Cataclysm Class Changes

[Nonentity]

Shaman

Changes:

Changes Update:

Q&A:

Warlock

Changes:

Changes Clarification:

Priest

Changes and clarifications:

Warrior

Changes:

Changes Q&A:

Death Knight

Changes and clarification:

Death Knight Rune Changes:

Rogue

Changes:

[Hutch]

We're making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes.

Maybe this will be the Blizzard policy henceforth: "We're changing a class because of PvP, and need to explain it to the players? Retconning the lore is so old-school. Let's just come right out and say it. What are they going to do, quit?"

[Nonentity]

Hunter

Changes:

Druid

Changes:

Mage

Changes:

Changes clarification:

Paladin

Changes:

[Ingmar]

I generally like what they're doing here.

A couple things I didn't see that I wish I had:

- Lava burst available before level 75 (should just give it to them when they get their fire totem or shortly thereafter, so they learn how to play elemental properly)
- They should be letting us drop magma at range, not searing (or in addition to searing, whichever)

[Nonentity]

Well, I'm willing to bet that they're just not going to worry about dropping Magma at range, and leaving the magma/fire nova combo to Enhancement shaman, while trying to push Elemental into Earthquake.

[Ingmar]

Maybe I misread the earthquake thing, I wasn't taking away that it was an entirely new spell since it wasn't listed in the 'new spells' section, but that would make sense.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Earthquake will be a talented elemental spell it says. So new but not one of the 81/83/85 spells.

And please can we stop saying shit about how the lore is being ruined?  Every time someone mentions lore in relation to class mechanics it makes me want to drive nails into my forehead.

[Ingmar]

It says talent rather than spell so I initially read it as it was just something that was going to affect the AE we already had, but I think you're right. Finally. Maybe it will have a knockdown effect too. 

[Fordel]

Glyph of Death and Decay 2.0? 

[Malakili]

Looks decent.  I especially like the chance to give the shaman some viable melee early on.   Damn it all, all this Cataclysm talk is going to make me resub to WoW, I know it.

[caladein]

I definitely hope that adding Primal Strike helps out early-Enhancement as I've always stalled leveling one and I think I'd quite like the class later on.

Is it gonna be "Victory Rush at level six"-type awesome?  (Which at least for me made leveling a Warrior go from to .)  Probably not, but I doubt it'll hurt.

[Nonentity]

They pushed out the Warlock changes early to the Spanish forums. Here are the badly translated spanish notes, I'll update the post with the actual english notes once they arrive.


EDIT: The badly translated notes are pretty hilarious in their own right.

"The Hellfire will no longer cause damage to the witch."

[Nonentity]

Added shaman Q&A questions.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Sentry totem R.I.P  even in wotlk you provided entertainment, like when we had a 5% wipe on sindragosa becuase our shaman kept dying thinking his computer was messed up.  Of course, he didn't realize he was clicking sentry totem and how no idea what it did "Omg my video is messed up, I can't move again!"  this happened 3 times.

[Nonentity]

Added full English warlock notes.

[Ingmar]

I'm going to miss that stupid sentry totem. At least it gets to be reunited with windwall totem.

[Typhon]

So warlocks get three turbo buttons to mash during combat (replacing soul shards) via the "Soul Burn" ability. 

I like the change, but they are very vague on the exact mechanism.  For instance, "Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat."

Since you can't gain additional shards during combat... how do you get them?  Timed refresh (would make them somewhat similar to the DK runes, except the timer doesn't count down unless you are out of combat)?  I hope I don't have to sit on my ass, out of combat, waiting for a soul shard to refresh.

They mention soul drain later in the thread so it seems like it isn't going away.  I wonder what drain soul is for now (straight damage)?  Maybe you still need to soul drain, but the souls you drain aren't available until after combat?

Very mysterious!

[Evildrider]

I take it to mean that for every combat you enter that you will have the 3 runes to use.  After combat they will refresh and you don't have to worry about the runes out of combat.

[Typhon]

Seems counter to the character concept.  With mages being the sprinters and the Warlock being the long distance runners.  This seems to make the Warlock more of a sprinter.  It might make you want to save your soul shards in case there are adds, etc.  I dislike abilities that I have to save because I don't get in the habit of using them at all... and then what is the point?

[Fordel]

It's much more in-line with the original warlock shard concept. Blizzard never intended for Warlocks to have more then a handful of shards at any one time.

Then someone figured out "hay, I can just stockpile these" and you know the rest.

