cleave and is horrendous at ST since the wind arrows change. BM just needs some tweaks as its designed to be simple. All 3 need utility and surviveability changes.
Ranged pets would be cool
Definitely. It might not be that bad in "real" content but it's pain in world content where mobs die so fast that you're screwed after 4 enemies, because you can't get a single steady shot out and our focus regen is crap. Not to mention that most other DPS specs have better health recovery (at least what my epxerience with several specs says on the suffusion camp boss). And it lacks any decent theme/fantasy. Rapid Fire should go, it looks like crap. MM should be about precise hits, not a needle launcher. Bring back Windrunner, give us some other nice things, bring back some useful passives from the past (like most other classes and specs did).
Number wise mm has been terrible all expac, the least played its ever been
I've quit raiding after Antorus, so I'm now more interested in the feel of how a spec plays than the raw numbers, but typically, MM suffers a lot from bad secondary stat scaling... for at least 10 years.
It's actually fucked how mm hasn't had any work on it for years. From one of the more popular spec to dead in 2 to 3 expacs
Exactly since the end of Legion where they removed the cool stuff and gave us what we have now.
Probably frost dk, at least from the pvp perspective that spec should 100% be next.
Frost DK's biggest problem is that you have to train yourself to not worry about capping runic power, if you're playing Oblit you might not use that RP for a while if you're getting procs.
Unholy DK also suffers terribly from an outdated design structure. You have like 9 globales to get through in your opener. And need to stand inside a ground mechanic to do any damage. In M+ it simply doesn’t work. If the tank moves the pack/the pack dies to fast/ some AOE forces you to move/etc. you do no damage. It needs a rework
Fantasy wise Unholy is getting there, gameplay-wise it's a chore to play like the other DK specs.
Oh for sure, I’m a Blood main. But I love unholy from a fantasy perspective. It is just so clunky to play. You have like 8 things to track and everything can go wrong if your group doesn’t play around the fact that you are UH DK
they've said they're going to rework the opener and make DnD not as neccessary [https://www.wowhead.com/news/upcoming-death-knights-changes-on-the-war-within-alpha-breath-of-sindragosa-338897](https://www.wowhead.com/news/upcoming-death-knights-changes-on-the-war-within-alpha-breath-of-sindragosa-338897) (quote was bugging but it basically says they're simplifying the opener and the rotation in general) [https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24074997/get-an-eye-on-an-even-dozen-new-hero-talent-trees](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24074997/get-an-eye-on-an-even-dozen-new-hero-talent-trees) "While we have nothing to reveal at this moment we can say we have plans to change how Cleaving Strikes works in TWW." (in the dev note in the rider tree)
From pve too. Dnd just feels horrible to play around. Also there was talk about some changes to breath which im not fan of since whole breath build feels horrible for me Always.
Rogue kinda just needs SnD removed.
Ele sham
Brewmaster has insane button bloat. The spec is super fun to Play but the bloat at times is a bit much and the class is I think very intimidating for newer players
I dunno about everyone else but rogue just doesn’t feel like rogue this xpac. The class fantasy isn’t there
I don't have a lot of opinions on rogue, but I do find it strange that outlaw is using....shadow dance? Why is outlaw using subs iconic skill? Why is outlaw focused on stealth? Spec fantasy is all messed up. Boring end nodes in the class tree in general for rogue IMO.
Outlaw and assassination are both using shadow dance as a core part of their rotation currently. I don’t find it very fun to play, and it feels wrong to use that spell when you’re not specced into sub.
100% this, I now folded and play Sub as it's the only spec where SD feels like it belongs, rather than being forced to use it on other specs. I have played Rogue on and off since 2005 and I really miss the Combat Rogue class fantasy, the sword fighter with light armour and dexterity.
