Compiled Cataclysm Changes and Updates

Compiled list of all of the recent Cataclysm changes and updates announced at the recent Blizzard press event.

edit: added info about spell haste, talents, and solo players

Cataclysm Guild Leveling System Changes

Compiled Cataclysm Class Changes

Cataclysm Raid and Dungeon Changes

Cataclysm Glyph Changes

Cataclysm New Zone Changes

Cataclysm PvP and Battleground Changes

Cataclysm Archeology Changes

General Cataclysm Changes

General Changes

• There are, as of the event, 3000 new quests planned for Cataclysm. That’s nearly 3 times as many quests added with Wrath of the Lich King.
• Leveling up will display a “toast” similar to earning an achievement. It will show:
  • The level you reached
  • If a new talent point is available
  • Any new abilities for that level
  • Feature unlocks: battlegrounds, dungeon finder, riding, glyphs, etc.
• Garrosh is the “acting” Warchief of the Horde.
• Garrosh’s stronghold is at the front of Orgrimmar, right as you enter through the front gate, to show “who is in charge.”
  • The Valley of Wisdom is now the Tauren district.
• A new auction house, inn and bank have been added to the Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar.
• Deathwing destroyed The Park in Stormwind. This was done to drive home the impact Deathwing has had on the world, and because he wasn’t happy about his daughter’s head hanging from the rafters.
• A new auction house, inn and bank have been added to the Dwarven District in Stormwind.
• New music will be added for all of the cities, and a large portion of the game world.
• The Forsaken have set up a foothold in Silverpine Forest and have rebuilt many areas with their unique architecture. They’ve done this to provide a base of operations for assaulting Gilneas, which is very strategically valuable to the Horde.
• Heirlooms will work for both Goblins and Worgen from the launch of the expansion. You earned them, so you get to use them — no matter what you’re leveling. They will only scale up to 80 though; new heirlooms that scale to 85 will be introduced with the new content.

Cataclysm Spell Haste, Talents, and Solo Players

Spell haste in Cataclysm
We’re not getting rid of spell haste and I agree it’s fun to get quick spells.

I was talking more about the PvP environment (and to a lesser extent PvE) where the balance has shifted too heavily towards very fast or instant spells that leave the other side with no chance to predict, react or attempt to counter what you’re going to do. It’s a problem with CC, I’d agree, but it’s also a problem with some of the really hard-hitting nukes where someone can die in a couple of GCDs before they can pop a defensive cooldown or even get healed.

We want combat to be less binary, where someone can get into a wounded state and then move either towards being fully healed or being dead depending on what they and everyone else involved in the battle do. We want there to be some back and forth — some chances to make mistakes and then recover from them. PvP can currently feel like a tennis match where the team who scores the first point wins.

There still need to be moments where if you line up all your cooldowns you can kill someone who is wounded, but those need to be not every spell you cast. Given talents and gear, fully three-second cast time spells aren’t really going to be that common for actual casters, but spell interactions are balanced around having a cast time so that the other side has a chance to respond. When every spell is at the GCD cap or hasted by a talent or proc then you sometimes die before you even know what happened.

31/41/51 Points Talents
We design the 31, 41 and 51-point talents to be attractive if not mandatory. There are very few builds that don’t go down to the bottom of a tree and we don’t think the ones that don’t are in some way more interesting builds.

Remember, the passive bonuses are just that — bonuses. If you find a build that avoids 51 points in one tree but picks up something really awesome instead, you will still be fully functional.

Solo players
You can still choose to level up Archaeology, which is going to have quite a bit of content. We are also updating all of the other professions to make them more interesting. In addition to goblins and worgen, we have redone the questing for most of the original zones, and all of the lower-level zones. If you like solo play, you will find literally thousands of new quests. We will also offer more achievements, many of which are designed with the solo player in mind.

There are also two buckets of solo players: one is the type of player who pretty much treats WoW as a single-player game and doesn’t interact much with other players. The other category is the player who may have lots of friends online but doesn’t feel like they have the time commitment for very organized and scheduled PvP or raiding. The new dungeons and BGs will also offer you lots of content if you are someone who plays alone but doesn’t mind working together with strangers for short periods of time. The big Cataclysm feature you will miss out on as a solo player is the guild revamp. Again, if you just like to play alone but don’t mind being part of a guild, you will still be able to help your guild contribute though.

