Cataclysm: Priest Class Preview

Cataclysm: Priest Class Preview

Onwards we march further into the class previews from Blizzard:

“In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at some of the changes in store for the priest class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, as well as an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or “Life Grip”) is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can’t seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

NightSkye:  Now Leap of Faith sounds so cool!  I can how how that would work in all those situations Blizzard mentioned but I could see the fun of it too – especially in dueling.  Kind of like MC when at the Naxx summoning stone and dueling someone silly enough to accept….hehe.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to introducing new spells, we’re planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re familiar with. 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.

• All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate).
• We want to bring back Shadow Word: Death as an “execute” — something you do when the target is at 25% health. – Almost like a Hunters Kill Shot ability.
  
• While we want to keep the priest’s role as a well-rounded healer, we also want to make sure the class is a viable tank healer, which is something priests moved away from a little in Wrath of the Lich King. Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing spell of choice, though we’ve also discussed giving Discipline a second shield so that they have a small shield to cast on lots of different targets, and a big, more expensive shield to cast on a tank or anyone else taking a ton of damage.
• Divine Spirit and Prayer of Spirit will be removed from the game. As Spirit will be the primary mana-regeneration stat, we don’t want it to vary as much between solo, small group, and raid play. Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild will not boost Spirit either. -Ouch.
  
• Mana will be a bigger consideration for all healers. We aren’t trying to make healing more painful; we’re trying to make it more fun. When the cost of a spell isn’t an issue, then casting the right spell for the job is less of an issue because you might as well just use your most powerful spell all of the time. We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don’t want to encourage standing around doing nothing. We’re also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don’t feel as penalized when those buffs aren’t available. - The 5 second rule, that is a good rule, it’s a shame more people don’t remember or practice that rule (at least that’s how it was on my server – not meaning you, dear readers and players).
  

New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to improve Discipline’s single-target healing capacity. One key is to make sure shielding isn’t always a more attractive option than healing.
• We want to improve Holy for PvP healing. One way to do this is to make sure that Heal’s throughput is similar between both specs.
• We want to improve Shadow for short fights and reduce its susceptibility to school lockouts.
• Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield. - That will be nice but I wonder if it can go raid wide or simply just group?
  
• We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast.
• Since the Shadow tree has a lot of passive damage-boosting abilities — something we’re trying to avoid in Cataclysm — we will need to replace several of the tree’s talents. One idea is to play off of the new Shadow Orbs mechanic (see Mastery section below), possibly allowing you to consume an orb to increase damage from Mind Blast or reduce Mind Spike’s cast time.
• Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn’t variable depending on group composition.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Discipline

• Healing
• Meditation
• Absorption

Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.

Holy

• Healing
• Meditation
• Radiance

Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.

Shadow

• Spell damage
• Spell Crit
• Shadow Orbs

Shadow Orbs: Casting spells grants a chance for Shadow Orbs to be created that fly around you and increase your shadow damage. This will help lower-level characters feel more like “Shadow priests” before they obtain Shadowform. - Makes me think of the Blood Princes in Icecrown Citadel with the orbs floating around.  Granted they have to be taken to increase Shadow Resist but I suppose the concept of gathering a spawned orb is the same, this one will just BOOST your shadow damage.

The idea behind the Holy “cast three in a row” talent (it’s called “Chakra”) is that we’ve always positioned Holy as a versatile healer. This talent lets you shift into different modes. If you need to be a tank healer, cast three single target heals and your single-target healing is now better. Cast three area heals, and you can be a temporarily specialized group healer. We’re going to try to play this mechanic up with a cool UI to try to get that “I’m almost in the zone” feel. We’ll let it apply to as many types of spells as we can, perhaps even Smite for those times when nobody’s taking damage. - This makes me want to level my priest even faster now, though I am shadow at the moment, but it could change hehe.

We pulled Misery because we are pulling every group benefit that improves hit. It’s annoying to have to swap your gear in and out depending on who shows up for your group. In general we’re going to push even harder in Cataclysm for bringing people you like to play with, not bringing people who have awesome buffs. The answer to almost every question of “But why would they bring me?” should be “Because you know what the hell you’re doing.” ” – Blizzard.

There you have it Priests – are these new changes something amazing or something to dread?  Let me know!

Happy Hunting!

Cataclysm: Warlock Class Preview

Cataclysm: Warlock Class Preview

Here we are with a Warlock class preview thanks to Blizzard:

“In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, warlocks will receive changes to their class talents and abilities. Outlined below are some of these changes. Keep in mind that this is an early preview and that these modifications are still under development, so you may see further adjustments to the listed changes as we get closer to launch. That said, here is a first look at these new warlock spells and abilities!

