Cataclysm Class Changes: A Comprehensive Look

We go in and tell you what the blues have said about the new classes all in one easy to browse location..

New Druid Abilities

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

DruidIn addition to the new abilities listed above, we intend to make changes to some of the 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 our goals for each spec.

  • All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form.
  • Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.
  • We want to add tools to cat form and depth to bear form. If a Feral cat is going to fill a very similar niche to that of a rogue, warrior or Enhancement shaman, it needs a few more tools -- primarily a reliable interrupt. Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep.
  • Barkskin will be innately undispellable.
  • We will be buffing the damage of Mangle (cat) significantly so that when cat druids cannot Shred, they are not at such a damage-dealing loss.
  • Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse.

New Talents and Talent Changes

  • Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.
  • We want to make the Feral cat damage rotation slightly more forgiving. We do not want to remove what druids like about their gameplay, but we do want to make it less punishing to miss, say, a Savage Roar or Rake. The changes here will be on par with increasing the duration of Mangle like we did for patch 3.3.3.
  • Balance druids will have a new talent ability called Nature’s Torrent, which strikes for either Nature or Arcane damage depending on which will do the most damage (or possibly both), and moves the Eclipse meter more (details below). The improved version of Nature’s Torrent also reduces the target's movement speed. 10-second cooldown.
  • Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth.
  • We plan on giving Feral cats and bears a Kick/Pummel equivalent -- an interrupt that is off the global cooldown and does no damage. We feel like they need this utility to be able to fill the melee role in a dungeon or raid group, and to give them more PvP utility.
  • We want to make sure Feral and Balance druids feel like good options for an Arena team. They need the tools to where you might consider a Feral druid over an Arms warrior, or a Balance druid over a mage or warlock. Remember that the PvP landscape will probably look pretty different for Cataclysm with a focus on rated, competitive Battlegrounds.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Balance

  • Spell Damage
  • Spell Haste
  • Eclipse

Eclipse: We are moving Eclipse from a talent into a core mechanic of the class and making it less random. Balance druids will have a new UI element that shows a sun and a moon. Whenever they cast an Arcane spell, it will move the UI closer to the sun, and buff their Nature damage. Whenever they cast a Nature spell, it will move the UI closer to the moon, and buff their Arcane damage. The gameplay intention is to alternate Arcane and Nature spells (largely Starfire and Wrath) to maintain the balance.

Feral (Cat)

  • Melee Damage
  • Melee Critical Damage
  • Bleed Damage

Feral (Bear)

  • Damage Reduction
  • Vengeance
  • Savage Defense

Bleed Damage and Savage Defense: Feral druids will receive two sets of passive bonuses depending on whether the druid is in cat or bear form. Bleed Damage will be improved for cats. Savage Defense is the current bear mechanic for converting crits into damage absorption and will be improved for bears.

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 unbuffed 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 Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won’t see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form 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 the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

Restoration

  • Healing
  • Meditation (The amount of mana you regenerate in combat as a function of your Spirit)
  • HoT Scale Healing

HoT Scale Healing: HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.

Next: Hunter

Comments

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Priest pay
# May 07 2010 at 9:14 AM Rating: Decent
27 posts
All these changes to priest are exactly identical to the way I have been playing my healing priest. All my gear already focuses on intelligence first for power pool, Spirit and spell power second for bigger heals and better mana regen. I did notice that they are going to make a second heal availiable with less mana. I find this funny because I used to make use of the top three ranks of greater heal to minimize the power loss on heals, then they made them all the same power cost, ultimantly getting rid of that second heal with less power consumption. So they are bringing back what they got rid of over two years ago.
I used to always use bubble shield on tank when its hp got low and I knew the heal wouldnt land before tank died, so I'm really glad they are bringing in a even bigger shield to make saving tank at critical moments less stressful. I do not like the idea of getting rid of spirit buffs however, as it was challenging enough with great spirit and mana and trying to heal second rate tanks with power pool. But I'm sure its not too big of a differance, losing 80 or so spirit, atleast I hope. Well rounded and thought out change for holy healing priest, and I like it.

Edited, May 7th 2010 11:16am by pizzamike

Edited, May 7th 2010 11:17am by pizzamike
Class changes
# Apr 28 2010 at 11:53 AM Rating: Decent
I agree with EphyuSikay, nothing looks like a nerf. But I did see some interesting changes to some classes. First off is the Pally, my class. Due to the fact that I was retri before retri was uber nerfed, I feel that them fixing it will be a great accomplishment. But what they said in the pally article is strange to me. Quote 'We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either ' 1) all they could do is PVP so why do they want to improve 'PvP utility'. 2) Risk to hit the wrong button? They also said that what was holding the retri pally back was the shields and defense. Unless they replace the endurance with more power, I see this more as another nerf than an improvement.

