The flames and carnage of the recent patch are abating somewhat, allowing more than thirty minutes of consecutive play.
This morning I had the opportunity to run two heroics back-to-back. I was wary of how it would pan out with all the game mechanic changes, the new talents, and the fact my bars needed some serious rearranging.
OVERALL IMPRESSION
Things went very smoothly, even while getting adjusted to all the new and different things.
Blizzard mentioned that raids were nerfed, but I get the impression that heroics were as well. It's difficult to tell with all of the changes, but overall it just felt easier.
We rolled two heroic instances in under an hour. Botanica normally takes at least an hour since it is one of the longer instances, that was knocked out in thirty minutes. Black Morass followed in a record 10-minute stomping. If the bosses spawned faster it would've been over sooner.
The in-game threat meter, while 100% accurate, is not so great. You don't get a clear indication of your threat level until the mob is already on top of you. This may just be a factor of getting accustomed to it, however. I'll continue giving it a chance.
Impression: Protection Warrior Tanking
First impression: OMFG. It can't stay this good for long. I'm dreaming. They've gotta nerf me or something. No doubt Blizzard will do some tweaking, but REALLY… I've never had it so easy.
Having a high-threat, cone area-of-effect stun ability every 20 seconds is downright hot. Shockwave is just... awesome. The graphic for it is a bit lackluster, like a carpet of dirt going FLUMP. I can live with that, however.
Having Thunderclap hit all targets? Phenomenal.
My defense stat took a major hit with the removal of certain talents. Since they removed crushing blows, this isn't such a big deal. To make up for it, my attack power was boosted immensely. Bolsh was pushing 570 dps while in DEFENSIVE stance in his TANKING GEAR. Normally I push just over 200 dps.
According to a WOTLK-approved and recently updated Omen, my threat was around 2,500 per second. Unbelievable.
The new talents really do work well together, my first stab at his spec turns out to be perfect.
Impression: Fire Magery
While I lost some of my spellpower due to changes Blizzard made to my gear, I was still throwing out 4.5K fireballs. My dps was solid and fiery and scary, but I never pulled aggro off the paladin.
Living Bomb is nothing short of hilarious, especially on add duty in BM. Cast it on the miniboss and watch his adds go BOOM, then just mop up.
The Blastwave knockback is amusing but can get annoying when you've got other people AoE'ing... ya knock them out of the spell range and they get irritated.
The instant-Flamestrike from using Blastwave or Dragon's Breath is kinda cool but I didn't use it much cuz we were killing things too fast.
I regret not getting the instant pyroblast talent that procs off fireball crits. Really.
I think Blizzard increased the cast time of Fireball, it's now 3.5 seconds raw and 3 seconds talented down. This is somewhat annoying but our damage made up for it.
All in all, fire-spec gets two thumbs up. I must tweak.