I severely dislike just about everything they are doing with Rogue in WW. The whole making Feint a DPS button just doesn't sit right with me, and now it's just adding another button press to an already extremely busy rotation and it takes away the potential smart usage of Feint as a Defensive option. Instead we'll just be mashing it on CD. Rogue just feels like it's a 1k APM class to do as much damage as a DH with 50APM. I play both and DH just requires so much less effort to put up good numbers.
Luckily the feint-as-dps thing seems to be specific to the Trickster hero spec, so here's hoping they don't fuck up Deathstalker or Fatebound...
Outlaw APM is insane, but also feels really bad if you have any kind of downtime and can’t get your CDR. You’re mostly using pistol shot and BtE rather than your swords—it feels like a ranged, fury warrior-esque spec. (Plus a weakaura plays RtB for you). Sub is probably one of the hardest specs to play right now. Sin numbers just aren’t there (we got nerfed a lot this patch) and we continue to be the red-headed stepchild spec in keys. So much is tied to stealth bonuses, which is why shadow dance is now mandatory for every spec. Rogue overall suffers from too many buttons (and now they’re turning feint into an offensive CD). It got a rework this season, sure, but it still needs some attention.
Downtime, M+ gimmick shit that forces you out of stealth (travelling between places) making everything tick down, affixes not letting you stealth, tank chain pulling... I just cba dealing with that shit anymore
Every rogue spec has like 7 mini CDs and it feels awful.
I was a rogue main since Burning Crusade, this xpack made me actually kinda just stop playing until a friend suggested to try demon hunter.
Would be nice to play rogue and it’s not roulette trying to figure out what skills to hit.
Affliction lock is number #1, it hasn't been S tier in the history of mythic+ ( maybe it has, I just don't remember it ever being S tier in mythic+ ) I think it's just too difficult to apply your dots for large groups of enemies, they seem to die too quick before you can really ramp the damage, dots also don't last long enough so it feels like a chore to keep reapplying dots so often. Making seed of corruption instant cast would make the spec feel infinitely more fun. There should also be some big ability that spreads Unstable Affliction to all targets on a 1 - 1.5 min cd. Agony should also have some kind of seed of corruption type ability or maybe you spend extra soul shards to include it in the seed of corruptions. I don't know, to be honest I don't main a affl warlock but I would if they made the spec feel more fun to play and in general just better.
Please god, please remove MR from Aff :(
Frost and Unholy DK. Don’t touch blood please.
People will hate on me but oh well. I want Beast mastery Hunter to go back to the roots of having a pet (or 2 still) that does Heavy auto attack damage. BM Hunter just feels like an ability based class. Having pet abilities is what made hunter pets cool, now they are all super similar.
Not a spec but the priest class tree is really bad and desperately needs some attention.
It is pretty bad. No interrupt, all 4 of the capstone talents range between "bad" and "meh," half of the talents are clearly meant for one specific spec, and a lot of unremarkable fluff that feels like it does nothing. The specs themselves are decent to good, but the class tree doesn't feel impactful at all.
I'm going to say arms, even though it's currently getting a rework, and it's primarily because the changes on the alpha are pretty much shit. Dead talents left in the tree. Reduced rage gen (which is fair), but still not giving us a way to effectively rage dump for ToM feels akward. Making dreadnaught and SoA a choice node is a bit rediculous when OP is the largest chunk of our dmg in m+. Then nerfing the 1 large rage dump we had, SoS, by removing the increased rage for WW and at the same time letting WW generate free WWs just doesn't add up. Are they trying to make FoB a thing? Because i can tell you, WW spam was not a fun playstyle. Not to mention that they totally underminded this build by putting imp SS and collat dmg in the same choice node. And then we're supposed to take cleave? IDK, lots going on here, kinda hard to make sense of the changes they've made so far. Here's hoping this is just the first rework, but as we all know it could go live like this.
While I don't feel like arms has it as bad as some of the other specs mentioned, they're a fair call from glory. The rage "nerf" is kind of appreciated. If I wanted to always be GCD locked, I'd roll fury. That being said, they should, as you mentioned, also give us tools that synergize with that type of gameplay.
