Pattern
Phoenix
Good morning all, My name is Pattern, a humble pug, but longtime twink enthusiast. This thread is simply my rants and ramblings about the findings of my own Sims, tests, and Beta-Play.
EVERYTHING is subject to change, and nothing is EVER set in stone. That aside, these are my idea's on what we will be generally looking at in the realm of serious class/spec power shifts come WoD and the shift to the new merged brackets, specifically for this thread, the 29 bracket.
Some of this information is posted on Conq's thread, as I typed a giant wall of text and then after posting thought to myself, why the hell not just create a giant thread going through my ideas for all classes and specs? So here we go.
Druids get to go first.
Balance: The major balance change is one passive ability, Shooting Stars. A 5% chance on DoT from Moonfire or Sunfire, doubled chance for crits (10%), which restores a charge of Starsurge. Well then, thats gonna be quite big damage wise for Balance, sadly I havent tested it on Beta, but nonetheless, Tgod is sure to be happy. Other than that, Balance Glyphs are lackluster at best, most are simply utility or playstyle related, none give any huge dps increase, a noteworthy survivability increase will be Glyph of Moonwarding, taking away the extra armor from Moonkin Form and instead increasing Max health by 10%.
Next comes Resto.
Resto: Woohoo! Resto seems to be in a quite happy place come WoD, with 2 new abilities, Healing Touch (meh), and LIVING SEED! I have tested the seed of life and my god it is potent, a huge boost to healing here. As for some other cool things Resto will be getting to be Tree's again! Glyphs are again lackluster, no huge bonuses, many playstyle defined and utility based (Glyph of Entangling Roots, etc). Glyph of Effloresence is interesting, due to the 20% boost to Swiftmend's healing, but it is a full loss of AoE heals, another interesting personal survivability glyph is Shapemender, giving you 5% max health every time you shift, which can be maxxed depending on playstyle. Glyph of Regrowth might just be the go-to talent for pure heals, as it makes Regrowth 100% crit chance, which is a 11.2% gain over the HoT (assuming your running a low crit build, ex. spirit build for premade healing).
Skipping Guardian as its completely lackluster with its glyphs being barf and its new abilities doing almost nothing, as a tank, it might be viable but I firmly hold the opinion of resto druid fc's.
Feral: Passive Crit increase by 10%, good shit. But thats not the big guns of this spec at all, welcome to Predatory Swiftness. Self heals will be off the charts, and if played right, this spec will be known as the rogue killer for all time. With the combination of FF and Predatory Swiftness free cast roots, the utility of ferals against rogues is unreal, as well as now being cemented as a hard hitting and hard to kill badass. And if the self heals and roots cant keep you alive, the new glyph Ninth Life sure as hell can, adding a whopping 10% OVERALL damage reduction passively while in kitty form. Glyph of Cat Form is also interesting, tested it and the self heals are quite potent. Calculated, it lags behind Ninth Life in maximized manner by 2.4% overall. But im sure on release that will have changed.
Hunter comes next. Overall, in a strange place, and as I didnt get to test much of it, I cant give too much concrete ideas on combos besides just looking at the basic skills and linking them together. Your talent will be Posthaste, if you change it, good luck.
BM: Passive Crit increase (10%), but honestly just not that viable of a spec, too pet dependent with lackluster dps otherwise, and the new abilities dont give BM much of anything, Freezing Trap has a role to play that ill explain later.
MM: Oh my lord. Welcome to the land of 1 shot. My advice for MM, run Glyph of No Escape, it gives you 100% crit chance on any enemy in your Freezing Trap, yeah the ability that you get at 28, then Aimed Shot, and act as if you have skill. running 306% Physical damage, with a full glasscannon build you should be in the range of 1 shot (2kish damage, maybe a bit less)
I will have to test this myself, but im speculating that we will all start needing to trink FT immediately or risk some serious damage.
Surv: Still might be the best overall dps choice, getting a solid 10% multistrike chance increase, with a cool side survivability boost of 15% health every kill. I would still take No Escape as your glyph, rest are lackluster, survivability at best, useless at worst. I havent tested so only time or some other person with a beta key will tell.
Mage!
Arcane: Test it yourself, Im of the opinion that its still garbage, relies too much on stack casting, with limited burst and is all around not viable.
