Cataclysm Stat Changes

[Nevermore]

    * Shaman will get Cleanse Spirit as a base spell that removes curses. Restoration will have a talent to add magic dispelling (on friends or enemies) to Cleanse Spirit.

Awesome, so baseline Purge is going away too?  The Shaman preview tomorrow better have some amazing new stuff in it because Elemental Shaman are really taking it up the ass, losing Poison, Disease *and* Magic dispelling.

[Fordel]

They could go a long way and just standardize condition states like Guildwars. We really don't need 14 variations of the 'snare' state.

[kildorn]

They could go a long way and just standardize condition states like Guildwars. We really don't need 14 variations of the 'snare' state.

I would love something like that. It annoys me to no end when they reuse an icon for something it shouldn't be used for (magic looking debuff icons used for other shit, whatnot)

I'd really like just a few basic states. Or all raid level debuffs being DISPEL ME, and no more of this "haha read the fine print mid fight, dipshit!" bullshit.

[Ingmar]

    * Shaman will get Cleanse Spirit as a base spell that removes curses. Restoration will have a talent to add magic dispelling (on friends or enemies) to Cleanse Spirit.

Awesome, so baseline Purge is going away too?  The Shaman preview tomorrow better have some amazing new stuff in it because Elemental Shaman are really taking it up the ass, losing Poison, Disease *and* Magic dispelling.

No, shamans are keeping purge. Restos will just be able to take it off their bar (maybe).

This is something we’re still working on. We will still have abilities that remove 2 effects. One design is that all shaman have Cleanse Spirit (curse) and Purge (magic on enemies), and then Restoration can talent to allow Cleanse Spirit to also remove magic. Another is that shaman have one button that does all the dispelling to free up key-binds. The point we were trying to clarify above is that the ability to remove curses is a base shaman ability.

[Nevermore]

That's... odd.

In other news, R.I.P. Frost tanking.  Which has been, you know, by far my favorite kind of tanking.

[Ironwood]

Why ?

[Nevermore]

Because I really enjoy the way Howling Blast grabs and holds aggro on groups.

[Gobbeldygook]

Why ?

Blood will be the only tanking tree in Cataclysm.

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.

I have never had a problem reading tooltips.  I make it a point to read every single tooltip for every debuff or buff I see.  The game does not move so quickly that you can't take a few seconds to mouse over a debuff and see what it does, especially in 5 man content.  Worst case scenario, you wipe, you explain what the debuff does, and then you kill him.  Also, there's nothing wrong with a boss that requires you wipe once to understand it or have something explained.  One shotting everything is not a right granted for fifteen bucks.

[Fordel]

A lot of people suspected that DK's would end up with 1 tank tree once the mastery system was revealed, but I have to admit I am surprised Blood was chosen, though it does make sense the way they explained it.

[Ingmar]

I expected it to be Frost and coupled with killing DWing yeah.

[Nevermore]

I expected Frost to be tanking and Unholy to get the DW talents, to match the fucking presences.  This just pisses me off.

[Evildrider]

I already Blood Tank so I'm ahead of the curve!   

[Fordel]

I expected Frost to be tanking and Unholy to get the DW talents, to match the fucking presences.  This just pisses me off.

Everything pisses you off though, so 

[Evildrider]

I expected Frost to be tanking and Unholy to get the DW talents, to match the fucking presences.  This just pisses me off.

Well I'm assuming the presences are going to Change.  The current frost will most likely become the new blood presence.

[Merusk]

I expected Frost to be tanking and Unholy to get the DW talents, to match the fucking presences.  This just pisses me off.

Ditto.  Anyone want to join me on the "fuck is Ghostcrawler goddamn stupid" train yet?

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.

I wasn't clear.  They're trying too hard to maintain their top position and keep everyone as engaged as possible.   Yes, it's homogenization ,as I also said.  Homogenization is a bad thing in a game, but a great thing if you're trying to just pump out expansions and churn money.  It means you have less things to train your designers on and less things to keep track of for mechanics.

[Merusk]

Thinking more about it, this is just laziness.  They wanted to keep Dual Wielding in the game for DKs, and the talents are all in frost.  "Oh well, looks like Frost is Dual Wield tree now.  We can't just go moving those talents about willy-nilly, wholesale elminating or renaming them.  These are DKs, not Paladins.  We'll just make Blood the tank tree since that's what "everyone"* is using to tank right now anyway."


* Everyone being only endgame tanks in uber raid guilds who have downed Arthas on Heroic and are bored & waiting for new content.  You know.. the guys who matter.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Who the fuck cares? I mean hoenstly is it some lore issue that frost needs to be the tanking spec?  How is switching presences any different than if they switched talents?  Hell even the shamans whining about the loss of a couple totems are more justified if only for seniority sake. 

