World of Warcraft: Midnight is on the horizon and set to streamline the game for players of all skill levels, giving WoW a more approachable combat system for all. Class specializations are being revamped to make it easier to track key buffs and debuffs, reduce pressure to rely on addons, and make the path to mastering every specialization clearer. Midnight keeps the excitement of combat alive while opening the door to WoW wider for everyone.
Our plan for the first wave of Public Alpha is to rebuild all 40 specializations according to the the philosophies in our Developer Insight: Combat for Everyone in Midnight article. As always, Alpha will be level-locked over its duration, so you will not have access to most of the new Hero Talents and Apex Talents gained over the course of leveling until later in the testing phase. Specs are designed with the assumption that you have obtained all those talents, so please take that into consideration during your playtesting and feedback.
Your feedback on these changes is crucial to us, and we are looking forward to reading it. Here’s what we are hoping to learn from players from the alpha test:
How well do the changes meet the goals described? Each spec changelist in the patch notes contains an overview of the changes and goals for the new version.
Gameplay clarity pain points you’re still experiencing, such as information that’s important to playing the spec well, but is difficult to track.
Building characters for different types of content—do you feel you can get the tools you need for dungeons, delves, raids, and PvP?
We hope you’re excited for the new class changes in Midnight, and we’ll see you in Azeroth!
DoT tracking: DoTs like Rend aren’t being tracked on their source spell. We should be able to track it from the spell when we use them, if our current target has the DoT/debuff.
Anchor Points/Positioning: Their positioning anchor is sorely needed, we should be able to set anchor points because CDM moves every time we add a new spell or buff track. or change spec or change to a new class and when we use the same UI profile, it gets ruined.
Energy/Resource Tracking: Pretty self explanatory, I shouldn’t have to look at my character portrait on the left side to track my rage level/holy power/arcane power etc. when I’m playing.
Give “grow upwards/downwards” option to “Tracked Bars”, also give the option to be able to position them as vertical bars.
The relevant spell icon on the “Tracked Bars” should be able to fit in that bar and could be embedded in it. Same hight or width depending on if it’s vertical or horizontal so I can design it as tight as I want it to be.
Give us the option to pad the icons and bars tighter than you allow atm. I’d like to be able to put my icons right next to the other and save space and see them less spreaded. Come to think of it, don’t put extra “frame spaces” to screen UI elements that take extra on my screen. I’d like to be able to set my UI as tight as I want to. That is a horrible design.
Buffs like “improved whirlwind” should be able to be tracked by their relevant spells. Like I should just see it on Whirlwind or Thunder Clap as stack info. Not as a seperate buff that takes space in my screen. Since Thunder Blast has its own stacks, you can put IW stack info to center or bottom left side of the icon.
If I don’t know a spell, don’t make its “ghost” take space on the “Tracked Buffs” Bar. Let them appear in the priority I set from the start of that bar. Don’t let it start from second or third spot at where it is when you’re configuring them.
I should be able to see the icons as actual squares, maybe I don’t like the chamfered versions of the icons, I think most people hate that.