Quote from: Bashiok (Source)
Beginning Wednesday, April 7 we will begin releasing class previews containing an overview of some of the changes currently being planned for each of the 10 World of Warcraft classes. The type of information you can expect from these posts are a list of the new spells from 80-85, the new passive mastery bonuses for all talent trees, a brief outline of some of the talent changes we're currently planning, and in some cases new low level spells for select classes.

These changes will by no means be comprehensive, and are subject to change between now and the launch of the expansion. It's also important to understand that some classes are currently further along in the development process than others, and as a result the amount of information will vary from class to class. Please do not let this frustrate you should your class be amongst those which are on the "lighter" side of things, as all classes will receive the same level of design attention before the expansion is released. Additionally we'll be providing more information for all classes, especially as we move into the beta phase.

Below is the schedule for each class:

* Shaman - April 7
* Priest - April 7
* Warlock - April 7


* Warrior - April 8
* Death Knight - April 8
* Rogue - April 8


* Hunter - April 9
* Druid - April 9
* Mage - April 9


* Paladin - April 16*


These posts are being coordinated internationally so they'll be posted at different times throughout the day and night on the given dates to give players around the world the ability to see posts made at a convenient time. This thread will be updated with links directly to each class preview as they're posted.

*The paladin is still deep in development. Instead of giving a preview that would be potentially less comprehensive than the other classes we made the decision to post it when it's ready, in order to properly honor the paladin class and those that play them. The wait isn't too long however as we're expecting to be able to post it on April 16.

The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty exciting for anyone who has played wow within the last three years.

So far the rage and dispel mechanics information have been good.

has there been an approx release date for the next expansion yet? had a few people ask me and i dont know the answer to the question


certainly in no real hurry for it myself

I'd say last quarter of the year.

Sweet, priests up first, I imagine there'll be some changes to make spirit and mp5 important again, cos right now its all about stacking int to get bigger mana pools so that regen effects are more effective. Mp5 is pretty much left in the dark as a stat anyone wants, and spirit is like a "Well, I guess if theres no other alternatives" kind of stat. The spellpower converted from spirit via talents is usually considered more of a plus than any mana regen it gives.

So far the rage and dispel mechanics information have been good.

What rage and dispel mechanics information?

last edited by Khel at 23:00:05 06/Apr/10

Pushing dispel skills = dispel. Those mechanics I guess. Since my main is a hunter i'll be over the f***ing moon when Int bites the dust and we get focus. Also when Beast Mastery tree gets a buff (say, a shot attack that has different effects depending on the pet you have) since I love that tree and even sometimes raid as it.

Yeah, I meant to ask, what information about them, I spazzed out and left "information" off the end of my question.

All I know is hunters get focus, and apparantly we can even tame giraffes, zevhras and other previously untameable pets. That's about all I know

mp5 important again

They've pretty much stated on several occasions that MP5 = gone come Cataclysm (think Blizzcon being the first time it was bought up, but I can't find the quotes from Blues since then). I believe they're going to make regen governed by Spirit or other means, but without falling back onto MP5. Ditto for Spellpower: the only things in Cat. with SP on them will be weapons, then that's just to mark them as being Caster items.

Rage normalisation

Dispel changes

last edited by darkjedi at 00:03:20 07/Apr/10

They've said that the five second rule will be gone, but I don't think they've outright said mp5 will be gone, just that there wont be any five second rule, there'll just be in combat, and not in combat regen.

But then its not like I've been following all this extremely closely, so I could have just missed where they said it.

No i've read that MP5 will be going and that spirit is now THE mana regen attribute. Not sure how that will work yet but yeah. I also like how most of the crap on armor and weapons are going. I like the old days of vanilla WoW when there was like 3 types of things you'd find on them all. AP, SP or crit. Now that I think of it, did they even HAVE such a thing as being hit capped back then?

I also heard that the new patch give you back 50 days of your life...

I also heard that the new patch give you back 50 days of your life...

Only 50?!

How do I redeem those days for badges and/or items?

Most of the info I'm getting comes right from www.mmo-champion.com on the front page. That site is religiously updated.

Death knight tanking tree is going to be relegated to the blood tree only now. No more unholy/frost tanking.

