5.0.4 Hunter/Warrior/Death Knight/Priest/RogueFollow

So I finally got some time to sit down and play some more classes!

Yes, I have an 85 of all classes before anyone even asks.

So.... please keep in mind these are my solo PvE viewpoints; I've not done any dungeons or PvP yet.

1). Hunter.

*drool* I LOVE hunters now. All Pets can be any specialization type (you choose). I can finally dust off that old Ravager I've had since I made my draenei hunter. I tamed him at Level 10 and used him clear up until Level 70. Then Wrath came out and suddenly hunter pets couldn't hold threat worth crap. I eventually leveled him, but I had to use a different pet. Then they gave pets different specializations and Ravagers wound up on the Cunning list and he still couldn't hold threat. Now, I can give him Tenacity and he'll tank just as good as any other pet. Finally! Also worthy of note is that awesome awesome talent "Thrill of the Hunt", and also the removal of minimum shooting distance makes for much smoother play. Also, I picked the talent that gives me a 30% heal every 2 minutes which can be nice (especially since it heals the pet 100%). So far, my pet has never lost threat, and something (not sure what) keeps me healed between battles so it is very smooth.

2). Warrior.

Haven't tried Arms or Fury, but I played around with Solo Prot some. I'd have to say I'm loving the fact they got rid of the Rage requirement for a lot of our basic attacks. Gone are the days when your Charge is on cooldown and the only thing you have is Bloodrage and three over-eager DPS laying into mobs. You can at least build up some AoE threat even with zero rage at all! Rage doesn't take long to build up. Personally, I chose the Impending Victory, Double Time, and Shockwave talents, the last talent I wasn't sure what to pick because I was choosing talents with solo in mind and all of the talents on that tier are group-oriented (they all affect other players). Some things to note, I love how Thunderclap automatically procs a bleed (you don't have to Rend first, thus saving you a GCD) and I was throwing out Cleaves and Revenges all over the place along with Shockwaves whenever the cooldown was up. Double Time lets you round up a lot of mobs in solo play; you can charge two, taunt one and run over to a last mob if you want, not necessarily in that order. I'd have to say I'm pleased with the changes I've seen thusfar.

3). Death Knight.

Played Blood a bit, but I didn't like how much DPS it lost; killing mobs solo takes way too long. I tried Frost back early Cataclysm, but it was far too squishy for my tastes so I decided to give it a whirl again. I chose a bunch of health restore talents thinking it was still squishy, but the truth of it is, it really isn't unless you're rounding up multiple mobs at once, so I probably could have chosen other talents instead. I might look into that. The DPS is pretty dang good, I don't remember how much changed between Cataclysm and MoP, though, but I will note that my Death Knight was putting out better DPS than my better-geared Ret Paladin and was keeping her health up just fine. If I really got into trouble, I chose that Death Siphon talent, where you can use 1 death rune to heal yourself for ~12k health. Death Runes are constant, so it is more than enough. Even if it weren't, I still have Death Strike (esp with the glyph!). I'd have to say I'm pleased.

4). Priest.

Took my Shadow Priest out to kill some elite mobs in Dragonblight (those snakes). I didn't get a lot of time to test this yet, but I notice that some of her spells were hitting hard. I'm wearing 377 crafted PvP and using Ahune's Frostscythe (lol, I know, right?) and I was doing 34k crits with mind blast. Every Mind Blast gives me an orb and when I get three of them, I can nail a mob with a fairly strong leech spell (Devouring Plague). These two spells were more than enough (along with the occasional channeled DoT) to do the job. I wanna take her out and try some more against mobs closer to my level, but so far I like what I see.

5). Rogue

Tried my rogue too, a couple days ago. I love the new poison system (thank God we don't have to keep buying the stupid things). Much simpler and easier to use. I've always played Combat, so I'm going to say things from a Combat Point of View. They didn't change a whole lot, to be honest. It plays much like Cataclysm Combat did, though I seem to be doing more DPS. They sadly removed the "killing blow refreshes durations of Recup and SnD" or at least they removed it for Combat. The healing poison though, seems to be working fine if I stick to single mobs. I can always Recup if I fight 2 or 3 mobs at once, though. Getting the Insight buffs seemed much faster than before (I remember killing mobs and routinely only having Green... now I almost always have Red by the time the mob dies).

