I won't be able to touch on every single change here, as I'm giving my basic vibes. Since the Midnight pre-patch launched for WoW, I've mostly been leveling up my new Void Elf Demon Hunter (and finding the Devourer spec to be... basically broken - something I understand will get better with some Apex Talents coming in the next few levels, but probably needs a fix at some core design level) but I've also been hopping on my many alts (see the name of the blog) to get a sense of how the class changes have affected them. Again, I don't play every single spec (I have basically no healers) and some I've just barely touched.
I'll go class-by-class, and within those, touch on the specs I've looked at.
Paladin:
Protection: At first glance, there are some cooldowns that have been pruned and one big change I actually like a lot, which is that Hammer of Wrath is now just a transformed Judgment, which makes my bars a bit less awkward. We lose Eye of Tyr, which was always kind of an odd semi-cooldown, and now if we're going Templar (and we are) we use Divine Toll to activate it. But for the most part, this plays similarly (though I miss having Weak Auras just to give myself a big visual cue when I'd gotten 3 Holy Power. This applies to Combo Points for Rogues as well).
I don't feel like this is going to change the way the spec feels all that much, so I'm kind of neutral on all of this.
Death Knight:
Blood: The big change here is that the "burn Bone Shield charges to get Dancing Rune Weapon back faster" playstyle is no more - indeed, Bone Storm and Tombstone are both gone, so DRW is on just a normal cooldown. Interestingly, Consumption is way more interesting now, working as an empowered spell that can consume varying amounts of your Blood Plague and give you a damage-reduction bonus based on its empowerment.
Frost: I ran a Delve mostly as this - Frost got, I think, a revamp mid-War Within, so some stuff, like making Remorseless Winter a passive, were already in place. There's an interesting new talent at the bottom of the tree called Frostbane, which causes your Frost Strike to sometimes get transformed into a big meteor-style strike in front of you.
Unholy: Honestly, lots of big changes that I don't yet fully understand, but you can now summon ghouls on demand, which seems to replace Apocalypse (it's a recharge ability) and Festering Wounds are gone, with new abilities that give you more undead dudes to keep you doing your Festering Strike and Scourge Strike.
Rogue:
Subtlety: Holy crap. Subtlety has been profoundly simplified. First off, no more Rupture - the only ongoing buff from a finishing move you need to worry about is Slice and Dice, and at least the way I'm talented, you refresh it with every Eviscerate, so once it's going, you're basically good unless you have like, more than a minute of downtime. The bigger deal, though, is that you're no longer building up damage in over a Shadow Dance to buff up Secret Technique as much as possible. Instead, you can just blow that the moment that you have full combo points and drop into Shadow Dance. There is something like the old mechanic, where you'll do some shadow damage for each unique ability you used during Shadow Dance, but these don't buff the abilities you're using - it's an independent source of damage - so the order no longer matters. There are also just fewer buttons to push now - Symbols of Death and Flagellation are both gone, meaning basically you just have Backstab, Eviscerate, Slice and Dice, Secret Technique, Shadow Dance, and of course Shuriken Storm and Black Powder as your AoE Backstab/Eviscerate alternatives.
While I appreciated how satisfying it was to pull off the gigantic Secret Technique blasts, I did find my hands juggling my keyboard and mouse in awkward ways to do so. Right now, it feels very simple and easy, but we'll see if we miss the complexity.
Shaman:
Enhancement: Another spec that has gotten seriously simplified (another where I struggled to find a spot for all their abilities on my bars). Lava Burst is out, as is Primordial Wave. You actually still have a fair number of things to press, but it all seems a little more forgiving. You'll only be spending Maelstrom Weapon charges on Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, and it seems that Doom Winds now replicates the Ascendance thing of speeding up Storm Strike's cooldown and having it consume your Maelstrom Weapon charges to shoot lightning at your foe. I've been playing Totemic, but I imagine that this also makes Stormbringer simpler, not having to juggle Lava Burst along with this.