Fire: Oh boy. We all might finally be able to get some fun fire play in here, with the addition of Scorch ability, fire gets a huge mobility increase, and has a quick cast which it can link with Inferno Blast for stacking pyro procs. Glyphs are disappointing as fuck for damage, as in nothing. BUT possibly the best survivability glyph ive seen in a while. Glyph of Regenerative Ice, while in Iceblock, you regain 4% max health a second! 40% health right there, say hello to a very very solid survivability boost. The only noteworthy thing here is scorch, remove curse is simply utility (useful, but meh) and cone of cold gives you a utility slow, no real damage boosts there.
Frost: Same spec, no serious changes, cone of cold! yay... I guess. Regenerative Ice is still R1 glyph to take as anything else is situational or just purely lackluster. Your talent will be blazing speed, if you change it your a turnip. I havent, repeat, HAVENT tested glyph of cone of cold, but it shouldnt have much effect, other than that, Glyph of Frost Nova is 2nd choice after RIce, but still, lackluster at best.
Monk, the class that I know almost nothing about play-wise, never played one, only against em. Here are some very basic thoughts.
BrewMaster: Oh lord, they get Guard, a huge damage reduction, and Expel Harm, both quite useful, and they might make BM one of the best FC's out there. Glyph wise, go Rapid Rolling or Freedom Roll, both are incredible mobility increases, and will probably be the difference between life and death as fc. Rest are meh, minor surv boosts here and there, noteworthy is Glyph of Breath of Fire for an extra 3 second disorientate.
MW: No idea, someone else will have to take this one on, you get Expel Harm, other than that, I cant say much as I have no idea how the spec works twink-wise.
WW: Disable. That is all. Why Blizz chose to give you Hamstring, I will never know. Why it also does an 8 second root on top of that is a mystery to me. Take glyph of fists of fury for a surv increase, otherwise, just go with the same glyphs as Brewmaster so you can move even faster and ignore more snares/slows!
Big Guns here. Paladin. Been waiting for this one.
Prot: Oh boy, I feel like a kid on christmas. Stupid. So unfair its unreal. I dont understand anymore. Here it is, tested in its glory. "What should I do as a prot pally pattern?!", Dont worry all you have to do is 4 simple things. Run Glyph of Harsh Words. Run up to enemy, hit Crusader Strike, Judgement, Avengers Shield, and Word of Glory. If they arnt dead by then (because thats around 2k-3k damage) something is incredibly wrong. "How will I gear Pattern?", Your going to run a full crit build, just like your level 70. That was my rant, here is the theory. Introducing, Bladed Armor, increase of attack power = to your bonus armor, then look at Guarded by the light, which makes you gain equal spell power to attack power as well as making Word of Glory INSTANT CAST and NO LONGER ON GCD. Combined with the new passive Judgements of the wise (Judgement grants a charge of holy power), its just faceroll. Glyph of Harsh Words allows use of Word of Glory as an offensive ability, EQUAL TO THE AMOUNT OF HEALING IT WOULD DO OTHERWISE. That means in the span of 3 gcd's, you can build 2 Holy power, run a 1k sheild, with a 3 second silence, AND add on another 1k Word of Glory. Damage, silence, damage, gg.
Ret: Worthless. Maybe thats mean, worthless compared to damage of Prot. If you want to theorycraft it, be my guest, but the gain is minimal in the move to 29, and the glyphs just arnt on the level of Harsh Words combined with GbtL.
Holy: Great heals, great surv, and the old niche returned, Shockadins! If you run the Glyph of Holy Shock, you will be having a pretty good time doing solid burst damage every 6 seconds with Holy Shock. You will also get Holy Radiance, an AoE heal, mostly meh, and Divine Prot, a new Defensive CD, which is a great bonus (this also applies to prot and ret, just forgot to add it for them).
Priest, my main, and a class I took a good look at from all sides. To begin, revamped talents! No more pet fears or psychic scream which is a sob story, but instead you get to choose between a huge on use surv boost, a smaller passive surv boost, or a utility vanish, which is my personal choice and is fully badass.
