WoW PTR Class Changes Opinions

Finally was able to get onto the PTR for a short time. Just enough time to mess around with a couple classes, but I haven't gotten to do them all yet because I keep disconnecting and not being able to get on. So, I got about five done before I decided to give up for the day.

Please take the opinions with a gigantic grain of salt because I am mildly irritable today, and I dislike the changes to my main class immensely.


- First up, Shadow Priest. I do not like the new Shadow Priest. I did not think I was going to like the new Shadow Priest. I really, really, really love the old Shadow Priest. I liked the slow build up and the satisfaction of using Devouring Plague. I liked the shadow orbs circling around me. I also liked it more thematically; light and darkness being two sides of the same coin was neater to me than Old God corruption and void magic. The Old Gods creep me out, okay?
The gameplay, to me, felt really too fast paced. The lag might have had something to do with that. I felt like I was button-mashing a bit. Getting to Void Form is easy, and then it's button-mashy time while you spam Void Bolt and Mind Blast so you don't fall out of Void Form. I feel like it is altogether just too much pressure to me. I do not like time limits. I will not be maining Shadow Priest in Legion and it makes me sad.
I can, however, definitely see why some people really seem to love this new version. And that's great!

I did test out Marksmanship and Survival Hunters as well, for a couple minutes (You will not get me to touch Beast Mastery because I do not like the pets to begin with).
- Marksmanship seemed a little...boring. It seemed like there wasn't much to do. Press a couple skills and that is it. It didn't feel mechanically interesting. Also, as much as I love Lone Wolf being a level 15 talent now, it feels like it is very easily overshadowed by the other two talent options. I can easily see either of those two options being chosen as the "meta" choice with Lone Wolf being seen as the "not optimal, just for fun" talent choice.

- Survival Hunter was a lot more fun, although I will admit that I didn't take the time to read every single skill information, so I had a lot of skills lightning up and I have no idea why. It was a fun class overall, I just wish it didn't have a pet :P
Also, I did not like the animations one bit, but that's livable.

- Outlaw Rogue. I really, really liked Outlaw Rogue. Which is odd because I've never once liked a Rogue class in any game I've ever played. The animations are very nice, I like the theming (yay, pirates!), and it felt fun to me. I also like RNG-based stuff (Hi, I main an Astrologian in FFXIV), so Roll the Bones was right up my alley. Sadly, I have no idea what the Roll the Bones "enhancements" are because I had a bunch of buffs up and no idea where any of them came from because I really only messed with each class for a couple minutes, and there is very bad lag because everyone and their cat is messing around with classes at the training dummies. I...can see myself maining Outlaw Rogue. I want to start leveling a Rogue now and get her up to 100, but that feels like it defeats the purpose a bit since I don't like Rogues right now, I like them in Legion. I don't know what to do with myself, in other words.

Last one that I got to try, but only for a few seconds, was Elemental Shaman. The skills are very flashy, if not a little too flashy. Let's just say that if I was an Ele Shaman, I'd get real sick of Lightning Bolt's sound and animation. Also, the Fire Elemental is cool looking.


Updates: Mages!

- Fire Mage feels fast-paced and clicky, in a good way. It was a fun kind of clicky to me, unlike how I felt about Shadow Priest. I think this may mostly have been a combination between the level 15 talent "Firestarter" (against the training dummies specifically, since their health never drops, so Firestarter is constantly in effect) and the level 60 talent "Controlled Burn."
It feels like Controlled Burn is almost an essential talent because the 10% chance to have Heating Up automatically turn into Hot Streak without a second crit seems too good to pass up.

I really liked Frost. I love the icicles about my head especially. It feels like a lot of other classes lost things floating around them (shadow orbs, lightning shield, etc.). I've never touched Ice Mage before so I have no idea what I'm doing with it, and will not even attempt to talk about talents and such because I have no idea how to play it.

Arcane Mage felt lack-luster compared to the other two specs. The streamlining of Arcane Blast, at least to me, was appreciated, but it just felt too slow compared to the other two specs. The level 15 talent "Arcane Familiar" sounds interesting, but it seems lackluster compared to "Words of Power" and also it kept in me in combat longer than I would have liked (I wanted to swap specs!). The lack of a pet-control bar to turn it onto passive would be nice, considering that it doesn't appear to have any animations to show you that it's attacking something.

I would test Warlocks, but they overwhelm me :(

Update 2!
I love Discipline Priest in the PTR! I know everyone's saying that they're awful and ruined, but I really, really like them! It feels kind of like FFXIV Scholar healing except hitting things also heals. I love it. I always liked Discipline's shields anyway, but the fact that I can shield and Atonement heal is wonderful. It helps that I like my Priest anyway and that I really liked the Discipline Priest artifact.
I will be happy to keep using Toyosatomimi, even though I did not like Shadow or Holy on the PTR. But oh my goodness is Discipline for me! This is the first class that I've messed with on PTR that really, really "clicked" with me!

Holy Paladin also felt quite nice for me as well.

Basically, I like the healing classes that are more utility and mechanical stuff than straight healing.

I did not like Mistweaver very much. Or Windwalker for that matter. Windwalker's changes felt kind of underwhelming because it didn't feel like they've changed all that much compared the other classes. And also, losing Jab has messed up my bars! I'm so used to 1 = Jab, 2 = Tiger Palm, 3 = Blackout Kick, 4 = Rising Sun Kick, 5 = Touch of Death. It confuses my fingers to have moved everything over a slot. Moving Fists of Fury to 1 also did no help, because I am so used to pressing F1 for that!




This post will be updated when I'm able to log in again and try more things.

Soooo...

FFXIV's latest patch was called "Revenge of the Horde."

