Power Overwhelming!

I’ve now spent the last couple of days testing out the changes in 4.0.1 and I’ve got to say… I like most of them. The interfaces are cleaner, the talent trees are greatly improved and streamlined, and for some unknown reason arcane mages can now melt faces by looking at people funny. I’ll break it down by character:

Strev:

After the first rounds of tests against some particularly offensive practice dummies (they must have been public enemy #1: everyone in Ironforge was attacking them!), I became convinced there was some massive bug or there’s going to be a serious beating with a nerf bat soon. The damage output I was seeing was close to double what it was a couple of days ago. More than once I reached >40k crits

For the curious, I’m running a 31/2/3 spec that probably isn’t ‘optimal’, but looked like fun. The cross talents increase critical chance and damage multiplier. Adding those to a new talent that increases damage by 20% for burst, mana gems that provide a significant trinket-like DPS buff, the Mastery skill that increases DPS%, and the Arcane damage boost tied into the blue bar that can get up to another 12% damage added… the build has a lot of synergy.

I took Strev for test drives through WG and WSG for the pvp experience and wow. With an additional 9.5k health and 8k mana and the fact that resiliance gear no longer does squat against critical hits, Strev was routinely hitting other players in excess of 12k a shot with some shots still hitting above 20k each. After taking so much abuse on the field for the past couple of months, it felt nice getting my own back. I may have to try an actual pvp build at some point.

Later, Strev went dungeon diving with a number of guild parties who were also testing. We were sad to see that guild experience and reputation weren’t affected, but I now have a better grasp of how many “justice points” we’d earn during a typical random: about 80. Bears no longer get an AoE taunt and Paladin’s consecration is now on a 30 second cooldown, so they are having a little harder time with aggro control in groups. If my mage experience is “typical”, mages are now generating about double the threat from the sheer DPS output. This led to a LOT of “I’m winning on aggro!” moments, coupled by the baddie dying from the next 20k point hit.

Anyth:

Anyth switched over to Beast Mastery for this go. Since the cost for a dual spec dropped by 90%, I went ahead and picked it up. Once I’ve got a handle on things, I’ll test her with Marksman. So far, I’m fairly unimpressed. She can throw traps now, which is fun, but losing almost all of her AoE abilities was a pretty big hit. Not having to carry ammo is a perk, but it wasn’t that cumbersome to deal with in the first place. I’ll reserve my final judgement until I see how she does teamed up with Zyrial and Pals next week.

Cyandra:

Didn’t do too much with Cyandra other than learn spells, pick new protection talents, and complain bitterly about the new consecration cooldown. Bear in mind, I’ve been leveling her primarily through AoE trash pulls. I’m not eager to see how this change in dynamics plays out, but will bite that bullet over the weekend.