Blizzard talks about the upcoming Cataclysm stat changes

I have read this and some of it sounds like it is going back to the original version in some cases. not liking some of the changes, but that might change depending on the talents.
 
One of the confusing parts of that post is that it doesn't talk about the upcoming changes to Spirit in a way that makes sense. Allow me to try to clarify:

1. Spirit, the stat that we know in WoW right now, is getting the axe. Spirit will no longer exist in Cataclysm.

2. Blizzard has rolled a lot of the functionality found in MP5 and Spirit into a brand new statistic that they called "Regen." Essentially, Regen caused mana regeneration on an X/second amount, where X is your regen modified by the number of seconds since your last cast. So unlike the current system, where you get Spirit regeneration after 5 seconds and mp5 regeneration before 5 seconds, this system would provide mana at all times, ramping up higher and higher if you stop casting.

3. After a few days in design, Blizzard's design team decided that "Spirit" is a better name for this new stat than "Regen." So, they named Regen Spirit, and confused the whole thing.

4. Whenever you hear Blizzard say things about "Spirit" in Cataclysm, they mean this new Regen stat, not the old Spirit stat.

5. Classes that used Spirit for damage in WotLK, like Warlocks, will have their talents rebuilt to stop doing that.
 
MP5 going away — YES!
AP going away (mostly) — YES!
Spell power going away — Eh?
Defense going away — Saw it coming with druids, but... Meh...
ArP getting the axe — Finally!

As to making these changes to simplify the game... I don't think people are having problems with the game per se. I think Blizzard's itemization team doesn't understand half the mechanics in the game they're itemizing for... Players simply aren't being given credit here. There are many bright people who play the game that have been able to see problems with the itemization that the Blues simply ignore until it hits them smack in the face.

Whenever Blizzard seems to make exceptions to how stats work when it comes to certain classes I feel that the classes that Blizzard makes exceptions for will be more of a band-aid. I'm looking specifically at Balance Druids and Elemental Shamans here...
 
Stat and Itemization Changes - Tanking & Physical DPS

I'll speak to what I know here (Tanking & Physical DPS):

Defense going away - meh. Blizzard's intention here is that a Warrior or Pally can be spec'd DPS (Fury, Arms, Ret) and "Tank" a heroic in Cataclysm. Pop on a shield and be G2G. The same applies to a kitty druid shifting into bear form or a DK going into Frost Presence. However from what I read a few months ago, this will be adequate for tanking a heroic (present day lvl 82 boss). This will not be adequate for tanking a raid (present day lvl 83 boss). Supposedly to raid tank in Cataclysm you'll need to be spec'd deep into your relative Protection tree.

A few of my concerns with this path. Take a Fury or Arms warrior for example. Tanking a heroic they lose Shockwave, Vitality, Damage Shield, Heroic Throw/Gag Order, Intervene, etc. It will be TBD how this all works in practice, the PTRs, and Cataclysm Beta of course. My other concern (which is already evident with the new LFG system) is this will create many players calling themselves a tank with little or no tanking experience. Also, why go down this path when we have dual-spec? :confused:

ArP (Armor Penetration) and AP (Attack Power) going away: :(
I personally find Stat Balancing an enjoyable part of the game. Take my hunter for example. It was relatively well known that until you were Ulduar 25 Geared (or better) Survival was the superior raiding spec. However, once you were able to get a static Armor Penetration rating of 360 or more, Marksmanship began to outperform SV. Fury Warriors enjoy similar ArP benefits and for me having to carefully analyze whether or not a new drop is an upgrade is just part of the game. I will miss this complexity and hope other opportunities exist in the future to make gearing/enchanting/gemming choices meaningful.

