Cataclysm

[koro]

wat?! Is this just me being confused by the simplification of the stats?

If I remember correctly, there is no such thing as spell power in Cataclysm.

Not quite. Spellpower will continue to exist, but it will not show up on gear aside from weapons. It will still show up as a stat you look at and has a number beside it on your character sheet, but I dunno how gemming will work for it. It's just that, if I remember, Int converts to spellpower and Spirit is supposed to be The Mana Regen Stat. That's why Shaman and Priests get talents to convert Spirit into +hit rather than raw spellpower.

Also, apparently there is going to be no DPS caster mail (i.e. mail with int, spirit, and +hit on it) in Cataclysm, so Resto and Elemental Shaman will share the exact same gear, only Elemental will have a talent to convert 100% of their Spirit into +hit, as opposed to SPriests who only convert 20%, since they will be sharing +hit gear with Warlocks and Mages.

[Rendakor]

There will also be no DPS caster leather.

The rogue changes seem pretty odd to me; most of it just move low tier talents further down the trees: Blood spatter is now deep in subtlety, Puncturing Wounds moved down one tier so we HAVE to take Remorseless Attacks now, Imp Gouge moved way deep in combat, etc. And some of the new talents just strike me as absurd and useless: Murderous Intent, a Backstab skill, deep in Assassination which was and remains Mutilate focused. Thanks guys.

Because of this, and the fact that all of the good new talents are in the last 2 tiers of the trees, we're now very bottom heavy. To the point that getting a 21p in another tree and still having a viable build is looking pretty difficult. And there are still places where you have to take worthless talents to advance deeper into the tree (Assassination specifically here): 2p after Ruthlessness, 2p after Overkill, 2p after Focused Attacks. Then you have 15p of useful talents in the next two tiers.  You could probably run CttC at 3p and keep your SnD up, which still doesn't leave you with room to get anything more than you could before: DWS, Percision, Relentless Strikes, and Opportunity are all still pretty mandatory, leaving you with 4p to play with. Dropping 2 of either of those 4 talents to get you a 21p in a tree would also probably gimp your build, despite being more fun.

The subtlety tree suffers from similar problems: way too many 5p and 3p mandatory DPS talents in the lower tiers; it's actually got some cool stuff in it (Cheat Death and Enveloping shadows which aren't new, but are still awesome) but you can't get them without gimping your DPS.

I really hope this is just the "add new shit" revision, with the "remove bloated +%dps talents" still to come, because otherwise color me unimpressed.

[Shrike]

Frozen Power under the Enhancement tree makes it all worth it.  I might be able to go back to Enhancement now.

As was mentioned, it's always been there. My PvP specced prot pally was so impressed with it, she squashed the cow e-shaman using on her in less than 5 seconds. It's a PvP only power and it does have it uses, but it's also a known quantity.

My real complaint is this stuff is what we have already. The new stuff is just more crap we won't have talent points for. Increased life for totems? That's a bad joke. Hell, we can't free up points for increased life on the shaman, much less borderline useless totems. Granted, we're a long ways from release and I"m sure more changes are in the pipeline, but this crap doesn't inspire any sort of enthusiasm for the expansion. Quite the opposite really.

[sickrubik]

INT will be where Spell Power comes from in Cataclysm.

[Sheepherder]

The trees are obviously not done.

[Ragnoros]

The trees are obviously not done.

Then why give an "Official Preview" of such a bland and uninspiring lack of changes?

Wait a month or two till you have something cool to show us.

[Paelos]

The trees are obviously not done.

Then why give an "Official Preview" of such a bland and uninspiring lack of changes?

Wait a month or two till you have something cool to show us.

Blizzard obviously wants you to play as feral.

[Zetor]

Seriously... even if I make both of my druid's specs feral, I have a feeling I'll be missing out. 

(I might just do that anyway... the new-and-improved shaman caster specs/spells seem a bit more interesting to me)

[Fordel]

The trees are obviously not done.

Then why give an "Official Preview" of such a bland and uninspiring lack of changes?

Wait a month or two till you have something cool to show us.

Because they want your feedback?




Also, none of you are Balance druids clearly! Where we are rocking out right now  


-edit-

edit: It keeps on getting better. I just noticed we lost the threat reduction component of Shadow Form. I'm currently spec'd into shadow affinity (30% more) and I'm fighting with our fury warrior for first spot below the tanks on most fights.

Anti-Threat talents are going the way of the Dinosaur, Blizzard just had a post on that recently. They are just going to compensate the threat on the tanks probably, or just make DPS do less threat baseline.

