World of Warcraft: Midnight — Season 1 Retrospective

World of Warcraft: Midnight Season 1 is slowly but surely coming to an end, and data for Season 2 is already being confirmed. We now know which dungeons will make it into the Season 2 Mythic+ rotation, and let me tell you, I don't think many people are happy about it. But let's focus on Season 1 and all the things that made it good or bad, depending on your point of view.

To start, let's talk about the reintroduction of bonus rolls. This is a system we used to have in Mists of Pandaria (MoP) raids, and now we have it in Midnight keys too. Bonus rolls allow you to gear up an alt in a matter of hours, and I mean that literally. I currently have 11 characters geared up to do any kind of endgame content, and all of them went from freshly "dinged" to a 280+ item level within a few hours of playtime. Now, I have to admit I had help from friends and guildies, and playing healers and tanks helps a lot, but I did the exact same thing recently with my Arms Warrior and Elemental Shaman.

Getting gear wasn't an issue at all. However, it comes with a cost.

Just because your item level is going up doesn't mean your character will perform as it should at that specific ilvl. At a certain point, stats are way more important than raw item level. I would say once you hit 280+, sacrificing your optimal stats just to go from 282 to 283 is no longer worth it. Even though people mostly say "item level is king," I have to disagree. A 1–2% difference in haste on a haste-reliant class will make a much bigger impact than a few points of primary stat lost by wearing a lower-ilvl item.

I believe the Dinar system was simply better because, right now, I have three characters that can get absolutely nothing from any key or raid other than that one specific trinket from the Dreamrift. There is no other trinket worth grinding in keys, and there is no other raid trinket worth getting. There is no alternative, as we all need the exact same item. When you go into a 20-man raid and kill a boss, probably 18 to 20 people are going to roll on that one trinket.

To make matters worse, bonus rolls aren't a 100% guarantee either. You might waste two cores rolling on an item you don't even need, which is crazy. It was way better when we could buy the missing pieces we needed using tokens, like we did in Dragonflight and The War Within, allowing us to actually finish our builds. This is especially true given how limited our character-building choices are right now.

Bonus rolls can be great, but they can also be terrible. You might need to use them across a few different dungeons instead of focusing on just one, which feels awful. For example, you might have one character that can focus entirely on gearing up in Pit of Saron (PoS), which is a very common route. But then another character might need two or three different dungeons just to get all their Best-in-Slot (BiS) items.

The problem is that if you need to run 2–3 dungeons with bonus rolls, you will accumulate a lot of junk items in the process. While you still get unwanted loot when focusing on a single dungeon, at least you can't get the exact same item twice from a single dungeon's bonus rolls. On the other hand, you can get the same armor slot from different dungeons. That's how my Warrior ended up with three Mythic cloaks, all with the wrong stats, and none of them good enough to replace my crafted one. That translates to three completely wasted rolls.

When you think about it, receiving fewer items per week that are actually BiS is far more helpful than having multiple alts that are technically item-level ready for Mythic raiding but can't perform because their stats are terrible. Plus, most BiS trinkets are still locked behind raids, meaning you only get a shot at them once a week, or twice, if you count the Great Vault. Still, those are incredibly slim chances.

Tanks are highly limited this season. You can play a Guardian Druid or a Brewmaster Monk, but if you aim for anything high on other tank specs, well, good luck. I'm not saying there are no other tanks pushing high keys, but the reality is that they aren't playing with PUGs (pick-up groups); they are running with coordinated teams that help them overcome their class weaknesses.

Nobody took a bigger hit this season than Vengeance Demon Hunters. Seeing as DH tanks were the meta for a long time, it's understandable that Blizzard wanted to nerf them to give other specs some breathing room. However, that shouldn't mean making other tanks feel unplayable. We are talking about +18 to +20 keys here, where these details drastically matter. A Demon Hunter dropping to 20% HP won't have time to heal back up and will likely die, even while trying to kite ranged abilities. It's crazy. I've watched top-tier players on DH tanks die mid-pull. At that level, it's obviously a class issue, not a player issue.

There will always be people claiming it's "not that bad" or boasting about how they pulled great numbers and earned a high rating on an underdog tank spec. That's fine, but you shouldn't claim the balance is good when it clearly isn't. Just because players can make a broken spec work doesn't mean the spec is fine. How many times this season did you see a DH, Paladin, or even a Warrior tank just randomly drop dead? I would argue that Blood Death Knights are the best third-choice option right now, even after all their changes and the tools they had removed. That's insane given that Blood used to be at the bottom; now, they don't even perform that much better than before, they just look amazing compared to the other classes Blizzard ruined in favor of the two they chose to make meta.

