Cata Class Previews

[Metta]

Think its kind of more aimed at pvp, you arnt going to get much preists using that in a pve enviroment if you ask me (just to annoy people).

Warlock changes are a little dissapointing imo when i was reading shaman changes i had really high hopes, im just a little dissapointed OH WELL.

[Thuronn]

I don't like the idea of Life Grip at all. I don't want to be responsible for some retard's death because they can't move out of fire.

The Shadow Priest changes sound cool, nothing as awesome as Healing Rain and moving while casting though.

Hopefully Druid changes will be nicer (i'm expecting something really nice for Balance at least).

I can see it now...

"Fucking we wiped again, because Cookies forgot to LG me out of fire. durrdurrr"


Cookies somewhere releases an appropriate response of "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!"

[Acturus]

Priest changes on paper are yawn-worthy.

I'll say it now, if the difference between winning and losing a fight is due to Leap of Faith, I'm finding a new group. That's a neat spell with no useful application except to fix other people's stupid.

I already bubble dps that can't ride a hate line, there's no way I'm yanking their sorry asses out of the bad stuff on the ground.

However, as soon as I figure out a way to Leap of Faith people off of cliffs, I'm taking supreme advantage of it.

The shadow spike thingie is interesting, and seems like a good balance to the long start-up time of shadow dps. My shadow spec always feels like a semi truck taking off from a red light. Plus, it sounds like an ability that increases Priests' overall utility, which is something I always like to see.

I don't like what they're hinting at doing to my Flash Heal though. As a tank healer, I don't use Flash Heal all that much right now, but if they tinker with Flash Heal, I'm skeered they'll also tinker with mah Penance.

[Norellicus]

Leap of Faith (I was so confused by 'life grip' lol) has more pvp applications than pve ones really, unless they start designing some encounters to specifically need it.

[Acturus]

Leap of Faith (I was so confused by 'life grip' lol) has more pvp applications than pve ones really, unless they start designing some encounters to specifically need it.

Shut up, early morning, one cup of coffee, etc etc.

I'll call it whatever I want, and Life Grip sounds cooler to me. "Leap of Faith" implies that the person doing the leaping has any control over it.

*edit* and apparently Matticus and I are on the same page:

http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2010/...your-thoughts/

Leap of Faith (I’m calling it Life Grip though)

And apparently Cookies said the same thing. GET OUT OF MY HEAD PEOPLE.

[Bardlet]

Maybe it's me, but I'm just totally not really feeling the changes they're making to make healing more "fun". Though, as an off-spec'd Disc Priest, I'm kind of liking PW:Barrier. Glad they're gonna implement it for us, should help synergize Disc Priest's noticeably week AoE support ability.

Looks like I'll be playing Shadow come Cataclysm (not that it's a big deal- it's my Priest's main spec anyway). Liking the idea of Mind Spike, along with Shadowfrost (I HATE SPELL SCHOOL LOCKOUTS JLSKHLKJHIA^%$G), and hopefully the aesthetics of the Shadow Orbs won't suck. Just wondering what they're gonna be doing with Misery, if it won't add the hit now. Though I sort of like not having to rely on specific talents for hit (and I'm a Space Goat, so I need 1% less hit regardless ;3).

Now I'll hold my breath til tomorrow's Druid announcements. Hoping Boomkin gets some sexiness, esp since they've been talking about tweaking Eclipse so having to move isn't such a huge DPS drop. I'm totally anticipating a nerfage of Starfall though- whether it comes in an upcoming patch or with Cata. Spiking to 100k DPS when using Starfall+Hurricane on decent sized packs of mobs feels sooooo broken now.

[Noobta]

I'm leveling a priest to grief people with LG

[Lucavi]

If you can grip falling allies off of the lumbermill back on in AB, I'm rolling a priest. Finally a counter to those damned boomkins!

[Correction]

The comedic possibilities of Life Grip are endless.

*life grip* FUCK YOU TANK STOP OUTRUNNING MY HEALS

[Cephius]

Levitate, walk off cliff, life grip friend to you, laugh as they fall to their doom. Time to finish leveling my priest.

[Ezek]

Warrior preview up on MMO Champ, they're bringing back Heroic Leap!

[Correction]

Oh god fuck Gushing Wound. Restore bleed removal to HfB motherfuckers.

