Cataclysm Stat Changes

[Ingmar]

Plus you can't control when spikes are going to happen, which means you can't control when you have to break rotation to drop an 'oh shit' heal, which means that you're at the mercy of the RNG as far as running out of mana goes it seems to me.

[Morfiend]

They used my idea! It's Runic power that's generated off auto-attacks instead of Rune abilities.

I'm a gamer, and Cataclysm was my idea.

[Tarami]

I'm a gamer, and Cataclysm was my idea.

You're a gamer? I've heard they make the best games. You should design an MMO!

/crossthreadsnark

[Fordel]

Major Dispell changes: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24038610691&sid=1

[Malakili]

I've never been a big fan of cleansing in the game to begin with (did anyone actually enjoy Chrommagus?).  This seems like they are just going to make it even more annoying.   Oh well.

[caladein]

Great.  No one dispelled before and now they're probably going to do it even less.

[SurfD]

Wow, they are takin the bat to the Non Resto Shaman pretty hardcore.  Losing Disease / Poison cleanse in exchange for curse (and Magic if resto?)  So pretty much every non resto shaman is now gank bait for DK's and Rogues even MORE severely then they used to be.  Course, now warlocks are going to get their shit pushed in by Enhance shaman in simply epic proportion, so maybe i cant complain too bad.

[koro]

I guess it's safe to assume that for the first three to six months of Cataclysm, raids won't run unless every dispelling base is covered.

The way it's looking, you're probably going to have at least 2 debuff types that you will not be able to dispel in any given 10-man raid, and we're likely going to be seeing more "DISPEL THIS BOSS'S BUFF OR WIPE" stuff as well, which I absolutely detest as a healer.

[Rasix]

So, my shaman has been able to cure diseases and poisons for more than 5 years and now suddenly.. just forgot how?  I better get a lore reason and a quest for that. 

...

Fuckers.

[Fordel]

Conversely, all PvE Debuffs will end up being 'Magic' Debuffs, or at least the ones that are "dispell this or die".


I'm hoping they spread out and reorganize the Player vs Player debuffs. Currently, something like 80% of them are in the 'Magic' debuff class.

[caladein]

Conversely, all PvE Debuffs will end up being 'Magic' Debuffs, or at least the ones that are "dispell this or die".

I really doubt that, at least for the raid-wide stuff because Mass Dispel still exists and hits 10 targets per GCD.

Edit: I know they said they didn't want them to be "spammed" or "in constant demand" but I find it hard to imagine a balanced .5s cast that can likely dispel your entire melee group compared to single-target instant casts without one or the other being useless at least some of the time.

[Fordel]

Raid-wide stuff is rarely also cleanse or death though.

[Ingmar]

Their big mistake here from a PVE perspective is giving the same amount of weight to offensive dispels that they do to the defensive dispels. Barring a rare few encounters, you never want your healers having to stop what they're doing and target enemies to cast dispels. I can see why they're doing it from a PVP perspective, but we all know how everyone loves to eat a PVE nerf for PVP reasons.

[Fordel]

Those healers need to learn to focus target.

[Zetor]

Not to mention that plenty of DPS classes will have offensive dispels (ele/enhance shaman, spriest, mage spellsteal, affliction felhunter on lol-autocast, hunter tranq shot), so there isn't really a point to having your healers take care of those. Prot warriors get an offensive dispel every 6 seconds too, or are they removing that?

[ezrast]

If they're putting any effort at all into revamping the dispel paradigm it better include adding a HEY DECURSE NOW indicator into the stock UI.

Also, wouldn't it be near-trivial to make a macro that casts cleanse only if the target is actually debuffed? Effectively negating the

making it possible to waste mana by casting a dispel when there is nothing to dispel

bit?

[Fordel]

Not if Blizzard breaks that functionality.

[caladein]

You can't even do that now.

If a macro casts a spell, uses an item, or does anything else on this list the only things it can know about its spell's (or item's) target are: if it exists (or not), if it's dead (or not), if it's a unit you can help or harm, or if it's in your party (or raid or neither).

Edit: Subject-verb agreement is hard .

[WindupAtheist]

I like how they have to deliberately break macro functionality because otherwise anyone who can read a page worth of possible commands would be playing their deep and complex game with two buttons.

[Sheepherder]

I was expecting them to go the other way and make dispels more common and easier, but tack on a debuff like the Warcraft III version of purge.