I did take my mage out for just a little, but hadn't had time to test it, nor have I had the chance to try Warlock. I've heard good things about it, though, so I'm going to try it soon. Hopefully they fixed Warlock; Cataclysm was some dark days for warlocks.

My feelings on the new Shadow Priest are mixed.

In PvP he is nigh unstoppable now. So many potent CDs.
In PvE he sure does nice damage (single target). AoE was very weak directly after 5.0.4 but got a slight buff since then (I think). Still not as strong as in 4.3 but better now.
I love being able to cast Renew/Leap of Faith without dropping Shadowform.
The speedboost after casting PW:Shield is extremely handy.
There are many things I like. Some minor glyphs are nice as well.

But I really don't like the new PvE rota/priority system. The old one was extremely fun to play. Now it's rather meh. I hope it will grow on me because Shadowpriest is by far my favorite class/spec.

The thing I immediately noticed about Spriest is that I'm not expected to lay down two (or was that 3? I forget) dots before casting my first actual damage-dealing spell.

That's one of the things I never liked about leveling Spriest before (and also Warlock in Cataclysm) and why I usually got most of my experience doing town dailies or tagging along with someone while they quest. Using up 3 seconds while a mob is running towards you just DoT'ing up the mob always was kinda stupid.

Instead, it looks like there's only one dot? They changed one of them from some DoT that you're expected to keep up at all times to a spell that consumes Shadow Orbs to do a large amount of damage and healing when you get 3 orbs and I'm not sure what happened to that third DoT/debuff spell.

Its been awhile since I played my Spriest in actual combat, please forgive me if I'm forgetting abilities' names.

Edited, Sep 11th 2012 12:13pm by Lyrailis

I've noticed my hunter has a lot more CC options which makes me really hope for more crowd control in MoP.
I also love the pet changes as I've never been a fan of bears/gorillas etc, for aesthetics i guess.

Vampiric Touch is still in the game. It now regenerates mana whenever you hit something with the DoT on.

You apply Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch then keep Mind Blast on cooldown and Mind Flay until you get some of them free, instant Mind Spikes that don't erase debuffs (don't remember if it's a talent or a glyph). Once you hit three orbs, you pop Devouring Plague and /dance.

Just kidding, you can dance without Devouring Plague if you want.

I'm really, really liking the Warlock stuff. Destruction has been turned into a wannabe Fire Mage thing now, with only one DoT (Immolate) and none of the old synergy from what I can tell. Unfortunately, as it is right now, Grimoire of Sacrifice (is that the name?) is the go-to talent for Affliction and Destruction, so you sac your demon and run around playing Fire Mage or Shadow Priest, depending on your spec. Affliction has been turned into an all-out DoT spec now. Shadow Bolt turns into Incinerate for Destruction Warlocks and Malefic Grasp for Affliction Warlocks. Malefic Grasp is a channeled beam-thing that causes your DoTs to double-tick or something.

I prefer Demonology, because, honestly, what's a Warlock without a demon? And the fact that I have TWO demon forms I can change into and out of at will is just hilariously cool. One demon form buffs my damage output and the other turns me into a sort-of tank, which is excellent for questing and good if your 5-man tank dies. Since you can insta-summon a new demon when in a demon form, you can pop the Infernal and call out your Blueberry for some tanking action. Managed to prevent a couple of wipes that way. And I love how you spawn Wild Imps every 20 seconds. I've had up to four of those little buggers running around with me.

Also, Demonology has the coolest secondary resource indicator as well. Affliction Warlocks get Soul Shards hovering above their heads and Destruction Warlocks get all fiery when they get enough Burning Embers. Demonology Warlocks, however, get @#%^ing horns, man! Hell yeah! So I'm running around questing in my Dark Apotheosis form, which gives me big purple demon wings, and because I'm above 50% resources, I've got big purple horns. Love it!

Edit: Pictures incoming, because the above description does not do it justice.

Affliction at max Soul Shards: Ooh, look at me, I've got purple accessories hanging above my head. I'm so powerful, ooh.

Destruction at max Burning Embers: How'd it get burned? HOW'D IT GET BURNED?!

Demonology Warlock at max Demonic Fury, with Dark Apotheosis (wings) and on a Purple Skeletal Warhorse: MOTHER@#%^ING HORNS!

