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 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

PriestIn 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 (The amount of mana you regenerate in combat as a function of your Spirit)
  • Absorption

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

Holy

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

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

Shadow

  • Spell damage
  • Spell Crit
  • Shadow Orbs

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.

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."

Next: Rogue

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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