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Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for holy paladins
As you can see from the above image, I love intellect gems. The guild jewelcrafter and I don't even have to speak anymore. I hand him a stack of King's Amber, and he knows exactly what I want. "You sure you want ALL of these cut as Brilliant?" I laugh at his skepticism, he comes from the idea that gems are used to balance caps and maintain certain levels of ratings. Holy paladins have the easiest gemming strategy ever: Brilliant in every slot, every time. If you've been reading this column very long, you know that I blame the current paladin playstyle on intellect alone. Because of its massive benefits, we really reduced our healing toolbox from two spells to one and a half: Holy Light and whatever else you decide to use when you're bored and the raid is at 100%. But oh no, what's this i read on WoW.com? Cataclysm brings with it a major stat rebalancing and intellect is in the cross-hairs?
The Daily Quest: Responding to Catacylsm's stat changes
Here at WoW.com we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we ought to follow? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! With today's information overload about changes to game stats in Cataclysm, everyone seems to be talking about how these changes will hit home. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you may want to catch up on the latest news before seeing what the WoW blogging community is saying about it: Eyonix's original post has most of the information, though there have been a number of clarifications since. We're working on our own analysis of all these changes, but in the meanwhile the blogoshpere is already abuzz. Flow talks about what these changes mean for resto shamans. Righteous Defense looks at things from a tanking perspective. HolyPaladin.net talks about -- what else? -- what this means for holydin gear. Big Bear Butt gives a rundown for bear druids. Of course, I'm sure this is just the beginning. As we have more time to think these changes through -- and get to see them in action -- there will be theorycrafting galore.
Cataclysm: Stats and system changes for balance druids
Moonkin form may not be able to fly, but this balance druid is still up on cloud nine. It's another bright new shiny day in the World of Warcraft, and our feathery friend (you did know that Eyonix plays a balance druid, right?) made a post of epic proportions. How does it fair for us? Well, let's have a gander shall we? Spirit is being completely removed from caster DPS gear in the next expansion. Caster DPS will no longer have to rely on the atrocious spirit stat for their mana regeneration, instead non-healers will have other methods of regaining their mana within combat. The latter part of this change is already true for PvE balance druids. Instead of spirit, we rely entirely on our crits to keep our damage flow pumping. I would expect that this is the type of system that Blizzard is going to go with, although it will probably be heavily adjusted since total dependence on the mana return from crits wasn't obtainable until higher levels of gear. More after the break.
Mastery bonus in Cataclysm to encourage proper gear choices
I'm sure you've heard this one before. Cloth gear drops in an instance, and the leather or mail wearing caster rolls Need on the item because, "it's an upgrade". Back in the day, it wasn't uncommon to see paladins wearing dresses -- and not just in the privacy of their own dressing rooms, either. It was sometimes alright to get armor that wasn't intended for your class because the stats were superior to the item you already possess. Cataclysm intends to reduce the instances of those happening by introducing bonuses with the new Mastery feature: Ghostcrawler There is a small Mastery bonus for wearing "your" gear. So a Balance druid who takes cloth will be essentially giving up free stats. Sometimes that may be worth it to them (just as sometimes it's worth it for a Resto druid to take that piece of +hit gear), but often times it won't be worth it especially if it's an upgrade for you. source Along with the many gear and stat changes that are coming our way in the next expansion, we should look forward to better itemization and gear distribution. It's probably safe to assume we can finally say goodbye to other classes stealing what is rightfully "your" gear. Except for hunters, that is. Everyone knows everything is hunter loot.