Druids seem to be fine but the tree of life argument is interesting. The reason they think that the tree of life should be a duration not a passive is because Druids shouldn't have to sacrifice damage for healing. That is a weird thing to say because i have played a resto druid and i think i was fine with not being able to attack. This is because i was in a dungeon as a healer. I am not meant to attack.

Hunter having no ammunition is weird. I liked having special bullets or arrows that helped my damage. But it will make things easier.

DK seem to finally have a tanking talent tree. I have a DK tank and his talents are in all three trees to get the best tanking buffs. It is strange that Blood is now the tank where before Frost was.

As for the other classes, I feel that they are just making it easier for them. New abilities look nice for all classes and talent trees defined is a great thing. Cross your fingers that Cataclysm will be great (Or at least good enough to still place)

For any spelling mistakes I'm sorry. I fail at typing :D


Tree of Never Being Used
# Apr 23 2010 at 9:40 PM Rating: Decent
While I'm mostly excited about a lot of the class changes, I'm a bit annoyed at the Tree of Life changes for druids.

Raid healing, especially for a druid, is about consistency. Making tree of life a cooldown that increases healing.. isn't really going to do much. We'll all be gearing ourselves to be able to sustain healing without it, because we'll need to keep heals up without it. So when it's popped, it'll either be overhealing, or a limited time of barely keeping up, especially considering the majority of druid healing is HoTs, which aren't going to benefit much from a cooldown. If a fight goes by where it isn't used, I'll feel like it was wasted. If I need to use it every single cooldown to keep up, why isn't it passive? Currently, I've got a trinket I'm mostly wearing for the Int that also has a SP bonus on click... I never need it, and it never really seems like a good idea to pop. I don't notice much difference from popping it every cooldown, or leaving it alone for an entire fight. Mostly, I use it when buffing tanks with thorns. Is that what Tree of Life will be?

Healing isn't like DPS. I've got to keep people alive the whole time. With DPS, you can spike and relax, spike and relax, and it averages out. If my healing spikes, and relaxes, I'm overhealing for part of it, and people are dying for another.

I guess they'll probably balance us around popping that and then spamming nourish or something. Or saving it for enrages. Or maybe they'll add that much more stress to encounters by creating more moments like the air phase on Blood Queen (which happens again fast enough that all my cooldowns are still.. on cooldown). But hey, now my raid can see my ugly *** armor (assuming they don't improve much over my current Jay Leno helmet). I currently use Tree of Life to HIDE my armor and take up less space on my screen.
garbage
# Apr 20 2010 at 2:31 PM Rating: Default
they are gonna ***** us shaman over, this is b.s.!
garbage
# Apr 23 2010 at 9:46 PM Rating: Decent
Dude, I am all the hell over the shaman changes, along with most of the others for classes I play (and a few I'd now be interested in). I didn't really see anything that looked like a nerf, how're you being screwed over? And what spec are you talking about?
#REDACTED, Posted: Apr 16 2010 at 7:45 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Ok after all the work geting my hunter to lvl 80 I now need to delete my hunter win thay do this hunters are bad enuf oredy now thay will be the worst toon in the game fater rouges that is
Y?
# Apr 20 2010 at 10:13 AM Rating: Decent
I agree with Dark. Hunters are hardly the worst toons in the game and if you are that bad on yours I would suggest a lot more research on builds and rotations. A good place to start is ElitistJerks, there is lots of useful information in there that can help. The new content for hunters coming out is only going to benefit them in multiple ways, I did not read a negative thing at all for the upcoming changes. I have 3 80's and my hunter dominates them all.
Y?
# Apr 20 2010 at 4:34 PM Rating: Excellent
I have a 80 hunter, rogue, spriest, shaman and pally (those are my toons in the pics). I'm combing through the changes to see if there is anything I DON'T like about the changes. If I find something, I'll write about it.

Oh and my mage just hit 73 ...
Y?
# Apr 20 2010 at 9:20 AM Rating: Excellent
Why, because they will be using focus instead of mana? It seems like a logical jump since pets use focus as well. I play a hunter as well, among my five 80s, and I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I never liked the concept of mana for hunters anyway. Our activity is action-based, not magical based.
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