Here goes my rant about outrageous WW bugs, our community perception and performance.
I just put this here first, because I want it to have more attention:
After reading this on the US forums, my “theory” was proven. Since TWW, I felt that SEF is not the ability that I wanted to keep instead of Serenity. It’s wonky, it requires too much micromanagement and on top of that, it’s an ability that screams for removal in this current form - along with Xuen bugs (oh look! an other pet handling issue!).
I won’t tell more about SEF and Xuen, the US guy and post covers it. I want to talk about our performance and community perception which is in parallel with our bugs and the ignorance of class developers.
I switched my main to monk in DF and started to do M+ with my friend. I had a blast with monk after maining a mage as dps (I was a prot warrior before) for a long time. It’s mobility, it’s dynamics, it’s utility in our little party with my friend, it’s mastery, I loved it, despite it’s downsides and awkward talent system. It’s a fun spec, and I still feel that I don’t want to drop it as a main.
However, after DF, changes happened. I sadly acknowledged that our option to choose between Serenity and SEF was removed and I’ll have harder time to manage my character. But this is not something like back in the days, when as a frost mage, I could choose between Incanter’s Flow and Rune of Power (they had so small difference in overall performance for frost, that IF was a valid choice, because frost didn’t require a big burst button). This is like, keeping the more difficult, bugged and fully trash option, instead of a much easier workaround, a single button that works well and outperforms the former.
This full expansion goes through like this. SEF is bugged since who knows when, but at least I could ignore it in DF completely and have a simple dps cd button with Serenity. And this is the other thing I’m mad about. Why other specs (I played some retri, fury, and looks like I’ll play BM for the rest of the season/expansion) just have a button to press and the magic works: they get their +X% damage for X seconds. No, we have this awkward and also bugged ability (along with Xuen), that we can’t even control and it doesn’t even work properly. Sometimes I can do 20M dps aoe burst, but most of the time it’s like 6-8-12M, because the other clones don’t function.
As I mentioned, it looks like I’ll play BM (dark ranger) for the rest of the season. I envy the simplicity of the spec. I have half of the buttons for rotation, but mostly when I use my CD buttons, they just work. I press the buttons, the character works. That alt is like 15ilvl lower than my monk. In 693ilvl, I can outperform my WW in M+ already. It’s single target is not as good (WW is performing well on single target, because SEF clones don’t have many targets to lose dps - yet they still could be even better, because of the other bugs the US forum guy mentioned), but it’s AoE and overall performance already outshines my monk, despite I just started to play that character in this season.
And we just arrived to our community perception. All the time I’m in a M+ group, where similar players play (same ilvl, same skill), I underperform overall (I just make up for it on the bosses). And I just realized it’s not user error, it’s character error and bugs. But what will that retri or fury see? Meh, it’s just a lame player with a lame character playing - I won’t invite them next time. Meanwhile they also just press their buttons and their characters do their jobs. I won’t be able to fully do it on my WW.
We could be a comparable performer to fury, even better. We have tools and utility that fury doesn’t. Fury is also more squishy. They have the same 5 target cap (Bladestorm is 8, but whatever). Yet fury is much more popular, because it’s much simpler (less buttons!) and it just works as a dps when you press your buttons. Their CD-s won’t mess you up, because it’s not bugged. I don’t want to hurt warriors, I just tried fury and I compare them, based on my own experience.
I just hope that we won’t be ignored in the next expansion by the devs. (Hey! I paid for the TWW premium pack, I got my 3 days early access, and I get my spec destroyed and ignored for it. Thanks Blizz!)
TL;DR:
- Either fix our pet handling or remove pet based abilities completely, because currently it hurts our performance and community perception.
- Give back Serenity or other similar option.
- Make the spec a bit simpler or at least fix us if we want to keep complexity.
- Being a difficult spec to play along with underperformance, because of many many bugs doesn’t cooperate well - BIG Surprise: It kills the spec and it’s popularity.
P.S.:
What do you think? We didn’t have any meaningful changes/reworks/fixes during the whole expansion (unlike other, more popular specs - winks at retri) - and that would be a confession that they messed up the spec.