Shadow: This is another rant spec, not as bad as prot but eh, still. We start with the gain of a utility dispel, a solid gain, but the real gain here is in Vamp Touch, a dps boost with a utility fear build in for all those nasty healers that like to dispel their fc's/dps. Solid ability gain there, but still not the real rantable changes. Those changes lie in the glyphs, which is where most of my rantings will stem from. Get to know and hate Glyph of Mind Harvest. "The first time you damage enemy with Mind Blast, you gain 2 additional orb"..... wait..... 2 ADDITIONAL ORBS?!?!??! Is this real? That means for the slow ones out there that my spriest will hit you with MB, and then have 3 orbs. Yes, 3. That means I will one shot you in the time of 2 gcds. Better hope your a prot pally that can run a silence burst kill fast enough or your toasted like a cinnamon bun. Nothing will beat that talent if it stays this way, but other choices are Reflective Shield, 70% damage reflection, which is pretty badass, and Glyph of Mind Blast, giving MB a 6 second root, also pretty badass and kinda makes up for fear loss, kinda.
Disc: Nothing new here, you get a dispel, whoopie! Your glyph choices range from dps (Reflective Shield) to extra healing or mobility boost with Glyph of Penance.
Holy: Revamped for better healing, havent tested but should become viable because of nerf on absorbs. Still have HW:Chastise which is a nice utility ability, and you get RENEW! which makes your healing just skyrocket, and makes up for those silly druids getting rejuv. Glyphs are lackluster, I would try out Glyph of Renew possibly or just run pure extra heals with Glyph of Power Word Shield. Overall, a Brave New World for Holy.
Rogues, Nothing new here, really. Not that exciting, but ill run through it anyways. Your talents didnt change, You got sprint, cool. Your glyphs are all utility or surv, I would honestly go with the ones related to Evasion as they seem to give the biggest bonuses out of anything. But, my one real idea here is to run Glyph of Energy (max energy increased by 20) and then go Blood Elf, line it up for Ambush Mut racial mut even. Should be a nice insta kill, without using Thistle Tea.
Asa: Same shit, different xpac.
Combat: ^
Sub: I had some strange ideas for Sub. With introduction of multistrike, subs bleed ticks are sped up, refreshed, and then multi-tick with actually is seeming to be substantial damage. So run Subterfuge, hemo, slice becuase with new ability you gain 8 energy every 2 seconds with slice active,then ambush (this is only with 120 energy glyph), then run hemo, hemo, evis.
You are then multi-ticking 4 different bleeds, have a slice n dice up, and get a 4 point evis in, plus poison application and you still have the Master of Sub 10% damage bonus on for this, as well as find weakness. Just some thoughts.
Shamans: Same talents, your also getting Earthbind totem for a nice snare, and chain lightening, which will be a "lets wait and see" kind of ability. Certain specs also get some cool stuff which ill go into specifically.
Resto: You finally got earth shield, congrats. Your glyphs are free choice, im sure someone else will figure out the exact numerical value for best glyph based to bonus healing, or bonus surv. You have a slow, bonus to surv, besides that, nothing much has changed for ya.
Ele: Nothing changed, you got an aoe chain lightening, cool. The slow is a surv boost against melee, I would look into Glyph of Thunder for more knockbacks, or into Glyph of Lightening Shield for extra surv.
Enhance: Oh boy. Big shit here. You guys finally got Stormstrike. And who said Enh was worthless? You got a slow that means you have way more ToT, which equates to higher overall damage. Glyph wise, nothing jumps at me, but your new playstyle will be, slow, SS, and then Earth Shock. Should put out some nice numbers, and will be a great arena burst.
Warlock, Fun in the sun here. Overall you have no change to talents, and you gain ability wise a Felhunter pet (anti-caster machine here we come) and you get a passive health regen but only while not in combat/arena, useless.
Afflic: Meh, havent tested viability, but im just gonna say outright that the dotting wont work, too slow paced and not bursty enough, on a different note, Drain Life might become quite the overpowered little ability healing wise if you Stack Harvest Life talent and Glyph of Drain Life for a whopping 27% health restore over 6 second drain, big surv boost. No glyphs really stick out, or look especially appealing.
Destro: Nothing new, same talents, forced to take Dark Regen, you get a felhunter and stupid passive, look into Glyph of Healthstone for surv boost, or Glyph of Conflag if you need a quick snare without the build up of immo, very personalized glyphs, not exactly good, fully lackluster.
