The developers mentioned at BlizzCon 2009 that they wanted groups to be a little less reliant on specific classes for the buffs which are considered to be "must haves." Good examples of these include Blessing of Kings, Gift of the Wild, and even Power Word: Fortitude. These buffs are so commonplace in most raids that the lack of them feels wild and strange. Not to mention, you feel downright underpowered.

Patch 3.2.2 is going to help raids out with that issue. Three items will be making their way to Azeroth, each of which mimics a class-specific buff. MMO-Champ posted them, but I've transcribed them for you below:

• Runescroll of Stamina (Inscription) - Snowfall Ink, Resilient Parchment x 5 - Increases Stamina by 165 for all party and raid members for 1 hr. This is an obvious replacemeent for Power Word: Fortitude.
• Drums of Forgotten Kings (Leatherworking) - Heavy Borean Leather x 8, Icy Dragonscale x 8 - Gives all members of the raid or group the Blessing of Forgotten Kings, increasing total stats by 8% for 30 min. This is your new Blessing of Kings when you don't have a Paladin.
  
• Drums of the Wild (Leatherworking) - Heavy Borean Leather x 4, Jormungar Scale x 20 - Gives the Gift of the Wild to all party and raid members, increasing armor by 750, all attributes by 37 and all resistances by 54 for 1 hr. Going Druidless, and lacking Gift of the Wild? Drums of the Wild will get you there.

Note that all of these item-based replacements perform equal to the class version. Only the Paladin buff is stronger than its profession counterpart but I expect the others to get weakened before this goes live. However, you shouldn't feel quite so naked without a Druid, Priest, or Paladin. Of course, this makes me wonder if a Tailor-specific Banner of Heroism or something is on the way, which would help lessen the reliance on Shamans in every single 10 man. (Though it's fair that it shouldn't be that hard to find a single Shaman.)

There's no official or even unofficial word about whether these items will be useable in the Arena. However, it would really, really surprise me if they were. They obviously seemed focused on enabling 10-man raids to get by without too many required classes, without handing these three buffs out to other classes.

Tags: buff, buffs, class-buffs, patch-3.2.2, patch-3.2.2-changes, patch-3.2.2-ptr, patch-3.2.2-wow

Filed under: Leatherworking, Analysis / Opinion, Inscription