Catalcysm changes! *epic music etc*

[thatbloke]

Unfortunately, bloke lost his tool to get Frost Mages to 90% hp while using his amazing jump-around spamming Shadowburn technique.

Damn, I like that too.

looks like now I'll be spamming Hellfire for AoE too

 

[Angelic]

PW:B is awesome, so is giant shield.
Radiance is nice as well.
Life Grip is kinda meh.
Three in a row I rather dislike, I like me being a versatile healer healing both tanks AND raid.
Shadow orbs are teh kewl.
Removal of Divine spirit is shit, coupled with no FSR I loved to juggle (oh where art thou, TBC days) and nerfed replenishment = even more punishment to healers. Boo for Blizzard.

 

[Nactall]

Warlock changes look realy awesome, I cant wait to test that new soulshard system.

This also gives the shadowburn spell some use at least in pve

 

[Nactall]

nerfed replenishment = even more punishment to healers. Boo for Blizzard.

Pff this only means that you now at least have to look at the mana you have atm. Plus the fights will be changed for this.

The priest changes sound quite fun tbh, the changes in disipline and holy are realy nice, they are going to be even more different from eachother and this is a good thing

 

[Burrick]

Yay for shammy goodness looks like it was a good idea to duel spec healer after all , just gotta re gem now :-(

 

[SwampFae]

[Response]: Catalcysm changes! *epic music etc*

A quick peek at the Priest changes thus far.

Posted today by: Wryxian

New Priest Spells
Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the "new" Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest's go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes.

Mind Spike (level 81): Deals Shadowfrost damage and puts a debuff on the target that improves subsequent Mind Spike damage. The intent of Mind Spike is to fill a niche missing in Shadow DPS, though it may be occasionally useful for healers as well. Mind Spike provides a quick nuke to use in situations where the priest doesn't have time to set up the normal rotation, such as when adds are dying too fast or you have to swap targets a lot. Spamming Mind Spike will do about as much damage as casting Mind Flay on a target afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain. The idea behind the debuff is that when you cast Mind Spike, we expect you to cast a lot of them; we don't intend you to fit it into an already full Shadow rotation. It also provides Shadow with a spell to cast when locked out of the Shadow school. (School lockouts will no longer affect both schools for multi-school spells.) 1.5-second cast. 30-yard range. No cooldown.

Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can't have both up at once. Inner Fire provides a spell power and Armor buff; Inner Will should be useful on a more situational basis.

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.

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.


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.


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.

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.


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

Holy
Healing
Meditation
Radiance

Shadow
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Shadow Orbs

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

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

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.

Posted today by: Slorkuz
A few quick clarifications:

Neither Inner Fire nor Inner Will has charges. The decision is on which armor you want up at the time.

Preventing dot clipping is something we want to do in general. It obviously benefits Shadow priests just as much as warlocks.

The idea behind Mind Spike is that you can't always settle into your normal, and high-ramp up rotation. It's also useful when you have to move or get school locked.

The closest analogue to PW:B is the DK Anti-Magic Zone, but it has some important differences, such as a way to counter it in PvP (since it absorbs all damage, not just magical 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.

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."

Not sure what the rest of you think. But I think this is getting more and more interesting.

Source

Added note:

Posted today by: Zarhym
A few points of clarification:


We've seen some confusion about Mind Spike. The intention is that you can’t always get your full DoTs up on a target in time before it’s dead. Shadow priests sometimes aren’t sure what to do on, for example, a fight where a boss suddenly spawns an add that you’re supposed to quickly burn down and then go back to the main boss. Mind Spike is what you do to that add. As a rule of thumb, if it’s going to die in under 15 seconds, then go with Mind Spike. Otherwise get your DoTs up and go into your longer rotation.


The movement speed from Inner Will stacks with the boot speed bonus. It won’t stack with some movement buffs like say Body and Soul.


We know a lot of people are looking for answers about Lightwell. We're reviewing the talent and spell functionality, but do not have any details to share as of yet regarding its future.

I would say that pretty much answers the question regarding things like Mind Spike.

 

[Windzarko]

Chakra, Shadow Orbs and Power Word : Barrier... win.

 

[Angelic]

Chakra would be brilliant if it wasnt reset by casting other spells. I cant see this working well: imagine you are on tank duty - you might cast couple heals, flashes and greaters, but you need to throw renew on as well - and allegedly that would reset your chakra. Similarly I cant see people spamming three or more PoHs in a row unless there is something seriously wrong. Even more so with Healing Rain and PW:B.