Edited, Sep 11th 2012 11:26pm by Mazra

Yeah, but it is so much easier without it? *shrugs* Using Misdirection with the glyph meant you had to write up a macro, taking up one of your macro slots, and adding it to a hotkey (and to save hotkeys, you probably combined it with, say, Serpent Sting or whatever you usually open with), which adds another problem: What if you need to swap targets or get the pet to grab a new target in the middle of combat and you either didn't want to SS the new target, or didn't have the resources for it?

Either way, pets holding threat without misdirection now works much better and easier. I prefer it this way.



While casually soloing mobs, I prefer Passive talents to Active ones. Cuts down on how many hotkeys I need, and it is one less cooldown I have to keep track of. I'd probably end up switching to something else if I ever did Heroics, but meh. I rarely do heroics with crafting alts anyways.



Considering the glyph UI is bugged all to Hell when using nearly Any addon (except ones updated within the last 5 days, most of my addons haven't been), I haven't been able to set any of my glyphs. Every time I try, "xxxx addon is preventing a UI action. Disable/Ignore?" and I don't feel like logging on and off several times to set my glyphs for all 20 of my characters just yet. But it is nice to know that it does exist.

That and instead of changing the Prime glyphs to the new Majors/Minors, they made us do MORE Northrend Research, so my scribe still doesn't know a lot of glyphs yet.



Well, given I said it was from a Solo PvE standpoint, yeah. It is nice in solo PvE. PvP, obviously, you take way too much damage for it to help you very much.

Edited, Sep 11th 2012 8:24pm by Lyrailis

Even if you do pull aggro from your pet, minimum range has been removed, so you can still shoot it while it's chewing on you instead of your pet. The pet is just there to ensure that even the most mentally impaired person in the world still has a chance to get into my end-game PUG. Same goes for Warlocks, by the way.

I'm not saying Hunters and Warlocks don't use their pets. Demonology Warlocks and Beast Mastery Hunters obviously rely a lot on their pets to get the job done, but for soloing, the pet is just there to make stuff easier. My Warlock and Hunter could easily complete quests without Fluffynoodles and Mekatik teh Wrathlawd. Having a pet just means I don't die while I'm watching the purrty butterfwies!

Edited, Sep 12th 2012 6:25pm by Mazra

You guys are making me wanna come back to WoW. I wonder if my Annual Pass still has time on it?

But meh, that would mean reinstalling WoW on my PC. I'll have to check my annual pass status and possibly reinstall WoW this weekend.

I've got at least 5 85s that I remember that I wouldn't mind trying out.

Star Wars is getting a little stale for me. Did that happen with you too Maz?

True. Having the pet tank stuff is much easier, faster and safer. Fun factor varies from person to person, I guess. I personally enjoyed kiting those ogres and nearly dying every time.

My point, however, was merely to show that you can take on an enemy without your pet. You don't have to do fancy kiting if you don't want to since the minimum range has been removed. You're wearing mail armor, so you can still take some hits, not that it matters as shown above, because the target dies before it comes even close to killing you.

If you go Marksmanship or Survival, you have almost the same burst as a Mage even without your pet. The difference is that a Mage can keep up the burst longer while you have to regenerate Focus at some point. For questing, however, you can easily take down an enemy of the same level as you without having to regenerate Focus. I killed one of the ogres by just spamming Arcane Shot and I still had more than 25% Focus left when it died.

The pet is a remnant from a time where Hunters and Warlocks needed a tank to keep the target busy while they peeled away its health. This is still true for Affliction and Demonology Warlocks (to some extent), but Destruction Warlocks and Hunters in particular can easily burst down a target before taking critical amounts of damage, mainly due to the large amount of instant casts and snares available.

But I mean it's not like anyone is losing sleep over the Hunters' and Warlocks' massive solo PvE advantage. Having a Warlock and Hunter myself, I definitely don't want them to lose the pet. It's just fun to think that a class with the damage output of a non-pet class needs a tank for solo PvE.

Maybe the Scroll of Resurrection could help you. If you qualify for it that is. :)

@ spammerdude

Knock it off.

I already have a raid-geared marauder in Star Wars, though, and you can't raid if you're not subbed. I think I'll just cancel the SWTOR sub for a bit, I'm thoroughly enjoying WoW. Even the annoying parts like grinding out 10 stacks each of fel iron and adamantite.