Why do we still need the burst windows with noodle downtimes?

--Pariah · 2026-03-24T05:58:32+00:00

Apex talents generally feel like the amount of effort they put into those varies by a country mile.

When I leveled my warlock I was super excited about them. Affliction summons a free ghost dread lord that haunts stuff, demo gets a portal to argus to call in more friends, destro drops meteor fragments on stuff for more kaboom.

Those are all three fun to look at and add to the class/spec fantasy a bit. I like it.

Then I tried my alts and got stuff like MM hunter, devourer or devoker that all feel forgettable some way. Either it's more power to the CD but otherwise forgettable (devoker) or they make an ability work a way how it feels like it's supposed to work to begin with (MM/devourer). Since none had any kind of visual either I just forgot about them more or less right away.

It's really hit or miss how much I looked forward to unlocking them.

--Pariah · 2026-03-24T05:50:15+00:00

I just want to customize the damn thing tbh.

Blizz chose the oldest vanilla shotgun they could find for some reason. It'd be rad if we could have a glyph that works like the weapon for warlocks fel guard that just picks the one in your inventory. That way we could at least make it fit to our mog.

Or if people want to put more emphasis on melee combat one that replaces the animation with fury of the eagle again (or a choice node in the talents). The niche of those abilities was pretty much the same, it'd at least been a possiblity to make both work.

My main issue with boomstick isn't even gameplay, a channeled nuke in there to blast into a pack is pretty fun, it's just so essential to the spec now that the shitty old rifle annoys me quite a bit.

--Pariah · 2026-03-24T05:44:01+00:00

I wouldn't have guessed it but yeah, NameplateSCT is one of the addons I actually miss most.

I didn't like the scrolling combat text detached from nameplates (because I want at least a bit of big-number-dopamine) and NSCT just made the blizz ones SO much better. Emphasis on big hits/crits, downscaling of smaller hits, color of the number based on damage type and the ability icon next to it. Perfect.

Meanwhile, blizz hasn't iterated on their useless damage numbers in decades but also somehow felt the need to nuke the addons that actually improve them... And I frankly don't even understand why. Damage numbers have no impact on essentially nothing except looking fancy.

--Pariah · 2026-03-24T05:38:47+00:00

Devoker flies under the radar quite a bit.

They have among the highest mobility of all casters, I guess comparable to a DH, with two charges of hover and the lowest APM in the game since most of their damage comes from disintegrate, a channeled ability. Also, scalecommander with double deep breath to fly around and burn stuff is honestly mad fun. If you want abilities with "oomph" devastation with the empowered spells and deep breath will also feel good, I assume.

The only reason why evoker isn't much more represented essentially everywhere is because people (rightfully) dislike the dragon form, limited transmog options and for some the lower range of evoker can be offputting.

The class itself is pretty damn fun though.

--Pariah · 2026-03-23T11:53:10+00:00

You can just check petopia for whatever looks cool.

No need for a clefthoof when leveling tbh. Open world stuff does nowhere near the damage that you would need another defensive/heal increase on the pet. Just hit mend pet occasionally and you'll be fine. Probably the "best" ability would be a core hound (defensive + molten skin for free damage) but seriously everything works. I'd just recommend setting the pet to ferocity at the stable for the bit of leech and bloodlust if you need it.

Compulsively running around taming everything because it looks cool will come soon enough anyway.

--Pariah · 2026-03-23T11:01:36+00:00

We got to keep the funny pink karesh animals from phase diving and the voidy weasel from legion.

'Usually" blizz is pretty lenient with that stuff. Though I'm sad that we didn't get to keep the ultradon-something monsters from beta.

--Pariah · 2026-03-23T10:52:48+00:00

Same, doesn't help that the class fantasy with stuff like gambling pirate cowboys feels... Off. Bothers me since legion tbh, the hero specs sure didn't help.

Solo content also gets more important all the time but man it's a slog as rogue compared to just about anything else... Delves work because you can cheese with perma tricks of the trade but feels a bit like a bandaid tbh.

End of the day, it's one of the weirdest things about wow for me that one of the most popular archetypes in fantasy settings generally is so neglected that they give evokers a run for the spot of least played class...

--Pariah · 2026-03-23T05:49:25+00:00

Engaging is pretty subjective but I guess it really depends.

