So Battle for Azeroth! Overall quite excited for the new systems and features, though the story seems a little like…maybe there’s some big events but they don’t want to spoil them? At least that’s the feeling I got from their incomplete descriptions of raids and dungeons.
Allied Races
- I got very excited, and then very sad about Lightforged Draenei.
- I’m thinking about maining a warrior just so I can be a Lightforged Draenei. Without legendaries, maintaining two tanks should hopefully be easier (very nearly accomplished it in Legion, only foiled by bad legendary luck and less-than-optimal class balance).
- If I do end up playing warrior, I’ll probably swap my monk to either pandaren or dark iron dwarf.
- Yeah, with a warrior and monk, that means the DH gets left behind. I’ll get my horned/tattooed needs satisfied by the lightforged.
- Or I could convince my guild to go Horde so I can play a Highmountain Tauren monk. With the changes to world pvp (essentially opting in to pvp realms), it’s not totally impractical (besides the money/gold cost).
- I used to be horde. Don’t care for the “for the horde” stuff but I still love tauren.
- I also love the Zandalari aesthetic (reds and golds) and dinosaurs.
- There’s also a lot of druid classes on Horde side now…
Early Tank Changes
- damage reduction % changed to armor increase %, which ties it closer to item level (brewmaster is still % based, but stagger is weird)
- magic damage reduction is greatly reduced (magic is supposed to be the thing that scares tanks)
- self healing is greatly reduced (healers are supposed to heal tanks sometimes)
- Honestly it’s too early for me to come up with any sort of conclusion, though I do approve of the constant effort to make tanks depend on their healers for healing. It’s also good to see that all tanks might care about armor on their gear like druids do now.
Trivial Artifact Appearance Questions/Concerns
- (which in my world are the most important things)
- Will brewmasters still have that awesome over-the-shoulder animation when they transmog their new staves/polearms with Fu Zan?
- Will feral and guardian druids ever be able to transmog into their artifact claws/dagger appearances, considering they can’t actually dual-wield and are unlikely to pick up new fist weapons or daggers?
- Will glaives still be a thing for demon hunters in raids, since there are the only two specs that use them and they have other options, unlike hunters with bows?
Heart of Azeroth Questions/Concerns
- Will we end up carrying around like 4 different helms, shoulders, and chest, each with slightly different configurations?
- How many traits will there be total for each spec? Will it be a large pool, so you’re unlikely to get favorite traits? Or small pool, where you can expect to get favorites?
- What’s the aim for power? Less than a legendary, more than an artifact trait?
- Most judgement depends on what the effects actually are..