Ok so here's my NEW impression after the hotfix...
(I decided to create a new thread because it's a whole other set of rules now, it might get confusing if posts from both completely distinct scenarios get mixed).
Warrior:
On the warrior I was going as prot, maxing survivability to put defense/offense barely into balance, and the change shot my defense-offense balance from barely balanced to overkill defensive. So my formerly balanced prot warrior had become a walking fortress, yes a fortress!! but one with no guns, just walls.
It was not unplayable. I still could play a support role by putting bleeds on rogues and spearheading attacks attracting most attention to my weak but durable prot warrior while the casters behind me blasted trough everything completely unharmed.
Note about Vengeance: The AP buff has a constant decay that remains active during combat, so I haven't seen it get above 700 at any time. I think it averages at about 500 AP.
I'll have to give the DPS specs another chance, I think.
Disc Priest/ Holy Paladin:
First, let me explain the whole logic of it. They had balanced the whole healing-damage-resil thing based on huge HP pools and slightly higher damage. But the hotfix didn't increase HP, it increased resil instead. (Bad move bliz, you could have asked me, I would have done your math).
It was pretty evident that this buff to resil would make healing overpowered. And what would you expect me to do when I figure out something is overpowered? That's right! Abuse it. (I want the game to be balanced, but for as long as it isn't, I'm taking sides with the winners).
Both Disc Priest and Holy Paladin proved to be unstoppable machines of keeping people alive. With enough resil, the damage 4 melee can do to a mage, a single Priest can undo with relative ease. The Paladin is not far behind at all, but the Paladin's spells suffered more changes so it takes a bit getting used to.
The Paladin seems much more durable than the priest due to the bubble and the automatic self healing. It's bugged too, but I only abuse imbalance, I don't exploit bugs.
The Priest seemed a little less durable, or just a bit trickier to keep alive. However there's a catch, in the current environment with overpowered heals, if the enemy boat floats on heals, it takes manaburns to sink it. Priest does, Paladin doesn't.
What really disapointed me with the priest is that Fade is not working on pets. I don't know if this is an intended change or just a bug. I hope it's just a bug, I mean, Vanish, Invis and Feign will deaggro pets, Fade should too.
Warlock:
Overpowered, they said... I don't know right now if the damage is imbalanced compared to the damage of other DPS. I do know that compared to the power of heals in a high resil environment, it's quite dim.
Overall, it works the same way it always has with the exception that if there's a healer around healing some guy, 4 warlocks are not enough to kill him. But then again that is exactly what makes warlock a pretty strong contender under the current situation, the ability to repeatedly fear, silence, stun, and generally disrupt the healer is priceless.
The mana drain is not so usable because the big blue beam attracts everyone's attention and is bound to get you stopped (by a rain of rogues and DKs..), as opposed to mana burns which are much much more discrete.
Overall, the commanding forces in BGs are now:
- Heals vs the limited ability to neutralize healers.
- Heals.
Edited, Oct 17th 2010 8:58pm by xorq