After a week on live, playing properly paying attention and things, on the back of some discussion in this thread I thought such discussion of how we feel things are broadly playing out deserved it’s own thread. I’ll kick off, with some clear Demo bias, with a summary of how things feel in terms of the good and the bad. Note some of this will be a rehash of problems I picked up from Beta, but have only served to be reinforced on Live.
Good:
Pandemic, greatly reduces the stance dancing for Demo and adds a lot of flexibility to the play of Affliction’s Haunt/MG weaving.
Demo feels incredibly flexible, without loosing the feel of the old playstyle it has shifted, successfully a challenging rotation onto a model very strongly defined by it’s resource management. I honestly didn’t think I was going to enjoy it as much as I am doing.
Affliction hasn’t turned out as just a variation on Shadow as I’d feared, that is in part testament to the changes Shadow itself received, but is largely down to the change to Haunt and the use of Soul Shards which add so much to the gameplay which allow it to have a little more adaptability to encounters than it had, without going overboard.
Grimoire talents. I don’t like Sacrifice and it is a little strong for Affliction, but many do like it. Fortunately I don’t have to use it. That’s because it’s optional, thus the row works.
Burning Rush. So much win.
Imp Swarm.
The rest of the talents up to and including 75. I’ve found use for basically everything on the talent pane with the exceptions of: Harvest Life, Sacrificial Pact, Blood Fear and Unbound Will. The latter two as I’ve not even tried any PvP, so much to do to get ready to raid! I can safely say there’s good reason to keep a stack of Tome of the Clear Mind in my bag.
Less Good.
Stance dancing as Demo. Pandemic almost fixes it. Almost, but because it ‘almost fixes’ something, it starts to make the ability feel more like a sticking plaster for the spec, than the bonus it truly is for Affliction. Similarly, it doesn’t help those moments when Corruption drops when you shift to Meta, blow Imps/Service then have a ToC miss leaving you with the sticky choice of dropping Meta to reapply or sitting out Dark Soul with no Corruption on target.
Touch of Chaos auto-refreshing Corruption. I like that I now manage my dots properly as Affliction, having the auto-refresh takes that away, leads to the above problem, and generally gives me a lot less to do in Meta. Furthermore though, it leads people into a nasty trap of spending ~200 Fury inappropriately to maintain a DoT. I’ve learnt that’s a Bad Thing™ when that Fury can be better spent for more gains elsewhere – Many new and returning players will not realise or accept that because EJ/SimCraft says so. If they’re doing it “Right” and doing terribly or complaining of Fury starvation as a result, this is not good for the spec.
Demonic Gateway. A lot has been said of the subject here and frankly, I just don’t ‘get it’. It doesn’t seem to be able to do the stuff I was wanting/expecting from it for myriad of reasons ranging from the technical limitations to the in built limitations. I ‘get’ they didn’t want to implement it, it turn out OP then have to nerf it, but in it’s current state I really am struggling to find a place for it and to justify it’s place on my action bars beyond that some other abilities got taken away and it just happens to fill a gap.
Glyphs. Too much fluff and not enough stuff. Each specialisation basically has a mandatory glyph, Imps/Shards/Embers while the other two slots are pretty much going to be Soulstone and Siphon Life. Of the rest, some may have some limited PvP or soloing use, but are generally seemingly detrimental rather than offering a viable utility/alternate application.
Level 90 talents. I feel like I could happily play with none taken. I use MF if I feel I can get away with it, but there’s such risk involved it’s just easier to pick up AV and forget about it. KjC is just awkward, and more worthwhile to make a /stopcasting /cast Fel Flame macro, even as Demo where you’re probably wanting to pool some Fury for a better moment than burning it when you’re dodging fire. I know it’s getting buffed, but picking a talent to go faster, then picking one to slow you down is a very contrary thing to do.
Harvest Life. Still doesn’t feel like it fits as a talent.
Sacrificial Pact. Don’t get why have a choice between two additional shields on top of the one we have baseline, or quite why I’d pick the self evidently less good one in spite of its lower cooldown. I feel like posting a Yo Dawg meme about shields on my shields…
Too Good.
Felstorm shouldn't be a single target DPS increase.
Grimoire of Service: Felguard Felstorm as above, while providing massive AE burst.
I'd be tempted to say Demo AoE in general, but DKs, Rets, Monks, and more absurdly, all classes of tank are also doing similarly stupid damage from what I've seen.