World of Warcraft: Current Year

This will probably sound cliche but play something you enjoy. The "top" classes today could be the shit classes of tomorrow.

Play the class you most enjoy. Who cares if monks are bad right now. That usually means they'll be the first ones buffed over the top 2 weeks into the xpac.

Edit: sukik beat me.

TJT_sl said:

After a shameful amount of research I am torn between boosting a Priest, or boosting my old WOTLK-era main Shaman (because tradeskills and shit). As the consensus seems to be that monk is bad, and Ele Sham/Resto are top of heals and DPS. Or Priest as I have never really played a priest and Holy/Spriest are both strong looking into the expansion.

What say y'all?

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sPriest rock "Right now" - in pvp at least sPriests seem to out shine shamans *in my particularly limited opinion*

Yeah i wouldn't really worry about who is the best currently, there will be a wave of adjustments within the first couple weeks on healer throughput just like there was in the first few weeks of raiding in MoP.

once people start hitting 100 i think resto druids and holy priests will be at the top, but i really can't see raids ignoring holy paladin's 2 beacons... that makes tank healing incredibly good heh

sukik_sl said:

It only took me a few hours to go from crap to 495 with the blasted lands quests, the timeless isle chests and an hour in a frog group to get some 489 weapons. I don't even think that'll be necessary for rolling into the new expansion. Once you get 85 I can que with you guys again through the panda dungeons, kinda left yall far behind.

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Or I could just not use my warrior and stick to boosted monk, DPS monk rotations feel exactly like warriors anyhow. All depends on how many tank we need(not tanking as monk) and how much Kingdom Hearts 1.5 I play with my daughter between now and this weekend.

Here's another way to look at it - what playstyles have you liked in the past? For me after years playing Rogue/DK, I felt the following about a variety of classes:
Shaman
Ele - boring and slow
Resto - fun!
Enhance - whyyy must you shackle my AoE damage to Flame Shock?
Monk
Windwalker - Alright
Brewmaster - pretty fun, but weird
Mistweaver - still confused how this plays
Mage
Arcane - mana mechanic is annoying
Frost - alright
Fire - didn't play yet

Haven't played Priest recently so can't comment there. Ultimately I end up back with my Rogue because I just don't enjoy the rotations of most other classes after playing Rogue besides maybe DK/Warrior.

My wife and I have characters on a PVP realm (Darkspear/Alliance). I'm contemplating a server xfer since she is new to the genre and WoW and getting wrecked in open world pvp is going to really turn her off questing.

Is all of WoD pvp flagged or will she be able to quest without being exposed to world pvp?

Eidal_sl said:

My wife and I have characters on a PVP realm (Darkspear/Alliance). I'm contemplating a server xfer since she is new to the genre and WoW and getting wrecked in open world pvp is going to really turn her off questing.

Is all of WoD pvp flagged or will she be able to quest without being exposed to world pvp?

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Definitely give the RR wow thread a shout-out if you decide to transfer, those guys seem to have their ducks in a row over there. I believe they're on a pve server.

TJT_sl said:

After a shameful amount of research I am torn between boosting a Priest, or boosting my old WOTLK-era main Shaman (because tradeskills and shit). As the consensus seems to be that monk is bad, and Ele Sham/Resto are top of heals and DPS. Or Priest as I have never really played a priest and Holy/Spriest are both strong looking into the expansion.

What say y'all?

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- Monks are currently topping DPS simulations (Simulationcraft Results). The DPS mechanics are pretty straight forward and work pretty well. I'd argue that their tank and healer design is all sorts of fucked up, though. Both specs were designed to fit perfectly into MoP's paradigm of smart healing and bursty damage, but look weird as fuck when the new design philosophy is no smart heals and attrition damage.

- Holy priests look strong on paper, they always do. The spec is still hamstrung by having no good way to avoid overhealing and/or react/defend against burst. If WoD design stays true to the intention, with raids/groups staying below max HP most of the time, Holy's tools fit the bill well. If it ever turns bursty, the spec is just as bad as it was in MoP. The spec is also leaning heavily on the strength of two spells - Renew and Circle of Healing. If those are deemed too good, there's very little to fall back on.