Cataclysm Archeology Changes

Quick list of Cataclysm archeology changes and updates.

Edit: added more about paths of the titans

• No longer involved in Path of the Titans, since it was removed.
• Will now help to “dig into the lore of the game” — essentially being used as a vehicle for storytelling.
• There are two types of “artifacts” players will be able to uncover through Archaeology.
• The first will be more of a lore or story artifact.
• The second can reward items; cosmetic or fun in most cases, with the rare usable weapon.
• It will not provide any must-have items.

Archaeology
We have some end-game plans for Archaeology. I would compare it to Cooking, which isn’t mandatory, but useful enough that nobody is surprised at the appearance of a Fish Feast.

Archaeology rewards
Many of the archaeology items are stored in your journal, not your bags, so inventory space shouldn’t be a big problem. While many of the artifacts are only there for rewards, the rare finds run the gamut from unique toys to usable weapons to special pets.

Paths of the Titans Removed

Further clarification on the removal of Path of the Titans

Path of the Titans Removal
We still think it would be cool to add some kind of post-game progression to allow for player customization, but we would have to be very careful and do it right. Nobody wanted to see a feature that felt like it delivered on half its potential. Nobody wanted to be thinking about how we were going to “fix the flawed Paths system” in 5.0. If we can come up with a design we like, then we’ll try again in the future.

A big part of game design is triage — knowing when something is good enough, knowing when something can be good with just a little more work, and knowing when something is a lost cause… at least for now. There are very few WoW features that we kill outright. Most go into a design parking lot, and we get together every few months to review those features and consider what to work on next.

[...] Fortunately, one of the benefits of being Blizzard is we don’t have to ship a product until we think it’s ready. Our marketing department works with us on the game, but they understand that when the game is ready is ultimately up to the team. We didn’t cut it because we ran out of time. We cut it because we didn’t think the design we had was fun. At the high level we still like the idea, and if we can solve some of the problems we might bring it back in the future.

Cataclysm PvP and Battleground Changes

Quick list of recent announced Cataclysm PvP and battleground changes.

edit: added additional information on interrupts and classic pvp titles

Battlegrounds – General

• Launching with two battlegrounds: Twin Peaks and the Battle for Gilneas. More to come post-release.
• Twin Peaks will be a capture-the-flag map similar to Warsong Gulch with a few small differences.
  • Two graveyards for each faction, with one of them being in the middle of the map. Dying out in the field will cause you to spawn here rather than at your base.
  • It’s relatively similar in size to WSG, but the field itself is larger, with the bases taking up less space.
  • Twin Peaks will NOT be replacing Warsong Gulch like some players were expecting it to.
• Blizzard wants to focus on introducing new BGs to offer a variety of environments, rather than focusing on updating older ones.

Rated Battlegrounds

• Players will participate in rated battlegrounds by forming their raid group prior to joining the queue.
• You will only face off against other rated groups.
• Each week the format for rated battlegrounds will be different. It will rotate between 10, 15 and 25-player battlegrounds.
• Rating loss will not exist until after a certain threshold.
• Conquest points will be rewarded for winning rated battlegrounds.
• There will be a limitation on the number of Conquest points you can earn each week to prevent feeling like you must participate in both arenas and rated battlegrounds.
• There will be end-of-season rewards for rated BG teams similar to arenas:
  • The classic Honor titles will be coming back and rewarded to the top teams each season.
  • The “Gladiator” equivalent teams will also receive epic ground mounts. Ground mounts because they want to reward something you can ride in the battleground and be proud of / show off.

Cataclysm Interrupts and Classic PvP Titles

Interrupts in PvP
We don’t want interrupts to be binary either. They shouldn’t be able to lock a caster down. We currently have something of an arms race where the melee got more mobility and interrupts, so the casters got more escape methods and instant spells. We just need some bilateral disarmament, so that melee can sometimes interrupt spells.

Characters with existing PvP ranks titles
The plan at the moment is to grandfather in anyone with an existing BG PvP title and just let you keep it.

Cataclysm New Zone Changes

Below are a few brief changes and updates for the Cataclysm new zones. Make sure to check out the video at the bottom.