Demo: Whew. This might be viable. I know, crazy things do happen. Of course this is, like basically everything, glyph related. Lets all take a look at Glyph of Wild Imps. Summons 4 imps, casting 10 firebolts each, each firebolt with 8% chance to make Soul Fire 50% less mana and 50% less cast time, as well as generating 8 Demonic Fury. Soul Fire is auto crit, and crit stacking drastically increases its damage, as well as the fact that if you run Meta with neverending Demo Fury, Demo might actually hit kinda hard! Havent tested, this is pure idea, but with the addition of a new passive that gives pets 20% more damage the damage could, I repeat, COULD, be viable.
Last but not least, Warrior. I love this class, I still run it as my raiding main, have since Vanilla. Charge got revamped. We are all sad yes, but this simply means that we are forced to take Warbringer. If you can stand to give up the stun, which I doubt most can, run Double Time.
Arms: Fully viable. I tested it, damage is subject to change but seems fine and execute is just plain, excuse my french, fucked in the head. Its a free 1 shot at 20% gg. Rend is no joke, great damage. Whirlwind is good shit, I forgot to test pure sim numbers against Hstrike, but its the difference between No GCD, and GCD. WE DONT HAVE HAMSTRING! Your only hope is to run Thunder Clap, which is some bullshit. Glyph of Mortal Strike. Nothing else comes close, I tested the Thunder Clap glyph and its just not all there yet, could change. Rest are bullshit or unusable, Enraged speed would be cool if we had on use enrage, but alas we dont. No need for Unending rage cause were not pooling rage anyways so you should never be rage capped.
Fury: Didnt test, heard it was shit but Im not here to gossip, Im here to offer slightly substantial ideas based to my own tests and napkin math. So this is what I noticed. We didnt get Raging Blow. Huge dps hit, Wild strike is meh, bloodthirst is shit. Piercing Howl is a great snare, but it cant cover all the holes the spec has at this level.
Prot: Alright. Bladed Armor is gonna be a cool thing to see when fully geared. Big AP boost. Shield Slam here is gonna be the killer. Your going to run Glyph of Heavy Repercussions (this isnt new to many, but check out the fun little twist im gonna add). Your going to be stacking Crit and Haste, I havent run full sims to give me an actual numerical value of what you want to stack more of and what gear therefore will be BiS, but the idea here is, with the new passive Headlong Rush, Haste reduces all Gcd, and Cd on shield slam. With the glyph, SS hits for 50% more damage. Damage percentage running based on AP, which you get an 100% boost from Bladed Armor based on bonus armor gains. When Shield Slam crits, you get a FREE charge of Heroic Strike (off GCD) which is a Guaranteed crit. Most of that isnt new besides the value of haste, but heres where it gets really fun. Your new ability is Devastate (lvl 26), which runs at 200% physical damage, and has a 30% chance to RESET CD of Shield Slam! And cause it to generate 5 more rage. which means more Hstrikes, off of GCD. Looking forward to see the full damage output here, but my god those SS's are gonna hurt, especially on Insta Procs.
There it is. Its a long wall of text. Take your time, If you made it this far, I salute you. I have also been testing chants and looking at gear models and new scaling as well, but will be keeping that to myself for a little longer, might publish my findings at a later date, Chantele has been publishing some good stuff on the 10s bracket threads.
If you have questions, comments, or anything else you would like to speak about, just comment away, and send a private message if you would like to talk about the viability of your class/spec or want me to personally look at a specific class/spec that you feel I didnt cover broadly enough or in the way that suits you. Any serious ideas about different playstyles, viability of certain glyphs, or damage numbers, just comment away.
This is my first thread, and it is quite plain and quite long, so feel free to leave constructive criticism about how better to organize the information, because I could use it.
I myself will be maining my spriest, and probably messing around with a shockadin, I really want to try SS Enhance as well, but only time will tell if I have the patience to gear.
On a side note, I would love to see more people in the 10s bracket, US side, because with the new changes in WoD that bracket is going to be soooo fun. Oh and dont be that guy who levels to 29 right now and then later realizes that all of his gear was better at 24 scaled up and that his new abilities mean nothing. If you know for certain that your gonna be better at 29, do it. Otherwise, chill out, read threads like this, and wait for WoD, THEN make the decision to switch.