Meanwhile, in WoW Legion Beta, there's apparently a world boss named "Nidhogg" and a bonus objective thing called "The Brood of Nidhogg" or something like that (so I've heard; I'm not on the beta).

Just saying.

Ah, Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, how I have not at all missed you.

Trying to level my Bard, and got in here. Fun fun.

Tanks that don't pick up all the mobs are fun.

Today I was that jerk DPS that takes enmity. The tank was ignoring all but one enemy per pull, so I stole enmity off the healer so he wouldn't die. Every pull. Bard tank best tank?


No, seriously, I hate Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak. It never goes well. Never. I have been in Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak many many many times. It never goes well.

While Brayflox is kind of the big jump in difficulty for healers, I think Toto-Rak is the same thing for tanks :|

Is The Vault always this bad for healers?

The Vault is torturous to me. I got it this morning as my leveling roulette (I really wish there was a separate roulette for Heavensward dungeons, because I like to queue into leveling roulette to help newbies...).

Oh my goodness is it awful. I can't tell if I'm just not a good healer, or if I'm not getting good groups, or if it's bad luck, or maybe Astrologians are bad in the dungeon? I don't know: all I know is that something always goes horribly wrong every single time I do this one.

Take this morning's run, for example.

Ser Adelphel:
1st Wipe: I get boxed in by the exploding bubbles + I have the ground AoE under me. I die, everyone dies.
2nd Wipe: We were doing absolutely wonderfully, and then the tank gets disconnected.
3rd time, we cleared it.

Ser Grinnaux:
No wipes, but a couple deaths and overall trouble. I remember when I went in here the first time I thought this fight was very easy and rather inconsequential. Not this time. I think it was a combination of not-high-enough DPS and unfortunate tank positioning. We ended up having barely any safe areas left from portals, and the boss was kind of positioned at a weird angle, so personally, I always got knocked back in a direction I wasn't expecting, typically straight into a portal. I think I ended up with like 5 stacks of the debuff by the end? While the first time I did this fight I had none by the end. Lost a DPS twice I think to a similar issue.

Ser Charibert:

1 wipe. Absolutely my fault. My computer decided it wanted to open the chat box instead of move, so I ended up getting hit by a triple combination of the ground AoE, horses, and the chain thing.
Beat it the second time, barely.


First time I did the dungeon we wiped on Ser Charibert about 3 times I think.


As a more positive, I witnessed a miracle yesterday in The Aery. Last night I was doing roulette trying to get to level 57, and I was put in as a fill-in healer for a friendly group in The Aery. They were on Nidhogg, with 18 minutes or so remaining. We wiped a couple times. Mostly due to Sable Price.
Last try, very few minutes remaining. The two DPS die to something or other. I get caught in Sable Price. Only the tank remaining. Tank is on a tiny sliver of HP. I warp back to the start because I knew the tank was about to die. And, nope! Somehow, SOMEHOW the tank managed to kill Nidhogg with only a sliver of HP left. It was a miracle.


As a side note, the more I go into dungeons with Bards, the more I want to play a Bard. Their animations are so nice :x

That one hit me hard...

"A smile better suits a hero."

I am extremely proud of myself right now

Last time I played FFXIV, I got nervous about fighting Ravana and quit playing for a month or two.

I came back yesterday and brushed up on my healing a bit, and today I just beat Ravana!

The fight went decently, I think. We wiped once. I think that one was partly my fault. I didn't realize I was the one with the purple circle around me so I was trying to run away from it, and...well, I was the one with the circle and it got me and someone else killed! So, that was one healer down, and then the tank fell off the cliff, and, yeah.

Second time around went fine. We had a couple deaths, but nothing that couldn't be revived, except for two people, who fell off the cliff early on.


Not only did I beat Ravana, but I also just did Sohm Al as well! Got to say, I really, really liked Sohm Al. It wasn't too healing intensive, which was rather nice. The last fight was fun running around. The second fight got a little rough at one point because I was targeted with every single one of the attacks where he slows the slimes, but I managed to heal myself up between each one, so it was okay. The first fight was absolutely trivial. The trash before it was harder. Fun fights.

I'm feeling really good right now, since I have never done real content while it's still rather current before. I mean, in WoW I'm level 100 but I've never done any dungeons or anything. It's nice to be doing dungeons in a game I'm comfortable with (as in, FFXIV). I can't see myself getting a static and doing Alexander or anything just yet, but dungeons are nice.

I love my FFXIV character so much

 

I can't help it but take screenshots of her all the time! I think she came out so well! I just wish she looked okay in other hairstyles besides this one, because currently she looks pretty awful in any other ones.

 

~Yomi Tosho from Adamantoise Server~

So, I got Overwatch

I'm too scared to really play, so I'm just doing the practice vs. AI thing.

Just out of curiosity, is there any difference between Practice vs. AI and Play vs. AI? I thought I had read that Practice vs. AI had you on a team with AI too, but these are definitely real people I'm playing with unless they have really, really good, unheard of AI that can mimic human conversation perfectly in voice chat.

Anyway, I'm really attached to Lucio's play style. It's fun.  I like Hanzo a bit too. I really, really wanted to like Mercy and Widowmaker, but I just don't think they're for me. I'll probably give Mercy another shot though; I like support. I also want to learn a tank so someone else can play support if they want. I'm leaning towards D.Va, but I don't know. I don't really like the tanks. None of the offense characters appeal to me at all. Symmetra is interesting, but I don't feel competent with her.

Sooo, I guess for now I'll just stick with Lucio and Hanzo.

If you play with someone named Cardboard then that's probably me!



Wait, it's 12:30?! I thought my clock said 11:30! Whoops! Off to sleep with me!