Uldum

• It’s keeping with the Egyptian theme; “WoW does Egypt,” according to Alex Afrasiabi.
• The tour was impressive; the zone looks great. Incredibly detailed textures on the terrain and buildings. Lots of pyramids and other Egyptian-themed sculptures.
• Uldum was locked away, protected by a Titan machine which created a projection of a large, impassible mountain, but the Cataclysm destroyed that machine — opening up access to Uldum.
• The Tol’Vir are still planned to be a new race introduced here. Not ready to be shown though.

Deepholm

• The Elemental Plane of Earth, where Deathwing was nursed back to health and “rebuilt”.
• It’s essentially the “core” of a sphere (though not Azeroth; it exists on its own plane).
• Deathwing ruptured out through a tower in the middle of Deepholm and entered Azeroth through the Maelstrom, according to Alex Afrasiabi. It looks like Blizzard changed their mind since BlizzCon.
• Therazane will be present here and is involved in a reputation similar to Sons of Hodir, “with the lessons learned from that,” says Alex Afrasiabi.
• Orgrim’s Hammer and The Skybreaker are both here. Orgrim’s Hammer has been shot down by The Skybreaker.
• You will encounter many stone and crystal creatures here.

Cataclysm Zone Change Video

Cataclysm Glyph and Inscription Changes

The following are the recent Cataclysm glyph changes and updates to the glyph system, including the removal of the Path of Titans. These changes were announced at the recent Blizzard press event.

edit: added more specifics about the new glyph system

• Path of the Titans has been scrapped and will not be implemented.
• Instead Blizzard will focus on improving the glyph system, as they feel it didn’t quite hit the intended goals in Wrath.
• Glyphs will now be available in 3 categories: Major, “Medium” (PH name) and Minor.
  • Major glyphs are core to each class and will be expected to be used to perform at maximum level.
  • Medium glyphs will be to provide “fun” alterations to abilities.
  • Minor glyphs will largely function as they do today.
• Based on the mockup shown, you’ll be able to have 3 glyphs of each type at level 85: Major, Medium and Minor.
• The glyph UI will now display all of the glyphs available to your class, even if you haven’t learned them yet, to the right of the section where you apply your glyphs.
• Blizzard wants to make glyphs permanent so you don’t have to carry a stack of them around. Simply learn the glyph and then you can swap it whenever you want.

Cataclysm Glyphs / Inscription

More on the updates for glyphs and inscription

Glyphs in Cataclysm
Minor glyphs are fine in our opinion. They weren’t intended to offer power and they are certainly much more flexible than major glyphs. Some classes need some better minor glyphs though (e.g. warlock).

Medium glyphs are the kind of glyph you’d take if you had more choices. For example, a Fury warrior these days in PvE probably takes Execution, Whirlwind and Heroic Strike. Why wouldn’t you? You hit all of those buttons a lot. The glyph of Cleave isn’t bad, but you just don’t find yourself in situations where you would use it as much as Heroic Strike, so it just never competes. If it wasn’t competing with Heroic Strike though, say it was in a different category, then it might be worth considering. Bloodthirst would be an excellent medium glyph, because it is useful but doesn’t contribute to dps. Medium glyphs are good for situational abilities, cooldowns, defense and utility.

Now having said that, we are also taking a hard look at the major glyphs. Glyph of Sprint (movement speed) is a pretty interesting one. It is probably a dps increase given that it helps your time on target, but it’s hard to put a number on that. It’s very easy to put a number on Glyph of Eviscerate (crit chance). It’s a math problem. That glyph is either going to be demonstrably better or worse than the other majors, leading to the cookie-cutter mentality. We already have plenty parts of the game where there really isn’t a wrong choice to be made — with enchants and meta-gems for example, there is typically a right or wrong answer given that we don’t make several per spec. We do make several glyphs per spec, so we think they can be cooler. Customization was our original design for glyphs, and frankly we just didn’t deliver on it. They feel like talents, and pretty simple talents at that.

The challenge for us is that ALL glyphs have to follow this model. If they don’t for some classes, as happened in LK, then eventually the whole thing unravels. We have a much better feel for what makes an interesting gylph now. I’m not going to promise we’re going to deliver on it this time around, because we weren’t able to the first time. But it is a goal and we’re going to spend a lot of time on it.

Non-Consumable/Learnable Glyphs in Cataclysm
Making glyphs more interesting to every player is more important than making consumable glyphs a reliable money-maker for Inscription, given that there are plenty of other ways to handle the latter.

