Cata Class Previews

[Eversor]

Inner Rage looks interesting but its hard to gauge it right now as I would like to see the rage generation once they change it. Looking at the 3 new abilities, I wonder if any of these will be stance-specific. I suspect that the only one of the 3 fury will get will be inner rage but would love to see Gushing Wound on fury too. A DoT to add to the rotation will help the dps out a bit I would imagine.

The changes to the "on next attack" abilities excite me a bit, moreso with Cleave than HS. It just seems to me though that with this change, HS is gonna really push Slam down a notch. I also dont think I will be able to break myself from using Titan's Grip and switch to Single-Minded Fury, simply cause I love the fact that I can dual wield 2h weapons and cant do that in FFXI.

[Acturus]

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?!

I'm in the same boat as it pertains to 'fun' healing.

I see what they mean. I haven't run out of Mana on anything of consequence since about a month after I hit 80. It's not hard, and my addons are basically having me play "whack a mole" with the health bars.

It will be more intricate, more finessed, and more tactical to be a healer if I've been reading Blizzard's intent correctly. They want to push opportunity cost and tactics, but if they do, the pressure is on them to not have these ICC-esque bosses that deal massive amounts of damage per swing.

There's no time to charge up a Greater Heal on a tank on a fair number of boss fights. It's all very quick, very reactive, and very dead if you miss or mess up. I'm curious to see how they plan out the raid content of Cata. That'll determine really the effectiveness of the 'fun' they're giving healers.

[Eaglestrike]

I don't like the Vengeance mastery thing being AP. As it stands a few of a paladin tanks abilities don't scale with AP...but we'll see how things scale in Cata, since they're seemingly majorly changing the class.

[Lucavi]

War changes sound nice. I was just getting pissed the other day that the ICC wars had access to heroic leap as enemies, yet our wars did not. Blizzard must be reading my mind, or my rants in vent and /g chat.

[Miraun]

I don't like the Vengeance mastery thing being AP. As it stands a few of a paladin tanks abilities don't scale with AP...but we'll see how things scale in Cata, since they're seemingly majorly changing the class.

If I'm not mistaken, weren't they trying to relatively lower the effectiveness of pally tanks relative to the other tanks? This may be one mechanism that they have in mind to accomplish that.


Overall though, when I read over the priest changes, I'm wondering if it's even going to be viable or possible to be downing the endgame WotLK bosses after the rebalancing of cata... If they're reducing mana regen so much, would there be enough mana to go around and spam heals on the tanks through ICC post-Cata? (Maybe thats why we're really getting the 30% buff?)

[Eaglestrike]

You can also bet they'll be putting out major nerfs with 4.0. The health and possibly the damage done by BC raid bosses were reduced by 30% when 3.0 hit.

[Kenai]

War changes sound nice. I was just getting pissed the other day that the ICC wars had access to heroic leap as enemies, yet our wars did not. Blizzard must be reading my mind, or my rants in vent and /g chat.

I was talking about this exact same thing in my LS earlier. The Shaman clones had a Healing Rain spell, Warrs could H Leap, Locks had green fire spells...it's weird. I ranted about that rain spell the first time I saw it too, I wanted it so bad >.>

[Ohaigaiz]

Spoiler: show

New Death Knight Abilities

Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Rune System Changes

While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.

• In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.
• A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.
• Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.
• The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.
• As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.

Talent Changes

Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.

• One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.
• Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.
• Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Blood
Damage reduction
Vengeance
Healing Absorption

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.

Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (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 grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design 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 the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.


Cataclysm Stat & System Changes: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...25636414&sid=1

Mastery System Preview: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...10210871&sid=1

[Eaglestrike]

My post is full, so I can't edit it anymore of those at the start.

[Boyiee]

I don't think I like the warrior changes. I was ok with haste and shit, but they are making whirlwind an aoe only ability and not to be used on single targets... I like whirlwind lol, I like my 3 buttons, don't change them. The inner rage thing is interesting, but that means if I hit 100% rage and heroic strike, I'll lose 60 rage off that... it better do a shit ton of damage for 60 rage. It is a good way to bleed off that rage though. Gushing wound doesn't sound too interesting, Heroic leap is really lackluster at this point. We wanted it in WOTLK and now we are finally going to get it, going to share a cooldown with charge, meh. Going back to dual 1handers, meh.

My warrior may become a tank for xpac, or maybe I'll dps on my lock hunter rogue or 70dk. Gotta wait and see how these changes are in beta and what else they add, cause atm there isn't anything exciting or worth looking forward to for me.

[Ezek]

The DK changes seem pretty lackluster to be honest.

[D44kpunk]

The DK changes seem pretty lackluster to be honest.

lackluster? >.> the ability they get at lvl 81 is hot

[Correction]

Deadly Throw and Fan of Knives will now use the weapon in the ranged slot.

Fuck this change, seriously. Recuperate seems out of place as a 'levelling experience enhancement,' since when did Rogues take any damage while levelling?

[Cephius]

I'm just gonna take over the first few posts on the first page so we can keep all the changes listed together.

[Pendas]

Hunter changes are up in case you want to edit the second post Ceph. They're adding Camouflage! (Finally). Looking forward to to it since I'm re-rolling come Cata,

[Cephius]

Yeah, got it. Why do all these changes seem to be mostly PvP balancing? :/

[Resin]

Holy crap, I am going to be so annoying with Life Grip.

"What, Ice, you're at 60k dps on that trash?? You're in danger! Let me Life Grip you!!!"

[Gulkeeva]

Hunter camo is going to be some "shimmering" effect not a full stealth according to GC, although we won't know the final outcome probably won't be full stealth as that was the original problem apparently with it ;/

Still having it s a damage boost to rape someone is nice!

and the way the focus is now.. probably most people will be going MM in cata haha

[Norellicus]

Fuck this change, seriously. Recuperate seems out of place as a 'levelling experience enhancement,' since when did Rogues take any damage while levelling?

First ~24 levels are fucking brutal.

[Odon]

Hunter camo is going to be some "shimmering" effect not a full stealth according to GC, although we won't know the final outcome probably won't be full stealth as that was the original problem apparently with it ;/

Still having it s a damage boost to rape someone is nice!

and the way the focus is now.. probably most people will be going MM in cata haha

It's fucking stupid for PVP, all someone has to do is drop an AoE on you and its gone from they way they worded it.
I will say this tho, if you can use it in combat (Which I'm assuming you can.) I'll be macroing it to Kill Shot.

The shots focus costs are way too high, Aimed/Chim at 40-60 is fine, but

• Concussive Shot/Tranquilizing Shot: 35 Focus.
• Rapid Fire/Master’s Call/Disengage: 30 Focus.

Is fucking absurd, trying to make us more like rogues and then putting our defensive abilities into the focus costs is complete bullshit.

The shot launcher is nice tho, it being off the GCD is going to make scatter-trapping a complete joke.

They also need to lower our GCD down to one second if they plan on giving BM hunters all this haste. It's already a 1.5 second cast baseline as BM

And they need to make stings un-dispelable or VERY hard to, dropping 30 focus on a shot just to have it dispelled. Would be asinine to say the least.

Overall going from mana to focus is probably going to be a nerf, and it will make the class more interesting.