All the best, Pattern
EVERYTHING is subject to change, and nothing is EVER set in stone. That aside, these are my idea's on what we will be generally looking at in the realm of serious class/spec power shifts come WoD and the shift to the new merged brackets, specifically for this thread, the 29 bracket.
Some of this information is posted on Conq's thread, as I typed a giant wall of text and then after posting thought to myself, why the hell not just create a giant thread going through my ideas for all classes and specs? So here we go.
Druids get to go first.
Balance: The major balance change is one passive ability, Shooting Stars. A 5% chance on DoT from Moonfire or Sunfire, doubled chance for crits (10%), which restores a charge of Starsurge. Well then, thats gonna be quite big damage wise for Balance, sadly I havent tested it on Beta, but nonetheless, Tgod is sure to be happy. Other than that, Balance Glyphs are lackluster at best, most are simply utility or playstyle related, none give any huge dps increase, a noteworthy survivability increase will be Glyph of Moonwarding, taking away the extra armor from Moonkin Form and instead increasing Max health by 10%.
Next comes Resto.
Resto: Woohoo! Resto seems to be in a quite happy place come WoD, with 2 new abilities, Healing Touch (meh), and LIVING SEED! I have tested the seed of life and my god it is potent, a huge boost to healing here. As for some other cool things Resto will be getting to be Tree's again! Glyphs are again lackluster, no huge bonuses, many playstyle defined and utility based (Glyph of Entangling Roots, etc). Glyph of Effloresence is interesting, due to the 20% boost to Swiftmend's healing, but it is a full loss of AoE heals, another interesting personal survivability glyph is Shapemender, giving you 5% max health every time you shift, which can be maxxed depending on playstyle. Glyph of Regrowth might just be the go-to talent for pure heals, as it makes Regrowth 100% crit chance, which is a 11.2% gain over the HoT (assuming your running a low crit build, ex. spirit build for premade healing).
Skipping Guardian as its completely lackluster with its glyphs being barf and its new abilities doing almost nothing, as a tank, it might be viable but I firmly hold the opinion of resto druid fc's.
Feral: Passive Crit increase by 10%, good shit. But thats not the big guns of this spec at all, welcome to Predatory Swiftness. Self heals will be off the charts, and if played right, this spec will be known as the rogue killer for all time. With the combination of FF and Predatory Swiftness free cast roots, the utility of ferals against rogues is unreal, as well as now being cemented as a hard hitting and hard to kill badass. And if the self heals and roots cant keep you alive, the new glyph Ninth Life sure as hell can, adding a whopping 10% OVERALL damage reduction passively while in kitty form. Glyph of Cat Form is also interesting, tested it and the self heals are quite potent. Calculated, it lags behind Ninth Life in maximized manner by 2.4% overall. But im sure on release that will have changed.
Hunter comes next. Overall, in a strange place, and as I didnt get to test much of it, I cant give too much concrete ideas on combos besides just looking at the basic skills and linking them together. Your talent will be Posthaste, if you change it, good luck.
BM: Passive Crit increase (10%), but honestly just not that viable of a spec, too pet dependent with lackluster dps otherwise, and the new abilities dont give BM much of anything, Freezing Trap has a role to play that ill explain later.
MM: Oh my lord. Welcome to the land of 1 shot. My advice for MM, run Glyph of No Escape, it gives you 100% crit chance on any enemy in your Freezing Trap, yeah the ability that you get at 28, then Aimed Shot, and act as if you have skill. running 306% Physical damage, with a full glasscannon build you should be in the range of 1 shot (2kish damage, maybe a bit less)
I will have to test this myself, but im speculating that we will all start needing to trink FT immediately or risk some serious damage.
Surv: Still might be the best overall dps choice, getting a solid 10% multistrike chance increase, with a cool side survivability boost of 15% health every kill. I would still take No Escape as your glyph, rest are lackluster, survivability at best, useless at worst. I havent tested so only time or some other person with a beta key will tell.
Mage!
Arcane: Test it yourself, Im of the opinion that its still garbage, relies too much on stack casting, with limited burst and is all around not viable.