Cataclysm Raid and Dungeon Changes

Blizzard recently held a press conference event in Irvine, CA and announced some pretty interesting stuff about Cataclysm raid and dungeon changes. You can check out all of the updated Cataclysm instance information below.

edit: additional information regarding movement, instance lockouts, and Grim Batol at the bottom

Raiding – General

• Players will be able to “downshift” their 25-player raid, splitting it up into 10-player versions.
  • Raids will be able to split into up to 3 10-player raids.
  • These raids will start at the same progress point the 25-player was at for the lockout.
  • There are no plans to allow 10-player raids to combine into a 25-player raid.
• There will be more freedom for moving from raid ID to raid ID. Players will be able to join other raids, even when saved to a raid ID, as long as that raid has killed at least the same bosses in the instance you have during their lockout.
  • While this sounds like the potential for cross-realm raiding, that isn’t possible yet. It isn’t ruled out for the future though.
• There will be more “Algalon” style encounters for both 10 and 25-player heroic modes which will offer loot a half-tier better than the rest of the instance.
• 25-player raids will provide around 50% more loot per-player. That includes items and the new currency used to purchase items.
• The goal of the philosophy shift for 10 and 25 providing the same loot  is to make it a playstyle choice where you choose the format that fits you, not the one you feel obligated to do.
• 10-player raids in Wrath of the Lich King were deliberately easier because that was the goal of it at the time. That is not the case for Cataclysm.

Grim Batol – Bastion of Twilight (Raid)

• Described as the “Naxxramas” of Cataclysm; it will be an entry-level raid for the expansion.
• 5 bosses in total.
• Cho’gall is the end-boss of the dungeon.
• One encounter will require “dual-strafing” — whatever that means.
• Another encounter will be a “council” fight called the Twilight Ascendants; Twilight’s Hammer members who have ascended and become elementals.
• Upon defeating Cho’gall on heroic mode, the floor beneath you will collapse and you’ll fall into a cavern of flowing lava that hides a “horrifying secret,” according to Alex Afrasiabi. Speculation time!

Skywall – Vortex Pinnacle (Dungeon)

• A dungeon where flying mounts work, but no flying combat (yay, not Oculus 2.0)
• The dungeon sports new cloud tech, and the visuals shown during the presentation were stunning. It’s a palace area floating in the sky; it’s the Elemental Plane of Air.
• Players will encounter djinn, or at least Warcraft’s take on the mythical creature.
• One of the bosses is said to be a “storm dragon”
• Another is an elemental lord

Cataclysm Raid and Dungeon Updates

Movement in Cataclysm
Movement is supposed to be a challenge in PvE. Handling the times when you have to move elegantly is one of the differences between a kill and a wipe. For Cataclysm we are making sure everyone has something they can do when mobile, whether it’s Moonfire for Balance or Fel Flame for warlocks. In the same way you need to master when to AE and when to single target, you need to master when to use the mobile spells and when to not use them.

25/10 Man Raids shared raid ID
We thought the LK design was asking raiders to raid more than they wanted to. When you see a boss twice a week, you just burn out on the fight that much faster.

If you really love raiding, as many of us do, bring an alt the second time around.

5 Bosses in the Bastion of Twilight (Grim Batol Raid)
As to the number of bosses, the 5 is just from Bastion of Twilight. There are two additional raid instances in the first tier of content and together they’ll offer enough bosses for us to fully itemize, around a dozen or so.

Compiled Cataclysm Class Talent Changes

Below you will find a complete list of all the Cataclysm class talent changes. In addition, there were a few minor additions posted in the last couple of days here regarding a couple of classes (which are at the bottom). Enjoy…more to come soon.

• Shaman
• Rogue
• Mage
• Druid
• Priest
• Warrior
• Paladin
• Hunter
• Death Knight
• Warlock

Additional Class Talent Updates / Changes

Druid

Restoration feedback
Couple of points…

I’m seeing a lot of Resto druids say something like “I won’t take talents that buff Nourish and Healing Touch because I won’t use those spells.” You will probably use those spells more in Cataclysm. That doesn’t mean you won’t also be using Rejuv, Regrowth and Lifebloom.

