Thoughts on 8.0 and the War of the Thorns

Even though it's already been out for almost a week, I really haven't had much play time on 8.0 and War of the Thorns so far.  I've redone the talents on the 5 characters that I play the most and have done some general world questing on them.  I also have done the War of the Thorns quest line so far on both a Horde toon and an Alliance toons.

So first the overall structure and class thoughts.  For me, my three primary classes are warlock, hunter, death knight, paladin and druid.  All of those still feel fine from a play style to me.  Affliction feels a little wonky, but not as bad as it seemed on the Alpha and Beta.  That being said, I'm still debating switching Joar to Destruction for the start of BfA.  On the alliance side, I've been playing Demonology lock, and that's been a lot of fun.  No clue how it would play in a raid setting, but it's fine for my normal questing stuff.

Death Knight and Paladin don't seem to have changed at all.  My balance druid feels a little different without the ability to drop a giant moon on someone and I seem to be much slower at generating Astral Power, but overall, he still functions fine.

On the story so far, a lot of good stuff has been written about some folks' level of discomfort with what Sylvanas is doing and the new direction of the Horde.  I'll caveat this that I have not read the current Christie Golden intro book, so I don't necessarily know all of the background for the story.  In some ways, it doesn't feel wildly different from the Horde under Garrosh.  Sylvanas has always demonstrated a willingness to take things just a little bit too far and clearly operates with the interests of the Forsaken ahead of those of the Horde as a whole.

One of the pieces that I do like is being back to feeling more like a foot soldier doing my part rather than the Epic Grandmaster Savior of the Universe.   That is a welcome change.

I'm anxious to see the rest of the quest line play out. 

In the meantime, I'm trying to decide if there's any real value in gearing up some of my "further down the list" max level alts - take level 110 #24 for example.  I'm guessing by the time I start leveling them in BfA, that heirlooms for leveling will likely be unlocked, so gearing them up now could turn out to be pointless.  But, it's also something to do that isn't leveling toon #34 or grinding out paragon chests.  So maybe it should just still be a thing.

Cheers! 

Joar

Leveling Plans for Battle for Azeroth

So I'm working on a new leveling order for Battle for Azeroth, this time based purely on how much I enjoy playing the class, rather than trying to get any particular professions on their way to whatever the new cap is.

So here is the list that I have worked out so far:

Warlock
Hunter
DK
Paladin
Druid (these 5 will be the main ones that I focus on for world quests, emissaries, world bosses, LFR, etc)

then..

Monk
Demon Hunter
Mage
Warrior
Rogue
Priest
Shaman

Now the trick is that I will likely start inserting an alliance character or two in the progression after the initial 5 are done, but those will most likely follow the same order.

Those initial five also give me every profession except engineering and inscription, so I think that actually works okay.

Cheers,

Joar