All in all, Chakra is a great idea, but it will need a lot of tweaking before I learn to like it.

 

[Elincia]

Hmm, after reading the changes I don't know what to say.... Can't really tell if I am happy or not :O
I think I will need to play the 'new cata' priest before making a judgement

I can tell, that I was impressed by lock and Shaman changes and I do not feel so with the priest changes, but maybe that is just me


EDIT: Though I can wait to Leap of faith a tank away from the boss

 

[Angelic]

Yeah, thats about the only use Just kidding, it will have its uses indeed (kiters fail or whatever), but will require priests to pay much more attention to general raid positioning than until now. Same with the Shammy healing rain...

Well, its gonna be interesting. I might end up not liking it, I may not, who knows. Chakra has a lot of potential to be interesting to play around with. Wait and see...

 

[Windzarko]

Chakra would be brilliant if it wasnt reset by casting other spells. I cant see this working well: imagine you are on tank duty - you might cast couple heals, flashes and greaters, but you need to throw renew on as well - and allegedly that would reset your chakra. Similarly I cant see people spamming three or more PoHs in a row unless there is something seriously wrong. Even more so with Healing Rain and PW:B.

All in all, Chakra is a great idea, but it will need a lot of tweaking before I learn to like it.

..are you judging an entire mechanic based of a basic explanation if a preview before you've seen exactly how it works and before it's gone into public testing?

Furthermore, judging it based on how things currently work, and not on how all the changes will come together as one to make the entire playstyle a fair bit different from how it is now?

There's going to be a lot of this going around as changes are announced, so I'll say it now: keep an open mind until we've seen all the mechanics in play. You just can't judge based off a limited preview that isn't throwing theory and all the numbers and all the changes at you in one go.

 

[Angelic]

doublepost fail

 

[Angelic]

James, dude, I know that I´ve said so myself in the last post and even before, actually. It´s a nice idea, I just need more info on it to say whether I like it or not...

Same with the new Soul Shards - having them unreplenishable within one combat session sounds weird right now, I have no idea how will it feel when tweaked and implemented.

 

[thatbloke]

James, dude, I know that I´ve said so myself in the last post and even before, actually. It´s a nice idea, I just need more info on it to say whether I like it or not...

Same with the new Soul Shards - having them unreplenishable within one combat session sounds weird right now, I have no idea how will it feel when tweaked and implemented.

In the context of how things work now and how you consume them with current fight mechanics the warlock soul shard changes do sound "weird" - however with the new content designed around how these new mechanics will work I'm sure it will all be fine and will work rather swimmingly - and I'm sure it will be the same with the other classes too

With regard to healing, remember that they are making health pools alot larger, with mana amounts staying similarish to what they are now, meaning that you will be much more likely to want to be casting successive heals on a single target such as a tank, so having a boost that will apply after successively healing the same target sounds useful

 

[Angelic]

Indeed. What I was a little worried regarding Chakra is that it directs people away from using all spells at their disposal towards repeated use of one (or two) spells. If they work around that, though, by for instance having both CoH, PoH and PoM stack AoE Chakra, it will be brilliant.

Soul Shards I like the new design of - empowering spells, but having juust a limit of three for even long boss fights feels a bit limiting - I personally would be afraid of using one in fear I might need it more later. But, we shall see

 

[thatbloke]

I suspect that soulshards may be used as more of a tool during the "execute" phase of a fight for that very reason

 

[SwampFae]

[Response]: Catalcysm changes! *epic music etc*

And so we have now recieved news regarding preview of how the Warrior might look:

Posted today by: Qoennon

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.

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.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.

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.

• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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.

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%.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase the Rage generated by shouts.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.
  
  
• The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear for 5/10 seconds.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Improved Pummel, a Fury talent, will cause a successful interrupt to generate 10/20 Rage.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arms

• Melee Damage
• Armor Penetration
• Bonus Swing

Fury

• Melee Damage
• Melee Haste
• Enrage Intensity

Protection

• Damage Reduction
• Vengeance
• Critical Block Chance

• 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.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.

Posted today by: Vaneras
Quite a few questions and concerns have been forwarded to the developers regarding this preview. Below you can find the answers and feedback we have received so far:

Some clarifications regarding what "All equivalent debuffs" entail:

"All equivalent debuffs" means if you have the debuff today, you will have it in Cataclysm, but at 20% healing received. To avoid further confusion, we are talking about Mortal Strike, Furious Strikes, Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Permafrost and Improved Mind Blast.