[Merusk]

Maybe I'm just burnt-out but I haven't liked a single mechanics change I've heard for Cata.  They're trying way too hard and, imo, silly shit like this shows why they're the "B" team.

They're homogenizing the game while trying to make it "Hardcore" enough for their raiding base and it seems like its losing a lot of its fun in favor of 'easier' optimizations. 

[ajax34i]

Not sure what exactly would make a situation like "you screw <whatever> up and everyone dies" fun.   Don't all healers strive for boring so they can relax and enjoy the raid? 

Heh, and they assume that the healers will decurse, lol.  Don't they already have their hands full?  Having to talent into it is a horrible idea.

[JWIV]

Jesus christ.   Dispelling is bullshit enough as is without making it more micro intensive.

[caladein]

Maybe I'm just burnt-out but I haven't liked a single mechanics change I've heard for Cata.  They're trying way too hard and, imo, silly shit like this shows why they're the "B" team.

They're homogenizing the game while trying to make it "Hardcore" enough for their raiding base and it seems like its losing a lot of its fun in favor of 'easier' optimizations. 

I don't see how they're trying to hard when this is just an extension of the Fear Ward homogenization and Shamans getting Curse removal put in their Resto tree.

There's really only two changes that I can see in PvE from this.  First, more bosses will have "dispel or die" type stuff as Magic which I'm not really sure about.  On one hand, I like dispelling.  Managing debuffs is something that a lot of people do poorly and I take some pride in being a good healer, dispeller, and making good use of things like PI and Shackle all at the same time.  On the other is the knowledge that so many players can't react to their debuffs without a raid mod screaming at them.  So, I guess we'll have more mods screaming at people, wooooooooo.

Second, you won't be able to spam your dispel bind waiting for a boss to cast his "dispel now or die" ability (like Iron Council) because if you cast early you'll lose both mana and time and still need to dispel the next GCD.  (The Iron Council example isn't great as I frequently had to cast dispel on the back end of a Flash Heal to heal and dispel at the same time, but presumably there will be less fights that are all about "omg spam heals every GCD or you wipe".)

All the bullet points at the end were just a long way of describing the new distribution of dispel abilities:

	Defensive Magic	Offensive Magic	Poisons	Diseases	Curses
Healers
Holy & Discipline Priests	Yes	Yes	Body & Soul	Yes	-
Restoration Shamans	Added	Yes	Removed	Removed	Yes
Holy Paladins	Yes	-	Yes	Yes	-
Restoration Druids	Added	-	Yes	-	Yes
Non-Healing Hybrids
Priests in Shadowform	Yes	Yes	-	Removed	-
Elemental & Enhancement Shamans	-	Yes	Removed	Removed	-
Protection & Retribution Paladins	Removed	-	Yes	Yes	-
Balance & Feral Druids	-	-	Yes	-	Yes
Non-Healing Classes
Mages	-	Spellsteal	-	-	Yes
Hunters	-	Yes	-	-	-
Warlocks (with Felhunters)	Yes	Yes	-	-	-
Warriors	-	Yes	-	-	-

[Zetor]

I think if you include 'priests in shadowform', you should include 'feral druids in feral form'. I doubt kitties and bears will be shifting out to decurse people. :p

I'm still unconvinced why 'offensive magic' is worth a category on its own. Plenty of DPS classes can do it already...

[Malakili]

First, more bosses will have "dispel or die" type stuff as Magic which I'm not really sure about. 

Oh I'm sure about it.  Who can forget such great fights as Lucifron, Noth (original Naxx), Chromaggus etc.  Boy, when I think of the best fights ever, those are really on the list....

[Lakov_Sanite]

You're confusing the two types of magic dispels.  Since every healer now has dispel(enemy)  you can expect a lot of bosses to put up self buffs, things like dmg multipliers or high healing renews.  Think more along the lines of faction champions, where as a chromaggus fight would be dispel(friendly)  which only shamans and priests are getting.

[caladein]

You're confusing the two types of magic dispels.  Since every healer now has dispel(enemy)  you can expect a lot of bosses to put up self buffs, things like dmg multipliers or high healing renews.  Think more along the lines of faction champions, where as a chromaggus fight would be dispel(friendly)  which only shamans and priests are getting.

No.