Fire: Oh boy. We all might finally be able to get some fun fire play in here, with the addition of Scorch ability, fire gets a huge mobility increase, and has a quick cast which it can link with Inferno Blast for stacking pyro procs. Glyphs are disappointing as fuck for damage, as in nothing. BUT possibly the best survivability glyph ive seen in a while. Glyph of Regenerative Ice, while in Iceblock, you regain 4% max health a second! 40% health right there, say hello to a very very solid survivability boost. The only noteworthy thing here is scorch, remove curse is simply utility (useful, but meh) and cone of cold gives you a utility slow, no real damage boosts there.
Frost: Same spec, no serious changes, cone of cold! yay... I guess. Regenerative Ice is still R1 glyph to take as anything else is situational or just purely lackluster. Your talent will be blazing speed, if you change it your a turnip. I havent, repeat, HAVENT tested glyph of cone of cold, but it shouldnt have much effect, other than that, Glyph of Frost Nova is 2nd choice after RIce, but still, lackluster at best.
Monk, the class that I know almost nothing about play-wise, never played one, only against em. Here are some very basic thoughts.
BrewMaster: Oh lord, they get Guard, a huge damage reduction, and Expel Harm, both quite useful, and they might make BM one of the best FC's out there. Glyph wise, go Rapid Rolling or Freedom Roll, both are incredible mobility increases, and will probably be the difference between life and death as fc. Rest are meh, minor surv boosts here and there, noteworthy is Glyph of Breath of Fire for an extra 3 second disorientate.
MW: No idea, someone else will have to take this one on, you get Expel Harm, other than that, I cant say much as I have no idea how the spec works twink-wise.
WW: Disable. That is all. Why Blizz chose to give you Hamstring, I will never know. Why it also does an 8 second root on top of that is a mystery to me. Take glyph of fists of fury for a surv increase, otherwise, just go with the same glyphs as Brewmaster so you can move even faster and ignore more snares/slows!
Big Guns here. Paladin. Been waiting for this one.
Prot: Oh boy, I feel like a kid on christmas. Stupid. So unfair its unreal. I dont understand anymore. Here it is, tested in its glory. "What should I do as a prot pally pattern?!", Dont worry all you have to do is 4 simple things. Run Glyph of Harsh Words. Run up to enemy, hit Crusader Strike, Judgement, Avengers Shield, and Word of Glory. If they arnt dead by then (because thats around 2k-3k damage) something is incredibly wrong. "How will I gear Pattern?", Your going to run a full crit build, just like your level 70. That was my rant, here is the theory. Introducing, Bladed Armor, increase of attack power = to your bonus armor, then look at Guarded by the light, which makes you gain equal spell power to attack power as well as making Word of Glory INSTANT CAST and NO LONGER ON GCD. Combined with the new passive Judgements of the wise (Judgement grants a charge of holy power), its just faceroll. Glyph of Harsh Words allows use of Word of Glory as an offensive ability, EQUAL TO THE AMOUNT OF HEALING IT WOULD DO OTHERWISE. That means in the span of 3 gcd's, you can build 2 Holy power, run a 1k sheild, with a 3 second silence, AND add on another 1k Word of Glory. Damage, silence, damage, gg.
Ret: Worthless. Maybe thats mean, worthless compared to damage of Prot. If you want to theorycraft it, be my guest, but the gain is minimal in the move to 29, and the glyphs just arnt on the level of Harsh Words combined with GbtL.
Holy: Great heals, great surv, and the old niche returned, Shockadins! If you run the Glyph of Holy Shock, you will be having a pretty good time doing solid burst damage every 6 seconds with Holy Shock. You will also get Holy Radiance, an AoE heal, mostly meh, and Divine Prot, a new Defensive CD, which is a great bonus (this also applies to prot and ret, just forgot to add it for them).
Priest, my main, and a class I took a good look at from all sides. To begin, revamped talents! No more pet fears or psychic scream which is a sob story, but instead you get to choose between a huge on use surv boost, a smaller passive surv boost, or a utility vanish, which is my personal choice and is fully badass.