Cataclysm: Stats and system changes for DPS warriors
So, what's happening with gear for warriors who like to actually get to kill things in Cataclysm? I'm glad you asked, gentle friend. I'm glad you asked. Well, okay, whether or not you asked I was going to talk about it anyway. If you've been using various leather or mail pieces with attack power, said AP is about to drop off of them. There will be no attack power on gear of any kind. Attack power will purely be converted from either strength or agility depending on class. This has been said before but it bears repeating. If gear currently has AP on it, that AP will convert to agi and stam. More changes after the break.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for mages
I have to say, there's an awful lot in the just-announced Cataclysm stat and system changes to take in. But if you're anything like me, you're able to cope with that dense heap of information by narrowing your focus to what's really important: what does all this mean for mages? Here's the short list of specific things we need to be aware of: Stamina - Like all clothies, we'll be seeing a bunch more of it on our gear. The aim is to have our max health be similar to that of plate-wearing classes. Spirit - We won't need it anymore. It'll be a healer-only stat, and we'll be getting our mana regen some other way. In other news, there is a God. Intellect - Now grants spellpower, but will provide less mana than it does now. I assume this is to balance out our mana pools with all that extra intellect we'll be seeing on all our gear. Spellpower - Gone from most gear, the only place we'll now be seing straight-up spellpower that isn't tied directly to intellect will be on weapons, and only to distinguish caster weapons from melee weapons. Haste - Still around. Critical Strike Rating - Still around. MP5 - Gone. Spell Ranks - Gone. Every spell will now have only one rank and will scale with level. The levels at which we learn many of them will change, to fill in the gaps. Mastery - New stat that will be tied directly to your talents. Supposedly, no matter your spec or class, getting more of this will always, always make you better at whatever it is that you're best at. For me, this means getting more mastery will make my mage incrementally better at making fun of warlocks. Existing gear - All of it will change to reflect this new statistical system, but we're being assured that the gear we have now will still be good for us. I have concerns about this, though. Brief (as brief as you're going to get with me, anyway) analysis after the break.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for spirit and MP5
One of the challenges for many novice level healing druids and priests is figuring out what provided more mana: X MP5 (which stands for mana per 5 seconds) or Y spirit. However, in Eyonix's post about Cataclysm stat changes, MP5 will be completely removed from the game. Healing paladins and shamans normally relied on slight amounts of MP5 on their gear. Instead, their gear will now pack spirit which will affect their mana gains. Say again? Yes, you heard right. MP5 is being removed. It will be gone. Fist pumps and high fives all around! In any case, when the next expansion comes around, everyone will need to relearn the entire mana regeneration mechanic. Thankfully, it should be much easier this time around. Spirit is the main stat which will contribute to mana regeneration since intellect provides spell \power. It is too early to provide any advice or guides since we can't actually see the changes in action just yet, but the basic idea is that healers will be stacking a combination of intellect and spirit to increase healing throughput as well as mana regeneration. Lastly, for the druids and shamans: Eyonix If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman: You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman. Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won't have Hit on it. You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit. Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you. Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn't find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs. source I wonder if this means Prayer of Spirit will be removed. All in all, I'm very excited about the regeneration changes. It'll make things much easier for players to understand (like me)! Anyway, the line of thinking here regarding the removal of raid spirit buffs is this: Since spirit will be providing elemental shamans and Balance druids with hit due to a talent conversion, any raid buffs which boost spirit will presumable bump their hit and put them over the hit cap which isn't a good thing since any surplus points will be considered wasted. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for prot warriors
Well, we knew the times would be a changing with Cataclysm, but how much they're going to change has been revealed, and it's quite a lot all told. For warrior tanks, what are the big issues? Block will be heavily redesigned. There will be no more block value of any kind and all blocks will remove 30% of a blocked attack's damage. Block rating will still improve your chance to block as it does now, but if you do block an attack, rather than the current system where you block (as an example) 2000 damage because you have a shield block value of 2000, you'll block 30% of whatever the damage would have been. This means a gimmick block set won't make you invulnerable to trash mobs, but also that block will be more useful against bosses who hit for 50k. (A boss who hits for 50k now would hit for 48k using our hypothetical block value. He'd hit for 35k with the new system, as 30% of 50k is 15k.) This also means that Shield Slam will need some other method of calculating its damage. More changes after the break.
Cataclysm Stat & System Changes Revealed
As promised in the Twitter developer chat, we now have a complete breakdown of how the stats and systems of the World of Warcraft will be changing with the release of Cataclysm. This information is absolutely essential to nearly everyone playing, and should be required reading for anyone raiding. There are too many points to summarize in a neat list. So instead, over the next few days you'll be hearing from our columnists on how these changes are going to impact individual classes and specs. But, that shouldn't stop you from spending 15 minutes and reading through the entire list; the game's basic stats are becoming very very different. A few of the more major points: Stamina -- Non-plate wearers will have a lot more. Spirit -- Only found on healing gear. Intellect -- Grants spell power. MP5 -- Gone completely. Spell power -- Only on weapons, and just to make them clearly a caster item. Attack power -- Gone on most items. Parry -- No longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attack. Resilience -- Only affects player damage and player crit damage, no impact on crit chance, mana drains, etc... Block Value -- Gone, 30% passive block value now when wearing a shield. Weapon Skill -- Gone completely. Gem Color -- Few stats changing. Hit will likely become a blue gem (it's yellow now). Defense -- Gone, becomes dodge, parry, or block rating. Reforging -- You'll be able to reforge gear to customize your stats -- 50% of stat X can become stat Y. Restrictions apply (no Stamina->Strength, for instance). Eyonix also says more information on mastery is coming in the future. The entire summary after the break.