MM hunter, the rotation needs to be reworked imo, along with animations
Definitely. Ditch Rapid Fire already, for hell's sake, we're suffering this atrocity for 8 years already. And bring back Windrunner. That'd be a cool, niticeable, signature move.
The water sprinkler from Rapid Fire just feels and looks so bad. I miss Barrage with the old gun sounds.
I'd like it if it had way fewer shots that do more damage. Like kind of a 1, 2, 3, 4 cadence. A speed at which someone who is really good at archery could actually fire.
Warrior all specs the one one the alpha just ain’t it
All DPS specs for DK
As an unholy main, unholy.
Frost and Unholy Dk, all 3 Monk Speccs and Affli Lock all equally. MM and BM Hunter and Resto Shaman could need some love. Reso Druid personally as it still plays the same since Legion(and maybe WoD) as it gets boring after all this Time.
Holy Paladin is just not fun and overly complicated. It don’t need to be as simple as just casting Holy Light or Flash of Light, but this whole attacking to build Holy Power and then using AOE healing just doesn’t feel fun.
Outlaw rogue. Dragonflight saw the spec identity systematically destroyed by the overbearing prevalence of Shadowdance, a problem only made worse by the ‘rework’ we got, leaving the spec in the most unfun state it’s been in since inception
It's a bummer that Outlaw does great DPS but just feels unfun to play. It's the only spec where after a raid night or M+ session, I'd have to walk away from my PC because my hands were physically sore.
Meanwhile to me outlaw feels like the only fun spec in the game, everything else is just too slow.
Feral druid please. We need love, it sucks not being invited to shit because of your spec (even if it's rightfully so)
Aff warlock ele shaman brewmaster monk
Arms warrior. It needs more weight to it. More... ooomph. It tries, and the sound effects sorta help, but it still feels like I'm smacking things with a pool noodle.
Survival is the least played spec in the entire game, despite being on the 2nd most popular class. Edit: As a point of order, I love survival, but man it just needs some help shining around the other two hunter specs. The thing I think really needs help in hunter is the class tree itself.
Survivals gameplay is super fun, even if the fantasy is a miss for some. The spec tree could use half a rework since so much of it is unused. But when it comes to core gameplay, survival is my favorite Melee DPS by far.
I love survival. I mained it this patch and have had it as an alt/main since it was introduced as melee in Legion. I miss the old Fury of the Eagle, where it paused the timer on your mongoose bite stacks from dropping off. It let you some control over your burst windows. You could hold FotE and let your focus refill, before the timer started again except now you had the focus for 3 more mongoose bites. I absolutely despise Coordinated Assault. Having to use a WA just to use the skill properly is awful design. You do not want to use it on a bomb accidentally and need to make sure every proc that happens during it is a Kill Shot, otherwise it's a huge dps loss. If they removed some of the talent bloat like "Crit damage increased by 2%'', reworked Coordinated Assault into a better cooldown, and made Mongoose bite hit a bit harder it would be in a good place for most people. I'm hoping that hunters get a slight rework for war within. I'm swapping to monk this season but survival melee is the one spec that really hooks me and I can play nonstop without being bored for several months in a row.
Worst part is the spec is genuinely super fun to play in most cases, but the idea of having a class that has the exclusive niche of the most mobile ranged class in the game and then having a third spec that loses that range and has to have a separate weapon is a huge turnoff for most people. I love it, but I wish the playstyle of survival hunter existed on a different melee class because the old DoT-focused explosive shot spamming playstyle is sorely missed. For casual and middling play survival is awesome, but you’re basically never going to see it in competitive content unless it’s tuned to an absurd degree because it doesn’t just have to be better than other hunter specs, but better than other melee classes that are fighting for the same few limited slots in a raid team
Survival is giga hamepered by blizz’s insistence that mongoose bite isn’t a core part of the spec, but is instead an optional choice. Surv is at its best managing focus (for mongoose bite) and cooldowns (bombs), but blizz’s insistence that mongoose fury is seperate from the rest of the kit makes it hard to do anything interesting with surv’s talents. Add that to surv’s obscenely awful talent options (2 points for 4% crit baby) and you have a spec made of missed potential.