I am guessing there will be many changes on the horizon and Blizzard will be instituting many of them in advance of Cataclysm's release. I'm also confident their testing will be exhaustive. That being said, I will be watching with anticipation and a bit of skepticism. ;)
 
Tanking - Well for the defense I think it’s a good thing, as a druid tank they did this change awhile ago and it worked out pretty well. There are some bear only talents that really shine when your tanking that do nothing for your dps,(Ex. flat 12% less damage taken) and I can see them doing the same thing for the other tanks. Just means you can tank heroics without a tank spec, something feral kitties do fine now, how ever in raids you really need the extra damage migration from the tanking talents.

Spirit – There will be talents for warlocks and other dps classes that turn the new spirit into hit as well, almost reminds me of how a prot pally has a talent that turns a high % of there str into spell power.
 
The druid talent that makes bears uncrittable is also a stat that most feral kitties would not go without. I mean, who wouldn't want to have a percentage increase in your base stats?

Now, the 12% damage reduction (Protector of the Pack, I believe it is) is a decent talent now but when it came out it was one of the most gimmicky of the tanking classes (Protector protected you less the less you had in your party). While Blizzard finally got around to making the talent less of a gimmick, initial implementation of this talent left a lot to be desired. :)
 
It was Protector of the Pack I was referring too, the crit one is used as a kitty :)

Can't recall the name of a few of the other ones but like the one that increases your armor is another that you only take for tanking is useless for dps.
 
Survival of the Fittest is the one that increases your armor (11%/22%/33%) as well as increases your base stats (2%/4%/6%) in addition to making your bear uncrittable at Rank 3 (2%/4%/6%, with raid bosses able to crit you up to 5.6% crit reduction). :) I note that you have it in both your bear and kitty specs as I would if I had a druid that had both tank and DPS specs based on bear and cat.

Protector of the Pack is a bear-only stat, is true, and if you're tanking in a raid you'd definitely want to take this one over King of the Jungle which is geared towards kitties instead of bears. Protector of the Pack, despite being a bear-only ability, also (at max rank) increases your attack power by 6%, so there is a DPS component to this tank talent, but you can still say it's a tank-only talent to the extent that bears get a lot of their threat from DPS as well as attack-modifiers (not as imbalanced as it was in BC prior to the Great Bear Castra... er, Nerf)...

Druids are almost a special case, though, as there are two roles found in the Feral tree (where three trees cover four roles of utility). So, feral talents are pretty skewed to be specialized so that there's no One Spec to Rule Them All®...
 
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having to carefully analyze whether or not a new drop is an upgrade is just part of the game.
Click to expand...

But why does it have to be? For a person that plays a multitude of characters, having to weigh 4 agi against 3 AP and 1 ArP, but only if my Str is over 560 and...blah blah blah, that gets really annoying. I am a simple-minded person that needs a simple system. I shouldn't have to build huge spreadsheets to figure out which gear combination is better for spec1 and spec2. Point of reference: I had 5 60s and 4 70s while those levels were caps... mostly because of the flexibility needed to get into groups. If I had to worry about dual spec *and* min/maxing, I'd give up playing them and just forgo grouping and raiding.

But even for the casual players (as I have been, recently) I hate having to read the forums to see what the latest and greatest gear-set and talent combination is. I like to build a character to use spell rotations that I can get comfortable with. I don't want to have to change it up every month or two just because another rank of gear comes out. As it is, I'm reading about where you want this Frost Badge gear, unless you're going to raid and get upgrades, in which case you want *that* gear set.

I find it all too burdensome and confusing. I'd rather quit than spend 10 hours a week analyzing gear.
 
I think thick hide is the armor one I was thinking of, it just increases your armor, nothing else, I forgot (don't have a talent tree to look at work) that SOF also increases it now, used to be just stats at one point.

Its been awhile now since we got a talent change so haven’t looked at them much, as you can tell by my detailed explanations: P
 
I think we need to keep this all in perspective. What we are seeing here is a brief glimpse at what Stats (and ONLY Stats) are likely to look like in Cataclysm. We are viewing this information through the lens of our current version of WoW, and that's not what WoW is going to look like in 4.0.

