WoW.... land of Confusion....

After having a bit of a preliminary hands on testing of characters and specialisations along my own lineup of characters I can say that I'm surprised at the way I now feel about the way wow has changed them.

I knew the changes were coming and I'd read a bit about the way things were going to go. However I'm more comfortable with getting my hands on, so was always going to wait for the patch and implementation of the expansion character changes.

What has surprised me is that both my "mains" are either "feeling" worse off or I've not been able to get my head around the way they now play.

My Hunter was the character I've spent the most time on and now feels rather lacking. He is a beast master and I wouldn't have it any other way. He still does great damage, even better than some guildies that are a higher ilevel than he is currently. But it's the loss of the utility spells, I'm really left with one shot to use while waiting for others to "cooldown". At least with the old spec I had a trap to cast down and was constantly going between building focus and using it, then go for the beast cooldowns.
My Lock is another story, started way back when as a Demonic then switched to Destro in Cata but seems today the best is affliction. Like my hunter this lock is missing spells that would keep me going in terms of feeling like I was doing something. At the moment as an affliction lock I'm casting off dots and then really have one spell to do damage with (drain life). Leaving me with a feeling like I should be doing other things instead of waiting.

Likewise the game had completely killed the protection paladin. Which I had liked to tank on and which my guild master was a pro at and could with ease sneeze and solo mythic content in. Now it's a different story.
It really boils down to the utility spells, the crossover spells in specs.
I foresee a lot of in raid chat and conflicts over people needing or not changing over to different talents between combats (mobs and boss's), there is a lot in these new characters for the min/maxers to cry over in their perfection.

On the up sides I'm going to be playing class's and specs I've never had any real feel for before beyond levelling them up with a slight side of timewaped gearing.
My preferences in class/spec's so far are:
Frost Mage
Shadow Priest
Fury Warrior
Feral (cat) druid
Frost DK
Outlaw Rogue
Windwalker Monk
Beastmaster Hunter
Affliction Warlock
Protection Paladin

The only other class not at 100 is the shaman who is still levelling but not in a hurry.

So overall the old top of my list (hunter, warlock, paladin) have sunk to the bottom.
The old middle of the list (mage, priest) have risen to the top; And the old bottom characters have now created a wider midfield that I can actually see myself really playing and not just levelling up.
Time will tell if the new demon hunter class will be "any good". From what I've seen they more closely resemble a cross between an outlaw rogue and maybe a blood death knight. Which could be interesting.
I'm sure that Blizzard will implement a patch once the main feedback in is on the last patch with all the changes. I think it won't backtrack on the changes but it will tweak the likes of mana regen etc. Small stuff that will help.






Fun times ahead.