[Paelos]

Anti-Threat talents are going the way of the Dinosaur, Blizzard just had a post on that recently. They are just going to compensate the threat on the tanks probably, or just make DPS do less threat baseline.

Thank god. I have enough to worry about as a tank to not get fucking owned, rather than watching whatever threat-gen combo I should be maximizing so our dumbass druid doesn't crawl right up my ass.

[Mattemeo]

edit: It keeps on getting better. I just noticed we lost the threat reduction component of Shadow Form. I'm currently spec'd into shadow affinity (30% more) and I'm fighting with our fury warrior for first spot below the tanks on most fights.

Anti-Threat talents are going the way of the Dinosaur, Blizzard just had a post on that recently. They are just going to compensate the threat on the tanks probably, or just make DPS do less threat baseline.

I don't mind if they want to get rid of anti-threat talents/make tanks generate much more than they do currently, but the Shadow tree still has Shadow Affinity in it, plain as day - still giving the same values. Mixed messages are confusing  :(

[Fordel]

Keep in mind that while previews, these are still Alpha Talents.

A lot of the talents in the trees currently are just there so the actual Alpha Testers can reach the bottom to play the game. They haven't even really started to organize the talents around builds, its more a focus on the individual talents, to see if they even work or not. GC was just commenting on how some of the Alpha Trees currently, you can't get past the 4 tier of the talent tree, because there just aren't enough talents to spec into yet 

[Wolf]

They really don't know what to do with Shadow Priests, do they? They created this wonderful little monster and then set it out into the wild, neglected it for years and they have no idea what makes it work.

No Imp. Spirit Tap, which is vital for Mana control.
Mind Melt looks like it has been sabotaged.
Unless the Shadowform tool-tip is just missing half the information, it has been decimated.
Imp. Shadowform has been split into two talents now - you require 'Dark Thoughts' now to receive pushback protection, swapped out for a crit chance buff to party members - nice enough, but hardly anything to be excited about having a SPriest along to the raid.
Twisted Faith now boosts spell hit by 20% instead of spell power? wat?! Is this just me being confused by the simplification of the stats?

I still don't know how Shadow Orbs are going to play, and this 'Shadowy Apparition' dealy seems laughably underpowered for its cost (3 points for a 6% chance to do 15% of Mind Blast's damage?   the 'while moving' addendum makes it slightly more interesting, but it's still a farce)

The Disc tree has now become very problematic for Shadow Priests in that it is impossible to get to Mental Agility without wasting several points and even then, it's likely you won't have enough points left to max it out.


Not pleased right now.

I was a sad panda yesterday too, but I had some time to think about it. First off this is Alpha, although these talents are most likely making it into beta, there's still time to fix things. Especally keeping in mind we're talking about shadow priests here, I don't think there's a bigger or more active theory crafting community for a single spec. Cataclysm is not WotLK - looking at these with wotlk in mind doesn't really work. There are a lot of things to be giddy about - we get hasted sw:p, we'll most likely get a mind flay glyph to replace t10 4p, we can't clip dots anymore, etc. Mind Spike and Mind Blast have a syngery that we've never had as a class - two mind spikes give you an Instant Mind Blast - which means we now have some movement dps - DP/MB/SW:D and spamming apparitions while moving seems good. Apparitions themselves are free dps, so you shouldn't whine about them - they don't take up GCDs. The aura is either getting replaced by 5% Haste or 5% haste is getting ADDED ON! Did I mentioned the awesome that is the new SW:D? Orbs are kind of wonky right now, but they work nice within our rotation, which will still be the same btw. It's not that bad at all. We just have to wait for beta, so the good folks over at shadowpriest.com can sink their teeth in and fix stuff up for us. Blizzard has a history of listending to them.

[Sheepherder]

Blizzard won't finalize their mechanics until into beta, and balance changes will continue until after patch day.  They did this with Wrath too, and that worked out well enough that I was left relatively upbeat about almost every class I had access to at that point.  They even talk with people on the Beta forums, though a few of their developers should limit their talking to stuff they know at least as intimately as their players.

[Mattemeo]

I was a sad panda yesterday too, but I had some time to think about it...

Yeah, on reflection and further inspection I'm not quite as unhappy as I was yesterday, bearing in mind I still don't know how Cataclysm's changes affect gameplay and specifically Shadow Priests, who have been notoriously difficult to balance during WotLK and have usually come out under-powered unless in top 25man raid gear. I still think there are a lot of mixed messages being given at this point, and while the Shadowy Apparition is, indeed, free damage, I still feel it is underwhelming for the cost at this point. I'd actually forgotten about Mind Spike so I'll be interested to see how it works, though I suspect it'll take a while to work out where it fits in a rotation with all the haste... SW:D too, which I just rarely ever use if I'm not moving, currently.
The trouble is, nice as some of these talents may turn out to be, if the Disc tree stays as-is to release, it puts a dampener on a lot of the utility Shadow Priests have enjoyed to date.