Breakfast Topic: Who could be a new world boss in Cataclysm?
One thing that was missing from the Wrath expansion, conspicuously or not, was a world boss on par with those such as Kazzak and the Emerald Dragons. For better or for worse, Blizzard completely removed them from the game, reserving the massive figures towering over the landscape for instanced quests or dungeons. Blizzard touched a bit on why they've not used world bosses in Wrath in the recent Twitter developer chat. They observed that there are issues with the bosses that have prevented them from feeling comfortable making more world bosses, such as issues with groups racing to bosses, or the ability of people outside raid groups to deliberately mess up boss attempts. On the other side of the coin, though, they did imply that they like world bosses, and will probably implement more in Cataclysm if and when they can find a satisfactory work-around for the problems.
Submarines coming in Cataclysm
While we didn't get the full fledged Maelstrom expansion that some people were predicting, Cataclysm still promises to have some water-related content, such as the Abyssal Maw, the elemental plane of water. And where there's water, you need a boat. The recent Twitter developer chat revealed that we will, in fact, be using new transports to get to certain places in Cataclysm, and that these transport would be submarines, built by the gnomes and goblins for their respective factions.
New Caverns of Time instance coming in Cataclysm
The recent Twitter dev chat confirmed what is fast becoming a tradition: We will be getting a new Caverns of Time instance with the upcoming expansion. It's certainly not something I have much trouble with. The Caverns of Time are an excellent tool for looking back and understanding old pieces of the story that brought us to the current world as it is. Unfortunately, the devs were not willing to drop any hints as to the exact nature of the new instance, but we can, of course, make our own guesses. The original questioner suggests War of the Ancients as a possible destination. In a way, that might be an interesting battle. It would, if nothing else, give us some insight into the character of Malfurion Stormrage, who promises to be a key figure in the expansion. That said, Rhonin, Broxigar, and Krasus have already traveled back in time to deal with the War of the Ancients, and you'd have to think that if you keep shoveling more time travelers back there, something's bound to give.
Cataclysm: Stylish overcloaks!
The thing about our cloaks is that the ones that give us the most power for our characters aren't always the ones that look the best. Turns out that is about to change. Our friends over at MMO Champion have revealed a new Overcloak function. They're entirely cosmetic in appearance and allow you to slightly customize the look of your cloak. It appears there will be a toggle option of some sort for players who wish to display their cloak along with an overcloak. My guess is that these cloaks will be incentive rewards that come from reputation, limited seasonal drops or really rare drops (like mounts and companion pets). Ironforge represent!
The Queue: The Continuum
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Any chance I get I have to use a Star Trek reference. I really don't have any choice. If I don't then I'm nothing more than a Klingon p'tahk. Lindsaya asked... "What's with all the retcons? Why do they do this?" Retcons you say? For that you must step into the Q Continuum, mon capitan.
Tom Chilton retrospective interview on Wrath of the Lich King
There's an excellent interview with Tom Chilton, the World of Warcraft lead game designer, up on GameInformer. Lots of stuff we've heard before, but there are some interesting talking points. For example: They are looking into extending the dungeon finder to 10-man content. Chilton hinted that we may see a new boss in the Ruby Sanctum before Cataclysm launches They have a "general philosophical approach of getting the hybrids to where they're close to the DPS classes when it comes to DPS roles. Otherwise, those specs just turn into joke specs." They feel warlocks could use a boost to their DPS. Tol Barad, the Cataclysm equivalent to Wintergrasp, will be more of a Isle of Quel'Danas style daily quest hub instead of a farming zone. Before settling on death knights for Wrath of the Lich King's hero class, they specifically debated necromancers and rune-masters. They feel that with all the accessibility work they did on end game PvE in Wrath, end game PvP has become harder to get into by comparison. It's a three page interview, so click through to read the whole thing! What really struck me reading this was that comment about hybrid DPS compared to pure. This "hybrid tax" concept has been harped on by posters on the official forums for a long time now, and this is a fairly straightforward way of putting it.
