[WoW] Sell/Unsell me

[Minischoles]

Typical blizzard overreaction - "we can't fix warrior scaling, so we JUST WON'T MAKE THEM SCALE AT ALL!" *cue evil laughter*

Really, it's funny to see people getting all excited over this, yet none of them remember what a shit storm rage normalisation caused in TBC, and how terribly they fucking completely messed it up. It's even funnier that they're turning things like HS into 'execute' style attacks - yay HS can consume 30 rage, when we're already massively rage starved. There is a reason rage is the way it is, and why warriors scale the way they do and it's because they fucking messed up normalisation last time, and they have absolutely no clue how to balance the difference in dps between a low geared warrior and a high geared warrior.

What's even funnier, is reading it you can see the same problem is going to crop up. Slower weapons will be more readily available inside raids, as will gear with an abundance of haste and crit. Given that haste and crit will directly effect how much rage you get, you'll still get into the situation where a low geared warrior will be doing absolutely fucking abysmal dps - just because they don't have the crit to generate double rage, or the haste to get more auto attacks. And a high geared warrior will have those, so you still get exactly the same fucking problem.

The only way to balance rage is to completely remove it - the whole concept behind it is broken, and blizzard has shown they can't balance it for shit. Just give warriors and feral druids energy or 'focus' and be done with it. Yes it'll turn them into 'rogue-lite' but it's better than this bullshit.

True, but I love how they go "You'll have more ways to gain rage!", which then runs into the ...GCD mess that we have. If I could remove the GCD or have a rogue's GCD? I would gladly take a 40-50% reduction in my DPS.

But as said, they did bring all of this now, rather then 1 month before it comes out as another fuck you to warriors.

HAHA oh yeah, warriors could have been given the warlock treatment in the beta - completely ignored until they're broken a month before release.

Really i'm in sort of the same position as GR. I enjoy 2 classes right now - my druid, and my warlock.

And all signs point towards healers being completely buttfucked by Blizzard in Cata. They've literally come out and said 'oh DPS won't be running OOM, but healers will be. Sorry if that's unbalanced, and we're screwing your class and basically hobbling the fuck out of you'. Yay I get to go OOM again, because that's so much fun - standing there doing nothing for half the fight, because healers apparently aren't allowed to have fun in this game.

And if warlocks get the same treatment in the Cata beta as they did during the WOTLK beta (they were flat out fucking ignored for most of it) then i'll pretty much be quitting too.

[Ritterin Sophia]

How are Death Knights? I stopped playing in I believe September last year, any major changes?

[Ghost Rider]

How are Death Knights? I stopped playing in I believe September last year, any major changes?

LOL, they nerfed them into the ground and forgot that making a class that bad doesn't attract anyone, gave a few buffs again...slowly. Even then every buff was tempered by the intent that if Blizzard saw anything that made them strong, they shredded. I don't mean a bugged talent but literally "That strike does too much by our thoughts, nix it by 50%". DKs can still do great damage in PvE because there are still some synergies in talents and game play that Blizzard didn't understand and kept.

[Ghost Rider]

And since they annouced it, I await April 8th. Why? Because I want to see how far they fuck my most played characters (I have a 277/264 warrior and a fully decked 264 with smattering 277 rogue). Cynical as that may be, it'll be a chance for me to even wonder if I should keep the account after defeating Arthas on Heroic. And oh yes, to laugh at the comment "Rogues are still low on population.". Maybe, just maybe it is because you fuckers destroyed a tree entirely, made another DPS raid tree and the middle one DPS retard.

Something that minischoles brought up and still amuse me.

Healers are getting fucked. GC and blizzard by extension has stated they do not like healers having never to OOM. They feel it ruins the classes. What I find sad about this, is healers really are the most boring of jobs and again only some of the higher geared healers do not go OOM. However and whatever your feelings towards healers all you do is move out of fire, throw your class spell, coordinate cooldowns on really big damage. But instead of trying to make the game more fun, they add the stress of becoming a lump of deadweight because they feel it adds flavor.