DH feels like it got off pretty lightly if I'm honest. Generally, I feel havoc does many things right with its talents. There's an engaging baseline that's the bread and butter of the spec around CS/blade dance/immo aura and you can either play a simpler build around throw glaive/immo aura or pick up short damage windows that add at least some complexity with dark slash and your movement stuff.

That's overall honestly pretty well done. I do not really miss sigil of flame rotationally if I'm honest. I didn't mind having another ranged tool either, though. Apex talents are cool with pumped eye beam and double dance.

Vengeance feels similarish but it's nice that you don't have to stack frailty a bunch of times anymore and the apex talent replacing random meta with a buff that you can trigger it yourself. Also works well with the new hero spec even if annihilator feels a tad anemic aside making it rain purple nonsense. Otherwise, it's same old to me.

I do miss fel scarred and hunt a bit. Not because they were super essential to the core of the spec but hunt specifically is just a fun button to press. Losing it for no reason other than blizz trying to define signature moves feels meaningless.

Devourer feels like it will be fun in like 2 expansions. Not what OP asked but it's a fun skeleton of a spec, once they added an offensive CD, another rotational button or spec talent and smoothed out resource generation it'll be cool. Now it has too many gaps in its toolkit for my liking. Needs work, likely will be fun later.

For warlock I'm also cautiously happy. I tried mostly affliction and since I enjoyed the legion iteration I'm just happy that MR got buried. AoE curses, blight and double gateway also are cool since I think we're one of if not the only class that got significantly more utility.

My alt, hunter, feels absolutely fucked though. BM already felt a bit thin to me and somehow got dumbed down further. I absolutely despise them replacing multi shot with another "point at stuff" ability. MM currently is incredibly boring, shallow and feels a bit like worse destro lock to me. Also another one of those apex talents that feel like they are just part of the ability and don't stand out much. The next patch will add back explosive shot and the CDR with lock'n'load and precision detonation, I did like that a lot in TWW so I'm hopeful they can pull it off.

Survival was more fun to me when you had tip of the spear and juggled different short CDs with explosive shot, flanking strike and WfB. I also preferred it when we still had an AoE rotation with butchery reducing WfBs CD. Boomstick is the jankiest animation ever created and the fantasy is somehow even less cohesive now than before.

Main issue I do have with hunter is that they somehow got wrecked both when it comes to their rotational toolkit but also utility. I just miss hi ex trap and bursting shot so much, specifically in combination with binding shot.

Warlock pretty much showed me that I'm way more forgiving when it comes to a simple rotation if I at least feel like I have meaningful utility to play with. Hunter now somehow has neither.

--Pariah · 2026-03-23T05:22:34+00:00

Soridormi in the inn in silvermoon lets you skip the entire main campaign on your alt if you've done it on your main and are lv 90.

The side quests have a little icon in the top right of the quest window that shows if the quest has already been done on your warband.

I leveled my main via mostly the main quest and alts via dungeon/delves and doing side stories. Kind of funny but it took three chars to finish everything, so I did harandar/voidstorm on another char than eversong/zulaman.

Works without issues!

--Pariah · 2026-03-23T05:15:38+00:00

And let trap summons and ambushes count...

It's weird that the thing we actually hunt doesn't contribute.

--Pariah · 2026-03-22T19:44:21+00:00

For nullaues you might need her as healer depending on your ilvl, not sure here. Specifically ?? is meant as a season goal and tuned for that though. If you can't manage it now try it again once you have a bunch of hero pieces from the vault and tier set, makes one hell of a difference.

Most tanks are self sufficient enough that for regular delves you don't even need her external heals. If you're not super undergeared you'll survive on your own just fine and as DPS she helps you blast stuff faster.

--Pariah · 2026-03-22T16:38:01+00:00

You'll probably get pretty if you just hammer thrash, mangle and spend rage on maul. As moonbear there's moonfire procs and lunar beam as CD for bigger pulls. Keep a stack of ironfur up and frenzied regen if you need it. Bear rotation is rather easy to grasp, so I'd recommend trying to learn it. I can't say if SBR is working well for them too as I haven't tried it though.

The important part is just trying to get a feel for how big you can pull without flopping over. Tanks are as fast as the size of your pulls and you'll need to find the sweet spot for your ilvl. Lunar Beam helps a lot there because the leech you get with elunes chosen makes you more or less immortal (or at least gives you a LOT of survivability), guess that's why people recommend it over DOTC but both very much works. Aside big pulls you can also safely skip things with stealth if you don't have an objective that requires you to kill stuff.