[Morfiend]

DK Blood tree made into the tanking tree.

We're doing our Cataclysm preview on the death knight changes later this week, but we knew one change risked overshadowing all the others, so we figured we'd go ahead and drop the proverbial Blood bomb today.

In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.

We'll go into more detail in the upcoming preview, but we wanted to take the opportunity to explain the reasoning for such a big change.

Why the about face? We actually thought the "tri tank" experiment worked out okay. We suspected there would always be a "best" tanking tree, because that's the way these things shake out, but we hoped it would be close enough that many players could tank with their favorite tree. When we tried out this design for Wrath of the Lich King, we were using it as a test case to see if we wanted to do similar things with the warrior and paladin talent trees.

A lot has happened since that time. We introduced the dual-spec feature, allowing players to have a tanking spec and dps spec that they could switch between. We introduced Dungeon Finder, which makes it easier to find players who want to tank, and even let players level up using a dedicated tank spec. In Cataclysm, we are introducing the concept of passive talent tree bonuses and we think that feature is a lot stronger when the talent tree has a particular focus (such as damage, tanking or healing). For example, it's safer to give more passive damage to a tanking tree than we can a dps tree. Above all, we were just spending a lot of effort trying to balance three trees (though it was really six trees, since each tree was trying to do two things).

It started to feel unfair to the other tank classes that we had to spend so much effort tweaking three types of DK tanks, and it even started to feel unfair to the DK that we couldn't focus their tanking experience. One bit of feedback that really struck home was the DK players who said, essentially, "I look at the Protection tree and I'm jealous of all of the cool tools they have to help their tanking. As a DK, I have to pick and choose tanking talents from within a sea of dps talents." Rather than have a strong focus, the trees felt a little watered down because they were trying to do so much. With Frost as a dual-wield, spell and runic power focused tree, Unholy as a disease and minion focused tree, and Blood as a self-healing, defensive cooldown, tanking tree, we think the focus of each tree is a lot clearer and cooler.

In Cataclysm, Blood will be the death knight version of a Protection tree. It will have passive talent tree bonuses that reflect tanking. It will have tools, such as a Demo Shout equivalent, necessary for tanking. Several of the more fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved into Blood. We will be able to revise (or even remove) clunky mechanics like Rune Strike and focus on letting DKs generate threat with their normal Blood tanking rotation.

This is major change, and we understand it will be met with some disappointment from players who really liked the flexibility, those who appreciated the unorthodox talent tree design, or those few of you who really liked Blood dps. Nevertheless, we are convinced that this is the right change for the game.

More exciting death knight news coming up soon in the preview.

[Ironwood]

Bloodworth ?

[Lantyssa]

If the shards simple appear between combats then Warlock regen techniques are going to be hilarious.  I hope they're accounting for it.

It will also make never-ending streams of adds very frustrating.

[Nevermore]

If the shards simple appear between combats then Warlock regen techniques are going to be hilarious.  I hope they're accounting for it.

It will also make never-ending streams of adds very frustrating.

The shards aren't carried in your bag anymore.  There are three that are tracked under your health bar like DK runes.

[Nonentity]

Added warlock clarifications.

[Sjofn]

Glyph of Death and Decay 2.0? 

That was a fear/cower/whatever, totally different!

[Lantyssa]

The shards aren't carried in your bag anymore.  There are three that are tracked under your health bar like DK runes.

Yes.  That's not what I'm really talking about though.  If just breaking combat and entering again refills your shard count, Warlocks will do whatever they can to refresh them.  "Pardon me guys while I run half-way out of the instance!  Don't die."  Or get caught in situations where they need to, but keep getting aggro, so they cannot refresh them.

Conceptually it's an interesting idea, however "a combat" can last anywhere from one hit to twenty minutes.  It's a terrible metric for determining resource management, especially if it's going to be their special mechanic.

[Sjofn]

Meh, I can't rouse a whole lot of pity for that, it's not like other classes don't have reasons for wishing they could drop combat for JUST ONE SECOND ARGH. I also doubt shards will be SO IMPORTANT a warlock will feel it's worth running out of the fucking instance (that's the only way to actually drop combat once it's started without killing whatever got you in combat in the first place).

[Nevermore]

The shards aren't carried in your bag anymore.  There are three that are tracked under your health bar like DK runes.

Yes.  That's not what I'm really talking about though.  If just breaking combat and entering again refills your shard count, Warlocks will do whatever they can to refresh them.  "Pardon me guys while I run half-way out of the instance!  Don't die."  Or get caught in situations where they need to, but keep getting aggro, so they cannot refresh them.

