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News
Live
Priest Class Updates in Cataclysm!
After many long hours of waiting, Zarhym has posted the Priest changes on the official forums!
Lots of really interesting changes are included in this update, including several new spells—such as
Leap of Faith
which sounds really interesting. What's the Priest community reaction to these changes?
The full update
will be
is now available
soon
in our
Cataclysm Guide
, or you can read the original post after the break.
Live
Warlock Class Updates in Cataclysm!
Edit: Zarhym has posted some updates and clarifications to the initial post. Check after the break to see!
Zarhym has just posted the Warlock changes on the official forums.
There are once again a lot of interesting changes in this one just like the Shaman ones posted this morning. So what do all of the Warlocks out there think of the proposed changes? Yay or nay?
The full updates will soon be in our
Cataclysm Guide
or you can read the full post after the break.
Live
Shaman Class Updates in Cataclysm!
Edit: Further posts have clarified some of your questions. Check after the break for the updates!
Nethaera has posted the shaman changes on the official forums!
A lot of interesting changes here, including a full explanation of the bonuses afforded by the
Mastery System
. Let's hear from the shamans in the audience! Awesomeness? Outrage? What's it going to be?
We'll be adding the full details to our
Cataclysm Guide
shortly. You can read the full text after the break!
Live
Cataclysm: Blood is for Tank
Ghostcrawler just dropped a bomb on the
Death Knight
community—It seems Blizzard has aborted their "tri-tank" policy with death knights, and committed to a single "tanking spec" for Death Knights:
Blood.
The tree itself will contain some new abilities similar to
, and some more of the fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved to Blood. Some of the more clunky mechanics like
will be changed, or even removed.
Check out the quote after the break to see the reasoning.
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Enhancement Shaman Buff
Ghostcrawler has just announced an interesting hotfix planned for Enhancement Shamans:
will be increased from 25% to 30% with the full 5 ranks. Blizzard hopes this will give Enhancement that slight boost needed to keep them even with the rest of the raid.
He also goes on to say that they
do
agree enhancement does have some survivability problems, and while they don't have any changes to deploy right now, it is something they'd like to fix in a future patch.
We agree with some of the recent discussion about Enhancement dps. We are going to hotfix a change to the Flurry talent to increase it from 25% to 30% attack speed with 5 ranks.
We also agree that Enhancement may have survivability problems and understand that players don't necessarily feel they can afford the bonus Stamina from the Toughness talent, at least in PvE. We don't have an immediate change to deploy here, but it's something we'd like to fix and a candidate for future patches.
Live
Cataclysm Class Information Coming Soon
Bashiok, who you may remember as Drysc, has posted the schedule for information about
Cataclysm
class changes. Some of the information you should expect to see are
new spells
from 80-85, passive
mastery bonuses
, a brief outline of changes that are planned for each talent tree, and in some cases low level spell changes for several classes.
You should note these will not be all the changes we will see throughout the beta period and as always are subject to change. Also it should be known that some classes are further along then others so the amount of information will vary.
The dates the information will be released are listed below.
April 7
Priest
Shaman
Warlock
April 8
Death Knight
Rogue
Warrior[/
Live
Changes to Dispels in Cataclysm
A slew of new information is coming out of Blizzard this week - this time it's about the change to
dispels
coming in
Cataclysm
. As it stands right now there are five different types of buffs and debuffs: curses, diseases, poisons, defensive magic, and offensive magic.
In Cataclysm, Blizzard plans to let all healers dispel three out of the five types of abilities, with one of them always being a defensive dispel. This will allow arena teams to be a little more open and will allow encounter designers to assume you will have a dispel magic. In addition to this the mana cost on all dispels will be significantly increased, this will cause people to "think" before they decide to cast instead of just spamming the button.
One last thing,
,
and
will be removed from the game.
With all this new info coming out we can only hope that an alpha or maybe even the beta may start in the near future. You can read the original post after the break.
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Rage Normalization in Cataclysm
In
Cataclysm
, Blizzard is taking the opportunity to fix some of the problems with rage for both warriors and druids. Right now there are quite a few problems with rage—we're rage-starved at lower gear levels, and have next to infinite rage at high gear levels.
To fix this Blizzard plans to
normalize
rage in Cataclysm. We're going to generate a set amount of rage on auto-attack (200% if you crit), rage from being hit will be calculated based on the warriors health, more sources for instant rage will be introduced, all “on next swing” will be removed and
and
will become instant attacks.
With these changes Blizzard hopes to make playing these classes a little more interesting, and hopefully make rage-management more a part of playing the character.
You can read the entire original post after the break!
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Raiding as an Arcane Mage
I've recently started raiding heavily with an Arcane Mage, and I have to say, I'm loving it.
With
, threat management is as close to a non-issue as it could possibly be, and with the potential max DPS of
spam, there's an entirely different mini-game that emerges.
Live
Tier 9 Compendium
Icecrown Citadel knocks on the door, Arthas is likely getting dressed like Santa, and a new Tier set is coming out. Looking at the names of the sets, they don't seem anything
special
- so I thought* it's probably a good idea to post some extensive explanation about the
last
Tier. Why? Because it is actually interesting from a Lore perspective.
Remember, back when Tier 9 was released, how a lot of people were excited about Alliance and Horde not only having different sets, but having those sets named after famous members of the respective faction and class? I don't know about you, but I was really excited to be a part of the lore on that level. And because of this inspiration, this blog was born - a compilation of relatively short summaries of all those heroes' and villains' stories. Read on!