Critical heals aren’t useful now because they often just result in overhealing. In a game in which your heals aren’t always topping someone off, then a critical heal represents a lot of “free” healing which saves you both GCDs and mana. It’s in players’ nature to want to minimize the impact of random elements, but you should be careful not to marginalize anything that gives you extra healing just because it isn’t 100% predictable.

Perseverance
We think talents like this are good, even in PvE. First, they aren’t strictly mandatory. If you think you can get by with taking a little more damage, go for it. Second, you don’t have to spend all 5 points for them to be useful. They are good sinks if you need to spend just an extra point or two somewhere. Third, taking less damage probably will be a bigger deal in Cataclysm. If healer mana becomes a factor in some wipes, as we expect, then it wouldn’t surprise as all to see raid leaders start linking damage *taken* meters as ways to get everyone to contribute to keeping the group alive. The attitude that nobody takes damage besides the tank or that damage to anyone besides the tank is trivial is outdated even for current content, let alone Cataclysm.

Hunter

Counterattack
Counterattack is probably going away. We haven’t released new hunter trees yet.

Priest

Is the Shadow tree unfinished?
Shadow priests should not be able to pick up every point in Shadow without giving up anything else attractive. That’s not how we want talent trees to work. It just looks like that for the time being so that we can get the priest playable.

Optional talents are not bloat; they’re a choice
Right. If there are a lot of choices and you can’t possibly get everything, then it’s a good talent tree. We’d define bloat as say a tree in which the mid-tiers offer nothing interesting or effective such that you just have to pick up some almost at random to get down to talents you actually want. Really though “bloat” just gets so overused on the boards that you’d be a lot more effective in giving feedback describing specific talent choices that you feel aren’t fair rather than the somewhat generic “make this 5 pointer 3 points so I can get more stuff” posts that I’m reading a lot of tonight.

As far as Shadow, I would anticipate a few more talent points in Shadow itself or else some more attractive talents in mid-Disc (it wouldn’t take much to make Archangel work for instance), or both.

Lightwell
We generally keep talents because we think the core idea is strong even if the current numbers or the current combat environment don’t allow the talent to shine. Original ideas by their very nature are going to be harder to get right than clones of other abilities. But we need more original ideas and fewer clones. Turning Lightwell into Healing Stream Totem would almost certainly work. But would it be interesting? Do Holy priests even need another smart heal?

The problem with both Lightwell and Riposte in LK has to do with the pace of combat. A small self-heal isn’t useful in an environment where the healers either keep you up easily or you die to spike damage regardless of the decisions you make. An attack speed debuff isn’t super useful in a PvP environment where players die so quickly. But with the larger health pools in Cataclysm, both of those talents become more useful. Saving priest mana and GCDs by using Lightwell could help turn a failure into a victory. Slowing down incoming damage can help a rogue go toe-to-toe with another melee class.

If the trees are unfinished, what should I give feedback on?
Empowered Shadow Orbs and Shadowy Apparition are brand new talents and Mind Melt has some different effects. Start with those.

Rogue

Shiv being changed to remove Enrage effects
Shiv is changing a little bit to be more of an enrage dispel.

Shaman

Wait, no 2H Enhancement? Why can Frost DKs go 2H then?
Letting the Frost DK go 2H as an option is pretty easy. All of the mechanics already work. It just needs a talent to offset a couple of DW talents. For shaman, it’s a lot harder. There is no equivalent for Lava Lash or Stormstrike. DK combat isn’t heavily tied into weapon swing speeds, but shaman most definitely are. Sure we could solve all of those problems, but that takes a lot of development time, and if you consider all of the challenges we’ve faced over the years related to shaman weapon speed and enchant choices, it could be a considerable amount of development time. We’d spend that time if we thought it was really important, but we think the class functions just fine with two weapons and we’d rather spend our effort on other shaman issues.

Warrior

Who was it that determined we weren’t fond on next-swing attacks?
We weren’t fond of the mechanic. It wasn’t up to a vote. But we also know a lot of warriors didn’t like it either. It takes the most visceral moments of combat — hitting a button and seeing damage — and turns it into an autoattack, probably the least exciting moment of combat.

AoE in Cataclysm: Whirlwind and Bladestorm
You’ll do fine on AoE, which will be more rare in Catalcysm regardless. The change to Whirlwind will not affect Bladestorm.