But par for Blizzard the top .01% fucks up the rest. Every single nerf that wasn't a bug fix is usually a extraordinarily geared person or people of that class raping others. Blizzard waits to see more results, goes "Too powerful!", and then the class goes "Whu-huh?!". Case in point? Juggernaut AND Charge. Juggernaut at 100% was stupid, so reducing it to only giving a 25% extra Crit is fine but increase charge time to 20 seconds AND nerf the Charge Glyph? Gee thanks for making every Arms warrior need a talent that nerfs them. Why not make it a charge in combat that Arms needed? No wait, that would've made sense.

And there is still a shortage of healers because most I've seen said "Fuck it, I'm playing my DPS spec where I don't stare at 25 bars for 3-4 hours a night.".

[D.Turtle]

The sad thing is, they removed the one thing that made healing really interesting: downranking. It was the one thing that made it possible for me as a healer to actively manage my mana/healing output. They replaced it with simply casting/not casting as mana management, and later always casting, but having to cast it within 0.1 seconds on the right guy...

In TBC healing was fun. Brutallus was cool to heal for me as a Shaman, as it was all about mana management, Twins was terrific, as it was reactive healing with a bit of mana management, Muru was simply ... Muru (killed it in the last weak before 3.0 patch made everything a cakewalk). Illiidan was fun with the different phases needing different strategies. Council was a great mix of needing to reactively and proactively healing (the rogue damage was predictable), interrupting the heal cast in case the DPS screwed up, etc. And ALWAYS I had to manage the mana, trying to conserve it, but still putting out enough to keep the people alive, triaging who needed a heal now, and who had to wait, etc.

With the removal of downranking the whole complexity of mana management was gone. It was simply - massive damage all the time and you better not miss a single cast... It really became a game of simply always spamming a heal, and hoping it hits the right guy, because if you were a second late, he would be dead.

And this is raid healing. Tank healing is even worse. I never figured out why they though it was a good idea to have so many bosses be able to 2-hit your tanks ...

Well, I stopped playing (Twins on normal is the last I killed) and I don't intend to start again. It was quite a surprise to look at the roster of my former guild again after about 6 months and realizing that only 10 or so people of the old group where still there... The turnaround rate is simply atrocious for a non-Nr. 1 guild on a server.

If they want to make healing interesting again, they have to put in downranking again (maybe with less ranks, and some tweaking of the numbers). This would make the nerf to mana regen acceptable, and would maybe let them make encounters that are more than simply massive damage all the time on the raid.

[Minischoles]

Every change to healing has been because healers do what every class in the game does - they find what is most efficient (mana and healing wise) and then use that spell.

EVERY SINGLE FUCKING CLASS DOES IT there's a reason dps have rotations, because that is what is most efficient for them to do max dps, and healers are no different in this regard. Why do resto druids blanket rejuve the raid? because its the best tactic for dealing with incoming damage, and gives the most HPM (Healing per Mana) and HPS (healing per second) - why do paladins spam Holy Light (apart from having no other spells) it's because it's the most efficient at handling the incoming damage. It's why lifebloom was rolled on tanks during TBC, and why Chain Heal was downranked.

And yet Healers are always fucking punished for just doing what every other class does. For some reason Blizzard has this idea that healers shouldn't be allowed to be efficient and eke out every ounce of healing they can get.
But what ruined healing most was the introduction of Replenishment. No other buff is so needed in the game right now, every single healer is completely reliant on it for their regen. It takes away any regen management from the healer, and dumps it completely on other specs (most of which are completely fucking gimp in raids - the only reliable sources are spriests and ret paladins). Now healers have no control over our regen, it's a completely random mechanic where we are dependent on getting a buff from our raid. Without replenishment, any healer will run OOM, and will go OOM very fucking fast.