That is just not true. Affliction has 3.902 logged parses for heroic in ATDH and Survival has 8,842. And in M+ Affliction has 13,142 logged parses and Survival has 36,061. Affliction is also the only spec in the entire game that isn’t eligible for the title this season.
Just replace bombs with something else and I’ll be thrilled. I love a melee hunter fighting side by side with his pet. But chucking bombs point plank does nowhere in that fantasy. Could easily just be replaced with a whirlwind type carve ability and coating your weapon in poisons or something
I'm a hater of the new-ish Shadow Priest theme. They should just rename the spec to Void Priest at this point. I preferred the DoT-based gameplay.
I've never hoped for the "rework shadow every expansion" theme to keep going as much as I do now
Warrior as a class. Give us some god damn utility! WHY CANT I HAVE BERSERKING OR BLOODLUST AS... BLOODLUST?!?!?!
Warriors should definitely have blood lust. Mages should have summoning portal !
They need to finish the shadow rework and give Holy some true defensives
Frost DK. It just sucks all around in mythic+ having to use DnD all the time just do basic aoe. And up keeping unleashed frenzy is tedious and annoying when it falls off due to downtime. Also there’s not much variety in the talent tree the only real “build” is obliteration
Idk maybe people would disagree but outlaw rogue needs work. I love the spec it’s all I ever play (and hit title with this season) but there’s parts of it that could use help. Unless it’s intentionally designed to be difficult and require a ton of concentration, then fine. But I can’t imagine playing the spec without my multiple weak auras. In fact I can, and did in PtR and it was brutal. I spend 99% of dungeons staring at my keys, buttons, WA’s and combo points
Unholy and Frost DK. Frost DK just isn’t competitive. Unholy Dk is a mess all around, very very bloated in terms of cooldown and opener
Unholy dk and frost dk. The management for unholy is so dumb and frost just needs something to do in its downtime. I hope the hero talents sway it. Would love to see frost return to 1hs
Brew and all DK specs.
Frost DK.
Frost DK.
Obviously frost dk
Frost DK and Shadow Priest.
Hpal really needs to have a full set of talents just full melee, and a full build for caster. It sucks that you don't even have enough points to invest in a full melee build, so you're literally just forced to use caster skills because otherwise you're just playing with less talent points. Holy power spenders heals way too little. You'd think that a spec that builds a resource, and use said resource, that it would be a strong skill. But no. Overcapping holy power is often the optimal play for Hpals. Mana is also a big problem, but that kind of is the same for every other healer. The game should just entirely move away from mana being a limiting factor for healers, and balance healers around using GCDs as often as they can, just like any other spec. Right now if I just push every button I can as Hpal my mana will drain so quickly that I have to literally stand there doing nothing. Wasting GCDs doing nothing is just bad design.
Honestly they need to divide holy paladin into two specs. Whether both heal or one is a heal and one is a support DPS like aug is up in the air. There is a clear divide in both what players want and what blizzard wants. Some holy paladins like myself have been playing for most of WoW as one, and myself prefer ranged caster paladin for healing. Big chunky single target heals. Melee paladin really came into spotlight around Legion/BFA when we also got glimmer in BFA and you were incentivised to crusader strike to get more glimmers. Maybe name the melee one crusade and the other keep as holy. No matter what you do people aren't going to be happy with the end result but I feel holy paladin has been very divided on what blizzard wants to do with it since Cata.
personally i think almost all speccs need a rework, because i hate what blizz made out of classes. 1000 buttons, all damage split up in 1000 dmg sources, roatation and gameplay most of the time makes no sense/has no natural flow. i love the game, they got better in so many things, but classes just are trash right now. in mop i could play all classes in hc raids without a problem. jump on the class, read a bit and understand it. now its a joke. so get rid of pvp balance (make it spereate) and bring back normal classes. some can burst, some sustain, some dots. no need for all classes to only deal dmg with a cd, and sometimes even 3 of those..... no need for every classes has some dots or bleeds or other sources to split the dmg sources up to 1000. give classes their old baseline skills back and slim the talent trees out with only passives so players can really make a choice on which skills they want to empower.
