Yes, it's true. The following will now be off the global cooldown in Wrath of the Lich King, but will have a 1-second cooldown of their own to switch between them:

• Hunter aspects (source)
• Paladin auras (source)

The new Druid talent Survival Instincts is also being taken off the GCD, which I can really appreciate - tanking gets quite frenetic.

But that's not all! After putting aspects off the GCD, the devs decided they weren't happy about how it made you feel like you had to "stance-dance" to Monkey every time someone came into melee range. So they're introducing a whole new aspect: Aspect of the Dragonhawk, which combines the benefits Monkey and Hawk into one aspect. This spell will be learned at level 75 and 80, instead of learning new ranks of Hawk. The idea, says Ghostcrawler, is that you'll never cast Hawk or Monkey again after 75; you'll just use Dragonhawk for fighting and Viper when you need some mana back.

I have mixed reactions to this change. It'll be nice for hunters, who already have enough spells to deal with between shots, melee, traps, pet skills, etc. However, it seems like they might as well just make +AP and +dodge built in to Hunters, remove Monkey, Hawk, and Dragonhawk, and put a penalty on Viper corresponding to the now-innate +AP/+dodge. The whole Aspects system has always felt a bit half-baked to me, to be honest. Also, I'm not quite sold on the Dragonhawk name, but I guess it's better than "Monkeyhawk."

Tags: aspect-of-the-dragonhawk, aspect-of-the-hawk, aspect-of-the-monkey, aspects, auras, gcd, survival-instincts, wotlk, wrath, wrath-beta

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Wrath of the Lich King