The dispel system change seems the most retarded change right now. We're going to be punished majorly for dispelling - apparently they want it to be a drain on mana, and you'll actually be able to dispel even when there are no debuffs, just wasting mana. Which just smacks of any fight that requires dispelling - one healer is gonna be the dispel bitch. It's going to be his only job in that fight, he will do nothing else but stare at Grid for the fight and dispel.

[Ghost Rider]

But downranking is cheating the system!!! And Blizzard always, always wants you to play at your peak!

I always found it funny given that downranking was a great way for DPS/healing to actually use said abilities? Y'know to proc things or manage mana? But nay! Cheating the system, and never meant to be.

[D.Turtle]

Druids blanket rejuv the raid because there is always constant raid-wide damage coming in, so that the blanket rejuv is the most effective way of keeping the raid alive. Paladins spam Holy Light on the tank, because thats the only way the tank can stay alive if he gets hit twice in a row. Disc Priests blanket shield the raid, because thats the most effective way to keep the raid alive when they constantly get damaged. Holy priests actually have it relatively interesting, because they can blanket hot the raid, and have to hit CoH on CD - thats two spells! Shamans had a tiny niche of extremely fast LHW, now more of a blanket CH of the raid, except it has to be targeted, because so much of its heal is on the person you target, meaning all the intelligent instants, hots, etc heals everyone before your cast lands and you simply have to hope that you snipe the other healers fast enough.

If you look at the overhealing numbers, its simply ridiculous.

As for downranking, I can understand that they removed it, because it made the balancing very difficult. But they didn't replace it with anything new. There were no new spells to help you manage your mana, no new healing spells that were very cheap and efficient. They removed the complexity, realized that healers would have to sit still half of the time if they didn't want to run OOM, so they pushed the manaregen to a level where healers wouldn't go OOM anymore, realized that this meant that healers could afford to put out constant huge numbers, so they pushed the damage on everything to ridiculous levels in order to keep the healers challenged, which meant that the only thing that counted was constant massive output of heals and any slack would kill someone, which made any real reactionary healing useless, as people would be dead by the time your heal landed, which meant constant spamming of intelligent heals, hots and shields becoming essential, and targeted casts on the raid becoming mostly useless.

Supposedly, they want to fix (hah!) it in Cataclysm, by massively increasing the health of people (like happened with every expansion), while keeping heals at pretty much the same level (not gonna happen), toning down the incoming damage (as if!), killing mana regen (might happen), and bringing back mana management (and how do they want to do that without downranking or 5 new healing spells?).

Well, it will be "interesting" what the next two days bring...

[Civil War Man]

(and how do they want to do that without downranking or 5 new healing spells?).

They're adding a bunch of new spells for all classes. Spell ranks are going away entirely. Every spell will have one rank, and scale with level. Some will be trainable at earlier levels, and more will be added to fill in the gaps.

[Civil War Man]

Looks like Warriors just got one-upped in terms of having to deal with a major change that may shake up the class as a whole.

Death Knights are getting creamed. Blood is being remade into a tank-only tree, and is being made the only Death Knight tank tree.

[Ghost Rider]

Actually I wonder about Paladins to be honest. While the rest are getting their little one shots of small buff or major change/nerf, Paladins got pushed back.

And gods, they have no idea at what they want. Frost/Unholy as DPS, Blood?! as Tank. Uh-huh...wait I smell a trend. Frost is duel wield spec, Unholy is a two hander. I want my warrior pet goddamn it.

[Civil War Man]

Seeing the Paladin changes will be interesting. Of course, you can crack out the old headlines anyway.

Paladins get a massive overhaul for next expansion. In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

Want to bet on whether Retribution be OP at the beginning of the expansion before slowly drifting off into obscurity?

[DudeGuyMan]

Ret Paladin changes make me nervous, as my main has always been one. After being worthless throughout most of WoW history, then ludicrously overpowered at WOTLK launch, we're finally in a good place and my primary thought has been "Okay we're cool, please just leave us alone now!" the last couple times there have been patch notes to read.

