Let's talk alpha notes.

It's an exciting time right now because of Warlords of Draenor alpha notes. There is plenty of speculation, badgering of devs' Twitters, and crying about precious removed spells. That doesn't mean I'm not crying, because I definitely am. However, in RP Your Life! fashion, let's take a step back and look at the trends that these changes are indicating for the development of WoD.

- It now takes a lunch break to read mage talents.

- Healers are panicking about Cata-style healing when it was AWESOME.

In the Convert to Raid and FinalBossTV interviews, Celestalon assured healers that healing in WoD would not become the fight against OOMing that it was in Cata, but that period of time when healers had to think about which spell to use, not only to match the situation but to also preserve their mana, was the most engaging. The WoD movement away from critical burst healing back to triage seems like the perfect opportunity to bring that cerebral kind of healing back, but it's not looking like they're willing to push healers that far.

- The devs can't decide what to tell us their ultimate goal is.

If the new Mythic raiding is balanced around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If they want to remove unique utility so a raid doesn't require a specific class, then why leave in things like Gateway? If they leave things in like Gateway because they want to balance around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If...

- The devs might not even be talking to Mythic raiders.

Even after their big claim that the move to 20-man raiding would be the epitome of balanced raid tuning, it doesn't even look like many of the changes that they're making are geared towards Mythic at all. The homogenization of classes and making sure that certain class abilities aren't required are definitely safeguards for 10-man Normal and Heroic raids. Plus, when a shadow priest asks whether or not s/he needs to carry separate sets of gear for multi-target and single-target fights, the answer that I gleaned from Celestalon's appeasing "No, but..." was actually "Yes, but not for casuals," which he could have just said outright. I was hoping that FinalBossTV's interview would be more enlightening for end-game raiders, but there were very few instances in which the crew pushed the devs to a point where they were forced to defend their choices and explain their reasoning in a deeper manner. Why indeed is a certain DPS class retaining a raid-wide CD while others are having theirs taken away?

Watch your raid spot, everyone. The mages are after it.

-Avia.

Edit: Added a link to the FinalBossTV interview.