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 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

WarlockThis 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 Curse 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

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

Demonology

  • Spell Damage
  • Spell Haste
  • Demon Damage

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

Destruction

  • Spell Damage
  • Spell Critical Damage
  • Fire Direct Damage

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

Next: Warrior

Comments

Post Comment
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.
Post Comment

Free account required to post

You must log in or create an account to post messages.