But the torrent of douchebag rogues who splatter all their cooldowns against the outside of the bubble and then run to the forums to scream "OMG OVERPOWERED" like it's 2004 and no one has seen that before has never slowed down, and something in the pit of my stomach is always worried that the developers are going to listen and send us back to the bad old days of lolret.

[Civil War Man]

Ret's situation with Wrath wasn't helped by the fact that the tree was so slim that you could basically pick up every single relevant dps talent by level 70 (I know, this is using a post 3.0.2 calculator, but that's basically all the points you needed to spend to do damage as Ret before Seal of Blood was removed and Vengeance and Command were buffed).

So between 3.0 and Wrath's release you had a bunch of level 70 Paladins with all of the dps talents they'd need for level 80.

[Kuja]

And gods, they have no idea at what they want. Frost/Unholy as DPS, Blood?! as Tank. Uh-huh...wait I smell a trend. Frost is duel wield spec, Unholy is a two hander. I want my warrior pet goddamn it.

I heard about this change late last night.

My reacion could essentially be summed up as NERD RAAAAAGE

[Kuja]

On a related note, the shaman preview has been released:

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.

New Shaman Spells

Primal Strike (available at level 3): Primal Strike is a new weapon-based attack that every shaman will learn very early in the game. Our goal with this ability is to make leveling as Enhancement rather than as Elemental more viable, since many key Enhancement talents become available at fairly high levels.

Healing Wave (level 4): While the shaman already has an ability called Healing Wave, we're adding another spell to the class's direct-healing arsenal and giving it a familiar name. The current Healing Wave will be renamed Greater Healing Wave, and the intent is for the 'new" Healing Wave to be the shaman's go-to heal. Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave will be used on a more situational basis.

Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.

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.

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.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

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.

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

Enhancement
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Nature Damage

Restoration
Healing
Meditation
Deep Healing

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.

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

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.

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.

[Steve]

Hahaha, this amuses me. Also makes it more likely that when I get income coming in and look for an MMO to play, I'll be heading off to Where No MMORPG Has Gone Before instead of returning to Azeroth to run Northrend.

Oh well. Guess the only thing WoW is good for now is writing a silly crossover.

[Norade]

The links to the rest of the class previews as they come are here.

Only having a mage at 80 I can't comment much on the recent announcements, but they seem to be getting mixed reviews as I expected they would.

[Ghost Rider]

I'll let other go into the Priest/Warlock/Shaman bit deeper but reading them and looking at their reasoning is again not filling me with confidence. GC's last bit of bringing people you want versus awesome buffs. Huh? No really, aside from five man dungeons where I don't care even at fresh peak level(I just want a healer and DPS)...what the fuck? Only at the cutting edge have I cared, and that is ultimately where anyone cares because then it is a race of who brings what best to the table. As it stands his statement makes no sense beyond some appeal to the general crowd.

Priests are given spells that are interesting(the level 85 spell) but ultimately...useless. Inner Will is a cheap BS way of handling run speed problems. Namely it's nice that it increases Insta cast and run speed, but I still advocate that run speed NEEDS to be a talented thing. Too much since Vanilla relies on this for raiding.

And first nerf to Pallies and Druids. Your buff no longer affects Spirit.

•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.

Getting rid of the need of Replenishment, good. The rest sounds like they are explaining that this two foot dildo getting rammed into you is supposed to feel good.

Shadow looks to be potentially fucked by the "Shadow Orb" replacing talents.

Overall, not a good sign.

[Civil War Man]

Warrior changes have some hilarious stuff. Bringing back Heroic Leap. Seeing if they can bring 1h Fury up to par with Titan's Grip Fury (I can see them doing this, since otherwise Frost Death Knights will be the only spec that uses strength 1h weapons). Damage buff if you hit 100 Rage. A bleed that stacks when the opponent moves. Protection mastery bonus gives them an attack power boost when they are hit and allows them to block more damage than Paladins.

As for Rage, most of the alternate Rage generation stuff is in Fury. Shout generate Rage, but a Fury talent causes them to generate more. Successful interrupts can generate Rage...if you are Fury. Fury's mastery increases the effect of their Enrages (including Bloodrage).