This, honestly, I think, feels a little more like what the spec is supposed to feel like. There are still some things to monitor and look out for, but it feels manageable.
Demon Hunter:
Havoc: Honestly, very similar to how it was before. Havoc has always been one of the simpler specs, so they didn't really need to pull much out of it.
Devourer: Well, see the previous two posts.
Mage:
Frost: We've gone a couple expansions, I think, without major changes to Frost (maybe not since Legion, actually, which launched a decade ago this year. Dear lord) and I've largely had an attitude of "not broke, don't fix." But they have now made quite a lot of changes - the biggest is that everything is built around applying a "Freezing" debuff to your target, which you can then consume with Ice Lance to shatter. Weirdly, spells that used to benefit a lot from shattering, like Glacial Spike, now apply Freezing rather than consuming it. I need to get a sense of how much I need to weave in Ice Lances, especially because Fingers of Frost seems to prevent it from consuming stacks, so presumably we do want to consume them outside of that proc. Also, Icy Veins is gone, with Ray of Frost now your main cooldown (and kind of your only major cooldown outside of Time Warp). Also, Glacial Spike now replaces Frost Bolt rather than being its own button.
I think it largely plays the same - the big thing is that you'll, I believe, be weaving in Ice Lances constantly to eat up Freezing stacks. I know that Comet Swarm can also shatter the stacks, so you'll sometimes be using them in other ways.
Warlock:
Demonology: Actually a fair number of changes, even if you're going to look pretty similar in the end. One big thing is that Soul Siphon and Implosion are now mutually exclusive - different ways to use up your Wild Imps. Summon Dreadstalkers is now always instant and always free, and your Demonic Tyrant now checks how many demons you have out to improve its damage (I don't know if this snapshots or just acts dynamically). Actually, Implosion now has a cooldown, so it's less about figuring out how many Imps to sacrifice than just doing so when you've got the ability (it also only sacrifices I think a set number per cast). You can also summon an Imp or Felhound as a long-lasting temporary summon that then lends you its activated ability - so with the Felhound you finally get an interrupt.
There are other changes here, but I think to a large extent it's mainly just less fiddly. You don't have Grimoire: Felguard or an actively summoned Vilefiend (though you can still talent to get the latter) but the Doomguard and Felhound/Imp options kind of replace those. It'll take some adjustments, but even if there are a lot of changes, the core of the spec remains the same.
Warrior:
Arms: There are some changes here, like getting rid of Dragon Roar (which did feel a bit redundant with all the other cooldowns we might use). Execute also now seems usable at any health percentage - I'll admit this is one that I haven't really looked under the hood at so much.
Priest:
Shadow: Huge aesthetic changes, as they're really doubling down on the cosmic aspects of the void. Devouring Plague, which made sense when Shadow kind of applied to any "dark" magic, is now Shadow Word Madness, but works similarly. Shadow Crash is now Tentacle Slam, with a whole new visual. And Dark Ascension is gone, so everyone will be using Void Eruption/Void Form, which I'm honestly good with.
To me, the biggest thing is that there's a talent that vastly improves the damage of Shadow Word Pain, which is fine except that it's mutually exclusive with the one that causes any instance of Vampiric Touch to apply the DOT. That means managing SWP more important to a rotation that I feel long ago moved away from "DoT management" as its primary focus. The Old God theme is still there, with the Idol of "insert Old God here" talents at the bottom, but, for example, I have a talent that sometimes pops out a void entity to attack my target (I think it's some variant of Shadowfiend).
Hunter/Monk/Druid/Evoker:
To be honest, I haven't really given much thought to the way that these classes have changed.
Naturally, the big caveat to this is that we won't really get to see how these play until we're level 90, with the hero talents filled in and the Apex Talents acquired. I know that Devourer is basically broken until we get get the latter, and I could imagine that these might entail big changes to how each spec feels.
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