Some people will tell you that the meta doesn't matter and that you should just play what you enjoy. I agree with that in theory, but how long can you actually have fun when you're dead last on the DPS meters simply because your class is underperforming? How long is it fun to be constantly declined from keys or raids because of your spec?

The meta matters.

For casual players doing +10 to +12 keys, or maybe up to +16s, it admittedly doesn't matter as much. A meta comp will make the run smoother and faster, but you'll still time the key without it, just make sure to bring drums if you don't have a Bloodlust class.

However, past +16 keys, it gets significantly harder to brute-force your way through a dungeon with raw damage alone. At +18 and above, it becomes impossible. You absolutely need your dispels, AoE crowd control, strong cleave, and utility. Some specs are simply not viable at that level, and the community knows it. Nobody wants their +19 or +20 key bricked just because they wanted to be a nice guy and let someone play an off-meta spec. Players want to make the key as easy as possible because it isn't going to be an easy ride anyway. Why make it harder than it needs to be? And that's exactly where the fun stops for a lot of people.

I completely sympathize with players who hate feeling forced onto a certain class or spec to compete at that level. But on the flip side, I also agree with the crowd that says at this level, the game is no longer just about casual fun, it's a competition. At that point, it doesn't matter what you want to play; you focus on your rating and do whatever it takes to push forward. You fight to get into that top 1% of players in the world, earn your mount, and enjoy the rewards of your hard work.

I honestly think that without this highly competitive tier, WoW would lose a massive portion of its player base. People love to prove themselves, and not everyone plays for fun alone; some simply love achieving difficult goals in a video game. I know I do. It’s not about compensating for real life (though I’m sure that applies to some); it’s about having something tangible to show for the hundreds of hours you invest into the game. For some, that’s their player housing; for others, it's achievements, pets, mounts, or transmogs. For players like us, it's our PvP or PvE rating.

This season, I've been healing on a Paladin and a Monk, and tanking on a Druid, Death Knight, and Demon Hunter. Let me tell you, the difference is night and day. I started the season with my Druid as Feral, intending for my Demon Hunter to be my main tank. At the exact same item level, my Demon Hunter was absolutely struggling to survive in +14s, while my Druid timed every single +17 in one day on the very first try.(tanking in feral gear) The +17s on the Druid didn't feel any different than doing a +12 on the DH.

Then look at my Holy Paladin: fully geared in BiS items with perfect stats, yet it was a massive struggle to heal +14s and +15s. It becomes incredibly punishing because PUG players refuse to use their defensive cooldowns, and Holy Paladin simply isn't equipped to carry a whole group taking massive, unmitigated damage.

By contrast, I pushed my Mistweaver Monk to a 3400 rating within two days of playing the spec for the first time in my life. No prior experience, no deep knowledge of the toolkit, it was just that easy simply because it's a meta class. The power gap is real, and it is massive.

Sure, you can find an elite Holy Paladin who plays circles around me and gets better results. But I completely lost interest in healing on my Paladin when the Monk makes the exact same content feel effortless. With my eyes set on pushing my characters to 3800 rating before the season ends, I see no point in making that road any harder than it already is.

On the bright side, the Season 1 dungeon rotation wasn't actually bad. Skyreach was nice, fast, and easy, and the same goes for Pit of Saron. I think we got the absolute best of the Midnight dungeons in this first rotation, which means the next one is probably going to feel way worse. Overall, Blizzard started the expansion off strong, but there is always room for improvement.

If you play WoW, you probably know we are about to get a new feature that is essentially yet another borrowed power mechanic. As you can guess, the community isn't thrilled. I vividly remember Blizzard admitting a few years ago that endless borrowed power systems were a mistake, promising they wouldn't do it again, yet here we are. Seriously, who asked for this? Isn't it incredibly frustrating when developers force a feature they think is cool, even though the entire player base paying their subscriptions thinks it's stupid?

The item is called the Omnium Folio, and it honestly doesn't look exciting at all. Even back in The War Within, I wasn't a fan of the legendary cloak system, and this feels like an even worse iteration. Why can't we just have the game operate without these bizarre "special" items? Instead of adding convoluted features that inherently break balance, why aren't they focusing on tuning the actual classes so that more specs are viable at a high level? That would give people way less to complain about in both PvP and PvE.

I saved the best, or worst, for last, didn't I? Either way, this Folio system is going to introduce a mix of passive buffs and active triggers to help you both offensively and defensively. How exactly it's going to blend into an already severely imbalanced meta remains to be seen, but we are about to find out very soon.