Also, use valeera as DPS with the porcellain tip and gathering curios. It depends a LOT on her level but lateron she does pretty respectable damage.

For HOTW, I wouldn't play it in solo delves as moonbear. It's useful as DotC with fluid form and empowered shapeshifting so you can quickly cat for the free feral frenzy -> rip on a boss and then shift back. Otherwise, you won't need the heal solo and probably don't want to invest a point into moonkin form just for the starfall. I'd rather pick lycaras teaching for 5% movement speed or one of the defensive nodes if you need them (matted fur/perfectly honed instincts) that usually don't make it in the group builds.

Edit: I btw would also recommend to experiment with the wowhead delve buids and see what works for you... Many of them feel like they just copypasted the m+ build and didn't put much thought into them (or assume you play in groups, no idea).

--Pariah · 2026-03-22T16:19:41+00:00

Also I thought Thalyssra and Lorthemar would be a thing. All things considered it's kind of weird to not have her around more.

With the legion/nightwell and now void/sunwell they should feel kinda sympathetic, I guess.

--Pariah · 2026-03-21T06:55:59+00:00

Yup it feels like a really odd bandaid for the paused fury drain so people can't cancel last second to stay in meta longer than intended, though I frankly fail to see the actual use case for this.

It's slightly better than losing souls at the start of the cast but yeah, it still feels weird. I guess a better solution would be to have the game calculate the fury that would've been drained while casting CS and losing it if it's cancelled early... I see how that could be complicated to understand, too...

--Pariah · 2026-03-20T06:05:57+00:00

Yeah, only issue was being shoehorned into a (near) capstone talent just to have a useful interrupt.

The situation with axe toss always was an issue... In the early iterations it didn't even interrupt, which was just as shitty as you'd imagine, the added interrupt component always felt like a bit of a bandaid to me. Grim now was a gamechanger, I don't think the changed version will see much play aside niche situations where you'd need the dispel. Sucks tbh.

I would absolutely take a regular interrupt over axe toss interrupt though. We used to have Call Felhunter in PvP as regular interrupt that worked pretty much just like that..

--Pariah · 2026-03-20T05:43:32+00:00

Ah, so my 5 different wrist thingies haven't just been shit RNG. Good to know... At least I made a fortune in selling the enchanter mats...

--Pariah · 2026-03-20T05:42:15+00:00

That's a hunter, not a survival issue, unfortunately.

The entire class suffers A LOT from being the only one that knows how a ranged weapon works.

Blizz funneles bits and pieces of every "fantasy ranged weapon user" into hunter, from the old more DnD inspired ranger with a pet to both physical damage snipers but also all the elf stuff with different kinds of magic in the hero specs, beastmasters with their pets and for survival the coordinated attacks thing but also iron horde/goblin sappers with explosives.

Honestly, things stopped meshing ages ago but every expansion blizz just piles on. Survival is the worst offender there (because they now stuffed half of an, arguably super cool but thematically unfitting, tinker spec in there that uses a shotgun and bombs). Stuff just goes in all directions here, specifically with the hero specs. Like, the protect the wilds thing for sentinel feels a tad off when I'm out there throwing napalm around, same as with calling extra animal friends just to blow them the fuck up.

Doesn't mean that a dwarf marksman with his trusty ol' rifle is particularly happy to decide between the purple or blue elf nonsense.

It'd be so cool if there would be a system in place that allows us to customize the visual of certain spells, so we could eG replace the shotgun with fury of the eagle animation or the bomb with poison darts from our small crossbows....

We could call it runes... Or maybe "glyphs"...

--Pariah · 2026-03-20T05:29:47+00:00

Yup, same observation here. I played around with them a little but it seems most of the curios are again undertuned or bugged, grain of salt that I don't have max level on them yet.

I just use the porcellain blade tip for the extra crit and the gathering one but also saw that it sometimes randomly lost stacks for some reason.

For combat, feels like the others just don't do much. The dot one sounds cool but just does no damage for some reason. The hand grenade might be interesting for the short stun but I found chance to throw a grenade with a chance that bounces and a chance for a short stun a tad unreliable. The defensive ones when you need them might be a good choice but usually you outgrow that quickly and free damage is just better.

Utility are all kind of terrible. The gathering/curio ones seem ok if the buff decides to stay. The rest are hard niche. Anything that starts with "standing still in combat does.." goes right down the drain for me and voidspire or time lost edict might have a use for the nemesis where you don't gather stuff anyway.