An example of defensive magic dispelling would be using a dispel to free a polymorphed ally, while offensive magic dispelling would be utilizing a dispel ability to strip away an enemy’s buff or heal-over-time (HoT) spell.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Ah, yes you're right.  In my defense, it would have made a lot more sense the other way around.

[caladein]

Yeah, I can see what you mean.  It does seem like they're adding the ability to remove "Offensive Magic" which implies magic you don't like on friendlies instead of "Magic, Offensively" which is what they mean.

I've always said "offensive dispel" and "defensive dispel" in reference to my own abilities so their wording, while confusing, didn't seem as off.

[Fordel]

Follow up: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24038610691&sid=1&pageNo=33#653

    * We want to stress yet again that one of our goals behind these changes was to help us design 5-player dungeons and 10-player raids. Currently having the ability to remove, say, a poison or disease can make an encounter go from challenging to easy, yet not every group has those abilities. With this new matrix, the encounter designers can make anything that must be dispelled a magical effect, while curses, poisons or diseases would be in the category of helping you win, but not an instant wipe if you lose. In 25-player raids, we have more flexibility to ask you to dispel more types of effects.

[AutomaticZen]

Class change previews a'comin.


As a person with a Pally main, I'm frightened that the Paladin preview is so far after the others.  Sounds like another teardown and build up.

[Fordel]

Paladins are getting another redesign, yes.



It's like the seventh redesign over the course of WoW history or so. Maybe Holy will get some fucking depth or variety. They seem to have finally figured out that healing niches are just as stupid as tanking niches were.

Really, Paladins have been a colossal fuckup the entire expansion cycle this go around. Started off as super gib Ret, then it turned into unlimited mana ret-healer, then invincible holy-healer, then invincible-unlimtedmana-prothealer, all the while with Holy being the only tank healer in any 'serious' raid content and all of that content balanced on the assumption of Holy bomb healing and now currently we have the Protection-DPS pvp build... 

[SurfD]

Raid-wide stuff is rarely also cleanse or death though.

I dont know.  Nearly every clensable raid wide debuff that i can remember usually needed to be cleaned off damn near immediately or you were almost always going to wipe:

Molten core had its plethora of curses and magic debuffs that would wreck people if not cleaned off speedily.
BWL had Chromaggus, and AQ had the Slime boss.
Naxx 40 man had Noth, where 1 missed dispell usually killed the whole raid, and Heigan, where failing to cleanse diseased people speedily usually resulted in them dying.

Burning Crusade generaly avoided that mechanic, as most debuffs were not dispell based, but rather required a reaction mechanic to remove (Switching phazes on the Water boss in SSC before stacks got too high, moving in a certain way when you got linked on Mother Sharaz in BT, clicking on the spiked person on Najentus, etc).

Wrath has also largely avoided it as well.  Very few "raid wide" (or even "hits lots of people") dispellable debuffs going out.  Only fight where dispelling someone really matters that I can recall is Iron Council, but that is single target only.  Everything else is, once again, either an in fight mechanic to deal with debuff (LOS the boss to drop stacks, etc) or just "heal that person harder" kind of thing, like with penetrating cold on Anub in ToC.

[kildorn]

They currently and never have had any idea what to do with paladins. Every attempt to make them different either makes them a PITA to play or a requirement to raid. Seriously, just rip out divine shield and LoH, and start balancing from there. At this point the paladins would freaking thank you for it.

On the topic of debuffs: Why the debuff/cleanse mechanic currently and will always suck:

Because it requires you to have read up on all encounters beforehand. Yes, most of us do it. No, it shouldn't be mandatory to play the game. My problem is that I don't have time to read what the fuck a debuff DOES by finding it and mousing over the tiny fucking icon during the middle of a fight to see if it's a CLEANSE ME NOW JESUS CHRIST (Iron Council), or a OH GOD DO NOT CLEANSE THIS (Naxx poison dude.. grobb?)

That's why it's a terrible system. Same reason having random buffs on the boss with specific required reactions is annoying and now has calls usually. Because I don't want DPS stopping every time the boss does something so the entire group/raid can read the fucking tooltip to see if it says "boss gains 1000 armor" or "boss will instantly kill anyone who attacks him for 15 seconds"

The game moves too quickly to read tooltips in real time. And I don't want to force everyone to go read tankspot for 5 man non heroics.

edit: MC era debuffs were stupid. "you have 6 seconds to cleanse EVERY MEMBER OF A 40 MAN RAID", who decided that was a fun mechanic, anyways.