We are also strongly considering having all of these effect cause the same debuff, called Mortal Wounds, which is a physical effect and therefore undispellable. This allows the behavior to be more consistent regardless of who is applying it and lets us consider things like how easy it should be to dispel poisons (since Mortal Wounds would not be affected).

Heals will be smaller and health pools will be larger in Cataclysm, so we don't expect Mortal Wounds to feel as mandatory as it does today, but this is clearly the kind of thing that will require a lot of playtesting and feedback.

Regarding Damage over Time abilities:

Almost all dots will crit. The exception will be things like Deep Wounds and Ignite because those are already the product of a crit. Rend will crit.

We are really striving for scaling parity for the various specs and classes. This means that stats like haste and crit can't be awesome for some characters and terrible for others. Most abilities need to benefit from haste and crit.

Some more answers to various questions:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Source

 

[SwampFae]

[Response]: Catalcysm changes! *epic music etc*

Hot off of the press, we bring you the Rogue preview.

Posted today by: Wryxian

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we'll be making several changes to class talents and abilities across the board. Here, you'll get a glimpse at what's in store for the rogue class, including a look the new high-level abilities and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the rogue's different talent specs.

New Rogue Abilities

Redirect (available at level 81):Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue's current target, helping to ensure combo points aren't wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. In addition, self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target, so rogues can spend extra combo points on those types of abilities (more on this below). Redirect will have a 1-minute cooldown and no other costs.

Combat Readiness (level 83): Combat Readiness is a new ability that we intend rogues to trigger defensively. While this ability is active, whenever the rogue is struck by a melee or ranged attack, he or she will gain a stacking buff called Combat Insight that results in a 10% reduction in damage taken. Combat Insight will stack up to 5 times and the timer will be refreshed whenever a new stack is applied. Our goal is to make rogues better equipped to go toe-to-toe with other melee classes when Evasion or stuns are not in play. This ability lasts 6 seconds and has a 2-minute cooldown.

Smoke Bomb (level 85): The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. In PvP, this will open up new dimensions of tactical positional gameplay, as the ability offers a variety of offensive and defensive uses. In PvE, Smoke Cloud can serve to shield your group from hostile ranged attacks, while also drawing enemies closer without the need to rely on conventional line-of-sight obstructions. Smoke Cloud lasts 10 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

We're also planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're already 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 want for each spec.

• In PvP, we want to reduce the rogue's dependency on binary cooldowns and "stun-locks," and give them more passive survivability in return. One major change is that we'll put Cheap Shot on the same diminishing return as other stuns. The increase to Armor and Stamina on cloth, leather, and mail gear will help with this goal as well.
  
  
• In PvE, even accounting for active modifiers like Slice and Dice and Envenom, a very large portion of the rogue's damage is attributable to passive sources of damage. Yes, they are using abilities for the entire duration of a fight, but we want to reduce the percentage of rogue damage that comes from auto-attacks and poisons. More of their damage will be coming from active abilities and special attacks.
  
  
• We would like to improve the rogue leveling experience. Positional attacks and DoT-ramping mechanics will be de-emphasized at low levels and then re-introduced at higher levels for group gameplay. We are also providing rogues with a new low-level ability, Recuperate, to convert combo points into a small heal-over-time (HoT).
  
  
• To complement the change to combo points, non-damage abilities such as Recuperate and Slice and Dice will no longer have target requirements and can be used with any of the rogue's existing combo points, including combo points remaining on recently killed targets. This will not affect damage abilities, which will still require combo points to be present on the specific target you want to damage. To coincide with this, the UI will be updated so that rogues know how many combo points they have active.
  
  
• Ambush will now work with all weapons, but will have a reduced coefficient when not using a dagger. When opening from Stealth, all rogues will be able to choose from burst damage, DoT abilities, or a stun.
  
  
• As we've done recently with some of the Subtlety abilities, we want to make sure more rogue abilities aren't overly penalized by weapon choice. With a few exceptions (like Backstab), you should be able to use a dagger, axe, mace, sword, or fist weapon without being penalized for most attacks.
  
  
• Deadly Throw and Fan of Knives will now use the weapon in the ranged slot. In addition, we hope to allow rogues to apply poisons to their throwing weapons.
  
  
• We are very happy with Tricks of the Trade as a general mechanic and as a way to give rogues more group utility, but we don't want it to account for as much threat transfer as it does now.

New Talents and Talent Changes

In Cataclysm, the overall feel of each of the rogue's talent trees will change, as we would like each tree to have a clearly defined niche and purpose. The talent details below are meant to give you an idea of what we're going for.


