Priests, mages, shamans, and druids in WoW can rejoice. With Patch 7.3, they receive brand new spell animations!
With the Warlords of Draenor expansion, most character models of the playable races in World of Warcraft have been brought up to date. However, some things have been around since Classic that have never been touched – the spell animations of many classes.
With Patch 7.3, many classes receive new animations. This primarily affects spellcasters – namely mages, priests, shamans, and druids. Blizzard has now presented these changes in detail in a lengthy blog post.
For example, shamans stand upright and grounded (even orcs!), while priests float slightly above the ground in reverence of light or shadow. Mages appear “battle-ready” and druids are prepared to harness the forces of nature from their surroundings.
Some of these animations will also be used for the “idle” animation in combat – that is, whenever the character is in battle, but is not casting a spell.
This also brings many new animations for individual spells. For example, the Arcane Missiles from the mage get an update, and even the shadow priest has seen some minor tweaks.
For those who have grown fond of the race-specific spell animations, there is no need to mourn. A handful of spells of each class still use the “old” animations of the races that players have grown so accustomed to.
Warlocks will receive their new animations at a later time. They simply were not ready for the release of Patch 7.3.
What do you think of the new spell animations? Do you feel they are well done and do you like them? Or does it no longer feel like “your” character and bothers you while playing?
With Patch 7.3, there are also many new PvP rewards – you can check them out in this post.