- Shadow priests are currently simming well, but that is entirely dependent on the strength of one Level 100 talent, which isn't being used the way it was designed to be. It's almost certain to be changed. With either of the other two level 100 talents, the class is right at the bottom of sims.

- Shamans are floating around near the bottom of DPS simulations. Ele shamans can no longer run and gun all day. I don't know how they play as healers, but their bread and butter chain heal is no longer smart so I guess they're a lot more like priests now.

Basically - no one knows how the game balance will look in a month, and you should play what is fun to you. I like playing priest, so I'll play one, but I'm almost certain we will be crap by the time 6.1 rolls around.

Brewmaster is fine unless you're doing hardcore Mythic progression raiding, meaning going into Mythic severely undergeared. Monk and Druid tanks are bad for this kind of Mythic progression because their active mitigation (Elusive Brew, Savage Defense) provides dodge rather than guaranteed damage reduction, so there are certain bosses like Mythic Kromog that they simply cannot tank at all until they've spent several weeks gearing up on Heroic. When Kromog melees you and uses both special abilities in the span of 0.5 second, a week 1 undergeared Monk or Druid simply dies if they fail to dodge all three, and there's nothing they can do about it. The plate tanks hit Rune Tap/Shield Block/ShoR and live. Other than this problem Brewmasters are quite good, the 2-pc Tier bonus is ridiculous when AoE tanking and when you're tanking a boss that you have to swap every 30 seconds or so you can have Elusive Brew up nearly 100% of the time and take very little damage.

Mistweaver sucks and will continue to suck as long as they insist on sticking to the stupid orb shit. They were the worst healer in MoP as well, they haven't fixed it in two years they're not going to fix it now.

WW is top DPS and very good, but that got covered already.

One funny thing about the whole orb dropping thing from mistweavers is raids/dungeons have taught people don't trust random things on the ground and avoid them at all costs. To this day I know a lot of people who don't realize what the green orbs are or that they are good people think they are a boss mechanic and avoid them. When doing my healer monk if I am playing with new people in dungeons and groups I tend to remind them that green balls = good. It was an interesting idea but I think it needs to be scrapped.

Windwalker Monk is going to *feel* completely different at level 100 than it does now. Butterfly Glyph is a gamechanger for raiding. I always hated DPSing on my Monk in MoP, which I luckily got to avoid most of the time because Brewmaster was generally the solo-tank of choice for the fights that only needed one tank. The sheer amount of lost Fists of Furies to the boss twitching out of range as a tank repositions (amusingly, an even more frequent occurence with Brewmaster Tanks ) slightly is maddening. Being able to FoF while moving fixes that, and makes the DPS priority way less stressful. You can just focus on making sure you time your resources/ability uses to nail on-cooldown FoFs, as opposed to the previous system of waiting for the stars to align with FoF Cooldown+Boss Not Moving+Nothing on the ground to avoid during the same 3-4 second window. MW Assurance of Consequence is just a pain in the neck right now, with FoF as it is.

TJT_sl said:

I do intend to mostly be healing. I loved maining a Resto shaman. So the decision is really what will be the most fun/different to heal with. I don't recall any healing class in WOTLK-era as being unable to heal through a dungeon or something. So if they're all going to be capable of healing and raiding to a degree, IDK. Why is life so haaard!?

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Unless you're doing bleeding edge progression raiding, every class will be able to perform their roles adequately. Your skill and gear will matter by far the most. It's no longer TBC era balancing where a certain class is detrimental to the group while another is mandatory.

It's just that most of us are stupid sperglords who freak out if some dude with slightly worse gear and skill beats us on the meters because of class balance, so we obsess over stuff like 10-20% difference in max gear DPS simulations.

No one enjoys having 6 or 7 other dpsers above them for no other reason than you wanted to be a shadow priest and shadow priests are currently it for sucking so we try to look ahead to see who the new it is.

Holy crap Gladiator DPS!!! Here I was, thinking Fury would be my go-to for the expansion, but maybe not. I find that rather ridiculous if I'm honest. The DPS spec should probably be the top DPS for the class...

I grab the shit out of healer orbs just because fuck you I'm a hunter.

You may be the only person who does this. In the world.

It's going to be an amazing feeling Thursday finally doing something new after 14 months of nothing