Beta class changes on the way
by Amanda Miller 
Jul 25th 2008 at 6:30PM
MMO-Champion has posted a list of changes that are seemingly going to go live in the WotLK Beta with the next patch. The official talent calculators have also been updated to reflect the changes. Here is an overview of some of the major changes on the way:
Death Knights
- Blood: Will of the Necropolis and Frost Aura buffed, and Blood Gorged will affect on melee damage.
- Unholy: Corpse Explosion and Unholy Aura buffed. Improved Corpse Explosion will have a longer effect time until full damage is done.
- Moonkin Form and Force of Nature will have a reduced cooldown. Those spells, in addition to Tree of Life Form, will have set mana costs instead of a percentage of base.
- Balance: Typhoon and Starfall will have increased range, but will also cost significantly more mana.
- Restoration: Flourish will cost less mana (585 to 450), but it will also heal for less (1610 to 672).
- Feral: Primal Tenacity will be changed back to a chance to resist stun and fear effects by 5/10/15%. The range of Faerie Fire is being increased by six yards.
- Hunting Party will be nerfed. It will now have at most, a 60% chance to proc on a critical strike, instead of 100%.
- Arcane: Arcane Impact will be called Spell Impact, and will affect Blast Wave, Fire Blast, Ice Lance, and Cone of Cold, in addition to the current effects on Arcane Explosion and Arcane Blast.
- There will be a new tier 3 talent called Student of the Mind, which will increase spirit by 4/8/12%. Potent Spirit has been removed.
- Arcane Potency will require one point in Presence of Mind instead of five in Arcane Concentration.
- New tier 8 talent called Arcane Flows. It requires one point in Arcane Power, and reduces the cooldown on your Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility spells by 30 seconds.
- Netherwind Presence, rather than causing several of your spells to have a chance to grant you an instant spell, will increase spell haste by 2/4/6%.
- Holy: Holy Shock is being buffed, with the amount that it heals increased by 66%.
- Protection: Holy Shield will grant 6 charges instead of 4. Avenger's Shield will cost 70% less mana, but will do less damage. Guarded by the Light will reduce the mana cost of your Consecration, Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield by 15/30%.
- Retribution: Improved Blessing of Might will increase the attack power bonus of your blessing by 10/20/30/40/50% instead of 4/8/12/16/20%.
- Vindication will have the chance to reduce target's attributes by 10/20% instead of 5/10%.
- Pursuit of Justice will require only 2 talent points (down from 3) and will increase mounted movement speed by 9/15% (old was 5/10/15%) and reduce chance to be hit by spells by 1/2% instead of 1/2/3%.
- Elemental: Convection (Tier 1) is now a 3 points talent, reducing the mana cost of Shock, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Thunder and Lava Burst spells by 4%/8%/12% (Old version : 5 points and 2/4/6/8/10%).
- Elemental Precision increases your chance to hit with Fire, Frost, and Nature spells by 2/4/6% and reduces the threat caused by these spells by 4/7/10% (Old version : 1/2/3% hit and 10/20/30% threat).
- Astral Shift now has a 33/66/100% chance to shift into the Astral Plane reducing all damage taken by 30% (Old version : 100% chance to reduce all damage taken by 10%/20%/30%).
- Thunderstorm range increased from 10 to 12 yards, damage increased from 595-679 to 640-729, knockback stays 20 yards.
- Enhancement: Improved shields now increases the amount of Mana Shield orbs by 10% instead of 5%, improvements to Lightning Shield and Earth Shield stay the same.
- Shamanistic Rage now gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 15% of your attack power. (Old version : mana regeneration equal to 30% of your attack power)
- Maelstrom Weapon now reduces the casting time of any spell by 4/8/12/16/20% when you critically hit with a melee weapon. (Old version : was only affecting Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Burst)
- Feral Spirit now lasts 45 seconds instead of 30 seconds.
- Restoration: Nature's Guardian cooldown has been changed from 8 to 5 seconds. Spirit Link now also breaks if a shared damage would reduce a target's health below 20%.
- Arms: Bloodletting has been renamed to Improved Rend once again and doesn't increase the amount of damage caused by Bloodbath anymore.
- Protection: Shield Specialization now gives you a chance to generate 1 rage when a block occurs. (Old version : 2 Rage).