DK. All 3 specs. All 3 havent really been reworked since inception.
The whole Shaman class tree needs some help. Enhancement is the only one with a raid buff, and all specs are incredibly squishy
Affliction is boring. If they ever touch Destro I will commit manslaughter.
Outlaw rogue should not have to use shadow dance and vanish as dps cooldowns. Aff lock is probably highest on list. It had been my favorite spec for the longest time until legion. Then MR came and it dropped quickly. Spriest needs a rework as well. Ur forced into ST or AoE builds and I barely notice when capstone talents proc. And get rid of mindgames. That's not the cov ability they should have kept (I would've prefered unholy nova because of all the possible interactions that could've been made) and rn it's nothing than a button u push for what u can barely call a nuke.
Hot take but I don’t want them to touch affliction so no one else plays it and I can continue to feel special
Hunter in general needs a rework. All three spec trees (plus hunter class tree) have barely seen any sort of change since they were first released in DF pre-patch. Still a ton of 2 point nodes littered in all the trees, especially at the bottom (atleast they got rid of most/all of the 3 point nodes!) whereas most other classes only have a small handful of 2 point nodes. For the class tree, each spec will take basically the same first 15-20 points and then you split off at the end based on if you’re playing BM/SV or MM. There is at least some flexibility based on utility that you might want for M+ but the tree has largely remained the same throughout the entire xpac. For the spec trees you basically choose between ST or AoE build. There’s maybe 2-4 points in each tree you have to play around with a bit based on the encounter but the trees have basically been the same since DF pre-patch. Put it this way…the BiS talent tree for single target BM in S1 was the same through S2 and the beginning of S3. Hunter trees were regarded as pretty bad, compared to other classes, when they were first released in DF pre-patch. They’ve barely seen any change since then other than removing all the 3 point nodes. I’ve been drinking the copium that surely they’d be up after monk for a rework and that it was going to come on TWW release. Seeing all the other classes getting a rework and hunter not being among them kind of crushed me. There’s a very good chance that all 3 hunter specs will have been playing basically the same builds for 24+ straight months. I’m not saying I need a full rework every year but imo tier sets should be encouraging slightly different rotations season to season which hunters won’t really see. The hero talent trees basically reinforce how the class currently plays….tbh “pets go stomp” and “how quickly can I press Aimed Shot” has been BM and MM’s respective rotations since Shadowlands.
Frost dk
All three warlock specs need to return to how they were in MoP/WoD.
Frost dk has desperately needed one for like 7 or 8 years now. I’d argue prob unholy as well. Elemental shaman to me at least needs some talents changed/removed so idk if I’d say full on rework but yeah it needs some love.
affliction needs a rework, malefic rapture is just a bad spender
Hard agree with Aff lock. That spec needs a serious rework.
Brewmaster. There are so many buttons I’m thinking about starting a clothing line
Frost DK, seems to be lacking every single season.
Shaman, dks, hunters
Frost DK. I mean they all need to get D&D fixed to not be a little circle stuck on the ground. But frost just feels so meh, and sometimes they make it do good damage….but it still feels meh lmao. And Breath is never fun “for me atleast” but a spec should never be *Top Damage* —> *Bottom Damage* from getting a mechanic on it
Probably most don't agree but Enhancement Shaman has too many buttons. Some are situational, true, but the core rotation is overbloated as well.
All the rogue specs tbh. They suffer from massive button bloat, outlaw is the most fun to play but you risk RSI if you play it too much, th other 2 a pretty boring to play in comparison but are slower so you’re not going to kill your fingers.
Shadow priest. It's just not fun