I do remember blizz saying that mp5 is gone, and they are getting rid of the five second rule. So its basically just spirit, and spirit will affect all classes the same for mana regen.

No more frost tanking? But wasn't frost originally designed as the tanking spec?

The original design was for all 3 trees to be able to tank and DPS. They were trying something different from the warrior and paladin approach where 1 tree is the tank tree.

But blizz have admitted that its a pain in the arse because of a few reasons, mainly because they are constantly trying to mish mash DPS and tanking talents together and that the DK has essentially 6 specs at the moment, which requires a lot more work to balance.

The tank tree they picked is Blood, and apparently they will be moving all the tanky talents from the other trees into that tree.

I can't understand why this game has such impacting changes to classes this far along in it's lifetime. Or as much maintenance downtime as it seems to, for that matter.

edit: not talking about DK either, since it's a relatively new class

I'm always amused at people talking to each other about MMO's in general and WoW specifically seem to go into this foreign language to describe what's going on. I'm just not with the in crowd I guess.

Apologies for thread derail, please continue.

Blizz have been getting more and more aggressive with class changes over the lifespan of the product. No doubt their tools are better these days allowing for more robust changes to be made in a shorter amount of time. I think there was a large shift in their design philosophies post BC with regards to casual players and class balance, as is evident by how massively better wrath is w.r.t. raiding and doing 5 mans.

They certainly don't mind changing things during an expansion that other MMOs would never think about changing. Like item stats, a classes resource system etc.

I get the feeling that these days they're using WoW as a testbed for new ideas they want to put into their new MMO. Chuck them in wow, see if they work, then make them part of the new one.

other mmo's have done it and failed - can't see the wow-machine failing though

I suspended my wow account this week after 4 months of inactivity. Gave all my gold and epic BOEs to a mate to use.

Feels good :]

I suspended my wow account this week after 4 months of inactivity. Gave all my gold and epic BOEs to a mate to use.

Feels good :]

You will go back to it for sure. Report back in here in six months time and let us know.

I gave it up just after wrath came out, sold my account and my characters. Just recently gave it another bash when the 3.3 patch and icecrown came out and I've been enjoyed it cos I'm just playing it casually, for a couple of hours here and there, instead of playing it every day and raiding "hardcore".

Its so noob friendly these days that you can still see all the content if you play it casually anyway, you don't even need to be in a raiding guild anymore, you can just jump in a random pug and go to icc.

That's right Khel.

Killing lich king 5 man was awsome :)

I can't understand why this game has such impacting changes to classes this far along in it's lifetime. Or as much maintenance downtime as it seems to, for that matter.

I imagine if Mythic had been a little more active, you might still be playing your Thane. Whilst I am not playing wow atm, I still always liked how Blizzard constantly went back to the basics to try and balance. I guess not even they could forsee the impact of gear / skills and specs in the raid environment can change class dynamics (They prolly should though).

Besides, it gave people with the less important classes to get some time in the sun before they yanked the carpet out again..

As for downtime, yeah its pretty bad, I can't understand why you would engineer software that requires restarts just to do class modifications or tweeking content. Not a software engineer though, so ..

Killing lich king 5 man was awsome :)

^^^^ This.

I imagine if Mythic had been a little more active, you might still be playing your Thane.

thanes had their fair-share of changes which required full skill/realm respecs as well. I used to ask the same question of mythic about daoc

Cancelled my subscription and it runs out on the 10th. No-one I know plays anymore so just pugging with strangers is pretty boring.

Changes for locks and shaman out now over at mmo-champion

I must have missed the part where we killed LK in 5 man.
(Halls of Reflection didn't kill him or even come close).

Wtf, they said priests, wheres the priests!

Hah, warlocks wont be able to hellfire themselves to death anymore and save on repair costs, suck that.

last edited by Khel at 13:59:13 08/Apr/10

Haha, priest stuff is out, Life grip! And group pws! Good stuff, sounds like fun.

Yeah priest changes sound like fun. Can't wait to life grip friends off cliffs :)

Sounds like some good improvements to shadow too. I hardly played shadow at all, but was playing it the other day in a raid cos we were short dps and had too many healers and yeah, the biggest thing that annoyed me was trying to fight trash, where by the time you get your dots up and get into a good rotation the thing is dead. So its good that fixing that is one of their main focuses.