*Not really. Read the note after the break.
Live
New Hunter Spirit Beast: Arcturis
So as some of you know there was a new model added to the PTR a few builds ago that looked like a new
spirit beast
in the shape of a bear. Finally
safrienaer
over at
maniasarcania.com
has found the little critter named
Arcturis
and tamed him.
http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=38453
Read on after the jump for more information.
Live
I HERD U LIEK ICONZ...
With patch 3.2.2 being released, I'm sure you're all excited about some of the new stuff that is being introduced. I, for one, am looking forward to being told by several thousand people that I stole my name from an
NPC
all over again, even though it was the other way around.
Bitter? No, not at all.
Not after I kill the wench...
:coughs:
So yeah, pretty pictures! We found
7
new icons in this patch, most of which seem to be related to non-combat pets. Check them out!
Live
Cataclysm Stat Revamps—GC Nerfs EVERYTHING!
So I'm going to go through and list some of the crazy changes that are being made to itemization here. I'll be elaborating more on this later, but here's the basic rundown:
Edit:
Because there seems to be some confusion: These changes are proposed changes to come with the next WoW expansion, called Cataclysm. These are still a long way off. When they come, they will also come with a complete revamp of existing gear, as well as a total reconstruction not just of the quests that lead you through the original zones, but of the zones THEMSELVES. Thousand Needles is being flooded. The Barrens is being split into two zones. Desolace is green and growing. Azshara is a lowbie leveling zone. Zones are being condensed so you spend fewer levels in each one. So have no fear. Everything is changing, but it's all changing TOGETHER. The whole game is getting redesigned for the new expansion—check out all the details on how in our
Recap
!
But in the meantime, let's take a look at the stat changes coming in the expansion!
Live
Priest Q&A with Ghostcrawler
It looks like
Illidan Stormrage
was
right—I am not prepared! Who would have guessed Blizzard would release two Q&As in one day? ;)
One of my favorite parts of the interview is that Blizzard's considering removing the "backlash" from
if the target is within "
" range. The other part is that Blizzard wants to make Shadow talents that improve the overall damage of Shadow Priests, so that their damage is not penalized in cases where DoTs are useless. But enough chit-chat—let's get to the interview!
You can read the entire interview after the break, or read the original one linked below:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/priest.html
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Rogue Q&A with Ghostcrawler
Much like the rogue class itself, Blizzard decided to be pretty sneaky and release the Rogue Q&A as one of the last class Q&As. Maybe they used some rouge to hide it? :D
For the most, I enjoyed reading the interview. I like that Blizzard admitted that a few aspects are in need of a fix, and that they defended a few decisions which negatively affected rogues. My favorite part of the interview was about
Vanish
and its current functionality—but have a look for yourself! You can read the entire interview after the break, or read the original one linked below:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/rogue.html
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Hunter Q&A with Ghostcrawler
This Q&A was more adventurous than the others. Just as we spotted it, it was pulled off the official forums (and website, if it ever made it there).
MMO-Champion
still had it though, so we used their version - you can find the source over at their
Blue Tracker
. I personally expect changes to be made to the original Q&A (which is what you see here), hence the pulling off. Keep an eye on the thread, we'll try to post the updated version, if there is one, as soon as we can.
Looks like everything is alright with the Q&A now. You can find the source under the quote, after the break (through nine mountains in the tenth, through nine rivers...). The
last question
in the quote was not there before - it's the only new thing.
This time it's Hunter. Remember how I was happy about the Druid one because my next alt would be a druid? Well, the alt I am currently leveling is a
hunter
! So I am naturally excited to see what they have to say about it, and about Marksman in particular. I still haven't r
Live
Druid Q&A Follow-up
Apparently the
Druid Q&A
did raise points interesting enough for Bornakk to answer a few additional questions. I am not a very active druid player, but one of the things he said looks very interesting to me:
Please continue to
constructively
discuss...
Any chance I am not going to see any "
first
"s here? :P
As usually, you can find the full content of the Q&A at the following link, or after the break!
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18600870072&sid=1&pageNo=17#336
Live
Warrior Q&A with Ghostcrawler
A little late on this one too! What with all the time we're spending on the
Profiler
combined with some big news we have for next week, and we're a little slower on the draw than usual this week. But here it is, the Warrior Q&A! Thanks to
MasterofDisguise
for helping me throw the blog together.
I can't comment much on the actual content here, Warrior is not a class that I play—the rage mechanic never really appealed to me, and the interview below indicates the same may be true of the developers!
You can read the entire interview after the break, or read the original one linked below:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/warrior.html
Live
Paladin Q&A with Ghostcrawler
As a player whose main is a Paladin, this was the interview I was looking forward to the most. I had some mixed feelings about what Ghostcrawler had to say in some parts of the interview, but overall I'd have to say it was mostly a good indication that the fate of the Paladin class wasn't as horrible as some people thought it was. But let's see what you folks think—you can read the entire interview after the break, or read the original one linked below!
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/paladin.html
Live
Warlock Q&A with Ghostcrawler
This Q&A was one of the few I was looking forward to, because I have a warlock in hiatus right now that I've been wanting to play for a while.
I personally liked the interview. It looks like Blizzard wants to
improve
the class as it is right now, but not necessarily buff them. Before I go into details and spoil it for you guys, I'm going to quote the interview entirely after the break, or you can read the original one linked below:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/warlock.html
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