[K9]

Penance while moving 

[Draegan]

I always wanted to play a dps Disc priest but it was never viable.

[Righ]

It looks like somebody spent about ten minutes knocking up those talent previews. In the case of enhancement shaman with their upcoming lack of int itemization on gear, those talents won't work at all. They could make the mana costs on a bunch of shaman spells cheaper so that the future enhancement shaman with tiny mana pools can still cast chain lightning (or healing wave if soloing) on a full maelstrom stack but that would also require them to reduce int itemization on zap and heal mail. If they're going to go forward with their stated intent of having fewer sets of gear tied to one specific class/spec combo (removing int itemization from physical dps mail will actually exacerbate this) and less gear sharing between different talent trees on the same character (would suggest making even more shaman-only caster mail) these aren't even close to the final talents.

If this expansion does ship in 2010, popcorn is indicated.

[Sheepherder]

You're underestimating how quickly Blizzard can iterate through talent changes.

[Simond]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1790-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Press-Tour

[Mattemeo]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1790-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Press-Tour

Hmmm. A fair bit of back-tracking on the more interesting/difficult systems talked about since Blizzcon 09 there. A bit of a shame, really, but I can sort of figure out why they've dropped/altered so much (besides expediency) - the whole Path of the Titans/forced Archeology thing could cause a lot of unintended competition and camping going by standard MMO rules.

Looking forward to seeing Grim Batol/Skywall, though I'm very disappointed to see that the Heroic Classic instances aren't shipping till later patches. On the other hand... 3000 new quests. Bloody hell.

What I'm going to presume by all this is the game is actually going to ship on time.

(hahaha)

[Rendakor]

I honestly don't mind that they've gutted Archeology; it would've made the new low level content camped to fuck by 85s who needed it for raids. The updated VC and SFK getting delayed doesn't bother me much either. 3000 new quests really only seems like a big number if you forget all the new low level content Cata is shipping with; WotLK had 1000 and that was just the DK noob zone and NR.

[Malakili]

I'm glad they dropped the Path of the Titans thing, that sounded just terrible to me from the beginning.

[Merusk]

No, I expect the cuts are to hit that ship date.  More and more I see the fingers of Activision seeping into Blizzard and aiming for profits & 'must hit' deadlines over fun and polish with the stuff in WoW and SC2 happening.

Archaeology could have been a lot of fun but would have needed extensive playtesting to work out the problems and make it fun.  So it's cut. The reasons being cited for its cut aren't that it wasn't fun or that it was now mandatory for character advancement, only that it was complicated and felt like the glyph system.

Heroics aren't in? It's that hard to upscale the mob levels on existing instances and retool the loot stats?  I'll expect them to go the way of custom dancing emotes in WOTLK right now. (Anyone remember that?)  Quietly forgotten after all the hype of launch and other raids are thrown at the playerbase.

I still expect the "same loot in 25/10s" to cause too many problems.  Even though you can "downshift" a raid, you can't reform it.  I understand the reasoning, but it means that you're now faced with a dilemma. You either do not raid certain nights (causing raider atrophy) or you find yourself constantly doing 10s after the first night or two, making people wonder why they're bothering with your "25-man" guild.  This is going to put a LOT more pressure on Officers of those 25-man guilds to lower recruiting standards so they can always field that 25m team.

The guild advancement & currency changes make sense, but the reasons they give over on wowhead are iffy.  "We couldn't decide who does the talents, can you respec, who pays, do you min/ max so that all guilds 'feel' the same?"   Really? That's the reasons you didn't do it?  They're not all hand-wringy about only the Guild Master being able to /gdisband why be so over talent picking?  Of course there's respecs and they come out of, oh I dunno, maybe the Guild Bank gold pool you implemented.  As for the min/maxing.. again, no such hand wringing about each class's spec at high-end being a cookie cutter of each other.

Something stinks here.

[Maledict]

No, I expect the cuts are to hit that ship date.  More and more I see the fingers of Activision seeping into Blizzard and aiming for profits & 'must hit' deadlines over fun and polish with the stuff in WoW and SC2 happening.


Something stinks here.

Umm, I'm not sure how familiar you are with Blizzard, but this is exactly how they build their games. The amount of stuff that has been cut from every single game they have ever released is astonishing - they even cut two full races from WC3. It's how they get that polish - if stuff isn't fun after a certain while, it gets cut. Every game they've released since Warcraft 1 had significant cuts to content and planned design in order to streamline it and focus in on what works instead of trying to patch up what doesn't.