Death knights having three tanking specs was a dumb idea from the get-go, DK's have probably been the most broken class since they were introduced(yes even more than pallies) 

[Mattemeo]

I expected Frost to be tanking and Unholy to get the DW talents, to match the fucking presences.  This just pisses me off.

Ditto.  Anyone want to join me on the "fuck is Ghostcrawler goddamn stupid" train yet?

Been on it a while, I'm a Shadow Priest player. But yeah, now I'm completely bloody confused - my DK is about to have a fucking identity crisis. Admittedly both my Blood and Frost specs were DPS oriented, but I relished the simplicity of the Blood tree for DPS, and its place as a high-defense offensive hybrid. Why would anyone want it to become Prot 2.0? Prot Warriors are already fun... but it's an entirely different play style to Blood.

[Ingmar]

I would be surprised if the playstyle is going to change dramatically from how blood tanks now - lots of self heals, etc. They'll just have a full suite of tanking tools which until now DKs have lacked.

[Mattemeo]

I would be surprised if the playstyle is going to change dramatically from how blood tanks now - lots of self heals, etc. They'll just have a full suite of tanking tools which until now DKs have lacked.

But how lacking are they really? Frost tanks are pretty bloody successful as-is, from my experience. I know Nevermore enjoys Frost tanking. In fact, our guild has a few happy Frost tanks, so far as I know. This change is totally left-field.

[Malakili]

. This change is totally left-field.

I almost get the feeling they are just shaking up everything for the hell of it.  It is a Cataclysm after all.

[Nevermore]

I would be surprised if the playstyle is going to change dramatically from how blood tanks now - lots of self heals, etc. They'll just have a full suite of tanking tools which until now DKs have lacked.

Which is exactly the problem I have with it.  I *hated* blood tanking when I tried it.  It's completely different from frost tanking.

[Ingmar]

When I say full suite of tanking tools I mean things they lack that all the other tanks have access to:

- multi target taunt (granted paladins' version is weak currently too)
- AP reduction debuff
- block or block-equivalent mitigation

Personally my feeling is they never should have tried 3 tank trees to begin with, that is the a major root cause of the wildly careening tank balance we've seen throughout this expansion. Picking blood is not the direction I would have gone but I'm guessing they saw frost and unholy as more 'interesting' dps specs and thus worth preserving as such? Just theorizing.

Personally, if I may neckbeard for a bit, I would probably have killed the DW thing entirely and left DKs as 2h users across the board, there's already too much DW in this game and it makes itemization easier since DKs don't want the same stat balance that other DW dps do. Frost tanks, unholy and blood keep their relative strengths as both are currently pretty useful raid dps choices. Probably with some mechanical change to make at least unholy DKs want to use unholy presence ever, since there's no reason to right now.

I wonder if they're going to switch around the effects of blood and frost presence in some way to make the stance choice a little more aesthetically tied to what the different specs will do now?

[Mattemeo]

Which is exactly the problem I have with it.  I *hated* blood tanking when I tried it.  It's completely different from frost tanking.

I wouldn't have even considered Blood a viable tanking spec until equiped with bleeding edge gear anyhow - what makes Blood a simple joy in DPS seems like a bottleneck in tanking - considerable lack of multi-target taunting/damage, especially. Thrusting 'tanking' upon Blood is a complete volte-face, they're even talking about taking the things that make tanking viable from Frost (and to a lesser extent, Unholy) and grafting it onto Blood. Seriously... wat?

[Sjofn]

Maybe Holy will get some fucking depth or variety.

lol


EDIT: I guess I'll chime in on the DK tank thing. I enjoy frost tanking, but I also liked blood tanking fine when I tried it (I'm not sure what there is to hate about it, howling blast is pure love but it is not so Pure and Wonderful to completely outshine the blood tank toys). My only "wtf" about it is that frost is the tank presence, it makes sense to BE the tank presence, so why the fuck suddenly go with blood as the tank spec? DW talents could've moved to blood pretty easily, given Thassarian, when I fought with him, had IMPROVED BLOOD PRESENCE up and he's a lolDW death knight. 

It doesn't fill me with rage or anything, it's just annoying and sloppy from a thematic standpoint.

[kildorn]

Why ?

Blood will be the only tanking tree in Cataclysm.

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.

I have never had a problem reading tooltips.  I make it a point to read every single tooltip for every debuff or buff I see.  The game does not move so quickly that you can't take a few seconds to mouse over a debuff and see what it does, especially in 5 man content.  Worst case scenario, you wipe, you explain what the debuff does, and then you kill him.  Also, there's nothing wrong with a boss that requires you wipe once to understand it or have something explained.  One shotting everything is not a right granted for fifteen bucks.