Mortal Strike was once an iconic ability, now it’s handed out to nearly everyone
The problem of course is that if only you get the debuff or if only you get the best debuff then warriors are mandatory for anything PvP which might be fine for you but doesn’t really feel fair to everyone else. Sometimes I wish we’d just remove the debuff because it’s almost impossible to balance around both having and not having it. We can make sure Mortal Strike hits hard but we’re unlikely to do anything that improves the debuff.

Core problem: Swapping to a shield – will weapon swapping be made easier?
Keep in mind that swapping to a shield is supposed to be a decision. If we wanted it to be effortless we would not make those abilities require a shield. We don’t want solving the puzzle to be coming up with a clever macro.

Scaling with gear
Scaling awesomely with gear as compensation for doing bad damage when undergeared is not good game design. Warrior damage with great gear is much too high right now, as it is at the end of every expansion. This isn’t surprising to anyone really. The current rage model just doesn’t work and we need something more consistent. Consistency is the way to make sure you stay competitive from beginning to end (rather than averaging out at competitive because you’re too low at the beginning and too high at the end).

Cataclysm Guild Leveling System

Blizzard recently held a press conference near their headquarters in Irvine, CA to discuss some of the major changes in store for Cataclysm. The new guild system was among these, you can check out all the juicy details below.

edit: added additional clarification about the guild leveling system at the bottom

Guild Leveling

• There are 25 levels in total.
• Guild talents are not going to be implemented.
• Instead, guilds will be automatically rewarded with perks.
• Each time a guild levels up they will receive a perk.
• Guilds gain experience through a member participating in dungeon or raid boss kills, winning rated battlegrounds, completing quests or unlocking guild achievements.

Guild Rewards

• Guild currency has been scrapped.
• Guild rewards will be unlocked by completing guild achievements.
• Rewards will be purchased with gold, and anyone in the guild can purchase the reward once it’s unlocked.
• Examples: mounts, tabards, heirlooms.
• Guild mounts will have a flag attached to them that displays the guild’s emblem.

Guild Reputation

• This is a newly announced feature; players will gain reputation with their guild similar to how other reputations work in the game.
• As you contribute to the guild by completing quests, killing bosses, winning rated BGs or completing guild achievements, you will gain reputation.
• The best guild rewards will require having exalted reputation with your guild.
• Guild reputation is on a per-character basis, so you’ll have to gain rep for each character you have in the guild before you can buy rewards with it.
• Reputation is not wiped immediately upon leaving or being removed from the guild; this is to prevent losing all your progress in the guild due to someone jokingly kicking you.

Guild Achievements

• These will be integral to the reward and level systems. Completing one can unlock rewards as well as give the guild experience.
• Guild achievements are earned and owned by the guild, so once it has it, it never goes away — even if all members who participated leave the guild.
• Even classic raids will help level your guild. A new version of the classic raid meta will become available that guilds can complete.
• When viewing a guild achievement it will display the members who participated in earning that achievement.
• To earn a guild achievement you must have 7 of 10 or 20 of 25 players in the raid be members of your guild.
• There will be realm first achievements for guilds, as well as individual players.
• Current raid achievements will NOT be retroactive. New guild versions of the achievements will be introduced. This is to start Cataclysm with a “clean slate,” according to Cory Stockton.

Guild Window

• The guild UI has received an overhaul and contains:
  • The guild xp bar and its current level.
  • An RSS-like feed of the latest news for the guild; boss kills, level milestones, etc.
  • Some news like major raid boss kills or level 85 will be “sticky” (this is determined by Blizzard) and will persist at the top of the feed for a while.
  • An upcoming events section that is a snapshot of your guild’s calendar.
  • The most recent perk the guild has earned, and the one for reaching the next level.
  • The guild reputation bar (this is specific to your character).
• The guild roster page has also been overhauled and now contains a professions display for each member.
• You will be able to click on profession icons and view the recipes a guild member has, even while they’re offline.

Guild Talents Removed

Further clarification on the removal of guild talents.

Guild Talents removal
Guilds aren’t a new feature for WoW, and we are really sensitive about imposing any kind of structure on them that might make you feel like you aren’t supposed to stay with your current guildies any longer. To that end, there were flaws with guild talents that we didn’t like.