This major change regarding Soul Shards was previously announced at BlizzCon 2009. Soul Shards will no longer be inventory items, but instead a new UI resource mechanic. Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat. Soul Shards will not be required outside of combat. Soul Burn will consume a Soul Shard resource, thereby allowing you to use the secondary effects of some spells. Soul Burn has no mana or health costs and is off the global cooldown. Planned secondary effects are outlined here.

• Summon Demon + Soul Burn = summon the demon instantly.
• Drain Life + Soul Burn = Reduces cast speed by 60%.
• Demonic Circle + Soul Burn = Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting.
• Unstable Affliction + Soul Burn = Instantly deals damage equal to 30% of its effect.
• Soul Fire + Soul Burn = Instant cast.
• Healthstone + Soul Burn = Increases total health by 20% for 8 seconds.
• Searing Pain + Soul Burn = Increases the crit chance of Searing Pain by 100%, and subsequent Searing Pain spells by 50% for 6 seconds.

NightSkye:  I’m not a Warlock player (not counting a level 66 alt) but how they are using Soul Burn sounds really intense.  What sounds a bit ‘iffy’ is the fact you’ll get 3 Soul Shards per fight.  Does that mean you can easily handle the 3 Shards per fight or will those shards become ‘use only in an emergency or if the boss is below X amount of health”?

Next you will find a list of some of the warlock spell and talent changes for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

• All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. 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.
• Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target. -Nice!
  
• Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the warlock. - Even nicer hehe.
  
• Imps will lose Fire Shield, but will gain a new ability, Burning Ember, which is a stacking DoT.
• The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have Soothing Kiss, but will instead have Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards.
• Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Pandemic will now cause Drain Soul to refresh Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony on targets below 25% health.
• The ability Fel Domination will be removed (because Soul Burn accomplishes the same effect).
• Demonology will gain a new direct-damage spell, Demon Bolt. Demon Bolt will add a debuff that improves the damage done by the demon to the target.
• We plan to add a new talent, Impending Doom, which will give certain spells a chance to reduce the cooldown on Metamorphosis and Bane of Doom.
• Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to demonic crowd control. Furthermore, abilities available only while under the effects of Metamorphosis will be altered to put more emphasis on the warlock’s own spells.
• Shadowburn will now do additional damage to targets below 25% health.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Affliction

• Spell Damage
• Spell Crit
• Shadow DoTs

Shadow DoTs: The damage caused by Shadow damage-over-time spells is increased.

Demonology

• Spell Damage
• Spell Haste
• Demon Damage

Demon Damage: The damage caused by pets and Metamorphosis is increased.

Destruction

• Spell Damage
• Spell Critical Damage
• Fire Direct Damage

Fire Direct Damage: The damage caused by Fire direct damage spells is increased.

Well that concludes this Cataclysm preview for the warlock class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.
[...]
Here are a few points of clarification on some of the popular questions or concerns we’re seeing.

• On regenerating shards in combat, we will add a mechanic to regen shards if we find that we need to in order to handle variable combat length. We haven’t added one yet because we really want to emphasize locks using shards at the right time and not as fast as they can with then an Evocation-like spell to bring them back again. These are supposed to be special moments in a fight — think Bloodlust perhaps — and not used every 20 seconds on cooldown (or whatever the cooldown ends up being). - Okay that kind of answered my question I had from earlier about the Soul Shards.
  
• Demon lovers, we haven’t ruled out adding a new demon, but we want to be very careful here. We’ve had a hard enough time finding niches for some of the current ones. So we first want to make sure existing demons are cool before we’re faced with Q&A several months from now asking why the new demon either isn’t cool enough, or why warlocks no longer use, say, their felhunter because of the new demon. - New Demon?  That’s like telling a Hunter they are getting a new pet!
  
• The intent for Hellfire is for it to be a specialty of Demonology warlocks. Affliction would use Seed of Corruption and Destruction would use Rain of Fire.” -Blizzard

So there you have it, dear Warlocks, I hope this proves to be interesting and drives you to want to play your class even more.  Tell me your thoughts and ideas, I always enjoy learning!

Happy Hunting!

Cataclysm: Shaman Class Preview

Cataclysm: Shaman Class Preview

A lot of information is about to be released for each of the classes but for now lets look at the Shaman!  Here is what Blue has to say:

“In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at some of the changes in store for the shaman class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

Here are a few examples of effects we’re considering for this ability:

• Windfury Weapon – Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 50% weapon damage and increasing the shaman’s Haste for the next five swings.
• Flametongue Weapon – Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the shaman’s next Fire attack by 20%.
• Earthliving Weapon – Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman’s next healing spell by 20%.

Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

NightSkye:  I had a lot of fun with this when talking to my partner, who is a Restoration Shaman.  I said “This sounds like a Druids Tranquility spell where all the little healing sparkles come from the ground your new spell will come from the air (well if Blizzard does it right)!”  *looks around*  It sounded a lot cuter saying it…*fiddles with her fingers*…I just think it would be neat to see a huge cloud come up and a healing rain come from it.  Granted I’m not sure if a cloud will form mind you, just thinking, but that is a really awesome.  I always associate the Tauren (though I know it’s not just the Tauren who are Shaman but they are the ‘poster child’ for that class) with the Native Americans in their respect and living with the Earth and now to see this new spell – it really is moving.  I am not a Shaman but I am most looking forward to this spell.

Spiritwalker’s Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

In addition to adding new spells, we’re planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re familiar with. 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.

• Restoration shaman and other healing classes will need to pay attention to mana more than they’ve had to during Wrath of the Lich King. Spirit will be the Restoration shaman’s primary mana-regeneration stat.
• We’re making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes. Shaman will have Cleanse Spirit as a baseline ability, but it will only remove curses. Restoration shaman will have a talent that will improve Cleanse Spirit so that it also removes magic. Shaman will no longer be able to remove poison.
• Cleansing Totem will be removed from the game, as we want dispels to be a decision for players, not something done mindlessly. To that end, all dispels will cost slightly more mana, and you will waste the spell if you cast it when there is nothing to remove. (Currently, the dispel is only cast when there is something to remove, which encourages spamming ‘just in case.”) We will balance PvE dispelling with this new model in mind.
• Totem of Wrath now will replace Flametongue Totem for all shaman, and dropping this totem will buff the group’s spell power by 4%. Elemental shaman will have a talent that lets all Fire totems provide +10% spell power, allowing them to drop Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. The 4% and 10% buffs will be exclusive with each other and with the warlock’s Demonic Pact, so you can’t benefit from all of them at once. We’re also considering letting Elemental drop Searing Totem at range.
• We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We’re considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Elemental Reach will be simplified so shaman have a more consistent spell range.
• We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE.
• Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept — and so did players — so we are trying to bring it back. - this sounds exciting and kinda neat!
  
• Elemental will have a deep talent that allows Spirit (which will appear on the gear they share with Restoration shaman) to boost their Hit rating.
• Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not Intellect.
• Enhancing Totems will be replaced with Focused Strikes, which will improve the damage of the new spell Primal Strike and Stormstrike.
• With the Mastery system, we’re also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, Improved Windfury Totem, Mental Dexterity, Call of Thunder, Tidal Mastery, Purification, Nature’s Blessing, and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Elemental

• Spell damage
• Spell Crit
• Elemental Overload

Elemental Overload: Your direct-damage spells have a chance to proc a less powerful ‘bonus” version of the spell. This will work much like the current Lightning Overload talent, but would also apply to Lava Burst.

Enhancement

• Melee damage
• Melee Haste
• Nature Damage

Nature Damage: This will provide a passive bonus to the Nature damage dealt by the Enhancement shaman.

Restoration

• Healing
• Meditation
• Deep Healing

Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target’s health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points.

NightSkye: So this means that the less health a player has and gets healed, due to Deep Healing, those players will be healed more powerfully then one who is still low on health but not as that in the critical zone.  Does that mean, say, with a Chain Heal it would work or more direct like a Healing Wave?  I’m a bit confused on that but then again – I’m not a Shaman hehe.

Last but not least, it’s the intention of Primal Strike to let shaman play as an Enhancement at low levels. Currently when leveling in this spec, you end up just using Lightning Bolt a lot so you feel like an Elemental shaman instead. At a higher level, Primal Strike gets replaced by Storm Strike. They share a cooldown so Enhancement just won’t ever use Primal Strike after that, in the same way that Prot warriors don’t use Sunder Armor once they have Devastate or Feral druids don’t use Claw once they get Mangle.” – Blizzard

So, all you Shamans out there, these are good changes?  These are interesting changes?  Does this preview make you jazzed about your class?  You need to let me know!  But I also have Blue’s Questions and Answers in this post:

“We know there are a lot of additional questions and we’ll do our best to answer what we can. Keep in mind, this is merely a preview of things to come.

Q: You didn’t answer the most important shaman question! What about Sentry Totem?
A: The Cataclysm is a time of great upheaval. Deathwing’s return to Azeroth tore a hole in the fabric of the universe that tragically resulted in the ultimate and irrevocable destruction of all Sentry Totems. Level designers are contemplating a shrine for the Sentry Totem near that of Uther the Lightbringer. We know shaman players will greet this news with grief, but as with all class changes we’ll have to get into beta before anything is final.” – Blizzard