If you read and correctly responded to Fusion Punch within 2 seconds, good for you! You officially speedread. Because the ability does 20,000 damage per SECOND, in a relatively high damage fight to begin with. The fact of the matter is reading tooltips with DISPEL OR WIPE style debuffs is a stupid idea, Especially since blizzard won't display them cleanly in raid frames (in the case of not-on-the-tank debuffs)

I absolutely object to the current system of read-the-game-files, upload ability data, and assume someone in every group keeps up with the latest boss fights. Am I saying everything should be oneshot? No. But I am saying that a fight should not be 100% determined by how quickly you read a fucking tooltip.

[proudft]

I would be surprised if the playstyle is going to change dramatically from how blood tanks now - lots of self heals, etc. They'll just have a full suite of tanking tools which until now DKs have lacked.

Which is exactly the problem I have with it.  I *hated* blood tanking when I tried it.  It's completely different from frost tanking.

Yeah I wasn't fond of it either.  I liked Unholy and the lazy-ez-disease mode.   Hey I lost aggro on something?  Never fear, next disease tick it'll come galumphing back!  Plus the purple umbrella of antimagic, I like that thing.  That might meander over to blood, though, I guess.

[Lantyssa]

Which is exactly the problem I have with it.  I *hated* blood tanking when I tried it.  It's completely different from frost tanking.

They are very different.  I'm sorry they're taking it from you since you'd make the better tank any day.

I do like my Blood tank (and my Blood dps), but that's because I'm odd.

[Evildrider]

Which is exactly the problem I have with it.  I *hated* blood tanking when I tried it.  It's completely different from frost tanking.

They are very different.  I'm sorry they're taking it from you since you'd make the better tank any day.

I do like my Blood tank (and my Blood dps), but that's because I'm odd.

Then I'm odd too.. I like blood tank/blood dps. 

After all is said and done though, all 3 tanking specs are lacking compared to the other tank classes.   I hope this change fixes that. 

[Rendakor]

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.

Lady Deathwhisper has a pretty annoying Curse that needs to be dispelled quickly, or it will fuck up someone's day; since this is cast by the adds, in 25m it hits 3-4 people at a time. Naxx25 had a few of these as well (Noth, Heigan, Sapphiron). However, none of those are "dispel or wipe", which I think is Fordel's point.

Regarding the DK Tank change, I don't really see the hate for Blood tanking. D&D generates AOE threat on par with Howling Blast, as long as you open with it and you don't have some silly frontloaded AOE DPSer (POM Flamestrike I'm looking at you  ). I fully expect them to change the presences around a bit though, so that the presence thematically matches the spec. Honestly, Blood was the only viable choice for tanking given the current setup; making all DK tanks DW would've been awful, and they seem intent on keeping Frost the DW tree.

My biggest hope for the DK change is that they remove the mandatory 5/5/5 talent points for tanking and consolidate them into one tree, so we can go as deep into a second as every other class. As a pretty geared out raider, my spec (56/5/10) is a mess because they have low-tier talents that are mandatory for tanking scattered throughout all three trees.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I dunno what there is to hate about blood tanking. It is a different feel from frost, but different doesn't mean hateful. :P

[Gobbeldygook]

My biggest hope for the DK change is that they remove the mandatory 5/5/5 talent points for tanking and consolidate them into one tree, so we can go as deep into a second as every other class. As a pretty geared out raider, my spec (56/5/10) is a mess because they have low-tier talents that are mandatory for tanking scattered throughout all three trees.

Congratulations, you can already go as deep as every other tank!

Warriors: Every tank must go 5 into arms for parry.  15/3/51+2 is the standard spec, although 5/15/51 is accepted depending on your raid comp.

Druids: Feral druids always go 11 into resto for omen of clarity, so the standard is 60/11.

Prot paladins: Must go 5 into ret for Parry and realistically quite a bit farther for other tank toys in the ret tree.  I wouldn't be caught dead on any protadin without 15 in ret.

[caladein]

Yes, but the whole idea of Mastery is get rid of some boring +x% something talents so a tank can go into Ret for Vindication and Pursuit of Justice, not Deflection.

That said, a lot of talents these days are already +x% something AND cool thing so they'll presumably just need to strip the boring bits out that were added in because no one was taking the cool thing talents unless they had to.

[Selby]

Personally I love blood tanking considerably more than frost tanking.  But that's just me.

[Zetor]

I don't really mind blood being the tank tree. I'll lose my unique snowflake unholy tank-ness, but that's ok. 

Curious though, if they made this move due to the mastery system ("we can't have a tree add mastery bonuses for a tank spec + damage spec at the same time omg"), what is going to happen to the feral tree?