Hey!
Here are some of my thoughts on SoD in general and runes for some classes. I’ve got a couple of lvl 25 so far but won’t pretend to be an expert in all. Mainly I play Shaman (or want to play), Paladin and Druid.
I’ve been collecting my thoughts for some time and I can retype and fix this thing forever. So now I’ll just post as is. People can agree or disagree if they want, these are my thoughts and ideas. Oh and all numbers are of course just example and ballpark. 
Balance
Runes are in general way to powerful, doing many times the damage of similar class skill (easy example: Sunfire and Moonfire). The issue comes from the fact that classic spells scale very poorly so runes need to be strong. Add in that the runes need to prop up under performing or broken specs and they end up being very powerful. I think it would be a good thing if there was a “hidden” rune that you get at lvl 1 which scales classic spells better. It doesn’t have to be perfect but scaling for Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot from AP instead of Spell Power would be great. And similar stuff for all classes (bleeds?). The other option is to give most classes entirely new rotations through runes so they don’t even use the old stuff. Not a feasible solution.
- Ashenvale
Disappointing. When presented it was a pvp zone. But in practice it is the opposite, just a pve event that pops every hour where the factions mindlessly rush the bosses.
Should’ve had smaller objectives that were always active. Like fighting over extra fp, gy and other benefits like small zone buffs. And then culminating in a lager battle every once in a while. Smaller scale stuff where you can gather 4 friends and go out and do some objectives.Like original av, gather something to help your faction.
I just assumed that for example the Warsong Lumber Camp would play a part… You know the Horde wants to cut the forest down and the Alliance wants to restore it.
My suggestions: let everyone in the zone who has participated (by attacking a boss/guards or players) earn rep from all bosses. This will encourage more than rushing bosses to get a tag for the rep. Should allow for more pvp when people can disrupt the other faction and still get full rep. Lower the rep from bosses to compensate but also increase the rep for having surviving leaders. Give 1 rep for each enemy player killed? Maybe even let players earn rep past revered at a very diminished rate. 1 Rep per killed enemy (with diminishing returns on the same player so people can’t set up cross faction farm raids that take turns killing each other for an hour) up to Exalted?
- Mage
New rune - Cauterize Wound
Heals for X (strong) but will leave a debuff that absorbs the next Y healing for 10s. If the debuff is already present then Cauterize Wound will heal for 20% less. If there is a bleed present on the target the heal will be increased by 10%.
Cauterizing a wound is bloody painful! So the next Y healing will be absorbed by mending the burn left from the cauterization. I’ve had the idea of a mage healing spec using fire and time magic rattling around in my head for over a decade now. Cauterize Wound is my favorite (even if I’ve never been entirely happy with the implementations I’ve come up with, including this one.)
- Warlock
For me Metamorphosis felt very spammy and lacking tools beyond pure threat.
Needs something to be able to do threat while still “resting your fingers“ and surveying the situation. Maybe a cheap channeled ability that doesn’t break on damage and doesn’t interrupt avoidance. Or simply make auto attacks cause extra threat (booring!)? Something so you don’t “loose” threat if you don’t press a button every gcd. Other tanks have breaks built in like energy/rage or cd on abilities.
New rune - Drain Soul tanking
Drain Soul is now a 3 second channel and the mana cost is reduced by 50%. You can still dodge and move while channeling it. It can’t be interrupted.
I’d love to see some rune for the warlock pets as well. Nothing as crazy as the hunter runes though.
- Shaman
Needs scaling! This is an issue Paladins also face. It is “okey” now when spell damage is scarce but soon enhancement will be even more just auto attacks because shocks/fire totems/lightning bolt/etc don’t scale with physical stats. I don’t know what runes we’ll get in p2 but in their current state Enhancement feels like you’re swinging wet noodles at the enemy while every other class got atom bombs (obviously exxagerating). Scaling spell damage won’t fix that but it’s a good start. Beyond that they need some beefy attack as well.
With the runes below DW shamans would get stronger spells giving them more of a spell slinger feel. While 2h should be more brute force.
Redesigned rune - Dual Wield Specialization
Add in 10% increased damage done from All sources while dual wielding.
Redesigned rune - Lava Lash
Make it encourage more flametongue use rather than rb/wf. Remove the +20% extra damage and have it play into fire spells. “While your offhand is imbued with Flametongue your off hand attacks cause 25% more damage and your Lava Lash increases your fire spell power by 50% of the damage done. Lasts for 10 seconds.”
Could be normalized to a % of AP or strength so it doesn’t vary as wildly between crits and normal hits. Flametongue scales with 10% spell damage so this might even turn out to make dual flametongue kick butt which would be pretty cool I think.
The cd on it can be upped as well along with the damage to make it more of a magical nuke.
New rune - 2h spec rune
“When you hit with a two handed weapon imbued with Windfury without it proccing the chance of it proccing on your next hit increases by 10%. Stacks up to three times. Last for 6 seconds or until Windfury procs. Also increases your hit chance with weapons and spells by 5% when using a two handed weapon.”
Goal is to make wf less of a lotto and more consistent. Short duration on the buff so you can’t charge it up on something and then get an almost guaranteed proc unless you’re really close to the new target. Maybe it needs to tone down the wf damage as well now that they’re more frequent?
This could be a wf rune instead… But I think 2h needs it the most and dw will already be hitting more often and have more chances to proc while also hitting with offhand to do more damage between procs.