The Queue: /sit bench left
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. > login adamh23 ************ WoW.com Offiices You gaze out upon an array of Pizza boxes and computer monitors, surrounded by rows of couches and recliners. Each monitor has inscribed on its top a slogan, "You are everything that is wrong with WoW.com." There are headsets and keyboards of various types, mice and trackballs abound. But no writers. Where did they go? Exists: bathroom, teh-gym, secret-door-to-blizzard, outside, editors-office > outside You attempt to go outside through the door, but quickly find that it's locked and won't budge. But wait... upon closer examination you realize that it's not really a door at all, but just a crudely painted picture of a door. Try another exit.
The Queue: In which solidarity is shown
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Fellow fatty Kevin Smith (we're part of a super exclusive club) was kicked off a Southwest Airlines plane this weekend. And while it has absolutely nothing to do with WoW, it certainly made me stop and cringe for a moment at the prospect of getting kicked off the plane as I'm on my way to BlizzCon. Of course I could take preventative measures to combat this inevitable passenger-eject-button-pushing, but I'm too busy eating my Pepperoni Pizza for breakfast, which is far better than Alex's Hawaiian Pizza. Nomnomnom. Ben asked... "Do you think the tension in Cataclysm will possibly lead to World of Warcraft: The Fourth War? It could be a very PVP centric expansion, with raid content involving major battles in war, lots of new battle grounds, y'know, the works."
Breakfast Topic: The Cataclysm site update pool
We here at WoW.com are constantly on the lookout for updates about all things World of Warcraft. We watch the Blizzard forums for hints at new information. We actually watch the game launcher in case it has something new listed there. And, sadly, we also watch the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm website in hopes it will actually update. It's not at the top of our priority list, but we do check by there from time to time. According to the site itself, its last update was September 14th, 2009. That means we're getting close to five months since the last update. We've occasionally gleamed tidbits of information from the forums and developer chats about upcoming plans for WoW's next expansion, but virtually nothing from the website itself. We've even been able to glean some knowledge off of fuzzy pictures of the developers showing off the Cataclysm map. It has gotten to the point that we're starting to make a pool about when new information might crop up on there. I've got February 24th of this year jotted down as my pick. However, Blizzard does have legitimate claims they could make as to the slow news cycle for Cataclysm. They released a packed content patch in 3.3.0 and had a lot of watching and tweaking afterward for 3.3.2. That should slow down their patch cycle for a while though with the only real content before players being hard modes in Icecrown Citadel. But, as far as patches go, we're pretty much just waiting for tweaks and Cataclysm lead-ups involving earthquakes, hints at the upcoming race/class combos, and additional lore to fill things out. Until then, we're waiting and watching a website that's four and a half months old with a very pretty trailer on it. I'd just be happy with some more concept art to give us a taste of things to come. When do you think Blizzard is going to start giving us more information on the Cataclysm site? World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Is the Alliance aiming to retake lost lands in Cataclysm?
Derthelz on the official forums asked a good question -- why is the Alliance prepared to kill Arthas but not to try to retake their lost city of Lordaeron? After all, the upper half of the Eastern Kingdoms is almost completely lost to the Alliance, despite the area being the former home of some of Azeroth's most powerful nations. Why doesn't the Alliance try to take them back? Crygil says that, actually, they just might: "Who said that the Alliance wouldn't attempt to reclaim these lands? That is a very dangerous assumption to make, especially if you're of the forsaken persuasion. The Lich King is a threat to all the inhabitants of Azeroth and, as such, he needs to be put down before territorial disputes can be resolved. Leaving those claims for the future only makes sense; far easier to fight one war at a time. For now, it's better to focus on the task at hand."
The Queue: Roflstomping bosses in patch 4.0.2
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. I'm urban dictionarying you all today. Rofl. Zalvi24 asked... "Do you think that Blizzard is gonna do the same thing they did with all raids at the end of The Burning Crusade and nerf the bosses HP, therefore making the Ulduar proto drakes not obtainable like the Zul Aman mount?"