Shadow: This is another rant spec, not as bad as prot but eh, still. We start with the gain of a utility dispel, a solid gain, but the real gain here is in Vamp Touch, a dps boost with a utility fear build in for all those nasty healers that like to dispel their fc's/dps. Solid ability gain there, but still not the real rantable changes. Those changes lie in the glyphs, which is where most of my rantings will stem from. Get to know and hate Glyph of Mind Harvest. "The first time you damage enemy with Mind Blast, you gain 2 additional orb"..... wait..... 2 ADDITIONAL ORBS?!?!??! Is this real? That means for the slow ones out there that my spriest will hit you with MB, and then have 3 orbs. Yes, 3. That means I will one shot you in the time of 2 gcds. Better hope your a prot pally that can run a silence burst kill fast enough or your toasted like a cinnamon bun. Nothing will beat that talent if it stays this way, but other choices are Reflective Shield, 70% damage reflection, which is pretty badass, and Glyph of Mind Blast, giving MB a 6 second root, also pretty badass and kinda makes up for fear loss, kinda.
Disc: Nothing new here, you get a dispel, whoopie! Your glyph choices range from dps (Reflective Shield) to extra healing or mobility boost with Glyph of Penance.
Holy: Revamped for better healing, havent tested but should become viable because of nerf on absorbs. Still have HW:Chastise which is a nice utility ability, and you get RENEW! which makes your healing just skyrocket, and makes up for those silly druids getting rejuv. Glyphs are lackluster, I would try out Glyph of Renew possibly or just run pure extra heals with Glyph of Power Word Shield. Overall, a Brave New World for Holy.
Rogues, Nothing new here, really. Not that exciting, but ill run through it anyways. Your talents didnt change, You got sprint, cool. Your glyphs are all utility or surv, I would honestly go with the ones related to Evasion as they seem to give the biggest bonuses out of anything. But, my one real idea here is to run Glyph of Energy (max energy increased by 20) and then go Blood Elf, line it up for Ambush Mut racial mut even. Should be a nice insta kill, without using Thistle Tea.
Asa: Same shit, different xpac.
Combat: ^
Sub: I had some strange ideas for Sub. With introduction of multistrike, subs bleed ticks are sped up, refreshed, and then multi-tick with actually is seeming to be substantial damage. So run Subterfuge, hemo, slice becuase with new ability you gain 8 energy every 2 seconds with slice active,then ambush (this is only with 120 energy glyph), then run hemo, hemo, evis.
You are then multi-ticking 4 different bleeds, have a slice n dice up, and get a 4 point evis in, plus poison application and you still have the Master of Sub 10% damage bonus on for this, as well as find weakness. Just some thoughts.
Shamans: Same talents, your also getting Earthbind totem for a nice snare, and chain lightening, which will be a "lets wait and see" kind of ability. Certain specs also get some cool stuff which ill go into specifically.
Resto: You finally got earth shield, congrats. Your glyphs are free choice, im sure someone else will figure out the exact numerical value for best glyph based to bonus healing, or bonus surv. You have a slow, bonus to surv, besides that, nothing much has changed for ya.
Ele: Nothing changed, you got an aoe chain lightening, cool. The slow is a surv boost against melee, I would look into Glyph of Thunder for more knockbacks, or into Glyph of Lightening Shield for extra surv.
Enhance: Oh boy. Big shit here. You guys finally got Stormstrike. And who said Enh was worthless? You got a slow that means you have way more ToT, which equates to higher overall damage. Glyph wise, nothing jumps at me, but your new playstyle will be, slow, SS, and then Earth Shock. Should put out some nice numbers, and will be a great arena burst.
Warlock, Fun in the sun here. Overall you have no change to talents, and you gain ability wise a Felhunter pet (anti-caster machine here we come) and you get a passive health regen but only while not in combat/arena, useless.
Afflic: Meh, havent tested viability, but im just gonna say outright that the dotting wont work, too slow paced and not bursty enough, on a different note, Drain Life might become quite the overpowered little ability healing wise if you Stack Harvest Life talent and Glyph of Drain Life for a whopping 27% health restore over 6 second drain, big surv boost. No glyphs really stick out, or look especially appealing.
Destro: Nothing new, same talents, forced to take Dark Regen, you get a felhunter and stupid passive, look into Glyph of Healthstone for surv boost, or Glyph of Conflag if you need a quick snare without the build up of immo, very personalized glyphs, not exactly good, fully lackluster.