We don't know how Talents are going to be reworked. We don't know what new spells are going to be available for each class. We certainly don't have any idea how hard or fast mobs are going to hit in the level 85 heroics. Tanking classes will become Def capped simply by switching to a tanking stance, presence, etc, but maybe being bursted to death by multiple mobs won't be the main danger. I suspect the main problem is going to be that non-tank spec'd "tanks" are going to be mana sponges, and Blizzard has certain said multiple times that mana management WILL be a healer priority in Cataclysm. Sure, an Arms warrior with sword and board won't get burst to death, but he's simply not going to have the same avoidance and reduction that a prot spec tank will, and he also won't have as large of a health pool.
 
Class previews are going up. First in: Shaman. Also listed, though the preview hasn't happened yet: Blood is the new DK tanking tree. Blizzard will not balance the trees around the ability to tank or DPS in each tree. /sadface
 
Looks like lots of cool stuff is planned for the shaman class! Earthquake sounds fun - more aoe is always fun - and being able to cast while moving will be a huge plus. I hope they move forward with letting elemental shamans drop searing totem from range too. It's a pain having to run up and drop it when aoeing.

Two thumbs up!
 
read the little bit of info on the dk tanking. think it is the right thing to do giving one tree. whether it should be blood or not, don't know. i just know that trying to have 3 tanking trees mixed with dps'ing just did not work as good as it could. there was always abilities that just did not fit. i really want to see how they set this up.
 
I disagree that they couldn't do it. Their excuse wasn't even really that they couldn't do it but rather 'it's unfair to other classes that we'd be fixing effectively 6 trees instead of 3'.

Personally, I think Frost would have been the ideal tree to consolidate tanking talents in as it seems to be the most 'tanky' tree (even Satorri — who basically 'owns' the definitive guide to Death Knight tanking — posits that Frost is the classic tank tree).
 
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"A clarification of Camouflage and what becoming obscured actually means:
Camouflage is *not* stealth. Your enemies will never wonder where you are. We're trying to use the new Cataclysm water effect to put a shimmering PREDATORy visual on you. It's protection from ranged attacks and it gives you some combat bonuses, but it's not like Shadowmeld or rogue / druid stealth where players can't find you.

The idea with it is that Hunters are only vulnerable to melee attacks or ranged AEs while they are in the obscured state. If you target a camo hunter or a rogue using Smoke Bomb, you will get an error message saying something like "Target obscured." You can see them and target them, but can't use your attacks. Imagine they are behind a pillar or something. You can try and get off an AE near them or you can move to melee.

As most of you know, we tried Camo once before, but because it was true stealth it was very hard to balance, plus it felt like we were just handing out the same cool abilities to every class instead of coming with unique mechanics. Hunters were so overwhelmingly excited about the basic idea that we wanted to try it again, but not as stealth."

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I hk thisl be senghuntes wil NOT use and Blizzard will need to redesign.

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" • Pet management will also change. Hunters will now have two types of attainable pets: active pets and stored pets. Hunters will be able to have up to three active pets (perhaps five for Beast Mastery specialized players) and will have the ability to switch among these pets any time they are out of combat, without going to town. They will also be able to have a large number of pets in storage at the stables. In order to swap a pet from active to passive, a hunter will still need to visit their local Stable Master. However, this should afford ample storage for the many Spirit Beasts wandering the lands of Azeroth."
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AWESOME!!!! hehe

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" • A major change coming for the hunter is the removal of ammunition. Guns, bows, and crossbows will now do damage without consuming ammunition at all. There will be no more ammo slot on the hunter’s character display. Any ammunition that a hunter has at the time of the change will become gray sellable items. Existing quivers will be converted into large bags -- though each hunter can only have one and non-hunters will not benefit from this change -- and we will not be making any additional quivers."
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Sad, being an Engineering this really hurts. For the most part the changes are okay......I think others needs more work than others.....

-Kahless-
 
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