Oh, also there's a Mortal Strike nerf.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Blood is being remade into a tank-only tree, and is being made the only Death Knight tank tree.

Wat?

Yeah, Blizzard just ruined any chance at getting my 15 bucks a month ever again, my Blood DPS DK was the most fun build I'd ever played in the game. Heavier armor? No thanks I'll just take more DPS so when I hit something I heal myself even more. Whites? Gone in at max five hits. I could solo Reds two at a time (I'm sure I could have done more, but for casual play I felt pretty good about my character). Thanks for ruining WoW for me Blizz. I was thinking of coming back to get my MMO fix until The Old Republic comes out and I can go Darkside on someone's ass, but fuck that shit.

[Ghost Rider]

Ah warriors, revel in the nerfs!

Let's break down what is Alpha Mark 1:

A small note, they love hearing thoughts? Huh, guess all those time we tried to make them listen to Cider's tank thought were us screaming. But I digress...

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.

Something to remember when Cata comes out.

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.

So they want Rage normalization but give an ability at 81 that will not be used with any use until 85?

No, really think of the math and the logic. Rage normalization limits a warrior until he is so overblown in haste, he's recieving massive rage, which only happen at...end game raid. But this buff only affects at 100 rage, but immediately rage dumps that at a time you are still hurting for rage, and will do so until level 85 ilevel 370+ gear(arbitrary number).

Then there's the reasoning, which is fucking stupid. Only time warrior is rage gorged now is at i264-277 gear. Meaning endgame raid level gear because they are constantly hitting thus constantly building said bar. But if we are limiting it...then through every other time, they are STARVED. Yeah, closely montioring...just like TBC.

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.

PvP mixed with weird Arms. Just more for Arms warriors to worry about...LOL. Morons.

Soon it'll look like

GW/Rend
Rend/GW
MS/OP/HS?Execute
Slam

Wash rinse repeat for fight, pray it doesn't move!

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.

I guess they finally ironed out the LoS problems that have plagued the game since day 1 alpha!

If you believe that, I have a pair of Orc testicles to sell you as well.

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.

If you spot any nerfs, warriors...just roll with it like you did for the last 5 years! If you see a buff, wait for the first QQ for nerfs. Don't worry, you'll be gods by endgame again because you scale with gear.

•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.

Translation: Arms...you're fucked because now you have more to your rotation for sub par DPS. Fury? We're giving something kinda extra for you to go "But I only have a 2.5 second window to do anything!", so yeah...we're fucking with you as well. Protect? Enjoy having to endure more pain.

•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.

Wait...something that warriors have wanted since..........Beta. A buff that is a buff that doesn't have use proc a cooldown to use pre-battle, and you just finally come around to this?

Better late then never, eh?

•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.

And you thought warriors were aggro magnets for AoE NOW? Paladins will wonder what the fuck is wrong with them.

If wondering, aggro between melee and ranged is around the lines of 100%-130%. Warriors have one aggro manager, a talent that reduces Fury by 10%. Arms has nothing. Bladestorm will be an insta aggro magnet on AoE fights.

By the way, this will make a warrior AoE DPS look fucking stupid high.

•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.

So warriors in PvP will have around 45-50% instead of 75%. Good to hear they were listening to healers when they told Blizzard that it's UNRELENTING ASSAULT, not MS. But thanks again for listening to the retard Blizzard.

•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.

...straight up nerf. Thanks again, Blizzard.

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%.

Wow, making a useless talent useful and thus elimanting the Protect warrior in a fell swoop!

I love you Protect Pa...shouldn't say that, nerfs will likely come.

•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.

So they keep the most NERFED of specializations. Instead of overhauling the system.

•As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase the Rage generated by shouts.

Ooooh...buh...nothing to see here.

•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.

Dumbfucks, we are using 2 Two handers because of...STATS. And oh yeah rage normalization will mean 1 handers get nearly no rage, and oh wait...move along, people Blizzard is fucking themselves, stop rubber necking.

•Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.

So again with the vagueries?

•The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.

...BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..10 seconds?

Holy shit, can you hear the QQ now? Fuck, it'll be worse then Ret Pallies.

•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.

Intercept for Battle stance!

•Improved Pummel, a Fury talent, will cause a successful interrupt to generate 10/20 Rage.

Unless this very near the top, you aren't getting why Fury is not a PvP spec.

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.

You'll be like Fury...but nerfed! But PvP gods, in season 4/8/12!

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.

Since Armor Pen cannot be stacked via equipment, Haste is god. Oh look. Gear up warriors, your gear curve begins again! Oh, and grab as much Critical Chance as you can. Cap it, bitches!!!

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.

Remember what Mini and I were talking about Effective Health? Hell, I've talked with Cider on this. And guess what? Nothing, nada, zero. I won't say it won't appear...but when they do not address the largest tank issue, you may as well wonder.

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.

Thanks for telling me why I won't resubscribe.

[Shaibar]

The shaman changes do look interesting although i wont put itpast blizz to screw it up.

As far as the warrior 1 handers bit i know exactly what happened. Someone asked "See any problems with this?" and got the reply "What about rage generation?" should be fine cause its normalized, it hits faster so it should generate faster. No one bothered to think about the stat difference as you brought up or the damage generated from using said rage (what will hit hard from 30 rage usage on same abaility, slow 2-H or a one hander, thanks for thinking in through bliz).

And the healer getting bored, I can relate. I'm sitting in a 5600GS [im the only US named character with shaibar as my name so just armory or wow-heroes (server: dark iron) it if your really that curious, but i digress] and its pathetically easy. Its to the point now on my shaman i pass on almost all healing gear because no one in my guild and nearly any of the high end guilds can compare to my healing done, and i dont have to try to get it. Get out of DnD or fires, use chain heal, riptide when its up, dont bother with LHW, just HW. (i do HW cause my guildies can tend to be retarded and will take much more damage than they need to, with haste the cast is about the same and m regen is at it doesn't matter anymore). The regen nerf to repletishment I can handle and like, coupled with we are going to nerf the rest of your regen through the floor talks its going to be balls. Yes regen is at an insane place atm, but being that we are at the highest teir of gear they should expect that. I also dont see the endless need to buff enhance and leave ele seemingly dead in the water without a destro-lock. Enh is honestly doing fine aside from needing stam to survive, and the 4pc bonus from ICC is ground shattering from what I've been told.

So yeah, blizzard is addressing things not an issueor a minor one and making them worse....again.

mildly unrelated, whats the GCD difference between warriors and rogues? i wasnt aware one existed (then again i never bothered to look since im just now lvling a rogue.

[Ghost Rider]

Follow up questions! Yay!

Here are some follow ups based on what is being discussed.

Q: Will the rotation for a Fury Warrior just be Bloodthirst and Slam with Heroic Strike to burn off rage?
A: We think Fury is going to end up needing another attack in there for single-target fights. Furious Sundering was intended more as having to Sunder being less of a penalty, but at only 3 stacks, it may not end up being a big deal and we don’t want Fury to feel like they have to purchase a talent that they may not always use. We don’t want Whirlwind to be a good button against single targets however. It essentially gets “free” damage against groups of targets when it’s effective at using against single targets. It’s okay if warriors still do more damage in fights where they can use Cleave and similar attacks often, but right now it’s too extreme.

It's too extreme because...drumroll...GEAR.

Cleave/Heroic strike have what component you brainless motherfuckers? What was that? WEAPON DAMAGE? We're armed with what?

And Whirlwind is there because Fury have FOUR MOTHERFUCKING ATTACKS.