Guilds are, for the most part, groups of friends. We don’t want features to drive wedges between them. We don’t want you to guild hop looking for the talents that suit you best; we want you to play (or in many cases keep playing) with your friends. With a talent tree, guilds would naturally have different talent trees, which creates a reason to bail or guild hop that doesn’t exist today. If you didn’t like the direction the guild was taking (for example, you were a PvP guy with a GM focused on raid-progression) you might feel like you should leave. That can happen today of course, but you can also stay in a PvE guild just because you like the members even if you don’t participate in the same content because you’re not losing out on inherent guild benefits.

Furthermore, we felt like the decision-making, for many guilds, would be up to a relatively few people, possibly as few as the guild master. Talent trees work for classes because the decision is up to you. We didn’t want to create the risk of drama over choosing those talents or even not being consulted in choosing them.

Another advantage of the perks system is that it’s easily expandable. If we want to add new levels and / or perks in later patches or expansions, we can, without having to rejuggle a talent tree.

Warrior Cataclysm Class Talent Changes

Don’t forget to check out the other class changes as well.

• Shaman
• Rogue
• Mage
• Druid
• Priest
• Warrior
• Paladin
• Hunter
• Death Knight
• Warlock

Cataclysm Warrior Talent Preview

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 – 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.

Fury
Melee Damage
Melee Haste
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.

Protection
Damage Reduction
Vengeance
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.

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.

Cataclysm Stat & System Changes: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425636414&sid=1%3Cbr%20/%3E

Mastery System Preview: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23710210871&sid=1

Developer Warrior Mini Q & A

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.

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).

Further Warrior Talent Clarification

Mortal Strike Nerf
“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.

DoT Crits
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.

Rage generation from 1h vs 2h weapons
Are you talking about Arms vs. Fury? That’s not that hard. Arms can have a talent to let them generate more rage with a two-hander or require less rage for their attacks.

Are you talking about 2H Fury vs. 1H Fury? The Single-Minded Fury talent could literally say “Your one-handed weapons do damage as if they were two-handed weapons.” The talent gives us a dial and we can tune it up or down for whatever we need.

It’s much easier to make dual-wielding one-handers and dual-wielding two-handers do equitable damage than it is to make dual-wielding one-handers and using a single two-hander do equitable damage, if that makes sense.

Getting rid of “increases damage” talents
The kinds of talents we want to eliminate are the ones that say “You do 5% more damage.” Unending Fury is pretty close to that because it buffs the attacks Fury warriors use the most. On the other hand, Flurry is a pretty unambiguous dps increase, but it does it in a way that’s a little more interesting. A talent tree that didn’t buff damage of a dps spec at all would feel lame. We just want to free up enough talent points that you can get more of the fun utility ones.

Source

Cataclysm Warlock Class Talent Changes

Don’t forget to check out the other class changes as well.

• Shaman
• Rogue
• Mage
• Druid
• Priest
• Warrior
• Paladin
• Hunter
• Death Knight
• Warlock

Cataclysm Warlock Talents Preview

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

New Warlock Spells

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that’s good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target’s chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

Demon Soul (level 85): Fuses the warlock’s soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown.

Soul Shard Overhaul

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

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

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

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

• All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT’s duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer “clip” the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.
• Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.
• Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the warlock.
• Imps will lose Fire Shield, but will gain a new ability, Burning Ember, which is a stacking DoT.
• The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have Soothing Kiss, but will instead have Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards.
• Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

New Talents and Talent Changes

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

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Affliction
Spell Damage
Spell Crit
Shadow DoTs

Demonology
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Demon Damage

Destruction
Spell Damage
Spell Critical Damage
Fire Direct Damage

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

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

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

Well that concludes this Cataclysm preview for the warlock class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.

Additional Priest Clarifications

Here are a few points of clarification on some of the popular questions or concerns we’re seeing.

• On regenerating shards in combat, we will add a mechanic to regen shards if we find that we need to in order to handle variable combat length. We haven’t added one yet because we really want to emphasize locks using shards at the right time and not as fast as they can with then an Evocation-like spell to bring them back again. These are supposed to be special moments in a fight — think Bloodlust perhaps — and not used every 20 seconds on cooldown (or whatever the cooldown ends up being).
• 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.

Here are a few more answers for you to digest.

• We do like the idea of allowing warlocks to re-skin their demons and have been talking about possible ways to implement this. I 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.

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