Assassination will be more about daggers, poisons, and burst damage.


Combat will be all about swords, maces, fist weapons, axes, and being engaged toe-to-toe with your enemies. A Combat rogue will be able to survive longer without needing to rely on Stealth and evasion mechanics.


The Subtlety tree will primarily be based around utilizing Stealth, openers, finishers, and survivability. It'll be about daggers, too, but less so than Assassination.


In general, Subtlety rogues needs to do more damage than they do today, and the other trees need to have more tools.


Weapon-specialization talents (for all classes, not just rogues) are going away. We do not want you to have to respec when you get a different weapon. Interesting talents, such as Hack and Slash, will work with all weapons. Boring talents, such as Mace Specialization and Close Quarters Combat, will be going away.


The Assassination and Combat talent trees currently have a lot of passive bonuses. We plan to dial back the amount of Critical Strike Rating provided by these trees so that rogues still want it on their gear.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses


Assassination

• Melee damage
• Melee critical damage
• Poison damage

Combat

• Melee damage
• Melee Haste
• Harder-hitting combo-point generators

Subtlety

• Melee damage
• Armor Penetration
• Harder-hitting finishers

The initial tier of rogue Mastery bonuses will be very similar between the trees. However, the deeper that a player goes into any tree, the more specialized and beneficial the Masteries will be to the play style for that spec. Assassination will have better poisons than the other two specs. Combat will have very steady and consistent overall damage. Subtlety will have strong finishers.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your initial 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.

Source

 

[SwampFae]

[Response]: Catalcysm changes! Regarding Warlocks

This was posted just yesterday as an added note:

Posted yesterday by: Vaneras
Various questions, concerns and suggestions have been forwarded to the developers. Here is the feedback we have received so far:


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).


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.


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.

Some details on the Succubus in particular:

Whiplash works similar to Freeze on the mage’s Water Elemental. It requires a targeting reticule. It isn’t just a melee ability that the succubus uses at-will.

As a clarification, we are removing Soothing Kiss, not Seduction. Soothing Kiss increased the chance the target would attack something else. Seduction is the crowd control more commonly associated with the Succubus, and it’s not going anywhere.

Here is some feedback based on some of the ideas that were presented to the developers.


We did mean to cover doomguards and infernals, but they didn't make it into our preview. Our plan is that you can summon a doomguard or infernal as a cooldown-based pet, much like the shaman elementals, without having to give up your current, permanent demon. If we add a new demon it will likely be one of these cooldown-based ones, and not a permanent pet like the imp, voidwalker, succubus, felguard or felhunter. We’re just not convinced there is a niche for a new permanent demon (and perhaps not even a temporary one).


Flying mounts and female Metamorphosis forms are great ideas and something we’ve had on the wish list for a long time. We can only create so many new creatures during a single expansion, and getting one of these might mean fewer new creatures in outdoor worlds or dungeons. It’s just a trade-off and sometimes you have to make hard calls. We’ll keep them on the list though.

Some more answers to various questions:


We do like the idea of allowing warlocks to re-skin their demons and have been talking about possible ways to implement this. We have no concrete information for you at this time beyond that.


When it comes to naming demons, this has always been one of those sacred cows, where the hunter gets to name their pet because he loves his pet bear, but the warlock considers the demon to be something disposable -- a tool.


The Demon Bolt debuff will only affect the warlock's demon, not other demons. We wanted a Demo-themed nuke that made it feel like the pet was part of the damage.


For Soul Shard bags, we will probably do something like remove all the shards, reduce the bag size (a little) and convert it to a normal bag. This would be a one-time conversion. We'll probably get rid of the recipes, as we wouldn't want other classes to go out and get shard bags just to get a free bag.

Source

 

[Zaggu]

I just hope that we get some clarification regarding PVE aspects, as there are no points whatsoever leading us to understand (even if superficially) how they plan to divert the focus from white damage to ability-based one.

As for PVP, they don't want Rogues to rely on CD's to survive toe-to-toe, so they added a new CD. This is a bit Pimp My Ride'ish at first glance... "Yo, I put a CD in yo CD so you can CD while you CD". It still doesn't address the everlasting kiting problem, as we are not warriors to intercept targets, and lolstep hasn't been viable in ages (and this part applies to target swapping PVE fights as well).

Time will tell what they have in mind, but I'm feeling the class is straying a tad to far into mini-Fury Warrior territory.