1. Bloodthrist.
2. Heroic Strike/Cleave
3. Slam when procced
4. Whirlwind.

Ok, I noted Rage Normalization will suck, but Whirlwind still does considerable damage(even at 50%) and will exceed Heroic Strike aka Mini Execute. Why? Because Rage doesn't scale unless they are going to make HS into this:

Weapon Damage + modifer + Rage damage. Which will make it the most absurd damage dealing ability in the game. Instead it sounds like Execute, which gets drummed out...because Weapon Damage modification attacks when compared with how damage is dealt is always...always better then rage conversions. It's why Warriors only use Execute as Arms OR when everything is on cooldown for Fury.

Thanks again for understanding five fucking years of data Blizzard.

As for Furious Attacks? It destroys the need for a Protect warrior unless they buff said warrior's effective health through the sky or give passive equal to a paladin. And I have this bridge to sell you as well.

Though after three attacks it becomes an inferior attack, thus...who knows what their plan is.

Q: Are one-handed Fury warriors going to be competing with rogues for one-handed weapons?
A: This is unlikely. Rogues and shaman will want one-handers with Agility, while warriors and death knights will want them with Strength. I won’t be surprised when one of these classes picks up the other’s weapon as it could be an upgrade simply based on the damage, but it won’t be optimal.

Five years. Note that.

FIVE
MOTHERFUCKING
COCKLICKING
DONKEYWHORING
YEARS

And they still do not understand why. Data after data shoved into their goddamn piehole. You know what is funny? The Ashen Verdict band? The Agility is better for Arms/Fury. Can you guess why? You could take out the AP component, and it'd be better.

Idiots.

Add to that? Crit give double rage. Hrmmm...

Q: Why are warriors not getting some kind of AoE tanking tool?
A: We think the newly buffed Thunder Clap plus Shockwave are sufficient abilities for AoE tanking. The design of Vengeance should make sure that threat generation doesn’t start to slip behind as the dps characters gear up. It’s not our intention that tanks face a constant struggle to generate enough threat, even in group situations, but we also don’t want threat to be totally irrelevant either. The danger for tanking too many creatures should also be tank death not threat management.

Translation : Shove it you motherfucking bastichs and stand behind, way behind your Paladin betters.

Q: Is only Sunder Armor being changed?
A: Rogue Expose Armor and other abilities that apply a similar debuff are being changed accordingly. They will all provide the same debuff at 12% armor reduction.

Translation: We felt Armor Penetration disrupted too much and other plate wearer were complaining in PvP. Oh wait...you mean only the truly insane percentages it matter? Enjoy being a hasted god and your 10 second fear!

Q: What about rage loss when changing stances?
A: We still want the act of changing stances to require more consideration than just clicking two buttons to use the ability you want. One idea we are going to explore is that you don’t lose rage when you change stances, but you won’t gain additional rage for a short period of time after changing. This lets you say swap to do an Execute without losing your rage bar, but still keeps the idea that shifting constantly comes with inherent efficiency risks.

Translation: Warriors need a permanent nerf to their abilities that no other class has to have to accomadate our very antiqutated and unique system!

Q: Is the intent of Gushing Wound that warriors constantly ask for targets to be kited around?
A: No, it’s intended to be a bonus when you’re in an encounter where the target either moves around a lot (Ex. BONNNNE STORMMMM-ing Marrowgar) or just has to be moved around a lot (say Lich King). Warriors shouldn’t have the expectation of forcing every PvE opponent to move but it would be entertaining to watch this (from a third party perspective).

Translation: We're giving them a reallllllllllly small buff. Sure, they need to be on their target like white on rice, but we want the illusion of them doing damage.

[Civil War Man]

And they still do not understand why. Data after data shoved into their goddamn piehole. You know what is funny? The Ashen Verdict band? The Agility is better for Arms/Fury. Can you guess why? You could take out the AP component, and it'd be better.

Idiots.

Add to that? Crit give double rage. Hrmmm...

Of course, they are apparently baking in something with the Mastery stuff to basically punish people who take gear they aren't supposed to (ie Holy Paladins with mail, Warriors with agility stuff, etc) by giving bonuses to the people with the "proper" gear. At which point you might as well remove the unwanted armor/weapon proficiencies from the classes with those problems.