Beta starts todayFollow

Yep, what the title says.

So maybe 6.0 in 2-3 months? That would be sooner than expected tbh.

Oh, and the Hearthstone expansion is coming in Juli.

I don't even... That is not the Blizzard I am used to!

Didn't get one either. But since I prefer playing on live servers to playing any kind of PTR/betaserver it would be kind of wasted on me anyway.

Just curious. Can anybody give some feedback to the Beta? How do the classes you play feel midway through the ability pruning and after the stat squish? Are Garrisons fun?

While I pre-ordered I must admit that apart from the Garrisons there is almost nothing I'm looking forward to, at this point. Some information about how the game plays and feels might lessen my sense of impending doom.

I played up until the first few Garrison missions with a Prot Paladin.

Hopefully it is just numbers tuning being a little off, but Good God. I wonder why they even bothered giving Prot Paladin a heal at all.

We're back to Cataclysm.....nay, worse than Cataclysm.... with the self-heals, at least on Prot Paladin.

My Prot Paladin in 500 gear has ~70k health. My heals do 2500 and that's it. I know they said they didn't want tanks being self-sufficient in groups, but they're not even self-sufficient in solo play.

The Group Quests in SMV? The Treant killed me in ~6 hits, and I even used Lay on Hands. Of course this was before the last couple builds; I've had a lot on my plate and have not had time to test it yet recently.

Edited, Jul 20th 2014 7:47pm by Lyrailis

I've had beta for about a month. Finally started playing it. I ported over my Paladin to the leveling realm. 585 Holy, 571ish Ret.

Grim Rail Depot
Healed it with a guildmate tanking. It wasn't as amazing as people make it out to be. Not that it was terrible either. Some solid boss fights for a 5 man. Healing wise, tanks need to use CD's as soon as the CD was off he was getting trucked a bit. My mana bar was fine, it was exactly like Blizz promised; if I was spamming mana intensive heals it got tight, if I was spamming Holy Light I was fine. A couple fights I got pinched on mana, used cd's and my blue bar recovered and I had breathing room.

Questing/Leveling Balance
I have a guild mate at 98, he hasn't replaced a single piece of Heroic SoO gear yet. I destroy adds, safe to say most don't even take 3 hits and are down. Hopefully they balance that a little bit. Retribution rotation really hasn't changed, just missing inquisition. However due to reduction in haste, I feel like there are plenty of time where I am auto~attacking and all my buttons are on cool down, which is yawn worthy.

Story (without spoilers)
Once you get through the Dark Portal the pace of questing is a roller coaster. It moves really fast and is fun. Once you get to Shadowmoon Valley (Alliance) it slows down and frankly I haven't paid much attention except a few of the quests with major characters (even some of those I don't bother reading). I found myself paying attention to the storyline in Cata & MoP, this expac there is a lot going on story wise but the quests connection to it seems fluff, not revealing or adding to the story so i just pass it over, if that makes sense.

The portal in the Blasted Lands no longer brings you to the Burning Crusade zones but instead to Draenor (I think). Other than that the old content should remain untouched.