I main fire mage. It's...alright. It was really strong most of expansion but recent nerfs have it feeling 'okay' in terms of strength. It plays smoothly but the #'s aren't top tier.

 

I've always played Arcane because I can't stand the proc-dependant nature of fire mage. It feels so shit if you get bad rng and don't crit for 3 spells.

I'd rather frost tbh, but i can't viably play without the elemental, and i also hate pet classes.

 

3 fire blast charges + 2 piece tier smooths that out immensely.

 

Yeah, tbf, i was only fire for WQs to get my sheep staff.

 

How about Spriests? Mine is 100, as I levelled during WoD.

 

You missed the 'Broken Spriest' period, lol, but they're still strong. Especially if there's multiple, high health targets.

 

Hmm... in that case, maybe I will just play my SPreist again...

The mechanics look completely different from the Cata days.

 

Yeah. It's why i went spriest (who was always disc previously). The inanity mechanic is super fun. Not quite as intense as when Surrender to Madness was the best, but still good fun.

 

It's pretty good. Not utterly insane single target the way it was prior to Nighthold though.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/10#boss=1841

Top 100 parses for the 'dps check' fight in the previous raid.

Affliction lock is really strong right now if you liked that spec at all.

All 3 mage specs are 'playable' but are middle of pack at best realistically.

I'm staying mage because I genuinely like fire, I can parse 97-100% on it consistently, and not holding guild back, etc.

 

All specs are within 8-9% of each other so you can pretty much just play what you want and expect to do fine.

 

Mythic Gul'dan (end tier boss) video from Spriest perspective was released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56N6Zq18i8Q

 

From the other end of the spectrum, I'm playing classes to 103 in different zones and trying out all the stories, because I'm never going to raid again seriously, and I'm one of those people with really bad alt-itis. All the zones are really well-done and cool in their own way - it's very refreshing after WoD, they really put some good work into them. And holy crap, do they look great. I've probably taken 200 screenshots already in various places (especially Highmountain though), and am actually considering framing a few. Great times.

The class changes are weird though - I can't believe how much they re-tooled and just flat-out removed. Made it much easier in some respects, and I can see why all the DPS classes are so relatively close together now - compared to the old days of 31/5/15 backstab being 50% ahead of everyone else, for instance. Ahh, memories.

 

WoW really does seem to be taking variety out of the game, endless homogenization! Everything must be equal! That's been going on since WOTLK though haha.

 

You'll find some classes are boring with six button priority dps systems/rotations (frost mage, ret pally, boomkin for example), while there are others that are far more dynamic, require forward thinking and on the fly snap decisions (spriest, arcane mage, subtlety rogue).

The latter isn't always better, despite what it may sound like I'm implying. I've got an Spriest, Arcane Mage and Subtlety Rogue. I adore the priest, only love Arcane in dungeons while trying frost out for raids and just don't really like Rogue all that much (by far my most played class in WoW history, so could just be fatigue).

On the flipside, despite how simple and faceroll-y Ret Paladin is, I'm enjoying it a lot more than the Rogue in terms of melee dps.

Having said all that and with varying difficulty and 'fun factors' aside, they really did a lot and focus heavily on the 'class fantasy' (MAYBE DON'T REMOVE GLADIATOR WARRIOR AND FUCK OVER THAT FANTASY THEN BLIZZARD) and overall unique identities, like combat Rogue becoming Pirate (outlaw) Rogue and having its own set of suitably flavored abilities - specifically in Outlaw's case, a massive RNG mechanic which has you literally rilling dice for certain buffs frequently.

YMMV, but I just don't buy the trimming of the fat and pretty good balancing meaning 'homogenisation'.

 

I recently got into reading lots of lore and now am super into it. How is the game lore wise? It seems interesting in terms of the overall story but are you the character involved in the thick of things day in day out?

Also, I'm sad Varian died, he was my favorite.

 

Don't have favourites, they'll just crush you by character assassinating them.

I don't find the game a particularly good vehicle to deliver the lore. I recommend the Warcraft Chronicle book instead (vol 2 out soon).

They're constantly retconning, the Chronicle book is the most up to date source.

 

I've found the lore to be sort of hit or miss, both with the universe itself in general, and the actual game. We've had both the best and worst expansions lorewise in recent years, with Mists of Pandaria having the best story, and Warlords having almost no story at all. So, I would say Legion falls closer to the Mists of Pandaria side of things.

To be honest, I kind of wish Blizzard would actually go through with a proper universe reset. They've played it safe and smart with a few characters like Medan, who've been retconned to not be complete OP steamrollers, but then we have stuff like Void Lords which feel like kind of a cop out. It doesn't help that a lot of the main characters are just boring. Like, Vol'jin did pretty much fuck all last expansion, so why should I really have cared about him? And someone like Jaina, who is pretty much as generic as generic comes, I just don't like at all. I just find it hard to care about some of these people, so when they finally meet their end, it doesn't bother me. And don't even get me started on Wrathion.

 

Heh.

Anyways, most of the leveling and questing you do in game before end game is tied veeeeery loosely to lore. Once in a while you get some cinematics in an important quest that's lore based, but endgame raids is where the story is and even then not in every raid.

On the other hand, there's probably add ons that will guide you through the game in such a way that you'll catch all the lore.

Me, I liked WotLK lore. That shit was bad ass. ToC was kinda left field, but fuck it that raid was fun.

 

God. Doing that place 4x a week was a nightmare though in a top 50 world guild. 10 normal 10 heroic 25 normal 25 heroic. And keeping an alt up to par.

It was fun for a while, but it got super monotonous being in that same room for months.

 

I kinda like Wrathion as an idea. He's a non-emo anti-hero that I can totally get behind.

I've not read the Garrosh trial book that probably assassinates his character too, but him as a premise is awesome.

And he looks badass. Evil!Aladdin ftw (even hilariously adorable welp form).