New rune - Stormstrike rune
“Stormstrike no longer increases the next nature damage spells but instead increases your spell power by X% of your unbuffed attack power for 30 seconds and reduces the cost of your next two spells by 33%.” This should solve the scaling issue on spells and allow for more spell usage without needing a 2xRockbiter charged shamanistic rage for mana returns.
This would stack with the fire spell damage from the lava lash rune.
New rune - Instant attack rune (same slot as lava lash)
Wind Strike. 6s cd. “Strikes your target from up to 20 yards away for x% weapon damage and increases your movement speed by 30% for 4 seconds.”
This needs to do something more like Lava Lash does. Just something to make it more interesting beyond X damage, the movement speed isn’t interesting enough.
New rune - Stormstep
20s cd. Teleports the shamans to the target and deals X Nature damage to all enemies in a 5 yard radius. Graphically it would be a lightning bolt from the sky striking the ground where the shaman teleports to.
New rune - Totem rune 1
Your totems with a duration of a minute or more turns into auras (so everything but offensive fire totems and grounding totem) and their durations are increased to infinite. All air totems also grant the windfury totem effect (so we get rid of totem twisting, especially now that we’ve got other buttons to press). Still limited to one aura per totem element. Ideally these totems would be visible on the shamans back, that could be cool.
New rune - Totem rune 2
Your totems are now raid wide and their range is increased by 100% (this increase would be calculated AFTER any other effects like talents are added in). Your tranquil air totem won’t affect warriors in defensive stance, druids in bear form, warlocks with the metamorphosis rune, shamans with way of the earth rune or rogues with just a flesh wound rune.
New rune - Judgement of Wisdom rune
Your Lava Burst, Lava Lash, Stormstrike, Wind Strike and other abilities with like 6s+ cd now debuff the target with Shamanistic Resurgence for 10 seconds granting a chance to regenerate x mana per attack. Talking about buff parity…
- Warrior
Warrior tanks could use some assistance in the aoe department. Just a tad… buff Furious Thunder to 100% increased threat? Or add the Rend spread from some future expansion on another rune? Personally I’d rather not see that as I enjoy spreading Rend around myself. Or add in a short slow to the rune so the warrior have an easier time picking up mobs that they lose threat on?
New rune - Shouts
Your Battle Shout and Demoralizing Shout are 20% stronger and no longer cost rage but instead generate 10 rage. They each have a 30s cd and a 15s shared cd.
Rogue
Would love to see combo points stored on the character instead of the target. Or as a middle ground an ability to transfer them to a new target (can’t remember what it was called). Shorter cd than that ability but you lose one combo point in the process.
Or a rune allowing cp to be stored on multiple targets at the same time. Degrading over time if no new cps are added to that target. SnD/Blade Dance would take all points from current target and fill in from others (oldest first) up to five. This would actually be a pretty cool and unique play style, especially for rogue tanks who can tab target and spread the love around and then Eviscerate/rupture/whatever if needed.
- Priest
Lack of mana regen rune for shadow seems like a huge miss when every other hybrid with “dead” mana using specs got some.
New rune - Shadow mana regen
“Every time you deal shadow damage you have a 4% chance of activating Spirit Tap for 5 seconds.”
I mean all damage, every dot tick, every tick of Mind Flay, shadow wands and all hits on all targets with Mind Sear. This rune would be available to holy and discipline as well but they’ll generally only have SW:P or if they start wanding. Low chance overall but still a chance. Could be a fun hybrid shadow off healer build in there though!
Or you could lock it to shadowform to reward going deep into shadow but then you’d have to wait until lvl 40 to get the mana regen which is a bummer.
Redesigned rune - Twisted Faith
Let it benefit Mind Sear as well. Could be a pretty cool three rune combo for AoE (Twisted Faith, Mind Sear and Shared Pain) and with the mana regen rune you’d probably activate Spirit Tap a lot on AoE mitigating Mind Sears high mana cost somewhat.
- Paladin
Tank needs another button to press or something to react to. Without Divine Storm there’s at the moment only Judgement as a direct attack. Judgement doesn’t scale with physical gear either so we will run into a situation where that ability becomes almost useless.
Ret also has problems with scaling on Judgement but they’ve got other abilities that are weapon based so it isn’t as bad as for example shamans. The Seal of Martydom is a good idea to rectify that (its Judgement scales with weapon damage) but it is up against Divine Storm in that rune slot…
Redesigned rune - Excorsism
Add in scaling with AP?
New rune - Shield attack
8s cd. “Slam your enemy with your shield causing X Holy damage and all your Holy damage done to the target regenerates your mana equal to X% of the damage caused. Lasts 10 seconds. Damage is increased by your Block Value.”
OR
“Slam your enemy with your shield causing X Holy damage. Your damage with “Shield attack rune” is increased by 50% of your Block Value for 10 seconds, stacks up to 3 times. Regenerates 1% of your maximum mana every 2 seconds. Lasts for 6 seconds or stops if you take damage from a direct attack (so not dots/auras/stuff on the ground).”
Damage should start relatively low but ramps up with the stacks. The mana regen is to help with off-tanking.
- Druid
Redesigned rune - Starsurge
Give it a cast time of 1.5-2s. I think that would solve a lot of the complaints other classes have. See the Wrath rune change below as well.
Redesigned rune - Fury of Stormrage
Also increases the damage of Wrath by X% to compensate for Starsurge having a cast time and give balance more sustained damage.
