I’ve let my WoW sub lapse for a few weeks while we await the Midnight launch, but before that I had a bit over a week to play around with the pre-patch and its associated class changes. In many ways they’re very small, but as I’ve said before, small changes can still make a big difference.

As is always the case, the hyperbole over classes being “gutted” by the ability pruning was entirely unfounded. Most of my characters lost only one or two buttons, usually stuff that was either blatantly redundant or so niche I never used it. Mostly, I find classes more comfortable to play now, with less need to juggle additional action bars or twist my hands with shift macros.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean everything is perfect. My biggest frustration — or at least the thing I’m must confused about — is that Havoc demon hunter was one of the more heavily pruned specs I play, despite being one of the few I would have said didn’t need pruning at all. It was already one of the simpler specs.

Sigil of Flame was pretty much just another cooldown for the sake of another cooldown, so no loss there, but loosing Demon’s Bite (an active fury generator) for mandatory Demon Blades (a formerly optional talent that makes auto-attacks generate fury) has been a difficult adjustment.

I tell myself it’s the same as a rogue’s passive energy regeneration, but it isn’t quite, because your generation shuts down whenever you’re not in melee. That was also technically true with Demon’s Bite, but at least you could take action to solve your resource starvation once you got back in range. Being at the mercy of the auto-attack swing timer is a very different feeling, and it lacks both the smoothness of energy and the agency of an active generator.

I’m getting used to it. Taking the talent that gives you a second Immolation Aura charge helped, and I usually don’t end up with any dead time where I can’t afford any spenders, but it still feels vaguely off. I won’t say it’s ruined the spec or anything, but I do wish I could go back to how it was before the patch.

I’ve already given my thoughts on Devourer over at Massively, but the TL;DR is that I like it, but not as much as I expected to. I am having second thoughts about making it my new main. I had even considered benching the demon hunter altogether, but I probably won’t go that far. It’s still fun, just not as fun as I’d hoped.

(The current version of Vengeance is absolutely awful, but I haven’t been playing it much lately anyway.)

At first, I was resigned to rogue being absolutely dumpstered. Outlaw is still a mess of juggling boring maintenance buffs with clunky cooldowns. I was glad to see the end of Symbols of Death for Subtlety, but I’m not happy with Secret Technique replacing Rupture. As I’ve said many times, I do not like these ~30 second cooldown rotational abilities, and I especially don’t like them on a rogue.

Secret Technique is just such a boring ability, too. The tooltip makes it sound like it should at least be visually spectacular, but the shadow clones are barely visible. Rupture may not have been the most exciting thing ever, but at least it wasn’t just a second burst damage finisher but she’s got a new hat but on a cooldown.

However, I gave Assassination a try just for the heck of it, and I found it actually feels pretty good now. The loss of Improved Shiv makes it a blissfully cooldown free core rotation; just the standard build and spend loop rogue should be all about. It’s not perfect, and I still miss being able to use swords,* but it has me thinking I won’t have to bench Mai after all.

*I just decided to check on the off chance that the transmog changes made it so you can transmog daggers to swords now, and to my shock and delight, you can! Why have I not seen this mentioned anywhere?!? LOOKS LIKE THUNDERFURY’S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS.

That does leave a bit unsure which character to leave out instead, or if I should just accept leveling up more than five characters in Midnight after all.

My warlock actually has more buttons to press since the patch. I don’t like Haunt being required for Affliction now, but over in Destruction spec, I was happy to see Shadowburn once again has no cooldown, so I started talenting into it again.

Meanwhile, I also played through the new War Within recap feature with my warrior. I question the usefulness of the recap for new players (is it available to new players?) as it still leaves out a lot of context and detail, but as someone who did the campaign properly it was an enjoyable way to quickly refresh my memory of some of the important bits.

I’m not sure how much is because of the recent class changes and how much is the new cooldown manager helping things, but I did find myself enjoying Fury again. Probably not enough to add her to my roster for Midnight, but it was nice to revisit the character.

I’m trying to get used to the idea that it’s okay to just play a character now and then, or to leave them behind after a while. I feel this weird sense of… not guilt exactly, but a certain regret over not playing characters that I’ve previously sunk time into. I always remember the fun I’ve had with them and regret not playing them more.

I’ve finally worked up the courage to check my /played time with characters now and then, and I find it’s helping with that unease. I vastly underestimate the time I’ve spent even on my lesser played characters. I checked the order day, and I have over seventy hours logged on my warrior, a character I think of as having hardly played at all. That’s more time than I’ve spent playing Clair Obscur, more than triple the amount of time I’ve spent playing Road 96. Knowing that makes it easier to not feel like I’ve missed out by not playing her more.

Anyway, that’s my latest ramble on my WoW alts. Now I’m off to play other games for a few weeks, until Midnight falls. I have really enjoyed the last few weeks of play. The dying days of an expansion are always a good time — the worst grinds are behind us, and there’s the freedom to follow your whims.

With The War Within wrapping up and Midnight around the corner, I’d like to take this opportunity to once again take stock of my roster of World of Warcraft characters and pontificate on whom I’ll be playing next expansion. Mind you, historically I almost always end up diverging from my plans on what I’ll be playing, but it can still be amusing to look back and see how off I was. I’ve already had to rewrite this post once since my first draft because the situation had changed.