- Affliction: Haunt (Tier 11) has been changed from a 10 sec cooldown to a 15 sec cooldown.
- Destruction: Aftermath (Tier 2) changed to 2%/4% chance to daze the target for 5 sec. (Previously 5/10% for 5 sec). Chaos Bolt (Tier 11) changed to an 8 sec cooldown. (Previously 12 secs).
Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, News items, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Brownjohn Jul 25th 2008 6:39PM
The news for paladins just keeps getting better and better. Holy shock finally looks to be a viable healing spell, and the changes to the protection talents actually address some of the mana issues. The ret changes are definitely welcome as well.
I've never been more excited to play a paladin.
WatcherZero Jul 25th 2008 6:50PM
All official talent calcs list mana cost at max level (for BC talent calcs 70, for WOTLK 80) rather than listing the percentage cost they actually are.
Germ Jul 26th 2008 11:22AM
lol I'm in Beta and Holy Shock is critting for 3000+ and this was before these changes took place, HL was critting for over 8000 and FoL in between around 4.5. I am wearing all t-6 and Sunwell gear and my spell power in beta is around 1200+. Paladins are the shit right now and if this is how they'll be once Wrath comes out I wouldn't be surprised to see more people rolling a pally. So much more fun to play in any spec. =)
Jason Jul 25th 2008 6:42PM
What the hell did they do to warriors?! Not good. Paladin and druid look nice though.
Kaphik Jul 25th 2008 10:50PM
I don't think the warrior changes are bad.
Admittedly, the changes to warrior tanking are major. the difference between one point of rage and two points of rage is miniscule compared to some of the other changes.
And yes, I have been playing warrior since I started WoW over two and a half years ago, and I am playing one in beta. The changes are unsettling, but so far, I am finding them to be very nice.
Groth Jul 26th 2008 11:48AM
Um, no offense, but do you play a drood? coz its not looking "nice" from here!
We've got some ok pvp buffs, (which arent great for pve,) which might help us when we're getting nailed by diseases and HoT eating talents of DKs, oh wait, no they wont.
Typhoon is less than impressive due to the way it animates then work, allowing mages to toast us before they get knocked back. Starfall was nice, but if its more expensive then it really removes its long term usage viability.
They've made moonkin and tree of life cheaper (finally), and reduced our new AoE heal by 100 or so mana, and reduced the heal done by more than half.
And primal tenacity gets changed back to its old lackluster self. Oh and we get to pull a whole 6 yards further.
Looking back to BC, druids saw some great new changes, with mangle, tree of life and force of nature.
Looking forward to WotLK, theres nothing that makes me think "great! my druid's staying as my main, and i can stop levelling my pally whilst i wait for a DK".
darian Jul 27th 2008 2:31AM
I play a Druid (is dr00d the Druid equivalent of rouge and huntard?), and I think the WotLK changes are awesome.
I'm not sure why you're complaining about PvP. Tree Form will let you do more powerful, cheaper heals when you're not being beaten on, and provides an armor bonus for when you are. Sure, we'll have a counter now, but it'll A) require a DK B) require the use of an unholy rune and C) not prevent us from using Nourish and Healing Touch. The Death Knights don't have an anti-Druid I.W.I.N. button unless the Druid and his team don't intelligently adapt to the situation.
I'm not sure why there's a complaint about long term usage on Starfall. It's a 3 minute cooldown. You can use this at most twice on any fight with a sane duration.
The Typhoon issue is about all we have to complain about. It's effectively a glitch, and hopefully will be fixed.
They reduced the healing on Flourish because it was overpowered. It was like being able to cast almost a full stack of Lifeblooms on five people whenever you wanted. Even with the nerf, the healing is still extremely powerful.
How can you complain about non-issues like these when Moonkin are getting incredible raid utility, Ferals are getting incredible damage and tanking utility, and Trees get Revive and a bunch of other fun tools? How can you not be excited?
Jordrah Jul 25th 2008 6:59PM
they nerfed shamie rage! >_> i guess we'll have more AP at 80, with mana pools that will stay relatively the same soo... i guess it makes sense?