Conceptually it's an interesting idea, however "a combat" can last anywhere from one hit to twenty minutes.  It's a terrible metric for determining resource management, especially if it's going to be their special mechanic.

Didn't they way MP5 is going away anyway?  Anyone with mana will have similar issues.

[Shrike]

Looks decent.  I especially like the chance to give the shaman some viable melee early on.   Damn it all, all this Cataclysm talk is going to make me resub to WoW, I know it.

Still scares the hell out of me. So now we have a retro SS? I mean, I seem to recall when I was leveling up my draenei shaman that killing stuff--even without SS--wasn't exactly difficult. This is par with giving us new SS icons and calling it an improvement.

I dunno. Expansions should be something new and exciting to look forward to. As a shaman, all I feel is fear and loathing. At least DKs are taking one in the shorts. Oh, and still no answer on dealing with rogues and their never-to-be-sufficiently-damned poisons that I'll no longer be able to dispell. I have heard there are changes to the stun mechanics, so hopefully some relief will be found there. Maybe.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Looks decent.  I especially like the chance to give the shaman some viable melee early on.   Damn it all, all this Cataclysm talk is going to make me resub to WoW, I know it.

Still scares the hell out of me. So now we have a retro SS? I mean, I seem to recall when I was leveling up my draenei shaman that killing stuff--even without SS--wasn't exactly difficult. This is par with giving us new SS icons and calling it an improvement.

I dunno. Expansions should be something new and exciting to look forward to. As a shaman, all I feel is fear and loathing. At least DKs are taking one in the shorts. Oh, and still no answer on dealing with rogues and their never-to-be-sufficiently-damned poisons that I'll no longer be able to dispell. I have heard there are changes to the stun mechanics, so hopefully some relief will be found there. Maybe.

It's not really a buff or a nerf. They just want people to get used to the enhancement playstyle prior to getting the talents, which makes a lot of sense considering they want to draw in new players with the whole newbie revamping going on.  Lots of other classes have similar things, like how priests get lesser heal/heal/greater heal.  I'm not sure how intuitive it is but it makes sense to not have enhanvement shamans just casting to kill mobs until 30 or so.

[Ingmar]

Looks decent.  I especially like the chance to give the shaman some viable melee early on.   Damn it all, all this Cataclysm talk is going to make me resub to WoW, I know it.

Still scares the hell out of me. So now we have a retro SS? I mean, I seem to recall when I was leveling up my draenei shaman that killing stuff--even without SS--wasn't exactly difficult. This is par with giving us new SS icons and calling it an improvement.

I dunno. Expansions should be something new and exciting to look forward to. As a shaman, all I feel is fear and loathing. At least DKs are taking one in the shorts. Oh, and still no answer on dealing with rogues and their never-to-be-sufficiently-damned poisons that I'll no longer be able to dispell. I have heard there are changes to the stun mechanics, so hopefully some relief will be found there. Maybe.

Go play an orc shaman from 1 to 8. It is pretty excruciating. You get the 2nd rank of LB at level 8 and your next totem at 10 so after that it picks up but 1 to 8 is godawful. At level 6-7 you can empty your entire mana bar into a monster and it loses maybe half its health. The extra strike will be a huge quality of life improvement for shamans.

[Fordel]

That isn't really true anymore, they changed the regen rates under level 15. You pretty much can't OOM in the first 10 levels at all.

[SurfD]

I recently leveled a Squid-Goat shaman to 30 just because i had the extra boa gear lying around and wanted to gather a few of the alliance side rare cooking recepies.

Low level enhance is pretty terrible.  A typical fight is usually open with lightning bolt, charge up another lightning bolt, then mele and shock till dead.  Repeat for the next 40 levels.  The only real additions to that are occasionally refreshing shields, casting a heal, or re-dropping a totem.   I mean, literally, there is absolutely nothing to differentiate an enhance shaman from an elemental shaman except that you do slightly more mele damage instead of magic damage, untill you get stormstrike and dual wield.  And that is like level 40.

[Wolf]

Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.

Man, I hate this. I'm guessing it's across the board. Bye, bye newfound awesomeness :( And not being able to clip dots takes away a considerable ammount of what's fun about playing a dot class.  

They better deliver on the utility side of that new nuke for shadowpriests! If it's x cast time, does y dmg I'll be very disappointed :(