After playing some shuffle and arenas on Midnight beta I came to some conclusions…
Positives:
- Tempo is slower but it’s actually a good thing. While damage is lower healing is also lower. There are no situations where someone gets healed from 20-100 % hp in a global. Same thing can be said about damage. Burst is there but it’s not that people disappear in 1-2 globals.
- Pruning made the game more clear and easier to read. Therefore damage dealing isn’t as important part of the gameplay and CC, Kicks, positioning and few other aspects of the game are more important.
From negatives… Oh boy:
- Damage mater is there but it has only damage and healing. Oh I forgot to mention you only see damage and healing of your team. It will remove the ability to analyze gameplay and compare yourself to other players of the same spec.
- Nameplates are horrible. And it’s not an overreaction literally 0 customization. I don’t mind the fact that we have information we have reduced but let us at least segregate it a bit. I don’t need to see the 21st anniversary buff on my teammates and enemies but I’d like to see all the hots if I play R Druid for example. I also want to see the enemy cooldowns. While pruning is there it’s not Cata or MoP where every spec had 1-2 offensive or defensive CDs and the amount of buffs and debuffs was halved. With the way the game is designed it’s really bad and actually makes playing harder.
- Arena frames. They are actually ok. Way better than they were are on retail right now. I’m afraid that with this UI will make the game even more frustrating. Good luck getting dispelled on your go! Average healer wouldn’t even notice you are in CC or Roots.
While the gameplay changes look overall fine and even though balance is not there - not even close (I’m looking at you BM Hunters) I’m really worried about the nameplates. I get it. Blizz wants to reduce the customization and remove the necessity to use Platter or Better Bliz Plates. However this is ridiculus - I don’t need the amount of customization that either of these two addons offer. I just need as much as Nameplate Auras offer. A simple addon that allows me to add buffs and debuffs to track that are existing in the game. It allows me to prioritize certain things over others and that’s it. Is it really that difficult? Also the customization is literally - 100% made around PvE. It looks like there were 0 thoughts PvP related.
Conclusion and tl:dr:
I’m afraid Midnight will be the same story again. Some really nice changes improving the game regarding gameplay will be meaningless because UI changes ruin them. I’m 100% for the reduction of things that addons can do for you. I was happy they announced it. The exection though is not there. Imagine that Walls show on ui as just random buff. It doesn’t have bigger icon… I’m truely worried.
P.S.:
WoW Arena community disappoints me every single day. I understand why Blizzard doesn’t like us. Fotming is a real thing and we can see all these Voidweavers, DKs and MMs in the ladder but fotming on Midnight beta… Really? Is this community really such degenerate to only play overtuned BM Hunters? I played few lobbys and each had 2 of them…