DirtyPriest Jul 26th 2008 3:15AM
Yeah, I think so too. Kinda the same with all the base % mana increases. And same with VT being knocked down to 2%. Everything probably scales much faster than mana pools. Hard to see if this is a nerf or just to balance out things at 80 until we actually play WOTLK and get to end game (and get geared) then we can make comparisons. But that's a LONG ways away and by then Blizzard will probably too lazy to revise it.
The bad part is lowbie chars will probably suffer more. That's for sure. Cause at 70 this is 100% a nerf. But we all know Blizz doesn't care about lowbies, whether they make a change that makes things easier or harder, it's completely disregarded (though I love when they make a talent change that heavily benefits lowbies like Blessing of Might change).
That's my guess anyway. A lot of these abilities were left untouched throughout BC so I doubt that Blizzard all of a sudden thought they were OP going into WOTLK.
That's all I got to say about that.
Zakk Jul 25th 2008 7:01PM
Holy crap, buffs to DKs? Either there are some problems I'm not informed about, or they really, REALLY want this class to be heroic!
Seppe Jul 25th 2008 7:03PM
Ok, so far so good for us Pallies. Prot is still incredibly bloated, but they look like they're at least trying to fix our mana-issues. Time will tell if it's enough.
But why the Shield Spec nerf to warriors?
redstar Jul 26th 2008 6:13AM
mana issues for who exactly? ...i see nothing for holy. I also see nothing terribly exciting as they give a lille and take away with the other hand.
Clasifyd Jul 26th 2008 4:49PM
Completely agree about the bloat... But we've still got a few months. Here's hoping!
Seppe Jul 26th 2008 6:45PM
Yeah, I've got my fingers crossed that in the next few months they'll prune the Prot tree and give pallies some love when it comes to our mana consumption. Ret is looking good, but so far it seems like I'll still be drinking after every pull as Prot. >
Meira Jul 25th 2008 7:05PM
"There will be a new tier 3 talent called Student of the Mind, which will increase spirit by 4/8/12%. Potent Spirit has been removed."
It should be the other way around (staying Potent Spirit and get rid of Student of Mind) to make spirit viable to mages... when will Blizzard learn...
TotalBiscuit Jul 25th 2008 10:00PM
Getting rid of Potent Spirit is a stupid decision. It synergized really well with deep-arcane. They've really dropped the ball on this one, I hope they reconsider.
Kawanda Jul 25th 2008 7:10PM
Wow, the Shamanistic Rage talents are going to be really rough. While we have phenomenal mana regeneration now, in WotLK, mana usage will increase dramatically with more expensive shocks, Lightning Shield (with Static Shock), and Maelstrom Weapon. Now, our major regeneration ability (SR) has its effectiveness halved, and our minor mana regeneration (Water Shield), is obsolete with the lucrativeness of lightning shield.
However, it begs the question, will Clearcasting in the Elemental Tree be our salvation? With the unification of spell and melee hit/crit, WotLK brings new synergy to the formerly polar trees in the form of Elemental Devastation, Intellect->AP, and Agility changes. Does anyone feel similarly?
Angus Jul 27th 2008 10:40AM
Maelstrom Weapons: Flame Shock, Instant Lava Burst, auto-crit, Elemental Devastation.
Next 2 spells get reduced cost, and shamanistic focus is going to pretty much be up all the time.
Kawanda Jul 27th 2008 12:22PM
Well, Shamanistic Focus was already up almost 100% of the time, and I'm vaguely curious as to whether Clearcasting will stack additively or multiplicatively. I still think that the concept of "infinite mana" will be a thing of the past come 3.0. While our mana issues will be much less significant than other classes, we will have to begin considering how to conserve mana.
Several things come to mind when examining this. Firstly, our major mana drain was totem twisting, which won't exist in 3.0. Secondly, due to new changes to our stats, we'll have larger mana pools because of the new hunter gear we'll be wearing. Lastly, since totems and UR are raid-wide, it's increasingly possible that we could be placed in a group with an SP, Resto shaman, or survival hunter for the mana regen.
Zakk Jul 25th 2008 7:10PM
You might want to change the wording on the PoJ change. It just says mounted movement speed in the article, but I think it still affects mounted and unmounted. Unless the BETA talent calculators on worldofwarcraft.com (not wowhead) need to be updated.