[Ezek]

lol Disarming Nature

[Aesctaa]

Some things look good, mainly the shaman healing rain and earthquake.

Mostly looks pretty bad IMO, especially turning DK into Blood tank only, and the Priest reverse death grip, I'm sure that will cause a whole raft of issues if it goes live.

Seems as they are having to neuter too many existing things to fit in a few new ones.

[Cephius]

Vengeance seems nice, should help newer tanks keep up threat if they're in a group/raid with decked out DPS. Overall the new stuff for warriors seems pretty underwhelming though.

[Eversor]

Some spoilers for Warrior changes for us "stuck at work" BG fans? Dont want to wait till I get off to see what my main job is getting and most stuff gets blocked here.

[Cephius]

Some spoilers for Warrior changes for us "stuck at work" BG fans? Dont want to wait till I get off to see what my main job is getting and most stuff gets blocked here.

Updated OP

[Ezek]

Spoiler: show

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the warrior. The information you're about to read is not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview for some of the exciting new things to come.

New Warrior Abilities

Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won't need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don't want warriors to feel like they're supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we'll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.

Gushing Wound (Level 83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target. If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a 9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be reached when fighting a moving target.

Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to learning new abilities, you'll see changes to other abilities and mechanics with which you're already familiar. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

* Heroic Strike will no longer be an "on next swing" attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can't afford the Rage, you don't push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.
* Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight's Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.
* Whirlwind will hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in multi-target scenarios and not on single targets.
* Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm will be a lower number relative to players' health than the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less healing. At the moment we aren't considering giving this debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP utility for historically under-represented specs that use other mechanics.
* Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.



New Talents and Talent Changes

* The Furious Sundering talent in the Fury tree will make the Sunder Armor ability cause 25/50% weapon damage and reduce the threat generated by 50/100%.
* The Mace and Poleaxe Specialization talents in the Arms tree will be removed. These provided just passive stats, which are not the kinds of talents we want to design in the future. We will keep the Sword Specialization talent, but it will be changed to a talent that applies to all types of weapons.
* As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase the Rage generated by shouts.
* While we like how Titan's Grip plays, we recognize some warriors liked the Fury tree because of the really fast swings that dual-wielding one-handed weapons could provide. Therefore, we're planning to try out a talent called Single-Minded Fury that is parallel to Titan's Grip and will provide a large boost to the damage of a pair of one-handed weapons.
* Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.
* The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.
* Another new Arms talent called Blitz will make the Charge ability hit for extra damage. The amount will possibly vary depending on the distance travelled.
* Improved Pummel, a Fury talent, will cause a successful interrupt to generate 10/20 Rage.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arms

* Melee Damage
* Armor Penetration
* Bonus Swing


Bonus Swing: This is similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing that hits for 50% damage.

Fury

* Melee Damage
* Melee Haste
* Enrage Intensity


Enrage Intensity: Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration.

Protection

* Damage Reduction
* Vengeance
* Critical Block Chance


Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

edit: beaten by Cephius

[Kenai]

Oh man those Shaman changes are hot buttered goodness. Spirit Walk/Link = so amazing they come pre-nerfed and a non-channeled AoE HoT is pretty much exactly what I wanted to compliment Chain Heal, since the Earthliving and Tier10 hots are so unreliable. I was hoping they'd make Riptide a bit better so it isn't so useless without tier set bonuses but oh well. Also, Ele finally can join the real aoe classes omnomnom.

I don't like the idea of Life Grip at all. I don't want to be responsible for some retard's death because they can't move out of fire.

On the other hand, you can be responsible for some retard's death by pulling them into fire. It's best to think positive. I'm not exactly sure how much I'm happy about the shadow changes since Misery was what got us raid spots during bad times, but we will see.

[Koul]

Maybe it's me, but I'm just totally not really feeling the changes they're making to make healing more "fun". Though, as an off-spec'd Disc Priest, I'm kind of liking PW:Barrier. Glad they're gonna implement it for us, should help synergize Disc Priest's noticeably week AoE support ability.

no, it's not just you. I'm also kind of on the fence with them wanting to make mana an issue so it's more "fun"

my gear isn't uber or anything right now but healing is still kind of irritating having to worry about so much. I get overwhelmed somewhat easy though. specially on my holy pally.

life grip will make my priest fun though. definitely gunna be gripping the dipshit dps or the rogue that vanishes when shit gets crazy. all for one and one for all, right?!