Some kind soul just dropped by the Wrath alpha wiki and posted a whole slew of purported changes to existing spells and talents, slated for Wrath. I trust these changes even less than the usual alpha information I see floating around (hence the "rumors" category on this post), but other people on that wiki's community do seem to be verifying them. And they do jive with what you can see at this site, for what that's worth. Of course, even if they are really what's showing up in the alpha, they have a long ways and a lot of change to go before Wrath goes live.

There's a lot of interesting, strange, and flat-out unlikely stuff on there. As usual, for the full list of alleged changes go look at the wiki. Here are some of my reactions:

• Druid
• The Tiger's Fury change makes perfects sense. As is, I very rarely use it since it's just too hard to calculate whether it's worth it.
• Hooray for the Roots change! This makes me extremely happy, and it just makes sense. Not lore sense, but certainly class balance sense.
• The OoC change is great, just for being less irritating in general.
• Tree of Life reverted to its old buff? Interesting, and makes me want a tree even more. Maybe my druid won't be going feral after all.
• Edit: Feral Charge usable in cat form is going to be a bit imba in PvP, in my opinion, though it does give kitties a spell interrupt, which is nice.
• Priest
• This is a buff to pretty much all aspects of Lightwell. More significantly (depending on what they mean by "direct damage"), it appears that DoTs (and AoEs?) will no longer break the LW effect. It's still weak for a 31-pointer, but I will probably take it now if I go that deep in Holy (which I expect I will).
• The Shadow Focus change makes sense, given that it is currently pretty easy to reach the hit cap as a shadow priest, and that we have mana issues.
• Improved Spirit Tap is awesome. Suddenly ST is ten times more useful in groups. And all for the same number of points we're currently spending in ST, too!
• The Mind Flay range increase is long-overdue.
• Wow, I just saw the Shadowform threat reduction. Excuse me while I go change my pants.
• Circle of Healing has been both buffed and nerfed. Apparently its most irritating limitation has been lifted (read closely), but it also now has a cooldown. Fair enough, I suppose.
• Enlightenment will now be taken by almost everyone that goes down that far in Disc.
• Finally, I mourn for Vampiric Touch. This is an unmerited nerf. But Shadow priests still come out significantly ahead in this round of changes, I think.
• Warlock
• Does anyone even use Demon Skin/Armor anyway, now that Fel Armor is available?
• I'm not sure anyone's going to take Demonic Power, because the two talents that combined into it are just too weak.
• Woah, that's a significant nerf to Soul Link, which is reasonable when you look at how early they're moving it in the tree.
• Warrior
• Many more skills scale with AP now. That can only be good.
• Isn't that a pretty big hit on Death Wish, though? I was under the impression that fear immunity was a big part of the reason people used it.
• The Anticipation nerf is going to mean you'll need more Defense from your gear, and will therefore have less latitude choosing pieces.
• Honestly, I'm a little out of my element analyzing these Warrior changes. But that's why we have more bloggers on staff than just me. The inimitable Mr Rossi will be covering this all in great detail later today in his Care and Feeding of Warriors column, so don't miss that.
  

Finally, this isn't a change to an existing ability, but how about this Blacksmithing spell, eh? Overpowered much? Unless it doesn't stack with enchantments, that is. Then it's probably underpowered.

Tags: alpha, leak, lk, rumor, spells, talents, tweet-this, wotlk, wrath, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Filed under: Classes, Talents, Wrath of the Lich King, Rumors