The pre-patch has been out for almost a week now and so far it is actually feeling rather good despite all the scaling issues and bugs.
It has been really nice to be able to do some mythic+ again since there is something of a renewed interest for that type of content, primarly due to everyone needing to learn their classes and specs again. It has also given me the opportunity to start poking at Discipline properly which has been a nice change of pace—especially since Holy seems to feel rather similiar to before except I now have on more big cooldown, and that is one really big cooldown potentially one of the strongest healing cooldowns available at the moment. That has been especially nice since unfortunately cooldown wise Holy was very weak during Legion so it is nice to see a bit more utility in that sense being available. I’m still not quite sure how to properly manage getting that cooldown reset though, there have been murmurings of it being doable in 3-4 minutes but I can’t seem to reach that, maybe the circumstances that are being assumed just haven’t been available in raids so far.
Discipline has also been really nice to play, so far only in mythic+ and nothing particularily high, I think the highest key was a Arcway+21. But it has been nice getting a feel for Discipline and I think it plays a bit better now without Plea since the descision what to cast feels a bit more straightforward. Having played my Restoration Druid twink I think also helped a lot with getting started as Discipline, since I had gotten used to the playstyle of being prepared for damage ahead of time instead of simply reacting to it as I can rather easily do most of the time as Holy.
Unfortunately I haven’t yet taken the chance to play my Druid, but that somehow feels a bit less interesting now that I also have Discipline to learn and as such something new and interesting to do with my main. I did however get to tank a couple of dungeons with my Warrior and it went reasonably well though the changes there were felt a lot harder especially when it comes to the global cooldown. Ignore Pain, in other words my primary damage mitigation mechanic, being on the global cooldown was a rather frustating experience. It wasn’t really helped along by Devastator and the talent that gives you rage through Demoralizing Shout now sharing a tier, since I was used to the rage gains of both I felt a lot less survivable than before which is a feat considering Warrior tanks were rather easy to bring down. This unfortunately lead to me not enjoying tanking with the Warrior as much anymore, which is unfortunate since it has been nice to have an Alliance character I could play with from time to time along with being able to tank. Having a feel for both the healing and tanking aspects in dungeons I feel really helps me in becoming a better healer and being able to better predict the damage the tank should be taking, which will of course become even more important if I plan on playing Druid or Discipline more since those are both rather reliant on being able to predict incoming damage. It was only a short test so far though, and I definitely want to try the Warrior a bit more but the initial impression was unfortunately not that good.
The pre-patch also has me really looking forward to Battle for Azeroth now since that’s when the specs will be really fleshed out with the Azerite traits. Also that is probably when I get the chance to start raiding a bit as Discipline once I have some more experience playing the spec, which I’m looking forward to a surprising amount considering I barely played the spec during Legion. I’m even considering deviating from my normal leveling routine and going Discipline for leveling instead of Holy, since that would probably be more useful with the DoTs available though I’m not sure how much that will matter since we’ll be leveling in a group anyway meaning my damage shouldn’t be of consequence.
All-in-all though, the pre-patch was really reinvigorating and has given me and my friends renewed motivation to play the game which was sorely needed and now we can start preparing for the launch of Battle for Azeroth!