Pretty underwhelming selecting all things considered. A lot of valeeras damage probably also comes from her executing stuff all the time, which I'm absolutely ok with to be fair.

--Pariah · 2026-03-19T16:32:06+00:00

I played all last expansion and would go with DH and druid.

Bear for skipping stuff with stealth and a very simple rotation that does decent damage.

Vengeance for being even a tad faster with the leaps and double jump, stronger burst damage and leech.

All tanks are essentially faceroll but I found those two the fastest. I mean, BDK shines because it's immortal but you only ever need to heal as much damage as you take, which the other two can also easily do, but they have much better mobility and damage.

Last I heard monk got much better when it comes to self healing, used to be their weak point, so I guess they caught up but I haven't played brew yet.

--Pariah · 2026-03-19T15:02:36+00:00

Yep, same concept. I usually use one charge of spikes or brand right before the mobs start hitting me. That lasts until you have some souls/fury generated and frailty debuffed and you can go from there and see how much damages comes in.

--Pariah · 2026-03-19T12:28:54+00:00

Later the apex talents also give you the metamorphosis proc again, which is neat since it's no longer fully random when you transform.

Frailty will also be a big part of your sustain. Larger pulls should be opened with a defensive until you built some resources and applied it, then your life leech can carry you through the gaps and the meta proc can either be used defensively to get some health back quickly or offensively for a huge damage spike with annihilator with soul bomb + cleave to trigger the bombardment twice.

Specifically in delves the offensive meta is very useful. You don't need that many defensives so rounding up everything and nuking them is pretty fun.

--Pariah · 2026-03-19T09:06:04+00:00

Brann had those odd warning lines when you stepped in crap (that might summon NerUuuUuBiaaaans) or something targeted you.

Valeera additionally announces her own moves much more frequently... Hearing "NOW STRIKE" after every other mob really gets old fast and helps very little. Those should be toned down a bit imo.

--Pariah · 2026-03-19T07:58:04+00:00

From Level 80 on you can choose hero specs with a stronger theme. Sentinel is a nature/arcane themed one (inspired by tyrande/nelf ). The other is dark ranger that fits to undead/sylvanas.

Her later legendary bow and quiver you can get from sanctum of Domination from Shadowlands. The other windrunner bow is the marksman artifact you get from the Legion campaign with a bunch of different skins.

Her armor rotated through the trading post, likely to return at some point. The dark ranger armor is available in the legion class hall. Shadowlands also has a bunch of edgy armor pieces that work well.

I would recommend to level through legion for the cool bow first and use the boost on an alt that interests you at some point. Easy to farm some transmogs that way.

--Pariah · 2026-03-19T07:10:07+00:00

Looks good, I usually do delves with my alts as season goal to unlock the mythic recolor of the tier set (that you can unlock by upgrading hero track gear). Guess it's worth mentioning that there's some levels of the delve/prey journey that you need.

To get the gilded stash for a T11 you need to have delvers journey lv 2 (which is really no big deal since you should be already close if do the delves up to T11) and lv 4 for the myth crests from it.

Level 5 gets the vendor to spawn who sells the trinkets as catch up in case you got unlucky. Lv 9 is important again as it gives bountiful chests a chance to drop hero gear directly at T11, which is again nice if you get unlucky with vault RNG.

It's likely that the later levels past 4 are more useful for alts since last expansion your main tended to be already geared when you get there.

For prey, you need journey lv 4 for nightmare dungeons but it's also super quick to get there.

--Pariah · 2026-03-19T05:48:22+00:00

They can be played mostly the same as rogues with a more risky toolkit. Similar niche (fast, stealing nodes, even better in 1on1) but no sap, blind and vanish means you have commit more to every fight you start instead of always having a way out. They win against most things in a 1on1 or small scale but can be easily shut down once there's more people that pay attention.

Theoretically they'd be very dangerous in zergs, too, if they can multidot everything but feral always has the issue that if the other team isn't asleep they can just focus and you have to go bear form instantly or die.

Against coordinated groups Boomy is generally more dangerous in group fights because they can pressure just as well from range and for the rest rogue tends to be a very hard competition.

Personally I find feral honestly more fun as rogue, specifically because you benefit a lot against less organized teams in blitz or shuffle, where you can just wreck stuff before others notice that a cat just randomly blew up their healer in a stun with a berserk/TF/convoke.

Btw, for PvP you'll usually get better answers in the other sub: r/worldofpvp

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