I know Bobby Kotick is supposed to be the emissary of Satan and all, but in this case he'd need a time machine in order to stop Blizzard cutting.

[Simond]

Never mind features, they've killed at least two games because they weren't working out - and one of those was even after basically trying to rebuild it halfway through development as well.

Oh, and Archaeology isn't completely gone - just AAs The Path of the Titans.

[Drubear]

Is there that much of a problem with 2 (3?) 10's happening one night and then picking up again as a 25 next raid night? They wrote that you could join any raid as long as you weren't "ahead" so if your 10's A team kills extra, just let them form up a 25 and let your 10's B team join up and keep going as a 25.

Or am I missing something?

[Sjofn]

I'm glad they dropped the Path of the Titans thing, that sounded just terrible to me from the beginning.

Yeah, that was one of the things I was sort of nervous about. I'm glad archeology is going to be "thing to do for the hell of it" like fishing instead of the "this might sort of wind up mandatory" thing.

I don't mind SFK/Deadmines being pushed off to a patch. I love those instances and I am glad they decided to heroic them, but they're not going to be high on my list of instances to do when I hit 85, you know? I want brand new shit for a while at 85.

I think a lot of the 10/25 fussing is overreacting still, mostly because it sounds like it's going to be a lot of short raids rather than Ulduar-type slogs that are cool but man you don't want to try and squeeze that into one night. I just really can't get too upset about the zomgsharedlockout even if they DO have long raids, it's the way it's always worked for the people who only did 10 mans, and we all still manage to not kill ourselves in despair.

[Ingmar]

The "heroic" Deadmines and Shadowfang aren't going to be just upscaled to 85 versions of the regular ones, from what they told us at Blizzcon last year. They're going to have entirely new fights, etc.

[caladein]

Is there that much of a problem with 2 (3?) 10's happening one night and then picking up again as a 25 next raid night? They wrote that you could join any raid as long as you weren't "ahead" so if your 10's A team kills extra, just let them form up a 25 and let your 10's B team join up and keep going as a 25.

Or am I missing something?

Here's the full raid section on Wowhead (source):

10-Mans and 25-Mans
You guys already know that Blizzard is planning to consolidate 10-man and 25-man raiding into less of a difficulty setting and more of a playstyle choice. This means that 10-man and 25-man encounters will be designed to have roughly the same difficulty level, and will drop items from the same loot table. To compensate for the additional logistical hassle of getting 25 players online rather than 10, Blizzard will be giving out more loot per player in 25-mans—specifically, about 50% more. It was strongly hinted that this extra loot would come in the form of Emblems.

What they hadn't announced previously is the ability to "downshift" your raid. Imagine if you do a 25-man run of a new instance, get about halfway through, and call it a night. The next day you get back together to do another run, but—big surprise—only 20 people show up. Well, now you can "downshift" your raid into two separate 10-man groups, and just keep right on going. The maximum number of 10-mans you can make out of one 25-man is three—meaning, if the remaining five guys show up the next day, they can swap down to a 10-man as well and keep right on going.

Blizzard is not allowing players to "upshift". They explained that they felt this would cause a lot of pressure on guild to pull some really unpleasant maneuvers—for instance, stripping out the bottom 15 players to do some particularly difficult encounter, and then inviting them all back in for trash. They figured the legitimate use-cases for upshifting a raid were much more rare.
Raid Lockouts
Here's another big change—they've added a great deal of flexibility to raid lockouts. Rather than being locked into a particular raid ID, you can now join any raid, as long as it doesn't have any bosses up that you have already killed. Basically, as long as you're not killing the same boss twice in one lockout period—you have total freedom.

So, the 25-man raid lockout essentially ceases to be once it's split into as many as three 10-man lockouts.

Presumably, your raid could start doing 25-mans again, but only if steal another group's lockout that is farther along than any of your 10-man groups.  Now, that might not even work because of this change to IDs and you may be "stuck" doing 10-man for the rest of the week because you've been in a 10-man raid.

On top of that, 50% more per player is 3.75x the loot in a 25-man over a 10-man.  That's quite a lot.

[Minvaren]

A bit of new race early-going info at this link.

At the new vehicle tricks, but the goblin starting zone sounds nuts.

[Sjofn]

  goblins 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Gasoline fight! 

[Evildrider]

I'm trying to talk some of my guildies to go Horde, because I wanna play a Goblin so bad.   

[Ironwood]

arrgagrgargagrggrgar