War Within has now tied with Legion for my most characters at level cap, with twelve. For much of the expansion I’ve had my rogue, warlock, monk, Dark Iron shaman, Blood Elf paladin, demon hunter, and mage at 80. While some have been played much more than others, they’ve all participated in endgame to some degree. Delves, raid finder, and such.

Around the time K’aresh launched, I got my Undead death knight from Pandaria Remix to 80, but I’ve only done one raid finder wing with him, and that’s probably going to be about the extent of it. More recently, I also got the Dark Ranger hunter, also from Pandaria Remix, to 80, but I can’t see playing her much. Try as I might, I just cannot bring myself to enjoy playing a hunter that much, no matter how much I love her aesthetic.

Over in Legion Remix, I’ve finished leveling the Blood Elf death knight (essentially intended as a second incarnation of the aforementioned hunter), and I also leveled up a Nightborne monk just to get the leather mythic set from Trial of Valor, and I probably won’t play her much past that. She looks super cool, but I don’t need a second Night Elf-ish monk.

I have also used my level 80 boost from pre-ordering Midnight on my Dwarf warrior. I don’t plan to play her much — probably just a couple delves — but I wanted to give the Mountain Thane hero talents a try, since I’ve always modeled her after the Mountain King hero from Warcraft III, and I couldn’t think of much else to spend the boost on.

It’s funny how much small changes can change your experience of a class. All it took was them adjusting the cooldown of Bloodthirst slightly to completely ruin my enjoyment of playing a warrior.

While I don’t expect to get either to level cap any time soon — if ever — I have also dusted off my long neglected Pandaren hunter a newer Goblin monk for the purposes of doing the heritage armour quests of their respective races.

So far I’ve got Pandaren down. It was a very short but thoroughly enjoyable storyline. Normally I’m all for keeping the war in Warcraft, but self-contained side stories like heritage armour quests are a great vehicle for more slice of life stories, where smaller stakes and more wholesome vibes don’t feel out of place, and the Pandaren storyline nailed that perfectly.

I don’t know how it is that what is on paper the game’s most ridiculous race consistently gets the best writing in its stories. I was especially impressed by how, despite their small role in the story, Aysa and Ji felt entirely consistent with their characterization from original the Wandering Isle story (which is nearly fifteen years old now!), as if no time had passed.

It kind of made me want to play that character some more, but again, hunters…

I haven’t kept an exact count, but I’m confident my demon hunter has been my most played character this expansion. The Fel Scarred hero talents have really elevated my enjoyment of the class by making Metamorphosis feel more meaningful, and it turns out Havoc is an amazing spec for delves.

Meanwhile the shaman I planned to be my main this expansion has barely been played at all past the first raid tier. This always seems to be the fate of my shamans. As much as there’s lots about the class I love, it always seems to get passed over in favour of other things.

I think I would like to scale back on my alt play a bit in Midnight. Not to the point of abandoning alts altogether — I’m still me — but maybe I don’t need seven characters at max level before the second raid tier.

I liked what I did in War Within by leveling one character through the main campaign and then assigning one alt to clean up the side quests in each zone, and I think I’d like to do the same in Midnight. That would make for five max level characters, which feels like a good number.

As mentioned above, I’ve been having a lot of fun with the demon hunter lately, and from what I’ve seen the new Devourer spec looks like everything I want in a WoW spec right now, so my current plan is for my DH to wear the mantle of nominal main in Midnight, her first time doing so.

Her warlock alter ego is also on the docket to keep being played. The warlock class isn’t in its best state right now, but it’s also far from its worst state, and she’s one of my traditional “big three,” so she’s got the weight of history on her side.

My monk is also a no-brainer. Another of my top three, the monk has remained a consistently enjoyable class for me through its entire lifespan — something perhaps no other class can claim — and there’s no reason to believe that won’t continue to be the case in Midnight.

I’d also like to continue playing my Blood Elf paladin. I’m enjoying the class, and with Liadrin looking to have a big role in the upcoming story, what better time to play a Blood Knight?

The fifth and final slot is a little more in doubt, but I’m leaning towards a death knight, and specifically my Lemix death knight, since she’s an Elf and this is the Oops All Elves expansion. DK has long been a neglected also-ran class for me, but I’m really enjoying the simplicity of Frost these days, and I’d like to make it a priority.

This would leave me playing a roster comprised entirely of sad Elf girls. Which on the one hand feels a bit boring and like a waste of WoW’s incredible species diversity, but on the other hand feels like me taking on my inevitable Final Form.

I had also given some thought to leveling up my mage. He was my original main, and bringing him back to defend Quel’thalas feels appropriate, but I’m not that enthusiastic about the class right now, especially as it seems they’re removing Living Bomb again.

The other elephant in the room is Mai. She’s the final member of the Big Three, my most played character, and my mascot in the digital realm. I have never not played her in any expansion where I was subscribed.

But the fact is I’m just not at all happy with the current state of the rogue class, and Midnight’s changes don’t look likely to change that. She’s also got no real story connection to anything that’s happening in Midnight. It’s hard to imagine leaving her behind entirely, but I have to be honest that there’s nothing but history compelling me to play her. Maybe I’ll just blitz her to cap with some Timewalking dungeons to keep the tradition alive and then park her.

My angst over what to do with Mai notwithstanding, I think I’ve got a pretty solid plan in place. Now watch me do something completely unexpected like main a Zandalari druid or some such nonsense.