Demo: Whew. This might be viable. I know, crazy things do happen. Of course this is, like basically everything, glyph related. Lets all take a look at Glyph of Wild Imps. Summons 4 imps, casting 10 firebolts each, each firebolt with 8% chance to make Soul Fire 50% less mana and 50% less cast time, as well as generating 8 Demonic Fury. Soul Fire is auto crit, and crit stacking drastically increases its damage, as well as the fact that if you run Meta with neverending Demo Fury, Demo might actually hit kinda hard! Havent tested, this is pure idea, but with the addition of a new passive that gives pets 20% more damage the damage could, I repeat, COULD, be viable.
Last but not least, Warrior. I love this class, I still run it as my raiding main, have since Vanilla. Charge got revamped. We are all sad yes, but this simply means that we are forced to take Warbringer. If you can stand to give up the stun, which I doubt most can, run Double Time.
Arms: Fully viable. I tested it, damage is subject to change but seems fine and execute is just plain, excuse my french, fucked in the head. Its a free 1 shot at 20% gg. Rend is no joke, great damage. Whirlwind is good shit, I forgot to test pure sim numbers against Hstrike, but its the difference between No GCD, and GCD. WE DONT HAVE HAMSTRING! Your only hope is to run Thunder Clap, which is some bullshit. Glyph of Mortal Strike. Nothing else comes close, I tested the Thunder Clap glyph and its just not all there yet, could change. Rest are bullshit or unusable, Enraged speed would be cool if we had on use enrage, but alas we dont. No need for Unending rage cause were not pooling rage anyways so you should never be rage capped.
Fury: Didnt test, heard it was shit but Im not here to gossip, Im here to offer slightly substantial ideas based to my own tests and napkin math. So this is what I noticed. We didnt get Raging Blow. Huge dps hit, Wild strike is meh, bloodthirst is shit. Piercing Howl is a great snare, but it cant cover all the holes the spec has at this level.
Prot: Alright. Bladed Armor is gonna be a cool thing to see when fully geared. Big AP boost. Shield Slam here is gonna be the killer. Your going to run Glyph of Heavy Repercussions (this isnt new to many, but check out the fun little twist im gonna add). Your going to be stacking Crit and Haste, I havent run full sims to give me an actual numerical value of what you want to stack more of and what gear therefore will be BiS, but the idea here is, with the new passive Headlong Rush, Haste reduces all Gcd, and Cd on shield slam. With the glyph, SS hits for 50% more damage. Damage percentage running based on AP, which you get an 100% boost from Bladed Armor based on bonus armor gains. When Shield Slam crits, you get a FREE charge of Heroic Strike (off GCD) which is a Guaranteed crit. Most of that isnt new besides the value of haste, but heres where it gets really fun. Your new ability is Devastate (lvl 26), which runs at 200% physical damage, and has a 30% chance to RESET CD of Shield Slam! And cause it to generate 5 more rage. which means more Hstrikes, off of GCD. Looking forward to see the full damage output here, but my god those SS's are gonna hurt, especially on Insta Procs.
There it is. Its a long wall of text. Take your time, If you made it this far, I salute you. I have also been testing chants and looking at gear models and new scaling as well, but will be keeping that to myself for a little longer, might publish my findings at a later date, Chantele has been publishing some good stuff on the 10s bracket threads.
If you have questions, comments, or anything else you would like to speak about, just comment away, and send a private message if you would like to talk about the viability of your class/spec or want me to personally look at a specific class/spec that you feel I didnt cover broadly enough or in the way that suits you. Any serious ideas about different playstyles, viability of certain glyphs, or damage numbers, just comment away.
This is my first thread, and it is quite plain and quite long, so feel free to leave constructive criticism about how better to organize the information, because I could use it.
I myself will be maining my spriest, and probably messing around with a shockadin, I really want to try SS Enhance as well, but only time will tell if I have the patience to gear.
On a side note, I would love to see more people in the 10s bracket, US side, because with the new changes in WoD that bracket is going to be soooo fun. Oh and dont be that guy who levels to 29 right now and then later realizes that all of his gear was better at 24 scaled up and that his new abilities mean nothing. If you know for certain that your gonna be better at 29, do it. Otherwise, chill out, read threads like this, and wait for WoD, THEN make the decision to switch.
All the best, Pattern
a lot of fun with SS. Lets hope 20-29 will be more balanced than 20-24 now. Doesn't look good for the f2ps though ):
